Olympian bites

Quo Vadis

Smack in the middle of Soho, Quo Vadis has survived largely on its location, but it's gone through a few iterations, and the current one is the best.

It's a cozy compilation of several small, attached buildings (Marx and Engels lived upstairs in one of them), with the bistrolike restaurant on the ground floor and private rooms and a club upstairs.

The menu changes pretty much daily, but it's always appealing. A prix fixe of 17.50 pounds for two courses or 20 pounds for three can make for a very good deal.

One permanent item appears to be the crab soup - a broth really - as intense as you could ever imagine. Flavor satiety comes pretty quickly with this, so I'd recommend sharing (even among four people); maybe you can get the server to bring you teacups, something that only occurred to me afterward.

The servers we had on one visit could hardly be bothered to bring us food, so it wouldn't have worked anyway. The restaurant has something of a reputation for having a "difficult" time with service, though we fared better on other visits.

In any case, the food is generally quite successful. Broiled mackerel, simply served, was perfect; radicchio with pork, the same, with the radicchio stealing the show from the anything-but-shabby pork; a salad of greens had a real fresh-from-the garden feel. Quo Vadis has long been an easy, decent choice for pretheater, but now it seems to be actually worth going to for the food.

Quo Vadis, 26-29 Dean St., Soho; (44-207) 437-9585; quovadissoho.co.uk. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, runs about 50 pounds.

The New York Times