"Please accept my resignation....

I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member". So said Grouch Marx in his wire to an elite club of which he was a member. Much misquoted through the years. However the Groucho club was named in the spirit of this quote.

The modern food buff would barely recognise the London of the late seventies and early eighties. There were a few bistros serving 'foreign food' but modern British cooking and the Gastropub were light years away. Most pubs were smokey dives with a jar of pickled eggs on the bar and bags of pork scratchings behind it. Private clubs were classified by class.The working class had working men's clubs and the upper class had gentlemen's clubs. The latter were often fine but fading buildings stained with generations of cigars, port and discrimination. 'The winds of sexual equality could only eddy around Pall Mall, but things were about to change'....
In 1984 a large stucco fronted townhouse at 45 Dean Street Soho, and it's now famous dining room with vaulted roof and glass ceiling (hidden as a store room)  became the Groucho Club. It had previously been a restaurant since 1880 and was most famously known as Gennaro's, a favourite of Dame Nellie Melba. Gennaro, the proprietor would often greet guests at the door and present each female guest with a red rose... This appeals to me and for some reason I have a picture in my head of the large annoying opera singer from the Go Compare adverts waiting at the door with a red rose between his teeth.

I am very much looking forward to TheBusinessLounge making its own small piece of history at the club this Thursday March 8th. The dinner will be in The Mackintosh Room overlooking Dean Street on the 2nd floor and hosted by the irrepressible and inspirational Jonathan Macdonald. This dinner is sold out and has been for some time but we have another booked in the diary for 10th April (selling fast). In this wonderful building where tales of murders and shootings occurred in what is now the supposedly haunted Gennaro's Room, we will be discussing business war battles and developing business relationships that will hopefully continue and thrive. Deals will be made alongside much conversation, food and beverages. If those walls could talk.. well our dinner probably wouldn't be as dramatic but it could be one of the most profitable for those in attendance.
We are very excited!