Toklas

Toklas occupies the ground floor of 180 The Strand, a 1970s concrete building that also houses 180 Studios, and it was opened in 2021 by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, who founded Frieze. That lineage shows: the walls carry work by Wolfgang Tillmans and Ragna Bley, and four decades of exhibition posters run the length of the bar. The room reads as a canteen rather than a dining room, which is the point.

The food is Mediterranean and produce-led, with a bakery at street level on the same road. It is named for Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein's partner and the author of a cookbook of her own.

For an event it is one of the largest and most adaptable rooms in central London: 150 seated across the restaurant and bar, 100 more on the terrace, and 400 standing across the whole space. A recessed sliding wall closes the Bar Room off from the main restaurant, so the two hire separately or together, and the windowed perimeter opens onto the pergola-covered terrace designed by Miria Harris. Surrey Street is a quiet, resident-free side street, which is why an evening here can run on.