Brighton nightclub owners to open experimental dining and drinking venue in Islington
House of Wolf will open on the site of a three-storey former Victorian music hall in October where it will host a series of 'experimental, experiential dining pop-ups' by a rotation of different chefs in its top floor Attic Room and Parlour.
The venue's ground floor, to be called the Music Hall, will be dedicated to live events while the first floor will host the Apothecary Bar, designed to look like an old Victorian apothecary and serving cocktails combining traditional Victorian recipes with cutting-edge preparation techniques.
Site first, concept later
The project is the brainchild of Madame Geisha owners Damian Frizzell and Jennifer Anderson-Mann and former Proud Group general manager Matthew Fleming. The trio came up with the finished concept after finding the site, although they knew that they wanted to provide something unique to London's leisure scene before starting the search.
"It's a beautiful Victorian building with lots of original features and what we didn't want to do was take over a pub and turn it into another gastropub," Frizzell told BigHospitality. "There are lots of those in London and they do very well, but we had to have that difference.
"My business partners and I had been looking to do something in London where we could be more creative and this space ticked a lot of those boxes."
Experimental dining
House of Wolf will see 'experimental dining', a style of dining where multi-sensory experiences and art are combined with the delivery of food, hit the capital in a more permanent and accessible form, according to Frizzell.
Alexa Perrin, founder of the Experimental Food Society and a judge at the Young British Foodie Awards, has been employed to manage the rota of chef residencies and is expected to bring together some of the UK's most exciting chefs and culinary artists.
Frizzell said: "We have also trialled lots of these kind of experimental dining pop-ups over the last year and found they were really popular and wanted to do something more permanent. They are very popular on the underground scene, but there wasn't a venue that was doing experimental dining outside of more Michelin-starred fine dining, so we wanted to make that more accessible to everyone."
As well as Perrin, the directors have employed former Soho House bar manager Stephen Quainton as head mixologist and bar manager and Emma Sutton of Fuse Box Media to oversee House of Wolf's events and parties.
House of Wolf is looking for a restaurant manager, a general manager and a sales and promotions manager to join its team. For details and to apply, click here.
