Lansdowne House,
59 Berkeley Square,
Mayfair,
London,
W1J 5DE
0872 148 3720
The ViewBrighton Review
With this location, the name ‘Babble’ led me to hope for a sort of high-society salon.
I wanted women with cigarette holders, ageing intellectuals and young fops flexing their Wildean wit; dangerously low lighting, a piano trilling tactfully and gasps of delight at whispered indiscretions.
However, I was disappointed - there were no discernible cigarette holders here when I visited, although plenty of cigarettes, and the punters were just a lot of monied business types who’d stopped for a few after work.
Fair enough, I thought, you can’t have everything, and I headed towards the bar. My goodness, though, I felt like I’d been juiced by the time I got halfway. When I say a lot of monied business types, I really do mean a lot - there were suits everywhere, in every possible place, sitting on every possible seat and generally creating pedestrian congestion.
I took a deep breath and decided to try downstairs; but didn’t have much luck there either. The clientele all seemed to be having quite a lot of fun, but there were just too many of them. I felt like I was seeing triple, and had to think again about whether it was really Thursday at 6pm, not Saturday at 10.30.
Still standing, and clutching my drink closely, I squeezed my way around trying to discern a decorative scheme behind the customers. There seems to be a sort of Imperial Russian concept going on that I liked very much - red, gold, champagne, cigars, caviar - all good things, and nice to look at.
I’m not sure, though, how well the idea works when two thousand pinstriped bodies are superimposed on top of it. Similarly, the music playing wasn’t bad, but even at a ridiculous volume it struggled to be heard over the general bray.
Babble isn’t doing everything wrong, and I’m sure it’s making a packet - but I couldn’t help feeling it had lived up to its name in quite the wrong way.
Babble has been reviewed by 17 users