New York’s Caffè Dante has become a permanent fixture in Claridge’s as Dante Mayfair, following a successful residency last summer which was extended to the end of the year.
It serves an all-day Italian-American menu including grills, seafood and cocktails in what was latterly the more formal Claridge’s Restaurant, operated most famously in recent times by Gordon Ramsay.
Dante in its current incarnation does from 2015, when Australian power couple Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson (pictured) bought Caffè Dante in Greenwich Village, a 100-year-old family-run cafe frequented by luminaries including Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith in the Village’s bohemian heyday.
Nathalie says it had become “a little bit sad” by the time she and Linden took over: “it was an internet café for NYU students. I tried to restore all its character from old photographs. It’s a unique space—and I wanted to capture everything that it had been over the last 100 years. I put in the Preston ceilings again, cleaned the original flooring, and placed the bar back to where it first was from the photos.”
Linden describes Dante as “a New York restaurant but with the European sensibilities of an all-day café or eatery, where even if it’s casual, it’s elevated. That edge between accessible and premium is something Nathalie does so well.”
The couple followed up with Dante West Village and Dante Aperativo, both close by in Lower Manhattan, then crossed the US to Los Angeles with Dante Beverly Hills in 2023 – set in the Maybourne hotel, part of the same group as Claridge’s.
