Johnny Smith

Coming Up

The work here sits between hospitality, taste, and room-making: Johnny Smith has held co-founder responsibilities at The Clove Club since 2016, co-founded LUCA, and has served as creative director of SMITH & WILLIS since 2025. Those roles point to a practice built around more than opening venues. They shape pacing, tone, and the standard a dining room has to hold if it is going to feel composed rather than merely busy. The throughline is control of the whole experience, from concept to the details that make it land.

Where They Are Now

Two London addresses anchor the present work: LUCA in Clerkenwell and The Clove Club in Shoreditch. In both, the focus extends beyond the plate to the atmosphere around it, the cadence of the evening, and the relationship between food and drink. That is where the precision shows up most clearly: in the way a beverage program is treated as part of the dining structure, not something added after the fact. On drinks, Johnny Smith has said, "When dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant, I expect the drinks to match the quality of the food, and Wild Idol delivers on that expectation perfectly." The point is a straightforward one for the trade: pairing has to hold the same standard as the kitchen. The best drinks do not compete with the menu or distract from it; they sit with it cleanly and reinforce the room’s overall discipline. In Johnny Smith’s frame, the beverage list belongs in the same conversation as the food.

In Their Words “Wild Idol strikes the perfect balance as an aperitif - its dryness is complemented by just the right touch of sweetness, leaving a clean finish that keeps the palate refreshed, making it enjoyable to drink all night (and still drive!).” The emphasis is on balance and finish. Dryness and sweetness are presented in measured proportion, with the clean close doing the work an aperitif should do: opening the palate without weighing it down. It reads as a practical standard for drinks that need to hold attention without overreaching. “When dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant, I expect the drinks to match the quality of the food, and Wild Idol delivers on that expectation perfectly.” The expectation is direct: drinks should stand at the same level as the food. That creates a simple benchmark for the room as a whole, where quality is judged by coherence rather than by any single element. The measure is consistency across the table.