London’s Gay Hussar reopens after two years under a new name

The legendary Gay Hussar restaurant of SoHo, which featured authentic Hungarian dishes, closed in 2018, 65 years after its opening. The place reopened this fall, with a new name and an updated menu.

The restaurant was actually founded by a British man, a child of a Swiss sailor and a Welsh mother. However, he studied Hungarian cuisine for seven years, after he was sent by the Association of British Restaurants to intern at a Budapest restaurant, the Gundel in 1932, 444 reported.

After returning to London, he opened his very first restaurant, called Budapest, when he was just 24. He kept visiting Budapest a lot during the war, but that might have been because the British Intelligence had recruited him.

Gay Hussar was opened in 1953, with a dark yet charming interior, and two private rooms, which were the perfect spots for plotting, and the place quickly became favoured by the leaders of the Labour Party, as well as left-wing journalists and intellectuals. But the restaurant was also popular amongst artists, Tories, and according to legend, this is where PM Margaret Thatcher’s colleagues planned to overthrow her.

Story has it that Labour PM Tom Driberg persuaded Mick Jagger to run in the party in the 60s and that he also tried to seduce Jagger, which made the singer leave the restaurant.

The restaurant was not named after a gay cavalry soldier, but after Imre Kálmán’s world-famous operetta, titled The Gay Hussars in English (Tatárjárás), which premiered in Budapest in 1908. At the time, gay meant happy and cheerful.

Regulars of the restaurant came together under the name “Gulyás Cooperative,” to buy the place communally when news first started spreading of a possible closing of the business in 2016. Unfortunately, their little community was not enough to save the place that once hosted T.S. Eliot and influential leaders and politicians, and fed them with authentic Hungarian dishes. Gay Hussar was closed in 2018.

Eventually, two young men, Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, bought the place, and have recently reopened it, now called Noble Rot. They also have a wine magazine with the same name.

The new owners modernised both the interior of the restaurant and its menu, but they left a few of the Hungarian dishes that had been served there for over 60 years, such as goulash and the redefined casino egg.

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Source: 444.hu