Joe Allen

Behind the brand name that became synonymous with pre and post-theatre dining in the West End was a quiet, unassuming New Yorker who put his success down to affordable food, friendly service and “not inflicting myself on my customers”.

When Joe Allen opened in Exeter Street, Covent Garden in 1977, its reputation as the hip joint for theatre folk preceded it. The New York restaurant of the same name had already been going strong for 12 years. It was cheaper and less exclusive than the Ivy, and there was a good chance that your waiter would be an out-of-work actor.

Exeter Street’s subterranean space, with its red-brick minimalism, celebrity diners and posters of fondly remembered theatrical flops, also felt more like a nightclub than a restaurant. For a couple of decades at least, the “West End’s canteen”, as it became known, was the place to see and be seen.

What drew Allen to hospitality in the first place was not a love of cuisine or the desire to be rich but the glamour of owning a place frequented by the stars. He once said of his eponymous restaurants: “We’re joined at the hip to theatre, whether we like it or not.”

The first restaurant he co-owned in Manhattan in the early 1960s attracted advertising executives, who bored him, so in 1965 he opened his own bar and restaurant near Broadway, figuring that theatre people “would be more fun than advertising guys”.

With various partners, he went on to open five more Joe Allen restaurants – in Paris, Los Angeles, Miami Beach and Ogunquit, Maine, as well as London. He also opened the more formal Orso in New York and London.

The London branch of Joe Allen’s moved from Exeter Street to nearby Burleigh Street in 2017 and is now run by Tim Healy and Lawrence Hartley. They recalled how Allen “would always be sat at the worst table in the place to leave the best ones to customers – that’s how he was”.

Joseph Campbell Allen was born on February 20, 1933, and died on February 7, aged 87. He is survived by his two children, Taylor and Julie.