How Balans, the best of the Soho restaurants, is getting even better
Soho institution Balans, one of the best Soho restaurants, is finally realising how good it is – Adam Bloodworth meets the founder
David Taylor is the sort of restaurateur who has no idea how good his restaurant is. You may not either: but Balans on Old Compton Street is open all night on Fridays and Saturdays, so you can get a lamb shoulder at 4am, served to you by a warm-hearted throng of staff, some who’ve been working there 20 years. “When are last orders?” I asked naively on my first visit when the clock had chimed well into the bleary hours. “For you, we serve until anytime,” one male waiter flirtatiously replied. I was around 20, and that comment was one of the earliest, most formative, flirtations with another man that I’d had.
It’s not that Balans is overtly gay – but as one of only a handful of Soho institutions that opened in the 1980s that’s still in operation, it has simply been there through the neighbourhood’s interlocking web of cultural facelifts. It was there for the AIDS pandemic, when gay bars existed discreetly behind small glass windows, in opposition to the ostentatious lights of today’s watering holes, and throughout the nineties, when acid house DJs exploited Soho penthouses for after parties before the licensing laws shredded those parties into pieces. For those that like to go out in Soho, Balans is the trusted and familiar stalwart that’s so trusted and familiar you forget to go, then go again and remember how you really should go more.
“We were adopted by the scene, the various scenes going on here,” says David Taylor, Balans founder, reflecting on how the restaurant came about. “It’s quite strange really. Even the idea that you had to have somewhere gay friendly. If you said that now, people would say, ‘what?’ Back then, there were no places where it was safe. It was just more our mind set that we couldn’t give a fuck who you were. If you were a customer we’d take care of you.”
The best of the Soho restaurants: British burrata and seafood
In Balans one July lunchtime, Taylor and I share plates of calamari and burrata that is actually made in Acton. (“You like that? Apparently I’m supposed to talk about sustainability… I think it’s really good.”) Sitting down, he asks me “why are you here?,” but in a way that suggests he’s genuinely puzzled by the interest rather than in any way snobbish. Beforehand, the lady sitting opposite stopped Taylor to say she’s a fan of the restaurant. “You talk about institutions, but when you’re in the middle of something, you have no idea it’s an institution,” he says. “No idea quite how other people see it. You don’t see it when you’re in the middle.”
Taylor and his former business partners Sally and Prady Balan began working together in 1989, alongside another partner, Charles Cotton. They served sandwiches, and with no money, it took them six months to save for a coffee grinder. They worked with machine-like efficiency. “Brady and I served virtually every customer, seven days a week, 24 hours,” says Taylor. “When we opened this place most restaurants shut at three o’clock in the afternoon, opened at six for dinner service, shut at eleven. Well bollocks to that. It’s Soho. Late night. Breakfast all day. If you want it, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Go for some British-made cheese at 2am and be met by riotous groups of theatre performers who’ve clocked off for the night but fancy food not clubbing. It’s common for spontaneous performances to happen when the wine gets flowing and even though takings have slipped for late-night service due to licensing laws prohibiting nightlife, it’s “still fairly healthy” overnight at weekends. He puts their success down to their militant approach to service standards. Then let the fun follow after. “Ultimately the ethos is very uncool, but having a customer first service, really focussing on doing the job properly, has sort of carried on through.”
More recently Balans has opened outposts across London. But Taylor has decided to invest more in the original restaurant rather than multiplying it into more and more smaller, less distinguished clones. It’s a good idea: the flagship is where 36 years of history is, where the footfall is, and where the restaurant has its cult following. A new art gallery celebrates local queer artists; one-off music nights will happen, although when I suggest suggest famous artists in for intimate shows, Taylor is keen to make sure events don’t sell out so the locals can always get a table.
I think that power with the residents has got too strong. There are a handful of people in one or two residents’ groups who hold a lot of sway
Balans founder David Taylor
It’s about cherishing the history, and spreading the word more, about a London institution that despite its cultishness still remains unknown to more than it should. “We’re a well-kept secret in a way, which is not a great business strategy.”
It’s well reported that Soho establishments are closing at a rate of knots, and the ones left open are closing earlier than ever. Soho’s challenges are perhaps the strongest reason why the district needs to promote its cultural bastions more now than ever. There are barely any clubs left, and even though Eat Out To Help Out was a huge commercial success during the pandemic, resident complaints have halted a campaign for it to return permanently. It’s the same few residents who campaign to stop nightlife.
“I’m afraid a handful of people said you can’t have it, whereas you could have really built on that,” says Taylor. “Less traffic… I think that’s what most people who visit, and most people who live here, think. But they’re not the ones who make the noise.”
“The problem is that the residents vote for the councils, and the rest of England, the rest of the world, who come to Soho to have a good time don’t have a vote. I think that power with the residents has got too strong. There are a handful of people in one or two residents’ groups who hold a lot of sway. Every application for licensing for an extension is the same two or three complaints, but it’s a life’s work.”
Aged 64, Taylor would “quite happily sit in the garden.” And yet, he has more growth on his mind, this time “to replicate in another major city”, honouring the spirit of the flagship in places like Manchester and Bristol.
“The answer is there is something special about this,” he says, pausing, and glancing around during a busy lunchtime service.
To book visit balans.co.uk; 020 7439 2183
Read more: London has a Soho problem. We need to fix it now.