Pressé

Above: now a tapas restaurant called Barrafina, Pressé used to occupy these premises at 54 Frith Street.

Interview:

“One of my defining moments of the eighties was going to Pressé in Soho when it had just opened… I would have been about twenty-two - this was in about eighty-eight. Juice bars and smoothie bars are everywhere now, but then there was nothing like it anywhere in London…

“I remember going there for lunch as people still thought of it as a restaurant - they just couldn’t get used to the idea of a juice bar. It was all clean and white inside and had metal chairs that made you sit up properly. It was the place to go, and everyone else there had that knowing look, like they knew they were in the right place…

“Pressé was run by an Australian who used to flirt with all his customers - they were nearly all women. Juicing was supposed to be a sort of beauty treatment, and he would tell us we didn’t need to look any more beautiful. I must have spent a fortune there in the eighties - I remember seeing Shirley MacLaine juicing in Postcards From The Edge and thinking: that’s what they do in Hollywood!

Lunchtimes alternated between Pressé and this amazing clothes shop called Ally Capellino which was round in Wardour Street. We only got half an hour for lunch so we couldn’t do both. Ally Capellino was my style in the eighties - I wanted everything, most of which I couldn’t really afford.

“Then it all sort of fizzled out and I changed jobs and never went to Pressé again.”