Soho institution L’Escargot helps launch Nike's latest sneaker

Nike have collaborated with London’s oldest French restaurant, L’Escargot, to help launch their latest sneaker, a Dunk SB low.

The shoe, created by Nike in partnership with Soho skate shop Route One, is nicknamed the “Escargot” due to its green and brown colourway, with the brands shooting the promotional film inside the renowned Greek Street restaurant. It is priced at £109.99.

In the launch video, a young skater arrives at the 100-year-old Soho restaurant, presented with a menu of special Dunk SBs, including the Strawberry high tops and the Ben and Jerry ‘Chunky Dunks’, the latter of which fetches around £2,000 on sneaker reselling sites.

The menu lists “L’Escargot” — the restaurant's eponymous dish of snails in garlic and parsley butter — which when served reveals the shoe.

Nike has dubbed the official name of the colourway as “sesame and pear”, but with a palette echoing the browns of a simmering escargot plate, swimming in vibrant green parsley butter, it’s easy to see how the nickname came about.

Nike themselves lean into this culinary theme, noting that the shoe’s silver swoosh and chrome aglets are “polished accents for some cutlery-inspired shine” with the insole of the shoe detailing a plate, knife and fork graphic, along with the Nike SB logo.

This collaboration represents significant contemporary cultural capital for such an historic spot. The restaurant was founded in Soho in the late 1800s before moving to its current Greek Street site in 1927, where a snail farm in the basement once supplied the dining room.

In the Eighties, the storied restaurant was run by husband and wife team Nick Lander and Jancis Robinson, who in turn employed legendary manager Elena Salvoni to run the restaurant day-to-day. Salvoni is considered one of the greatest front-of-house operators London has ever seen, and was nicknamed “the Queen of Soho”. The restaurant began to draw a huge celebrity following, including the likes of Princess Diana and Stephen Fry.

After Lander sold the restaurant in 1987, its reputation slithered somewhat until in 1998 Marco Pierre White took over and during this time, L’Escargot was once again regarded as one of the best French restaurants in town, an accolade it still holds today under the ownership of Brian Clivas.

Clivas told the Standard of the partnership: “We were super excited to do it, it was a bit of fun, and one that introduces us to a younger audience.

“But also, it’s great for local businesses to collaborate in this way. Route One is just down the road and it’s been lovely to be able to do something together. We did whatever we could to make it easy for them, and they did everything they could to make it look so lovely.

“The response has been fantastic; so many people in contact. Snails are the new bao!”

The shoe is a continuation of Nike’s Paris Olympic drive for sales, following on from the releases of the Cortez model and Jordan 4, among many others, this summer.

Before London’s trendsetters were in Solomons or Sambas, Nike Dunks were the shoe du jour in the very early 2020s, with the “Panda” black and white colourway being of particular popularity.

However, SB models are a niche subsection under Dunks: originally a shoe designed for skating and typically released in much lower numbers, these popular releases generate much greater hype and subsequently, demand, with particular colourways fetching resale values exceeding £100,000.

For more information, visit nike.com or lescargot.co.uk