Manzi’s Soho is reborn as an immersive dining experience

This article first appeared in Mix Interiors #228

Words: Harry McKinley

In Hemmingway’s seminal 1952 novella, The Old Man and the Sea, death is an inescapable force; an ever-present spectre looming over man and beast alike. If this sounds a tad macabre, it also teaches that beauty and dignity can come from battling its inevitability. Though the book was more of a visual reference for the exuberantly designed, newly opened Manzi’s, it’s also a fitting thematic one – a one-time West End institution rescued from the chilly abyss of history.

The original Manzi’s opened its doors in 1928 on the edge of Chinatown, a shrine to seafood with a cheeky character. Above the dining space, guest rooms were reputedly rentable by the hour. It was as democratic as it was colourful, drawing a diverse audience, but eventually shuttering a couple of years shy of its 80th birthday, in 2006.

Now, a hop and a skip away in the heart of Soho, Manzi’s has been revived as part of The Wolseley Hospitality Group, with conversation-starting interiors by Fabled Studio. Spread across two floors in a vast site off Bateman Street, it is one of the neighbourhood’s largest dining destinations, determined to make its presence felt in both scale and spectacle.

“We obviously wanted to nod to the original Manzi’s, but we didn’t actually have much to go on,” explains Fabled co-founder Steven Saunders, noting that there are little or no images of the previous interiors. Instead, it was another book, Memories of Manzi’s, that provided a creative springboard.

“It was written by someone who had never been to Manzi’s,” Saunders explains, “but he recreated the place vicariously through stories, interviewing past patrons. From that we gathered something of an emotion; a feeling of what Manzi’s was and what it meant to many people, as well as what it looked like to a degree.”

Red gingham tablecloths, a gold statue of Neptune, draped fishing nets and mermaids in mirrors, were some of the design details mentioned for a venue that, shy of some new discovery, is memorialised only in the recollections of those who visited. Far from limiting Fabled’s vision however, the enigma of Manzi’s previous face was liberating – an opportunity to develop a truly original, rampantly vivacious design that is a new chapter in the story, not a knowing (or even knowable) pastiche of what came before.

Granted free creative rein by Wolseley Group, the studio first sought to root the 240-cover restaurant in its surroundings, and provide a response to them. “It had to speak to Soho by offering glamour and decadence, as well as not take itself too seriously,” continues Saunders. “We wanted it to capture an ephemeral romance, something nostalgic and an element of escapism; nostalgic, yes, but also theatrical.” A pre-opening hard hat tour saw the London Gay Men’s Chorus drafted in to deliver a series of high-camp musical standards – evidence, if ever needed, that Manzi’s would leave humourless solemnity to others.

If theatricality and escapism was the ambition, then the end result is one successfully defined by melodrama. Where some restaurants may have a singular set piece to harangue the attention of diners, Manzi’s is an extraordinary embarrassment of design riches. A taxidermy marlin greets arrivals, set against a vivid mural of a raging, angry wave and desolate fisherman by Mark Sands.

In the adjacent dining room, rendered in soft blues, a sculptural Poseidon towers over a table, clasping a swaying light fixture in one hand, his trident in the other. Venture to the even more grandiose space upstairs, and vaguely life-size mermaids prop up the bar, conger eels snake around wall lamps and a gallant glass centrepiece depicts an enormous octopus in teal and shades of red. Eight kilometres of rope have been used throughout the restaurant, adding texture and dimension to walls and columns.

Fabled unconventionally collaborated with a set design and modelmaking company to bring many of these elements to life – the Bristol based Cod Steaks. Famed for its work with Aardman Animations and having just finished work on Tokyo’s Harry Potter studio tour, Cod Steaks partnered with Fabled in hand sketching, clay modelling, digitally artworking and ultimately producing the likes of the mermaid bar, Poseidon and the immense clamshell DJ booth. All of the custom decorative lighting was helmed by Atelier Lighting’s Tim Henderson, while bespoke manufacturer Noble Russell led on the furniture – from the scallop edged barstools to the embossed leather seating on the ground floor.

But what makes Manzi’s so particularly, agreeably immersive is the commitment to design intricacy, as much as to those bold statements. There is as much love and attention lavished on the barely-noticed as the can’t-miss, be it aesthetically or in the layers of storytelling. The mermaid motif in the mirrors, for example, was recreated from an original Manzi’s menu found on eBay, floors feature hand cut mosaics and even the salt and pepper shakers are manifest as twin metal crabs.

“It’s not just the obvious. Yes, you’ve got the big-ticket theatre pieces, but then you’ve got the background, with its layers of texture and purpose and meaning, which bring it all together,” concludes Saunders. “It’s not just one token gesture, it’s everything. That’s what makes it such an enveloping experience; that’s why it works.”