Johnny Ekperigin

For more than 30 years, Johnny Ekperigin has been the man behind Julie’s, Portland Road’s enduring bohemian haunt. He looks back over the years with Pendle Harte

Everyone knows Julie’s. It’s one of London’s oldest restaurants and probably W11’s most established eateries. The cavernous, bohemian site may be named after designer Julie Hodgess, who conceived the whole thing, spotting the building and identifying it as a good location for a restaurant. But the man most associated with Julie’s today is Johnny Ekperigin, managing partner and the man who makes it all work. Johnny has been at Julie’s for over 30 years, joining in 1975 as a chef and now responsible for running Julie’s and its sister business, the Portobello Hotel. He’s an enthusiastic fan of the place, having welcomed some of the world’s most glamorous and stylish people through its doors over the years and seen everything around it change while its own décor and, largely, menu, remain constant.
What was Johnny cooking in 1975? “There was steak and kidney pie, which of course we still do. We don’t do duck a l’orange any more, but we are still doing crème brulee. And we’ve stopped the flamed mackerel on sticks – health and safety won’t allow that any more.” Julie’s has never seen itself as a culinary trailblazer, but has always offered a reliable menu of British favourites. “Eating habits have changed,” says Johnny. “Now people come in for lunch and just have a starter, or eggs Florentine, and a bottle of water. In the 70s, 80s and 90s everybody had a starter, a main course and a pudding and they’d all drink at lunchtime. Nobody went back to the office after lunch. But that all changed in 2000, when people started becoming faddy. And nobody drinks at lunch now.”
It’s not just eating habits that have changed. Over four decades in W11 Julie’s has seen several shifts in its clientele, as well as gaining several generations of fans. “We’ve had the parents, and the children, and then the children’s children,” says Johnny, and among them of course the stars and their children. First, in the 70s it was a fashion crowd, peopled by Julie Hodgess’s old Biba friends (she had helped to design Biba) and others including Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood. In the early 80s, the music industry moved into Notting Hill – Chrysalis, Island Records, Sony and EMI all had offices in the area. “George Michael was selling millions of records and he was coming in all the time.” But the music industry soon grew out of Notting Hill, moving mostly to Hammersmith, and the new millennium brought with it an influx of bankers to the area and to the tables at Julie’s. “The problem with the area now is that it’s too gentrified,” says Johnny, himself born and bred in W11. “The property market has destroyed the community because people can’t afford to stay. Look at Portland Road: in 1975 it was shabby – these houses were all divided into 10 bedsits and now there are no flats left, they’re all houses for bankers.” Not that he’s bitter. The area’s shifting population has provided him with 40 years of trade and a word-of-mouth reputation that no amount of advertising could challenge (Julie’s has never paid for any), and Julie’s resistance to fashion has meant that it’s never out of fashion either.
The style is eclectic and not easily categorised. Bohemian, diverse, eccentric: it’s a very English thing. “It’s cosy. The Victorians would bring back things from all over the world on their travels and Julie’s is like that: we’ve got Turkish rugs on the floor, Moroccan and Japanese influences.” The building, a former builder’s yard, is a sprawling site divided into different themed areas – the gothic room, the crypt, the conservatory, the garden room. “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and some people think it’s old and shabby but others just get it.”
Similarly, the Portobello Hotel is a large house in Stanley Gardens with rooms decorated in different styles, attracting musicians and the globally glamorous. It opened in 1975, and the first guest was Richard Branson, who had just opened a record shop nearby. “We started getting all his people and that’s where we got the reputation for rock and roll,” says Johnny. And the reputation remains. “Van Morrison was here last week. He’s got a house in Notting Hill but he still stays. We’re like everybody’s old aunt that they stay with now and again, who does their laundry for them.” Over the years these walls will have witnessed countless scandals but nobody at the hotel would ever reveal any starry secrets. Despite living nearby, Paula Yates was a regular (“we loved her”), as was Tina Turner during the 80s, even when she owned the house next door.
Today the clientele at Julie’s can expect the discreetest of treatment. “Keira Knightley just pops in for a quiet steak and kidney pie and nobody ever knows, while some stars like to be followed by paparazzi – Kate Moss comes here all the time and there are always 30 photographers outside. The Crown Prince of Jordan comes every time he’s in London, leaving all his Special Branch minders outside.”
Julie Hodgess is still involved in all design decisions, and she is called in from her home in Hammersmith whenever anything needs work. But she took a back seat early on in the restaurant’s career, passing the running of the place to its owners, Tim and Cathy Herring, who have lived in the area since the 1960s. Then they were landlords with an empire of bedsits; now they are successful hoteliers. And what does the future hold? Johnny is open to ideas. “Maybe another hotel somewhere,” he says. “We might try bringing our bohemian flavour to an old office block, or something.” It may be hard to imagine the special, magical and romantic feel of Julie’s in a characterless tenement but you can’t imagine these people ever getting it wrong. We’ll wait and see.  l