London - November 24, 2005

Bird Watching

The Cuckoo Club Opens

Christmas. Avian flu. The shooting season.

It’s so not a great time to be a bird.

Yet Swallow Street’s latest restaurant-cum-bar-cum-club is named after that mean feathered friend, the cuckoo — a cheeky little fowl that forcefully evicts its rivals to take up nest.

And The Cuckoo Club may turn out to be an apt soubriquet, as the latest venture to land on the site formerly occupied by the infamous Stork Rooms. The two-storey supper club is headed up by the team behind the Cafe de Paris of the ’90s (expect retro glam with plenty of disco lights) and a flighty bunch of committee members (Isabella Blow, Alice Temperley, Nick Rhodes) who’ve lent their collaborative creative genius to the project.

The music is refreshingly rock-heavy, with The Libertines and Kasabian featured on the playlist. Though it remains to be seen how easy it will be to fly around the dance floor after sustenance from the kitchen (try the creamed lobster and aniseed soup, roasted pumpkin ravioli, and panettone bread and butter pudding).

And with an exclusivity elusive to most of clubland, rest assured that there’ll be nary a hen party in sight.

(At least, that’s what a little birdie told us).

The Cuckoo Club, Swallow Street, W1 (020 7287 4300 or thecuckooclub.com).