What’s it like in central London on Christmas Day?

It’s an extremely grey Christmas morning in 2023. All the Lime bikes have low battery or flat tyres and they all play me snippets of “Jingle Bells” when I unlock them and fail, time and time again, to find one with working brakes and tyres that aren’t punctured. There are no trains or buses on the 25th and it’s worryingly humid for the end of December. By the time I arrive at Bob Bob Ricard, on Upper James Street in Soho, I am distinctly sweaty and my hair is wet and frizzy. I’m not feeling particularly festive. But then Michel opens the door and I am transported into a winter wonderland and everything is fine and lovely again. It’s Christmas Day in Soho, which is a weird place for it to be Christmas Day.

Michel Tran and his team are preparing to open their doors to 470 diners. When I arrive, perilously close to their midday start of service, nobody is rushing around, nobody seems particularly fazed by the fact it is the 25th of December. “You know, it’s the busiest day of the year,” Michel shrugs. “And it’s the day when we make the most revenue, so everybody’s got to go to work. Everybody comes in from 11am, the chefs are here from 9am, and we’ll finish at… we’re looking at 9pm. Last year we did 450 covers for Christmas lunch and then another 250 for dinner.” He tells me all of this in a way that suggests it could be a random Thursday in March.

Michel is the general manager at Bob Bob Ricard and has worked every Christmas for the past six years. His daughter — who at 15, is thankfully too old to believe in Santa — spends the day with her mum. They’ll celebrate tomorrow instead. “We get a lot of tourists, the kind of people who stay in an Airbnb and are out and about,” he says, adding that Bob Bob’s famous “press for champagne” button gets pressed a bit more than usual, but that, other than this, people are fairly well behaved, in the spirit of the holiday. “And we have some locals who just don’t want to cook, don’t want to spend their whole day with the family, they’d rather go out and have a quick meal.”

There are, though, little extras that suggest this is a special day for the 40 or so staff members who have drawn the short straw. Today, each of them will have their Christmas dinner in shifts, taking breaks between service. Without any public transport, a makeshift carpool is arranged, taking everyone home on schedule at the end of the night, but not before Secret Santa, and some well-deserved pints.

In a few parts of central London, Christmas Day is very much like one of the other 364. This is the good thing and the bad thing about this city: its ceaselessness

“It’s Christmas and we’re all in the same boat,” says Michel. At the end of the day they’ll have a sweepstake, the winner taking home tips if they guess correctly the amount of diners who will order the restaurant’s famous chateaubriand for their Christmas dinner. “We try to make it as fun as possible for everyone because most of the people here have their family at home.”

Ben Hobson, the chef director at Bob Bob Ricard, is an exception to that rule. Sort of. When we speak he’s prepping a huge tray of oysters, deftly flicking each open with a knife mid-conversation, as 10 other kitchen staff work around him. What would he be doing if he wasn’t at Bob Bob Ricard? He’d probably spend it with his partner, he tells me, grinning. But he’s doing that anyway. He nods across the kitchen and chef Sherwin waves back. They met seven years ago, while working together at Galvin at Windows, on Park Lane.

Despite the fact that opening time is fast approaching, and the kitchen staff are two hours into a mammoth, 13-hour shift, this is a serene, well-oiled machine. Someone is wearing a festive apron but, apart from that, there’s no indication that this is the one day of the year when it’s inevitable someone will cry in the spare room about a turkey being overcooked.

“We don’t mind,” Sherwin says, when I suggest it must be something of a busman’s holiday for a chef couple. Usually she works next door, at Bébé Bob, Ricard’s little sister. Today she’s on the production line here instead. “This is sort of the family,” Ben adds. “You’re here more than you’re at home.” (When I speak to Michel after New Year’s Eve he has an update for me: chef Sherwin Mauro has just become Mrs Hobson to be.)

There’s an eeriness to Christmas in central London. The roads are unnervingly empty until you get to the Houses of Parliament, when suddenly the streets start to fill up. In a few parts of central London, Christmas Day is very much like one of the other 364. This is the good thing and the bad thing about this city: its ceaselessness.

However, outside of the tourist traps, the backstreets are deserted after the madness of weeks of party season. It feels like 28 Days Later, except that occasionally police horses will go past covered in tinsel. But Chinatown is bustling — perhaps because everyone knows it always will be. It’s a long-held truism in London that, no matter what, Chinatown will be open. Need a 4am restaurant? Chinatown. Need a place to go on Christmas Day? Chinatown.

Chinatown’s crowds on December 25 are mainly tourists. Mainly American ones. One couple tells me they’re over from New York and not sure where to go. A queue of people are waiting for street food. A waiter stops our conversation to invite them into his place. It’s open until 9pm but already heaving at half past one. I stand in line in a packed bakery behind TikTok teenagers and buy a red bean paste bun in the shape of a fish. Everyone in Chinatown, either working or dining, is again, deeply chill. It feels incongruous. Surely Christmas Day is meant for fraught family lunches, grudges, point-scoring, awkward conversation about politics and digs at your appearance?

The reality is that there are in fact many different Christmases happening at once. That there is no right way to do it. Caffé Concerto — a gaudy restaurant chain beloved by pre-theatre mums visiting the West End — is packed, so is the bar at The Wolseley in Mayfair, where a decidedly different clientele sips martinis. In Hyde Park there is a steady stream of joggers, weaving their way in between the men in red jackets selling tickets for open-top bus tours. A disconcerting number of joggers, actually.

My friends are all horrified that I’m spending Christmas Day “on assignment”, particularly once they’ve ascertained that it won’t be what gets me my Pulitzer. One of them rings me while I’m in The French House, perhaps Soho’s most iconic and historic pub, patronised by everyone from Francis Bacon to Charles de Gaulle. I’m having a glass of wine with a crowd of mostly regulars, fitting in a tipple before their own roasts.

“Are you all right?” my friend asks me. In the background I can hear the chaos of Christmas afternoon in her own house. A child is screaming inconsolably. My friend sounds tense. I feel a bit bad telling her that I’m having a great time, actually. Nobody has yelled at me about potatoes or not having a boyfriend. I haven’t had to muster up a single political opinion on XL bullies (a year on, no one cares about XL bullies any more, so I will again be spared). This is heaven. Everyone should do this, all the time, every Christmas. Everyone should spend Christmas Day in the kitchen of a Soho restaurant.

And yet, not everyone is as chill as the team at Bob Bob Ricard. The atmosphere at Canton Blue, in the newly opened Peninsula Hotel on Hyde Park Corner, is fancy but fraught. As I’m waiting to be led into the kitchens of the opulent Cantonese restaurant, a woman in front of me hands an employee, dressed all in white with a red scarf, her full-length fur coat, artfully slipping a £50 note into his palm as she does so. Sure, a man dressed as Santa is here, but the vibe is somehow less festive.

The set menu at Canton Blue is £265 a head, for eight courses (this has been reduced to £188 in 2024, to reflect fewer courses), one of which is lobster. In the kitchen, restaurant director Anthony Obeuf weaves his way through a dozen chefs and shows me an overflowing bucket of them. One of the lobsters clacks its claws morosely. This lobster and its friends will make up part of a festive dinner for 50 guests, who will keep the team here until around half one in the morning.

“Then I’m back to work tomorrow,” says Obeuf. “I always work Christmas. It’s challenging. For my role it’s important to know how everything works.”

“Yes,” I say, because I feel like this is what I’m expected to say. Or perhaps: yes, chef.

Around us the chefs shout ticket numbers at each other and pots clang and the doomed lobsters squirm. There will be no Secret Santa at Canton Blue, no drinks after work to celebrate a job well done (Canton Blue told me there is an “annual colleague ball” in January, and a festive lunch before Christmas). “Maybe at home,” Obeuf says of drinks. “We need more people than usual, we’re very concentrated. You need to have something special, because the market is extremely competitive.”

He pauses, his eyes sliding out of focus, then adds: “Our managing director is here so I am going to go outside now.”

The conversation ends abruptly, and I’m left standing in the middle of the dining room, watching Santa manoeuvre his way around quiet tables of adults in paper hats.

Supervisor Leon Bach has come from Walthamstow today. He isn’t going home to Scotland for Christmas. “I went up last week,” he says. He calls the first three months working in the newly opened hotel, in which rooms begin at £1,300 a night (as of 2024, they’ve been reduced to £1,100) “an adventure”. “You’re always going to have ups and downs,” he adds. “It’s a bit weird sometimes.”

Leon worked Christmas Eve too. “On Boxing Day I can relax a bit,” he says. “Get ready for Hogmanay. We did Secret Santa before Christmas, but today is just full-on work, and then I go home and have my dinner. I have stuff already pre-prepped. Christmas Eve I spent cooking, and then my mates are coming over tomorrow. Traditional-ish. This is . . . ” He falters mid-sentence then disappears to a nearby table, who are looking at him expectantly.

I see myself out, feeling low on festive cheer. It starts to rain again.

The weather outside is not exactly frightful, but the joggers still making their way around Hyde Park look more miserable now. They deftly dodge families and hobbyist cyclists in full biking gear, even on Christmas Day. The day has taken on a grey-sky atmosphere that’s making me pine for The French House. Dreaming of returning to Soho, I duck out of the drizzle and take a detour via the winter wonderland of The Lanesborough hotel. It is very, very Christmassy in here. There’s another Santa. “Do you work here?” I ask. “No,” Santa says gravely. “I am Santa.” “Oh,” I reply. “Sorry.”

This is the peak of The Lanesborough staff’s calendar; much like Santa, they prepare for Christmas all year. The lobby is decked out in crimson trees — five in the hall alone — a festive display that changes every year. The staff take pictures of guests sitting in a special red velvet chair. A cat named Lilibet sleeps peacefully in another armchair and children fuss over her. (They named the hotel cat after the Queen’s childhood nickname before the Queen died, head of food and beverage Pamela Debattista assures me. In 2023, this was still something people felt delicate about.) Everyone, appropriately, is wearing their Sunday best. The trend of matching all-day jammies has not extended to Knightsbridge. Thank God.

There are many Christmases happening at once. Caffé Concerto is packed, as is The Wolseley. In Hyde Park, joggers weave between men selling tickets for open-top bus tours

Pamela and her team of 80 began preparing for today in February, and she always, always works Christmas. She is pretty sanguine about this. “We’re building up to this all year round,” she says. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I take the first week of January off every year, and I send my boyfriend back to his parents for Christmas, because I don’t want to be stressing about when I can get back home to him.” We pass through cavernous dining rooms and a pianist is playing “Jingle Bells”. In a palatial private room downstairs, a family is eating from a buffet laid out on a vast mahogany table. A harpist plays “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. “I always feel quite smart because the next day I haven’t had, like, 80,000 calories, and I’ve had a productive day,” says Pamela.

She walks me through the belly of The Lanesborough, where chefs are serenely painting tiny pastries. A long line of white wheelie tables is stationed here, ready to bring Christmas dinner in room service form to their more antisocial guests. This is a specific perk; the historic hotel is one of a dwindling number that still offers a butler service to each room. When Pamela sees my expression of abject horror, she laughs. Some of the 150 guests spending Christmas at The Lanesborough (a further 80 are visiting just for the day) live here for months on end, Eloise at The Plaza style. They come from South Africa, America, Cyprus. Some of them even ask the industrious butlers to do their Christmas shopping. “They unpack for them, they shine their shoes, they’ll even go shopping for their dogs,” says Pamela.

In the next room around 20 employees sit at a long table covered in the same white cotton, eating Christmas dinner together. The parsnips waiting for them in a roasting tin look, I am ashamed to admit, better than my mum has ever managed. Like at Bob Bob Ricard, there’s a family atmosphere here, one that feels surprisingly genuine. But perhaps practice makes perfect. One of the doormen, Victor, tells me he’s worked over Christmas for 28 years, but he’s still not quite used to it. “I used to love it when I was younger,” he says. “I used to do it all the time. It was different back then. Hardly anyone stayed, so it was more staff than guests.” His fellow doorman Theo has him beat. This is his 42nd on-call Christmas Day. He seems pretty cheerful about it, despite the rain.

As I leave Victor, Theo, Pamela and Lilibet, a lightly frazzled man in beige chinos strolls in off the street to ask if his family can be seated for Christmas lunch. He has not made a reservation and is waving an iPhone around. I imagine a woman on the other end of the phone conversation berating him for not having the sense to plan ahead for this, the most important meal of the calendar year. The staff at The Lanesborough are impressively kind and accommodating when faced with his request. The woman on the front desk smiles and says she’ll see what she can do. Nobody says to the man, “How stupid, it is Christmas Day, why would you not book ahead?” It takes a lot of patience, I think, to work in hospitality on December the 25th.

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