Carolyn

The Union Club | 27y

Head chef and joint owner of The Union Club, Carolyn, has been there for 27 years.

She is married to Peter Cross, a former geologist (and waiter at another of LSL’s featured restaurants, Andrew Edmunds), who founded First Floor in Notting Hill and The Dog House bar on Wardour Street. They met in the Soho bar when she landed a job as a chef there. One day in 1993, Peter was walking down Greek street and met the landlord of La Bastide restaurant on its front steps. Looking for something to do, and fancying the idea of a member’s club (Groucho had just opened and was thriving), he decided to buy the restaurant and turn it into The Union Club.

Carolyn came over to London in 1990 as “it seemed really interesting - much more so than where I was from in Australia’. Having a family connection helped (her father is English) and she felt at home here from the outset. She had started in kitchens at age 23 from a self-taught background and had a stint away from the Club for a year to gain more experience, working in the kitchens of another Soho institution, The French House, as well as at cookery schools in Italy and Thailand.

The Union started off with only about 50 members and there was no technology in place at first: “We didn’t even have a till, just a petty cash box. All the letters and paperwork were hand written and we had to run the menu to a hotel on Oxford Street to photocopy them. We didn’t expect to be here that long! It was the early ‘90s and we were out partying every night… It’s been such an evolution.”

I ask her if she feels the area has changed a lot. She believes as long as some of the icons remain (The French House, Bar Italia, The Coach), it’ll retain its spirit. “There are big holes in the ground where old buildings used to be. Everything’s cleaned up a bit. The quirkiness and people are still here, though, and the sense of community’s still palpable.”