There was no contract. They shook hands and the Walbrook was born
Philip Palumbo is waiting for me in the bar of the Walbrook Club with Luna, his father's cockapoo. 'Are you a dog person?' asks Palumbo, the club's managing director.
Palumbo 'dogsits' when his father, Lord Palumbo, is abroad and Luna is a regular at the City of London private members' club, and on the establishment's Instagram feed.
'Dogs light up any room that they enter into. And I hate the idea of them sitting at home waiting,' says Palumbo. Luna, who is far better behaved than my cockapoo, later joins us for lunch, lying obediently under the table, unnoticed until I accidentally nudge her during the main course.
The Walbrook will mark its 25th anniversary on Friday evening with a black-tie dinner at Mansion House for more than 300 guests. Over the past two and a bit decades the club has established itself as a favourite of City grandees and investment bankers. An elegant club for a discreet drink, lunch, or dinner.
The club may have opened in 2000, but its history dates back to 1997 and a lunch at the Connaught during which Mark Birley, the founder of Annabel's, suggested to Palumbo's father that he should convert what was then the family office in the City of London into a club. 'My father replied: only if you do it,' he explains. Birley agreed.
'There was no contract. They shook hands. And three years later, the Walbrook was born, twice over budget,' explains Palumbo over lunch in the Walbrook's dining room.
It is easy to see why Birley was tempted. The building that houses the Walbrook is as unique as the club itself.
Despite appearing to be a Queen Anne-style townhouse, it was actually built in the 1950s by Palumbo's grandfather, the property developer Rudolph Palumbo, who acquired the postage-stamp-sized site, sandwiched between Rothschild's headquarters and St Stephen Walbrook, as part of a larger property deal.
'He put our family office between the church and bank,' jokes Palumbo. The 'dolls house', as he describes it, wraps around the Sir Christopher Wren-designed church so has a Tardis-like quality.
'My father gave Birley more or less free rein.'
The club was filled with Palumbo family photos, paintings and artefacts. There are drawings and models of many of the buildings built by both Rudolph and Lord Palumbo, and the Mies van der Rohe-designed skyscraper that was not built, after a very public intervention by Prince Charles, as was.
A collection of dog paintings by India Jane Birley, Mark Birley's daughter, adorns the bar, which is dominated by a model of a luxury 1920s Italian liner which the Allies seized and used as a troop carrier ship in the Second World War.
'We don't have portraits of Wellington or English landscapes. The collection is extremely eclectic. I'm very proud of it,' says Palumbo.
'Birley rang my dad and said, don't be alarmed. I'm sending you a swan.' The stuffed swan still sits in the dining room.
Michel Roux Jr was recruited as chef for the opening. 'He would cook personally and author the menus. We used his suppliers. The layout of the kitchen to this day is how he left it.'
When Michel's TV career took off, his father, Albert Roux, stepped in. 'Our guiding principle remains the same: you should never leave hungry and recipes shouldn't be elaborate for the sake of being elaborate.'
Palumbo leaves the menus to the chef. 'He and I meet for coffee once a month to discuss his plans for the month ahead. I will volunteer, very sympathetically I hope, suggestions, but for the most part, he writes them. Our sommelier does the same with our wine list,' explains Palumbo.
My sea bass is cooked to perfection, and Palumbo's guineafowl looks delicious. On opposite walls of the dining room, staring at each other, are paintings of Rudolph, his grandfather, and his father.
There are also travel posters from a bygone Beirut, reflecting his mother's Lebanese heritage. Lady Hayat Palumbo ran the club before handing over to her son in 2018.
The dining room doubles as a venue for the club's guest speaker programme, which Palumbo has expanded to two or three speakers a month, ranging from Joanna Lumley to the former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who spoke to members two days before he was sacked.
Many of Palumbo's bookings have proved prescient: Liz Truss spoke two weeks before she was appointed foreign secretary; Kwasi Kwarteng spoke a month before he became chancellor.
As well as expanding the speaker programme Palumbo has added to the artefacts: including two Michelin men mascots he saw in a shop in Paris and a 'Buddha President Trump' donated by a member and former newspaper editor who picked it up in China.
'I see this as a canvas which I'm constantly adding to and tinkering with. I'm always trying to improve it. I want it to be reflective of the area and not to be stuffy and closed off … in the truest City traditions of the old coffee houses'.
One big change has been the dress code. In 2023, the club dropped the requirement for members to wear a jacket. 'The idea of invented Victorian traditions didn't sit well with me. I also think you can look smart without wearing a suit and tie.'
The West End has seen an explosion of private members' clubs over the past decade and in 2017 Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House, opened the Ned, a large hotel and members' club a short walk from the Walbrook. But Palumbo insists they are not in competition.
'We would recognise one another on the street, but we are fundamentally a different proposition. We are much, much smaller than Annabel's or 5 Hertford Street. And our membership profiles are different. I don't see other clubs as our rivals.'
When the club opened in 2000 membership was capped at 500, but post-Covid, Palumbo raised that to 650 as 'people's habits are now so unreadable'.
Covid was a challenge. The club's speaking programme moved online (as did a regular cocktail evening). Bonds were issued entitling members to a lunch or drink when the club reopened. 'Rather amazingly, we only lost two members because of resignations following the pandemic.'
But the pandemic has had a longer effect: 'Fridays were always pretty tricky in the City. But we've also lost Mondays.'
'I do worry whether people are as social as they once were, and whether they are placing enough emphasis on getting to know colleagues and indeed rivals. Because so much now is done by messenger or email or a quick Zoom chat, the more social aspect of the City is disappearing.'
More recently private members' clubs have been hit by HMRC using membership as evidence that non-doms are UK resident and therefore liable to pay tax.
'No matter how wonderful a club, if your advisers are warning you that it might be an issue, it's quite difficult to decide to stay a member just because it's such a nice club.
'A lot of people who've left have said that they'd come back in a heartbeat when the conditions are more favourable. The fundamentals are sound. We have to weather the storm.'
More than 30 per cent of the membership is now aged under 35 and the club has admitted women from day one: 'We could do with a few more female members, but then again, the buildings around us could do a bit better in that regard.'
'I want this place to be contradictory, young and old; traditional and contemporary; fun and serious without one being at the expense of the other.'
Potential members can be proposed by two existing members or apply directly and be interviewed by Palumbo; they then go before the membership committee with his recommendation.
'I'm very careful as to who we admit because this place is physically quite small. If there's a bad apple, you will take a bite,' he explains.
'The ethos is to bring people together. The architecture of the space lends itself to chance encounters and drawing up a chair and rearranging the furniture.'
Palumbo's main criteria for membership? Simple: 'Are you fun to sit next to at dinner?'.
Age: 32Education: Ludgrove School; St Edward's School, Oxford; School of Oriental and African Studies (First Class Hons)Career: 2018-present: managing director, the Walbrook Club; 2018-present: director, Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck KnobFamily: 'Perennially single'
Soup of the day £8.00Asparagus, lemon laper butter £12.50Supreme of guineafowl £22.00Sea bass £24.00New potatoes £5.00Spinach £5.50Radishes and peas £5.00Apple and rhubarb crumble £9.00Ice cream /sorbet selection £3.00Bottle Hildon water £4.50Glass tomato juice £4.00Discretionary service charge @ 10.00% £11.50Cover charge for two £8.00
Total £121.55
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