A London legend is re-born

This article was published in November 2001

Legends, the former nightclub in Old Burlington Street and shrine to Eighties interior design which has now passed into the annals of, well, legend, has undergone a £1.5-million transformation to become one of this season's destination restaurants.

Quite how the new Embassy restaurant and private members' lounge can follow an act like Legends, is hard to know, despite its being brought to you by the team behind the successful Red Cube and Sugar Reef clubs.

For almost 15 years, Legends embodied everything that was both irredeemably naff and unbelievably cool in London clubbing. With a name straight out of Romford, and a d?cor to match (black-and-silver Marilyn Monroe wallpaper, acres of chrome and mirror and a huge spiral staircase that swept down to the basement dancefloor and bar), its heyday was in the early Eighties when it was the stylish New Romantic hangout.

This was the stomping ground for the Duranies and Spandaus, Boy George, and Bowie. Uniform for boys was a linen jacket with sleeves rolled up Miami Vice-style; for girls it was the LBD and white stillies. The regulation hairstyle? The bouffed Diana flick, rigid with hairspray.

In the later Eighties, Legends became the natural habitat for the Thatcher-era Bridge and Tunnellers, and one of the first clubs to popularise the Tequila Slammer. In the Nineties, it attempted to jump on the Accieed bandwagon, without realising that ravers were more at home in a field by the M25 than in a fading Mayfair club. It finally closed in 1999, to be replaced by the short-lived, hideously named Lounge-jing.

Now the club has been taken over by Mark Fuller and Michelin-starred chef Garry Hollihead. Following a three-month refurbishment to create an interior 'reminiscent of Vienna in the Twenties', it will reopen in November as a 110-cover restaurant serving 'British Renaissance' dishes: chicken Rossini with foie gras and braised celery; roast cod boulang?re with creamed spinach and oxtail jus.

The lower ground floor has been designed (with an 'incredibly hedonistic feel') as a private members' lounge - surely the perfect spot for the fortysomething ex-clubbers to ease into a few cocktails and reminisce about the time they skidded down the spiral staircase.