Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp first had the idea of opening a restaurant at the age of 18, newly arrived at Oxford in the mid-80s. Instead, they wrote and edited university newspapers and in 1991, soon after graduating, launched Frieze magazine, with perfect timing. Damien Hirst was preserving sharks in formaldehyde and, a few years later, Tracey Emin had her first solo show at White Cube. Distractions persisted: in 2003, Slotover and Sharp launched the Frieze Art Fair in London and it has since expanded to New York and LA.

In 2016, Slotover and Sharp stepped back from Frieze. A year later, the landlord of 180 The Strand, a Brutalist building home to, among other things, Frieze and Soho House, offered the pair more space. ‘Everyone had always said how difficult it was to run a restaurant so we were put off for a long time,’ says Slotover now. ‘Amanda and I realised that we talked to each other more about food and restaurants than art. The space we were offered was perfect for a restaurant, so we took it and planned to open in 2019. Of course, everything took a bit longer and we didn’t manage to open Toklas until late 2021.’

Named after US writer Alice B Toklas – whose eponymous 1954 cookbook also documents her life with partner Gertrude Stein (the couple hosted dinner parties for the likes of Picasso and Matisse) – the space is gorgeous. There’s a reclaimed parquet floor, reclaimed iroko table tops and vintage Børge Mogensen chairs. ‘It was quite tough to adapt the building,’ says Slotover. ‘But there was so much to work with. The building is beautiful and it’s got very clean lines. There’s also an amazing terrace, which is 3,000 sq ft – London’s biggest, I believe.’

Slotover and Sharp then turned their attention to decorating the dining room with art. ‘The artist we kept coming back to was Wolfgang Tillmans, who has done a lot of images with food. He suggested Pomodoro, his 1993 photograph of tomatoes and aubergines adjacent to a swimming pool – it turned out to be the pool of a friend whose villa we used to rent in Italy! We then spent a lot of time getting hold of art posters from particular shows that were important to us.’

The idea of Toklas had been floating around for so long that Slotover and Sharp knew what they wanted when it finally came to pass. They loved the way Omen in New York produces healthy Japanese food that attracts artists, architects, musicians and actors; they were drawn to stories of David Bowie and Iggy Pop hanging around the Paris Bar in Berlin and, closer to home, the bohemian crowd at Rochelle Canteen in east London. They wanted Toklas to be the kind of place you might bump into someone you know but also ‘where anyone is welcome’.

Above all, they wanted the Mediterranean food to be spectacular but simple. Head chef Yohei Furuhashi previously worked at the River Café and Petersham Nurseries, restaurants that prefer great ingredients to edible foam. ‘At Toklas you can have a fantastic peach on a plate pretty much on its own; why do you need to add anything?’ Restaurant critics have been raving about Furuhashi’s chips, but Slotover says nothing on the menu is particularly rich: ‘We want people to leave feeling healthy and to have a good night’s sleep rather than weighed down and sick.’

There is no red meat – Slotover says this is related to health, climate and animal welfare and doubts that, in 50 years’ time, any of us will eat it– and the wine list is mostly organic, biodynamic or natural. There is also an adjacent grocery store and bakery; he is ‘super proud’ of the latter.

There is a shared philosophy with Slotover and Sharp’s projects past and present. They started an art magazine because they liked contemporary art. They would prefer to be led by their hearts and, in this case, their taste buds. ‘We wanted to open the kind of restaurant our friends would like,’ says Slotover. ‘It’s a nice place to be and, we hope, a nice place to come back to.’

toklaslondon.com