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London Calling1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Itinerary | Home
To observe the powerful, one must invoke some powerful tools. Our visit was abetted by the turbo-concierge service known as Quintessentially and a fine car in the form of a midnight blue Jaguar Sovereign. Our equally fine driver, Leslie, knew the back byways and doorways of private London and also that a 50-metre journey across Berkeley Square from Morton’s club to Annabel’s could only be accomplished in his back seat. “You can’t just walk into Annabel’s,” he insisted. Of course, he was absolutely correct. Our initiation had begun days earlier. Wanting to surprise my London-based business partners in their own city, we booked at the restaurant Galvin at Windows, which crowns the London Hilton on Park Lane and offers panoramic views. It was a sparkling day, and over drinks in the bar, Mayfair stood glossily at our feet, with the City and St. Paul’s Cathedral arrayed far in the distance like chocolates in a box. Hyde Park, a carpet of green, and the Serpentine rolled out beneath our table. It’s unusual to look down on London, on the crooked mews and crannies that circumscribe our ritual walks through frenetic nighttime Soho or our morning rambles northward along Millionaires’ Row behind Kensington Palace, where enormous German motor cars await their diplomatic cargo. Or my favourite walk, especially when the crash and clang of London become too invasive: in the heart of Mayfair near the Connaught Hotel, toward the little green sward of grass and trees that rims St. George’s Church on Mount Street. It is my leafy sanctuary. If Galvin is a sleek aerie, where the widely separated tables lend themselves to discussions of high finance or entreaties of seduction, Dukes is a determined ground dweller, a pocket handkerchief of a hotel tucked in a St. James’s mews. Smaller still is the bar, where trolleys are soon dispatched with legendary (and, at $36, legendarily expensive) martinis. One of barman Tony Micelotta’s hefty constructions of frozen gin poured into a frozen glass, pushed with the oil of Sicilian lemon skin, is mood-elevating; two verge on danger. Next to us, Texas oilmen and their wives hoist their glasses to the remains of the day. The room is as subdued as a library, the evening measured in the dewy decibels of fine drink and confident haberdashery. “But that’s impossible, sir.” So said a pretentious little man named Ben at the Ivy after scanning the reservations for our lost booking. The Ivy is an iconic London restaurant, especially among theatre luvvies and film celebrities. (Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole are frequently spotted.) It’s a place of invisible velvet ropes, infamous for its six-month wait for the unconnected, which we were, although a quick call to Quintessentially saved the evening – barely. Sadly, the restaurant has seen much better days and trades on its reputation like an aging doyenne. Our British comfort food included frites as damp as an Earls Court bedsit and a wine list too thinly cast, all served by understudies. No stars tonight. |
