The Society Club - review

Being a flâneur is a dying art. Everyone is just so ambitious and busy these days, there's no time to stand and chew violet-scented gum or fine-tune your moustache. But turn into Ingestre Place, just off Broadwick Street, and you'll find an eccentric Soho gem on the corner.

The Society Club is the brainchild of former nightclub promoter Robert Pereno, his wife, interior designer Babette, and former publisher Carrie Kania. The bookshop/art gallery/café/salon combines the couple's passion for literature, music and art.

A long table runs through the centre of the shop, aiming to bring like-minded people together over tea, coffee and an eclectic menu of pastries and cakes (today, fruitcake and mince pies give it a Fifties feel).

Admittedly catering is quite modest. It depends on how they're feeling. The head waitress wears a modish feather skirt; the tea boy a hat and cravat. But they'll cheerfully make you toast with Marmite or you can order in soup, salads and sandwiches from Café Soho next door.

The place is full of lovely touches. The trio sell everything from pulp fiction novels to first-edition books, Babette's homemade jam, snuff, limited-edition prints, moustache wax and organic dog food by cult brand BettyMillerPet. Everything a Soho dandy needs, Babette insists.

Dogs are big at The Society Club: I counted four in permanent residence including Noodle, a bewitching chihuahua with a tongue that is just a little too big for its head (perfection isn't important at this venue, everything is just a little off-kilter).

In the main shop (and downstairs in the art gallery-cum-salon) they have book launches, poetry readings, storytelling and live music sessions. There's even a stitch and knit group.

At the moment the gallery is showing photographs by Graham Smith from his book about Eighties clubland. Over a pot of tea and florentines or a Tunnock's tea cake, you can also gaze at images of a young Sade or Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet in Weimar-style leather.

The Society Club is also staging a programme of pop-up events around Soho including a Film Club (Monday nights at the Soho Sanctum hotel) conceived as a throwback to bohemian salons of bygone days.

Not everyone will love The Society Club (it's just this side of pretentious; the boys are vainer than the girls; you leave spaced-out on a sugar rush), but personally I can't think of a better place for a first date. There's a whiff of danger but also lashings of plum jam. And not many establishments will play Guns N' Roses on the iPod over afternoon tea.

The Society Club
2 Ingestre Place, W1