Music On The Menu? How Dine-To-Dance Nights Became London’s Latest Craze

You’ve scoffed your main, indulged in dessert, and are now nursing the last dribbles at the bottom of your wine glass. The usual next steps? Grab the bill and work out the rest of the night. But, in many restaurants and bars across London, diners are staying for a final course: a healthy serve of dance. Charli West meets the London restaurateurs asking you to end your night in their eateries, which transform into after-hour dancing spots. 

Dinner and DJs: How London Restaurants Started Offering A Full Night Out

Dinner For One Hundred, created by pizza chef Jake Bucknall and former London bus tour guide Jacob Stuttard, is not quite a restaurant, nor a nightclub. Rather, it’s kind of both. Originally set up in 2020 – serving a dinner for 100 people to connect – the pair have set up in Brixton pub and club, Hootenanny’s, Bloomsbury’s Perseverance Pub, and have since found a permanent pizzeria and bar (the eponymous BAR D4100) in Nunhead.

For Bucknall and Stuttard, who previously worked as club promoters from the ages of 18 to 21, this new space was an opportunity to return to their roots. And so, they started hosting regular Lates events, where you can party the night away to DJ sets until 3am. 

‘We didn’t [need to] think about it,’ Bucknall says. ‘We just put on parties.’

‘But,’ he continues, ‘we eventually moved away from club nights. Being on the dance floor can actually be quite lonely sometimes, because you don’t actually say anything beyond a nod; we sought to make something a bit more sociable.’

It’s no secret that, post-pandemic, the ‘night out’ has evolved, and increasingly incorporates music. London now has a well-established cohort of listening bars, like Bambi in Hackney or Peckham’s Jumbi, which are stylish bars that put the audio experience first. But the growing crossover between music and out-and-out restaurants (i.e dining spots with dancing), is a bit grungier, more about full throttle partying – and having a really good time – than drinking with background noise. It seems chefs and restaurateurs are no longer content with simply being the warm-up act before a big night out. Instead, they’re getting creative to offer a new all-in-one package, collaborating with DJs, becoming DJs themselves, and making spaces for dancefloors that foster community.

But for Jake, the fusion of food and music is not a new thing – these are already professionally interlinked: ‘Everyone who works in a kitchen loves music because you listen to music 12 hours a day. And so you’ve got to keep finding new music because otherwise you’ll get bored.’

Another venue embracing this music-food connection is the team behind Peckham’s bar and restaurant Hausu, which was set up in 2024 by sibling duo Holly and Tom Middleton-Joseph, along with their close friend Christian Williams. Already embracing sound through a vintage hi-fidelity sound system in the restaurant, they decided to lean even further into a music offering by opening a new bar, Upstairs at Hausu, which launched last month. Sitting above the restaurant and open until midnight, the spot has been designed with after-dinner drinks and a late-night party offering in mind, thanks to a revolving programme of DJs. And [Tom] Middleton-Joseph teases the idea of a boiler room in their huge grade-listed bathroom in the basement – ‘it’d be really funny; it’s long enough to be a thoroughfare’ – showing how the party spirit influences much of what they do, and the restaurateur’s further ambitions. (‘We’ll have to wait and see.’)

Hausu, a restaurant in Peckham, now has an upstairs listening bar

Middleton-Joseph and Williams met while the former was working at a nightclub in Peckham. When I ask him about moving from the nightclub space to restaurants, he describes the similarity in the energy: ‘The biggest thing that translates is it’s all a really mad choreography and dance between everyone working.’ He describes it as ‘manic’ and ‘chaotic’ but loves seeing everyone work together. 

The new bar, which is separated by a full length curtain, brings an element of secrecy, and that seems to be something Williams and Middleton-Joseph think people are looking for. They want to escape somewhere surprising or unassuming and stay there all night long. It’s something you can see with the growing number of gallery and museum ‘Lates’ events; there’s a novelty to attending these institutions after dark with DJs playing a set to soundtrack the evening. 

For Hausu, Williams explains that it looks like a tiny coffee shop and restaurant from the front. ‘I think people love that side of it,’ he says. ‘Almost seeking out this little thing and suddenly they’re transported into this very different, almost otherworldly space.’ 

You can’t speak about restaurants that shed their sit-down persona without mentioning the Dalston Jazz Bar. Where some diners may just be discovering the venues meeting dinner and decks, this stalwart joint was set up over 25 years ago by chef-owner Robert Beckford, and now is introducing a new generation to the concept (in multiple senses, too: his son Duke is found behind the decks many weekends). 

The unassuming spot serves seafood dishes in their restaurant until 10pm, with a house band playing live jazz to accompany the meal. But, once dinner service is over, the tables are stripped away, the band replaced with a DJ, and the space turns into a dancefloor. The music offering leans towards old-school hip-hop and RnB, and the venue has a 3am weekend license. 

While at Dalston Jazz bar, you won’t find diners dancing on tables – they clear these out of the way at 10pm – you will find this at a BAR D4100 late. Bucknall says that he loves this about his lates, not least because it surprises passersby. That intrigue can draw more people in and, for these neighbourhood spots, that’s part of the joy of spreading the word. People want to have a good time and that’s the heart of what these venues are doing. 

Ultimately, the line is blurring between restaurants, bars and clubs. Hospitality and nightlife venues are getting more creative and the demand is there for something new and different, allowing chefs to get on the decks and DJs to become a more integral part to a venue’s identity. Perhaps it’s the cost of living crisis – as venues need to increase spend-per-head across the board to keep doors open – or perhaps people simply want more experiences that, like Christian Williams says, feels ‘otherworldly’. 

But, as his partner in a good time Tom Middleton-Joseph puts it: ‘I think overall it’s all about curation, isn’t it? I think that we’re trying to create a space and I think that is what other people are doing. Every aspect of it is purely created for people to have a good time.’