There's absolutely nothing authentic about that video. All answers, his look etc is curated to signal something to other people. It's extremely obvious and here he basically admits it.
I hadn't actually watched it but it's also quite interesting working out what he's trying to signal. Bardo St James's is (or at least was - it shut last month) a genuinely nice restaurant; I've eaten there. Food is great and not extortionately overpriced (I think about £90/head plus drinks). However it's
very try hard as a venue, sort of in the vein of Brasserie Zedel or Park Chinois, you're supposed to feel you're in a timewarp to old world glamour and "classiness", all red velvet and jazz music. It was staged to appeal to a very specific "set". This TikTok (which set my teeth on edge) pretty much tells you the sort of person who raved about it.
So yes, basically Ollie if he'd leant into his privilege instead of trying to larp as a leftist, although obviously Gstaadguy is much better off than Ollie (he's Bella Hadid's cousin). I wouldn't say it's the most exciting or happening place to have picked, but it's a safe choice (or it would have been if it hadn't closed!).
"I'm a Watchtower girly" means he's been reading the Jehovah's Witnesses magazine. He
meant WatchHouse Coffee. It's amusing that the social media person didn't let Ollie do a reshoot and just bitchily corrected him in the editing. WatchHouse would have been a cool thing to say about 10 years ago when it was still starting out as an independent, but it's expanded massively into a chain now. It is nice coffee, but very expensive. They're really all about fancy coffee, so Ollie babbling away about their cookies is a bit embarrassing (there is no reason to pay that much for their food), and naturally he defers to his ex who knows about coffee to explain that the coffee is good rather than judging the coffee himself. It's generally a central London chain so I doubt there's one in Stoke Newington where he lives.
Choosing Dalston as a neighbourhood? Again, Dalston was considered super cool about 10 years ago. It's down the road from Stoke Newington and he has lived in the area for a while - however I do not get the impression you would have seen Ollie propping up the bar in Efe's Snooker Club or dancing in Dalston Superstore back in the day. I can't really criticise picking the area, it just seems very workshopped based on outdated references - and also is incredibly incongruent with the other choices he's making (it's
not a posh area).
Seven Dials... I feel that Seven Dials gets touted as a "hidden gem" of an area, but it's literally just off of Shaftesbury Avenue (and its where choob shot that ill-fated pizza video a while back). There are boutiques in the area, but I see no evidence he shops in them as they're really not his style - I cannot picture Ollie flouncing around in a Gudrun Sjoden linen shift while wearing a Plain Bear beanie and one of those Rains backpacks everyone bought a couple of years ago. The vintage shops are horrendously overpriced and are not a good place for vintage shopping. I find it bizarre that he mentions the food without specifically mentioning the old banana warehouse market because that's one of the "cool" things everyone knows in the area.
His best night out in London is just "the theatre" - apparently any theatre anywhere - but then specifically The Understudy which is on the South Bank (it's attached to the National Theatre, but most of what people think of as theatreland is not really nearby). It's odd that he suggests you can get a "proper pint" here when it's specifically a craft beer venue. I've not tried Xi Home Dumplings so I'll refrain commenting on that, although I do query how something directly off of Trafalgar Square can really be a "hidden gem".
So what does this collection of references really signal? To me, it paints a picture of someone who's not from London, moved here after university and largely hangs out with other transplants who work in The City in finance or work in the West End in something publishing or PR adjacent. Try hard Mayfair restaurant, most reference points are constrained by the West End, throws in a reference to a neighbourhood they heard was supposed to be cool. Much like how he fails at being a Geordie, he also fails at passing himself off as a naturalised Londoner with decent knowledge. Ironically if he'd tried
not tailoring his answers he could have accidentally lapsed into a slightly more interesting answer - talking about 13th Floor Coffee in Stoke Newington (run by the people who do End Of The Road festival), namedropping literally any restaurant
on this list of Stoke Newington restaurants, referencing the giant Beyond Retro shop in Dalston, etc etc... but I suppose that assumes he actually engages with the neighbourhood he lives in. Plus he's incredibly paranoid about revealing where he lives, even though he already has accidentally revealed he lives in the flat above Next Door Records on Stoke Newington Road (maybe he doesn't know we've worked that out yet).
