Diners at the new Forza Wine in Soho will be given the option of ordering a ‘Forza Fiver’ cocktail when they make their booking. The idea, according to Forza Wine’s founders Bash Redford and Michael Lavery, is that it’s a £5 drink that can be delivered to the table as the guests are seated, dispensing with the laborious process of having to wait for a drink upon arrival.
“I really dislike it when you get to a restaurant or a bar and there’s that time when you don’t have anything to drink,” says Lavery, clearly suffering from some sort of bar-related PTSD. “When I order a cocktail, I ask to have a beer while I wait for it.”
This might feel like a first-world problem, but it’s one that the pair want to address. “And, if people are not as impatient as Michael,” quips Redford, with a gentle dig at his friend, “you can just sit and drink £5 cocktails all night instead”.
Accessibility
Exactly what the Forza Fiver will be is yet to be decided - Lavery insists it will include white vermouth; Redford is yet to add his seal of approval but insists it will be ‘strong’ - when I speak with the pair a month ahead of their Soho launch. Preparations are about to take a bit of a knock, with Redford due to welcome his third child (a baby has been born around the time of each restaurant opening, Lavery notes) and go on paternity leave, but the pair are on track to meet their 2 March opening date.
Cocktail specifics aside, Lavery and Redford have a clear vision for their new restaurant, which will join the existing Forza Wine sites that occupy a rooftop in Peckham and a restaurant within the National Theatre. Known for its vibey atmosphere, well-priced menu of small sharing plates (the pair say they hate the term ‘small plate’), and a well-chosen wine and drinks offer (its Custardo, a sippable crème anglaise spiked with a shot of espresso, is an indulgent drink for the ages), Forza Wine has struck a similar chord with trendy south east London young professionals as it has with an older South Bank theatre-going crowd. It’s fun, it’s accessible, and it’s all really rather good.
It is this accessibility that the pair intend to lean into for Soho, not just with £5 cocktails but with an offer that is well suited to the area. Almost uniquely for Soho, their new restaurant has a large 72-cover outdoor terrace - there is also a large basement that will open later in the year - and they believe it can become a space that can be many things to many people.
“It’s an intensely difficult time to open restaurants, but it’s never been fucking easy to run restaurants. It takes a certain type to do this
Bash Redford
“Soho has a lot of pubs and high-end restaurants but nothing that quite sits between them,” says Lavery. “If we go to Soho, we just go to Koya and then the pub,” adds Redford. “And we don’t go there that much. Unless you’ve got a booking or you know a guy, you don’t go out for dinner in Soho unless it’s well planned - and I’m not very good at planning.
“Thinking about it from that perspective, if we wanted to go for a plate of food and beer, we could go to Barrafina but we may have to queue and you’re unlikely to see change out of £100 by the time you’ve seen all the delicious things coming out. That’s the gap [Forza Wine] is trying to fill.”
While the pair acknowledge that Soho rents will inevitably make their new restaurant more expensive than their one in Peckham, they’d like to think it isn’t noticeably so. “Soho rent is absolutely crazy, but we still want to be able to give people something to eat and a glass of wine for £15,” says Redford. “We’re not cheap, but we’re not exactly expensive, either.”
At Forza Wine Soho, diners will be able to choose from a tight menu of just 10 regularly changing dishes (it will serve 12 in the winter months when the pair say they can cook food that they are too busy to do in the summer) that are designed to be shared.
Dishes include a warm parmesan-laden brioche; pane carasau with gorgonzola and pickled celery; cod with winter tomatoes, vinegar, and hazelnuts; pork tenderloin with cabbage and mustard; and Ox cheek Genovese ragu. The concise dessert offer includes pistachio olive oil cake; and vanilla saffron soft serve with marsala sponge.
Additionally, diners can opt for the whole menu, at around £130 to £150, which serves four and means people “can have a lot of food for around £35 each”, says Lavery. “It’s about making sure it is accessible to everyone. That is critical.”
From Peckham to Soho
Forza Wine as it is now known was started by Redford and Lavery in east London in 2012 as Forza Win, a supper club located at the Truman Brewery in partnership with Pizza Pilgrims’ Thom and James Elliott serving ‘Italian-ish’ food. It later moved to Bethnal Green and then to The Culpeper in Shoreditch before becoming a permanent fixture in 2017 when it opened in a warehouse in Peckham.
The restaurant later closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and reopened on Camberwell Church Street in 2022 before closing for good in February last year. “If you’re making all of your money in between the hours of 6pm and 10.30pm on 48 covers with five days a week of trade it’s just not worth it,” says Redford of the closure. “Especially with a landlord who was quite problematic.”
In September 2019 the pair opened Forza Wine in Peckham on the fifth floor of workspace venue Market. The restaurant, which has more space outside than in and which operates from a small kitchen, is open all year round but sees a significant up-tick when the mercury rises. Then, in August 2023, they opened at the National Theatre after Hawksmoor co-founder and friend Huw Gott, who is on the board at the National Theatre, suggested their model in Peckham (small kitchen, big dining room) would work just as well at the theatre.
With Soho, the pair have moved much more central, and yet their site, tucked away on Manette Street, a part-pedestrianised thoroughfare between Charing Cross Road and Greek Street, feels slightly off the beaten path (if anywhere in Soho can really be described as such). It’s a position that they believe works in their favour.
If you’re making all of your money in between the hours of 6pm and 10.30pm on 48 covers with five days a week of trade it’s just not worth it
Bash redford
“As a group of restaurants, we’re quite hard to find,” says Redford. “Peckham is invisible, and the National Theatre is kind of invisible too, there is not an obvious route to it and there isn’t any big signage (in her recent review of the restaurant in The Observer, Sheila Hancock said she had ‘struggled to even find the restaurant’ first time round), so from that perspective it works for us. [The Soho] location suits us down to the ground.”
Soho wasn’t a target area, they say they were just looking north of the river, but when they discovered that a site had come up with outside space - it was previously home to Italian restaurant Daroco and is located in the same building as the headquarters of landlord Soho Estate - they jumped at the chance.
“One of the prerequisites of what we look for in sites is an open kitchen and everything on the ground floor so you can see everything that’s going on, plus outside space,” continues Redford. “And outside space in Soho is not normally a thing.”
The pair saw the site in April last year and took on the lease in June with the intention of opening in September. Six months behind schedule, it will finally open its doors early next month.
A cover drive
Operationally, Soho is something of a beast. The pair say they need to do 2,500 covers a week at the 100-cover restaurant just to break even at existing and predicted spend per head, but while they acknowledge that this is a big number it is not something by which they are fazed.
Their restaurant at the National Theatre, which holds 160 covers and has quite swift table turns given the nature of its location, has been a good test bed. The project has allowed them to test a big restaurant without the financial risk, with the National Theatre paying for it and Forza Wine paying a commission.
There’s no such safety net in Soho, but they believe they have acquired the requisite experience to make it work, despite the current challenging restaurant climate.
“People will always need to go out, and want to go out and have fun,” says Redford. “I’m hopeful it works. The accessibility and the offer and the size all in theory play into it being a success. “We’ve got this model this is accessible and can do the numbers and, while I don’t want to say it because it will be written down, it’s future proofed to an extent.”
Soho is a community that we want to impress but there are a lot more different kinds of customers than anywhere else we operate. Making sure everybody likes it will be a challenge
Michael Lavery
While this might smack of over confidence, there pair also have a sense of realism. “We’re not as cavalier as maybe we make out,” Redford is quick to add. “The thing we’ve understood from the National Theatre is that if we’re going to carry on and be this kind of institution we need to move forward.
“Soho is not an easy place to break; more restaurants open and shut there than anywhere else that I’m aware of and it’s hard to get it right. We are going to focus on just doing things well, not trying to polish any turds, and sell food and drink at a reasonable price that neither of us would think is punchy.
“There is definitely the demand and if the size is there too it should be good. Where some people fall over is if there isn’t enough space to do the covers, so they naturally train their teams to up the spend per head. We do mega business at the National Theatre, it’s super busy but the majority of people need to get to the theatre and so want to be fed quickly. At Soho we expect it to be the same.”
Building on this, the pair intend to open a late licence operation in the basement later in the year once they have the funds. The space, which has a separate kitchen, will eventually be used for private hire and events as well as training and will eventually have space for 150 people standing, although at present it only has a licence for 60 including staff because it has only one fire exit (an issue that is being addressed).
A challenging climate
What challenges do they see on the horizon? “It’s an intensely difficult time to open restaurants, but it’s never been fucking easy to run restaurants,” says Redford. “It takes a certain type to do this.”
He believes the biggest challenge could be if Soho is a success. “This is such a ridiculous thing to say but if we get it right and lots of people come it will be a very big challenge to get the flow of people right. Because we are so hidden in our other locations there’s not much passing trade, but Soho will be different, and that’s our blind spot. There’s a finite amount of time you have to get that kind of thing right.”
To give it the best possible chance, Soho’s 12-strong management team comprises existing of returning employees. “We’ve purposely considered who they are and their strong suits to put ourselves in the best position to deal,” adds Redford.
For Lavery, Soho’s more diverse clientele provides the biggest challenge. “Peckham is neighbourhoods spot with loads of locals. The National Theatre doesn’t have locals, it’s not that kind of place, but a strong theatre trade. Soho is a mixture of both. It’s a community that we want to impress but there are a lot more different kinds of customers than anywhere else we operate.
“Making sure everybody likes it will be a challenge.”