Behind the Doric columns of Motcomb Street, a building between evenings

A storehouse with a Greek front

The Pantechnicon stands on Motcomb Street in Belgravia, and its front is one of the more surprising sights in a district of cream stucco: a screen of great Doric columns rising through two storeys, with the building's name carried across the top. It went up at the start of the 1830s, built by Seth Smith, who was responsible for a good deal of early Belgravia, on an awkward triangular plot behind the new squares.

It was meant to sell and to keep almost everything a new household in the district might want: carriages, furniture and pictures, with warehousing behind for the belongings of families who were travelling or between houses. The name, made up from Greek words for all and for the arts, promised as much. The big horse drawn vans that carried the furniture to and fro came to be called pantechnicons in their turn, and the word has never quite left the removal trade.

In February 1874 a fire destroyed most of the building. The columned front survived, and what stands behind it was rebuilt within the old face, which is why the Pantechnicon looks like a temple from the pavement and turns out to be something quite different once you are through the door.

The floors, as they were arranged

After a long restoration the building reopened in 2020 as a house of Nordic and Japanese food and design, and in the autumn of 2024 it was relaunched by a new operator as 19 Motcomb Street, though the old name is still the one most people use. For most of the two years that followed it was the one building in SW1X that could hold an entire evening without anybody having to step back into the street.

Read floor by floor, it went like this. The ground floor and its mezzanine held Amélie, a Provençal dining room that suited a first dinner well: bright, unhurried and easy to talk in. The second floor and the roof belonged to Sachi, a Japanese kitchen with an open counter and a terrace under a roof that could be drawn back, which made it the place for a late drink under the sky. Below ground was Luum, a dark lounge built for the last hour of the night. The order of an evening was simply the order of the stairs, and a guest could climb or descend it according to his mood.

Why its doors are shut this autumn

I would rather tell you this plainly than let you discover it on the pavement. The three rooms closed in July 2026, at first for what was described as refurbishment, and in September the company that ran them went into liquidation. At the time of writing none of the floors is trading, and nobody has yet said what will become of them.

The building itself is going nowhere. It is listed, it stands on the estate that owns most of the district, and a front of that quality does not stay dark for ever. But I will not send anybody to a door that is locked, and until one of its floors opens again this house will not arrange an evening around it. When that changes, this letter will be revised to say so, and the floor by floor account above will become a recommendation again rather than a record.

The evening Belgravia usually declines to have

What the Pantechnicon gave the district was rarer than it sounds. Belgravia is a place of residential squares, embassies and mews, and it keeps its evenings indoors and private. It has some excellent small restaurants and some very good pubs, but it has never gone in for the kind of building where dinner, a roof and a late room are stacked one above another. For a few years, on Motcomb Street, it had one, and guests staying nearby came to rely on it.

In the meantime the district's evenings return to their older pattern, which moves along the pavement between a dinner and a bar rather than up a staircase. The hotels at the top of Belgravia manage the late half of that very well: the house on Wilton Place, and the old hospital at Hyde Park Corner, whose panelled bar has a letter of its own. Motcomb Street remains one of the prettiest short walks in SW1X, a few minutes from Knightsbridge station, and an evening that begins at a dinner nearby can still pass the columns on its way to a nightcap.

Two companions, and a building made for three

A floor by floor evening was always a particularly good shape for two at the table, which brings a second companion to the same evening. With three people the conversation changes character from room to room, and a building that changed the room every hour or two kept it moving without anybody having to steer. Until the Pantechnicon reopens, the same evening can be walked between two or three addresses in the district, and I will suggest a route when you write.

Two women in the circle know Belgravia better than anybody, and both happen to be among its three auburn companions. Lea lives there, seldom leaves after dark, and has a weakness for small upstairs rooms with a terrace to finish on. Patricia keeps her whole evening within SW1X, is particular about wine, and prefers a mews dining room to anything grander. Together they make an unusually composed pair, and they know the same streets well enough to agree, without discussion, on which rooms are worth the walk.

Arranging an evening in SW1X for now

Write with the date, the length and the sort of evening you are picturing, and I will propose the rooms along with the names. Each companion is booked at the ordinary tariff for her own hours, so three hours with two companions is £700 for each of them, and every length is set out on the rates page. Each receives her own fee in person when she arrives.

If what you want is the Pantechnicon itself, say so and I will keep your message until one of its floors is trading again. It would be a pity to spend a first evening on the building while its doors are shut, and the evening will be considerably better for the wait.