Invasion of the serial bar

There's no escaping the chain bar. For some, its stripped wood floors and standardised bar menus are an affront to traditional London pub culture; for others, it's a welcome alternative to the one-man-and-his-overflowing-ashtray boozer. But with most of London's high streets and shopping malls rapidly approaching chain-bar saturation point, it's time to look for a new breeding ground. So Po Na Na is going clubbing.

The recent news that the legendary Hammersmith Palais has been saved by the Po Na Na bar group, which intends to restore it to its former glory as one of London's leading live-music venues, brought the memories flooding back. Back in 1978, Joe Strummer put the place on the A-Z with his snarled classic 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais'; during the Seventies and Eighties the venue rocked to punk and Goth; and in the Nineties the Palais hit the headlines after a shooting at a ragga concert. But the news also stirred up memories of a July evening in 1993, when the capital's novelty seekers and barflies trooped down King's Road for the opening night of Chelsea's new members' bar - Po Na Na.

Inside, punters found themselves in a small, ersatz oriental basement featuring a canopied, harem-style ceiling, a honeycomb of intimate alcoves, mosaic tables, exotic-looking lamps, and mountains of scatter cushions. Very Moroccan, the design-conscious announced. Still, it was novel and elegant in a kind of low-rent, fancy-dress, not-quite-whisking-you-off-into-an-Arabian-Nights-tale way. And the drinks were reasonable. So you appraised the crowd (clued-up SW3), admired the carved woodwork and fretwork tables, appreciated the efficient air-conditioning, possibly even boogied the night away on the small dancefloor, and then left, vowing to return sometime. But, of course, you never did, because, let's face it, this was Chelsea, and, anyway, new bars with even more exotic decor were opening every month.

The Po Na Na (pronounced poo na na, not 'po' as in po-faced) 'Souk' Bar was fashionable for a while and, unless you happened upon its sibling Po Na Na 'Fez' on Fulham's Beach a couple of years later, or were an avid reader of the financial pages, you won't have given the place a second thought. That was until the announcement that it had bought for £700,000 - it already had a stake in the Palais - a prime piece of the capital's entertainment folklore. How did they manage that?

Far from heading off into obscurity after 1993, Po Na Na's progenitors, Christian Arden and Rob Sawyer, spent the intervening years quietly and astutely expanding their empire, rolling out more Moroccan theme bars in university cities around the country, so that there are now 35 Po Na Nas (Po Na Ni?) in Britain and abroad. Apparently, they're all profitable, and they intend to add 20 new bars each year.

Initially, I'm refused entry to the King's Road branch - perhaps for being male, on my own, over 30... Having been forced to play the journalist card, I swiftly find myself being introduced to Christian Arden himself, who happens to be in the bar that night. He catches me eyeing one of those Moroccan 'wavy-pyramid' lamps. Little appears to have changed.

'Please be as snooty as you want,' Christian says magnanimously. 'But we're not in the million-pound refit, Soho designer-bar market. We appeal to upmarket university students and first-jobbers who like the reasonably cutting-edge, laid-back atmosphere of Po Na Na, appreciate the fact we have a late licence, and like it that we don't just let anybody in. Plus, we do play excellent music...'

And are all the branches the same?

'They're all a similar Moroccan theme. But Rob Sawyer, our creative head, designs each of them individually, and he sources all our fixtures and fittings from selected craftsmen in Marrakesh.'

Certainly, everything seems to be going Po Na Na's way at the moment. Its turnover last year was £19.3m, and although it recently missed out on a chance to take over the Slug & Lettuce bar chain, it has bought six nightclubs, including the Embargo on King's Road, and now, with the acquisition of the Palais, it is making a serious move into the nightclub business.

And there are the plans to open more bars abroad... So, I ask Christian, how about one in Marrakesh? That dry city is crying out for a decent bar. Christian smiles. But whatever happens to Po Na Na over the next seven years, you can guarantee that it won't be just a footnote on the financial pages.