The New Mayflower & Wilfrid Voynich…
Yesterday, a set of random clicks somewhat akin to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (or do I mean “Six Degrees of Roger Bacon”?) took me to the Voynich Monkeys archive of the main Voynich Mailing List: there, I learnt to my considerable surprise, that one of the premises in London formerly used by Wilfrid Voynich is now the New Mayflower Restaurant (on Shaftesbury Avenue).
OK, I’ve probably been to at least half of the restaurants in and around Chinatown over the years: but I’ve been to the New Mayflower probably ten times – it’s a nice place.
If you’re going there, I highly recommend (hopefully they still do it) the chilli crab – very tasty indeed (if a bit messy, it has to be said). A big thank you to my chess-playing friend Neil Bradbury for recommending it, particularly the basement part of the restaurant.
Of course, it’s a little strange to think that I’ve eaten so many times in what was Voynich’s former bookshop – but historical London’s a bit like that, full of slightly unnerving coincidences! 
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I fully understand the feeling. There seems to be a wider tradition of having
restaurants in historical places. I remember a fish restaurant on Betlem
square in Prague. This is located at the former site of Thaddeas Hajek’s
house (more correctly, his father Simon’s), where Dee and Kelly stayed and
held sceances. I have a picture of the place, which, however fails to
do justice to the ‘magic’ of the place.
(Bad puns are always intentional).