Lights, Camera, Restaurant: Film Locations You Can Eat In
You’ve seen it on film, now you can eat there. London is one of Hollywood’s most popular go-tos for filming. Partly down to its incredible architecture, iconic locations and picture-perfect views, but mainly because of the generous tax breaks. Either way, here’s where you can eat after the movie crew’s moved out.
116 Pall Mall
116 Pall Mall, may also be known as the Institute of Directors, but it’s probably even better recognised as the Viceroy’s office in film epic Gandhi (the Nash Room shared the limelight with Sir Ben Kingsley for the scene). Or, indeed, Dark Knight fans might recognise the venue’s Café Duke as backdrop. But for the real culture vultures it’ll be 116 Pall Mall’s setting for Mark and Victoria’s extravagant Russian Ball in Made In Chelsea. You know, just after the big news was revealed that Binky was pregnant.
Where: 116 Pall Mall, Westminster, London, SW1Y 5ED, United Kingdom
Website: www.116pallmall.com
Regency Cafe
The stand-out venue from Layer Cake is the Stoke Park, the Buckinghamshire hotel that belongs on eveyrone’s bucket-list. But if you operate a greasy spoon bucket list, then make sure that Pimlico’s Regency Cafe is on it. The Layer Cake scene where Morty snaps and eviscorates old enemy Terry in one of film’s most brutal scenes. Recency Cafe itself is the quintessential London ‘caff’, founded in 1946 and, one suspects, not really updated since.
Blenheim Palace
A short hop out of London is the splendid Blenheim Palace. Home to the Dukes of Marlborough since the 18th century, the pile is more than just a country pad, with vast parkland, impressive state rooms, a restaurant and, of course, a popular spot for filming. With an IMDB page longer than most Hollywood A-listers, it’s been in teh BFG, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Cinderella, The Transformers: The Last Knight, Gulliver’s Travels, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, The Young Victoria and so so much more. The houses’s role in SPECTRE deserves special mention for simply being so very cool as the European headquarters of secretive baddie network SPECTRE.
Where: Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, OX20 1PP, United Kingdom
Website: www.blenheimpalace.com
Savini Criterion
It’s schmaltzy and doesn’t quite make sense, but Russell Crowe’s 2006 film A Good Year is also one of my all-time faves. And early on Crowe and Tom Hollander, playing an estate agent, have a fancy dinner at non other than Picadilly’s Criteron (recently rebranded (again), this time as the Savini Criterion).
Where: 224 Piccadilly, St James's, W1J 9HP
Website: www.saviniatcriterion.co.uk
Nobu London Old Park Lane
If ‘I’m sure you guys have dicks the size of peanuts’ has entered your daily lexicon then it’s probably down to Julia Roberts’ sassy come-back in Notting Hill. The restaurant scene where Hugh Grant and Roberts take on a table of drunken leering fans was filmed at Nobu on Old Park Lane. Request a window seat and hope you don’t overhear anyone bad-mouthing you.
Where: Nobu London, Old Park Lane, London, United Kingdom
Website: www.noburestaurants.com
Inferno's
The Inbetweeners movie, definitely not one to watch with your parents, features one of the best dance scenes on the big screen outside of Dirty Dancing and Grease. The epic dance takes place, not in Malia but in Clapham’s Inferno’s. Meaning you can recreate this epic scene any weekend you like.
Where: 146 Clapham High Street, Clapham, SW4 7UH
Website: www.infernos.co.uk
