Ciro's (London)
Ciro's, often written Ciros, was an exclusive nightclub in Orange Street, Leicester Square, London, "just behind the National Gallery". It was famously closed during WWI for serving alcohol illegally. A fashionable club of the same name later opened at the same location.
Club and restaurant chain
The Ciro’s restaurant chain had branches in Monte Carlo, Paris, London and Biarritz.In 1897, Ciro, an Italian-born Egyptian headwaiter, in Monte Carlo, opened his first restaurant within the fashionable narrow radius of a hundred yards around the square, fronting the casino, on the Galerie Charles III, next to his former place of employment.
The name Ciro's comes from Italian-born Egyptian Ciro Capozzi who founded the first Ciro's bar in Monaco around 1892, next to the café Riche in the newly built Galerie Charles III. According to the story of James Gordon Bennett Jr., having a difference about a table on the terrasse, he bought the café Riche and gave it to Ciro who named it the Ciro's. In 1911, Ciro Capozzi sold the name to an English consortium who open the Deauville Ciro's, the Paris Ciro's in 1912, and the London one in 1915. Ciro's became a European high society restaurant chain with branches in Monte Carlo, Paris, London
, and Deauville. Bartender Harry MacElhone, famous for Harry's New York Bar, first worked at Ciro's in London after World War I.
In 1911, Ciro sold to an English Syndicate headed by Lord Poulett and Clement Hobson with M.Rizzi as general manager.
"Ciro's was a hip London establishment, that had as their bartender Harry McElhone, at which Jimmy took over when Harry went off to Paris...."
"Louis Adlon, grandson of the proprietor of Berlin’s Hotel Adlon opened Hollywood’s first iteration of Ciro’s in 1934 Located on Hollywood Boulevard, the club was informally part of a chain with locations in London, Paris and Berlin. The Hollywood Ciro’s was not a success, apparently, because it soon folded."
London
In May 1915, Ciro’s London branch opened, as a private club, in Orange Street, near the back of the National Gallery.The producer Jack Haskell staged a cabaret there around 1917, and said that an evening's entertainment at Ciro's would cost at least £10/10.
The club came to public attention in 1916 when it lost its licence after a police raid at 11pm on Sunday 19 November 1916. It was proved they were serving jugs of champagne after hours, and to non-members. This was in the depths of the War, when butter was rationed and petrol unobtainable. A workers' newspaper commented:
... if that's the way to win the war, and denotes a burning enthusiasm, the Tory press is right; Australia hasn't been doing her best, for she has scarcely got past beer by the jugful.The two managers were each fined £125 and three directors were fined £25 each, with costs.
In 1936 two rival bandleaders, Ambrose and Jack Harris, took a financial stake in the club in an effort to keep it going.