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London Calling1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Itinerary | Home
A luncheon at the Ivy’s new West Street neighbour, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, would prove quite another matter. We ate with Robuchon himself on his opening day, and the pretty red and black rooms were loaded with celebrity diners: Jancis Robinson, the Financial Times wine writer; AA Gill, the dyspeptic restaurant reviewer for The Sunday Times; and Michael Gambon, who has long starred onstage and as Dumbledore in the last three Harry Potter films. Little England, indeed, but with little dishes accented by Clouseau: an amuse-bouche of lemon jelly and caviar; a vivid mackerel tart with lashings of Parmesan; and sautéed squid with baby artichoke and chorizo. Witheringly expensive (our lunch for four easily topped $460), certainly, but wonderfully intense and lightened by watching Dumbledore zoom off in his Bentley. Our languorous lunch bumped into tea at Sketch, the apocryphal $27-million folly off Oxford Street. Among its series of modern rooms (the loos on the top floor look like space pods), the tea room is a jumble sale: Beatrix Potter meets Alice, with well-made loose leaf teas, scones and clotted Cornish cream. Our tea gave way to sterling British oysters and potted shrimps at Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill, then drinks at the Groucho Club, where handsome Polish barmen – with the cheekbones of a German airport – dispensed liberal cocktails. Perhaps they symbolize the real New Labour and the changing of the guard: The front ranks of London’s service staff now seem almost universally occupied by young Poles, Aussies and Russians. It might not seem wise to be fitted for a new suit after three lunches, but the tailors at Savile Row’s Richard Anderson were, well, accommodating. I saw the evidence of other expanding clients: paper suit patterns with recent additions. There might be no greater pleasure to be had standing up than admiring the ranks of Super-numbered cloths, narrowing one’s selection and then allowing the skilled hands of the fitter to go to work. My new suit would require six weeks and four fittings but would also, with proper care, last a lifetime. The next morning I walked the Thames upstream, carving through the Green Park, bypassing the tourists at Buckingham Palace, on a beeline for Geo. F. Trumper on Curzon Street, a place of manly restoration. The wood-lined rooms are a sanctum that Bertie Wooster could love, and I sat back for a straight-razor shave, a finely scissored haircut and a manicure that left me as polished as the Elgin Marbles. A splash of Trumper’s signature Extract of West Indian Limes sent me on my way for the restorative work just ahead. |
