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London Calling1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Itinerary | Home
On the walk back to the Savoy, I experienced a mild epiphany. In a time of five-bladed disposable razors and serviceable off-the-rack suits, why would I so willingly give myself into the hands of others? Surely, I thought, it’s a way to touch that previous era, when life knew grace and time itself was allowed to pass more slowly. And there’s no better place for this than London, where the slower clocks of tradition are counterpointed not just with fresh paint but with the clean edge of modernity. The American Bar at the Savoy is so rife with legendary drinkers (pictures of Bogart and Noël Coward stand watch over the piano) that I’ve often wondered if there could be room left for me. But watching Salim Khoury, the 37-year veteran head barman, prepare a martini is both reassuring and refreshing. Khoury takes an outsize martini glass from his freezer, adds a dash of Noilly Pratt and then generously free-pours a lashing of icy Tanqueray. Fine martinis, it seems, are neither shaken nor stirred. The rim of the glass is painted with lemon skin and, with the reverence of a Scottish pastor passing the collection plate, the drink is placed on the bar top: viscous, icy, meaty. As the drink warms between sips, the aromatics of the gin intensify, like London itself. London’s culinary revolution, which married its past of prime local provender to modern, lighter technique, neatly paralleled Margaret Thatcher’s exit and the advent of New Labour. If Home House (a modern private club that occupies old and cozy rooms in Portman Square) speaks to the new studied informality of London, Arbutus trumpets it. Arbutus is the Soho headquarters of chef Anthony Demetre, whose cooking renders powerful flavours in dishes of braised shin of beef, rabbit saddle stuffed with liver and heart, and macaroni with chicken oysters. It is traditional food recast through the prism of Blairist Britain, which has its feet in the past but its hands in the air, hailing the world as surely as the immigration queues at Heathrow. We end the evening at Claridge’s hotel, where the side bar is thick with punters and would-be Lotharios. Unlike newer nightspots, such as the Volstead and the Cuckoo Club (favourites of wayward princes and Page 3 girls), it’s a place for tradition and compressed intimacy, for a flute of champagne or a cleansing ale and a drop into easy conversation. We soon do just that, with an attractive English couple entwined in a new romance. So too are we, caught up in the affair that London pours back into us. On the long meander back to the Savoy, the streets are limned black and silver and red under the high beams of Piccadilly. Even Oxford Street has gone to bed, its madding throngs of shoppers long dispersed. Along the Strand, the pubs noisily decant into minicabs. London never fails us – from the granite smell of its pavements and buildings to the sweet snug of a Hoxton pub iridescent with laughter, to the grassy tincture of a Chelsea morning. Each describes my affair with the great city and my long walks through its veins. Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net |
