A Shoreditch local journalist sets out the facts on Hackney Council’s food safety inquiry at the members’ club, and why the story landed so hard in a neighbourhood built on exclusivity
The Story So Far
Few buildings in Shoreditch carry as much symbolic weight as Shoreditch House, the Soho House members’ club on top of the old Tea Building, with its rooftop pool and its reputation as the place where the local creative and tech elite go to be seen being relaxed. So when Hackney Council opened an investigation into food safety and hygiene at the club, the story travelled fast. The trade magazine The Caterer reported the details on 30 September in its piece on Hackney Council launching an investigation into food safety and hygiene at Soho House’s Shoreditch outpost.
It is important to be precise about what has and has not been established. The council received a report about food safety and hygiene at the venue and opened an investigation. A former employee told BBC News that out-of-date food was served, that he was pressured to replace labels on prepared food that had not sold by the end of the day, and that he regularly saw rats. Those are allegations. No findings have been published.
What Soho House Says
Soho House has accepted that what it called an isolated food labelling incident took place in one of its kitchens, and said this was not how its houses should operate and not company policy. It said it had involved its director of health and safety and appointed an external independent consultant to investigate. The company also pointed out that Shoreditch House has consistently held the top food hygiene rating of five, most recently at an inspection in March 2026, and said the venue performed strongly in an independent, unannounced external audit shortly before the story broke. It said the former employee’s contract was ended for reasons unrelated to food labelling.
Both the council’s investigation and the company’s internal review were ongoing at the time of reporting. Readers should treat the allegations with the seriousness they deserve, and also note the company’s response and its inspection record. That is the fair position until the facts are established.
Why It Landed So Hard
The story resonated in Shoreditch for reasons that go beyond food hygiene. Members’ clubs sell exclusivity, and exclusivity depends on the idea that what happens behind the door is better than what happens outside it. A claim about relabelled food and rats goes straight at that promise. It suggests, whether fairly or not, that the velvet rope is just a rope.
Locals who are not members, which is most of them, have discussed the story with a mixture of concern and something closer to glee. It has, by any measure, been talked about more than any planning decision this autumn. The jokes write themselves, and in Shoreditch they have, mostly at the expense of the members rather than the staff, which seems about right.
The Dinner Party Comparison
The London Prat this week published research, of a sort, on British dinner parties and why husbands mainly go to check for Sky Sports, in which fieldworkers observed twenty-two dinners and concluded that most men attend for the television and leave by twenty to eleven. Shoreditch has its own version of this social theatre. People do not join a members’ club for the food. They join for the room, the view, the sense of being on the right side of the door. That is why a story about the kitchen is, in a sense, a story about the whole business model. If you are paying for exclusivity, you expect the exclusivity to extend to the fridge.
How Food Inspection Works
For readers wondering what happens next, a short explanation. In England, food businesses are inspected by local authority environmental health officers, who award ratings from zero to five under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme. Ratings reflect hygiene practices, the condition of premises and the management of food safety at the time of inspection. Councils can investigate complaints between inspections, and can take a range of actions if they find problems, from advice and improvement notices to, in serious cases, prosecution. Ratings are published, and anybody can check a restaurant’s score online before booking.
That last point is worth repeating. Whatever happens at Shoreditch House, every diner in Hackney can look up the rating of any restaurant, cafe or takeaway they use. It is one of the quieter, most useful pieces of public information in Britain, and most people never look.
What I Will Be Watching
I will be following three things: whether the council publishes any outcome, whether the independent consultant’s findings are made public, and whether there is any change to the venue’s rating at its next inspection. You can follow my reporting on Shoreditch business, food and nightlife on my author page.
Down On Bethnal Green Road
For balance, it is worth taking a walk down Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane, where curry houses, bagel shops and Turkish grills display their hygiene ratings in the window, many of them a proud five. A meal at most of them costs less than a cocktail on the Shoreditch House roof. None of them has a pool. Some of them have been feeding the neighbourhood since long before most of the club’s members were born, and they never needed a velvet rope to do it.
