Wild nights, legendary guest lists: How a bar becomes a hype spot

The man who made Chiltern Firehouse the hottest ticket in town reveals his secrets

There is an alchemy that goes into creating an enduring party spot. A place that becomes part of the fabric of a city, where tales of its wild nights and legendary guest lists become lore. Dashing Frenchman Guillaume Glipa is responsible for much of London’s reputation as a good time mecca. For more than two decades he has ruled the capital.

Born in Bordeaux, the 54-year-old cut his teeth in New York where a brief stint as a patisserie chef saw him hooked on hospitality. From running two Michelin-starred Umu in London he made his way over here to manage Zuma and Coya in Knightsbridge and Mayfair. Then risk-taking sybarite André Balazs came a-knocking and a wildly successful stint at Chiltern Firehouse followed, between them generating a level of hype difficult to overstate.

“We had Prince Harry coming in before we even opened to do a party in the Ladder Shed — it was crazy,” Glipa tells me in his velvety Gallic accent. “We didn’t have furniture yet so we had to think outside the box. We thought, let’s get some ping-pong tables in. So you would drink your martini and play ping pong with Kate Moss, and then the buzz grew. There were no photos of Chiltern, no Instagram account, no website.”

Guillaume Glipa

The buzz surrounding Chiltern rarely dimmed. “The energy was effervescent all the time,” says Glipa. “Any big name you can think of — they were there.” He’s infuriatingly tightlipped on specifics, but a few can’t help but slip out, including Madonna and Bill Clinton, who could be seen mixing at the DJ deck one night. Plenty thought big names were being paid to come to Chiltern, but Glipa says the opposite is true — they were buying him drinks.

Chiltern Firehouse

PA

There is more to creating an enigmatic address than pulling in celebrities. The key, says Glipa, is balance. “People, even celebrities, like to be a bit looked at,” he says. “You think Madonna is going to look at Rihanna? They probably know each other. If you put only bankers in a room, it’s boring. Who are they going to show off to? You need to balance in order to create excitement. You need the young kid from east London who can barely buy his beer next to the guy who just got his million pound bonus in the City.”

Glipa’s other essential ingredients are worldclass staff, decor that doesn’t skimp on attention to detail and creativity around the law. “It’s about flirting with what you can and can’t do — you can get away with a lot of things, you just need to have good lawyers,” he says. He gives Chiltern’s legendary smoking area as an example, which played fast and loose with the ban on smoking inside. “Everywhere has a smoking area like that now,” he says.

Sofia Wellesley and James Blunt arriving at Chiltern Firehouse

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Another London institution to have benefited from Glipa’s tastefulness is Richard Caring’s Birley Group, where he helped reinvent nightclub Annabel’s in 2018. In the end, the gaudiness was perhaps too much. “It was the opposite of Chiltern,” he says. “I’m not here to criticise, but it’s a different vision — a very money-driven and successful one.” And the crowd? “No comment.”

In 2020 he opened Louie with Laurent de Gourcuff, another French doyen of hospitality. The Parisian-style spot with a jazzy New Orleans twist in Covent Garden had rave reviews and was the hot property of its time. Rihanna celebrated her 34th birthday there (she was reportedly due at 11pm for dinner but arrived closer to 2am), Quentin Tarantino gave talks on the terrace and Celeste hosted jamming sessions.

“The energy was effervescent, any big names you can think of were there”

Guillaume Glipa

Glipa has now turned his attention to The Twenty Two hotel in Mayfair, where he has relaunched the restaurant as Café 22. “The heart of the restaurant was not beating at the same speed as the rest of the place — the bar, the members’ club,” he says. “We needed to change the tables and bring a bit of chaos, making people closer to each other.” He sourced banquettes from a long-established producer in Venice, rolled out a martini trolley and brought in experts from his Chiltern days for the lighting and soundtrack.

Whether or not Café 22 reaches the heights of “it” venue remains to be seen.

But if anyone can deliver that rare form of alchemy, it’s got to be Glipa.