Gossip girl has the dish on an American pin-up whose love life, unlike his clean-cut hetero hero screen image, tends more towards dirty low-life. I need a seat and a stiffener: scandal is such thirsty work. Sipping a Harvard, a cognac-based Old Fashioned, I settle into a comfy, maple leather banquette for a Perez Hilton-style precis. We’re at QV, the smart new bar at 1920s Soho doyenne, Quo Vadis, nowadays in the capable hands of Sam & Eddie Hart also of Fino and Barrafina renown. The brothers have transformed ‘the bit of the restaurant nobody wanted to sit in’ into a timeless chic salon away from the hubbub of the main act. For bitchy têtes-à-têtes, it’s perfect. Seamless, discreet service delivers faultless cocktails - at £8, cheaper than at most glossy West End rivals and within reach of any Tom, Dick or Harry. Correctly prepared steak tartar, black pudding and duck egg, snails au gratin and a shoal of crispy baby squid are the type of bar food I crave: ‘trendy’ joints can shove their ‘pan-Asian tapas share-platter slates’ where the sun don’t shine. Which brings me back to Mr. Seedy. Lawyers are listening, so even after a carafe of lip-loosening Loire lovely Menetou Salon (£21), my cakehole remains zipped . What I can say is that with its walk-ins only policy, you’ll likely frequently find me at QV. Stand me a Manhattan: there’s every chance I’ll blab.
26 - 29 Dean Street W1 7437 9585 http://www.quovadissoho.co.uk
