A tale of two Sohos: anarchist assassins and hospitality incubators

Ravioli di zucca, you should be my Proustian madeleine moment when Lina Stores expands into Manchester this spring. Fingers crossed these little pasta parcels of pumpkin and ricotta make the cut, to be served doused in butter, sage and Grana Padano. 

For a while this old favourite of mine no longer seemed a fixture on the menu of the Italian icon that has swollen since my first encounter in Eighties Soho. Just as I have, thanks to a lifetime of carbs. At the last count Lina currently comprises three delis and seven restaurants across London with a further three outposts in Japan – a statement in itself.

The original family deli, where they used to bag up the ravioli for me (in sheets of greaseproof sprinkled with Parmesan) still occupies its corner site at 18 Brewer Street. Here fresh pasta continues to be made, under the perfectionist eye of consultant head chef Masha Rener, who perfected her dough skills in Umbria. The premises themselves have set the design template for the burgeoning Lina chain (the first spin-off restaurant was in nearby Greek Street). Think signature pistachio-green exterior and colourful floor to ceiling shelffuls.

No Manchester expansion ill omens, I hope, in the presence next door at no.16 Brewer Street of Randall & Aubin. That fellow Soho fixture opened 30 years before Lina in 1911 as London’s first French butchers, supplying Sir Winston Churchill and both the Ritz and Savoy. 

In 1996, under new ownership, it reopened as a seafood-led restaurant, while retaining, even gussying up, the original Edwardian features. That incarnation is still there but R&A over-stretched themselves with an ill-starred Manchester franchise in 2016. Within a year the liquidators were called in and it was salvaged before finally limping off into the sunset. Kaji, formerly  Musu, now occupies  the Bridge Street site. 

The other day I passed Lina Stores’ starkly functional new venue on Quay Street, its huge expanse of glass mirroring the Opera House opposite. At 150 covers, it doesn’t yell ‘just like Mama used to make’. Nor does the all-day, breakfast to cocktail ethos honed across South Ken, Marylebone, Kings Cross, Broadgate Circle et al.

Lina’s arrival in Manchester mirrors that of other reassuring mid-size brands from The Smoke – Flat Iron, Blacklock, Caravan following in the footsteps of Dishoom, Rosa’s Thai, Honest Burgers and, on a different level, the mighty Hawksmoor.

How Lina’s pumpkin ravioli were my Eighties lifeline

My own Lina loyalty was always tenuous. I’d followed the national newspapers south when they’d shut their northern offices. Just a four day week toiling in The Street of Shame but still three nights away (and too much time spent in Fleet Street watering holes) before an all too fleeting long weekend with my family in the Pennines. It couldn’t last.

Back then pasta, parmesan and pesto, let alone fresh basil, weren’t staples of the supermarket shelves, even if chemists shops were no longer the source of our olive oil. That’s where Soho came in as a place to stock up on Roman and Tuscan exotica (of the culinary variety). Lina Stores wasn’t even my deli of choice. That honour went to I Camisa & Son around the corner in Old Compton Street. Like Lina, it had changed hands but felt immutable. My life didn’t as I clutched my consignment of San Daniele Prosciutto and Parmigiano Reggiano and sprinted for Euston. 

Soho retains my affection to this day and I’ve waxed nostalgic about its legacy on this site while championing today’s culinary heroes – Jeremy Lee at Quo Vadis and Tomos Parry at Mountain, Oisin Rodgers’ Guinness-centric Devonshire and Noble Rot occupying what was the Gay Hussar… not forgetting the searing take on Northern Thai from the team at Kiln.

Of old haunts, my sole constant is the 150-year-old Maison Bertaux in Greek Street for café au lait and croissant. Since 1988 it has been in loving English hands, two sisters steeped in its culture, so changes have been sympathetic. Compare with its one-time rival in Old Compton Street. Patisserie Valerie. 

From small-scale brand building in the late Eighties it rose to nearly 200 branches nationally before plunging dramatically in the last decade with much publicised financial nightmares and wholesale closures, among them the lacklustre Deansgate, Manchester cafe. 

Lina Stores has been a quite different proposition, having got into bed with White Rabbit Projects, a self-styled ‘hospitality incubator’ whose CEO is former Soho House commercial director Chris Miller. His team have obviously brokered the big investment in what was solely a family-run deli for decades. Cannily the Lina website comprehensively surveys that Little Italy legacy, celebrating both the folksy side and the start-studded patronage.

It may just be me but I love this anecdote: “In the mid-20th century, the rooms above the delicatessen were used for auditions and rehearsals for nearby theatres in the West End. Later, they were rented by John Calder, who ran his publishing business from there. Many faces visited Calder over the years, including Samuel Beckett, who often came over from Paris and stayed overnight, playing Calder’s Bechstein grand piano into the early hours.”

Soho was once packed with food stores. Confusingly there were two Camisas – I Camisa and Fratelli Camisa. All down to the brothers Ennio and Isidoro Camisa, who created the business in the 1920s. Later after wartime internment they fell out and becoming bitter commercial rivals with separate Soho stores. How very Italian, you might say. Now neither survives in tangible form. Fratelli, once of Berwick Street, went online long ago, while I Camisa, having won a stay of execution for two years after support from the Save Soho campaigners, shut for good in the autumn.

When I walked past the other day it was shuttered up and sad. Still Old Compton Street, with its strong gay community, remains a vibrant stretch. Camisa’s neighbour has recently been reborn as Poppie’s, a chippie with a retro seventies vibe. In the 1950s it was the 2is coffee bar, where the young Cliff Richard was discovered. So many Soho ghosts.

Anarchy in W1: King Bomba v Mussolini

One of Soho’s real old school delis was King Bomba (above). The quarter had been home to North Italian immigrants from the late 19th century, many fleeing political unrest. That was the certainly the case with King Bomba founder Emidio Recchioni, born near Ravenna in 1864. Originally a rail worker/activist, his anarchist beliefs led him to found a radical newspaper, swiftly suppressed. Summary executions were carried out on his comrades and Recchioni was implicated in an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister.  Acquitted, he still served harsh jail terms before fleeing to London at the turn of the century. 

In 1909 he opened his groundbreaking grocery – where else – in Old Compton Street. Profits from Parmesan and pasta helped fund the exiled radicals who made it their rendezvous. In 1932 a failed attempt on the life of Mussolini was linked to Recchioni after the hired assassin was tortured into a confession. This unrepentant anti-Fascist’s British passport spared him retribution. Two years later he was dead, buried in Kensal Green Cemetery; King Bomba lived on until 1971. I wonder if ravioli di zucca was on the menu?