Zetter
86 Clerkenwell Road, EC1 (020-7324 4455)

The great traveller, historian and writer Jan Morris once took a moment off from her greatness to write an introduction to The Harry’s Bar Cookbook by Arrigo Cipriani. She began by citing Napoleon’s assertion that the Piazza San Marco was the best drawing room in Europe and then offered this addendum: “I would nominate Harry’s as one of the two or three best saloons. This means that however sophisticated the food, the service must have a particular slickness and intimacy. Nobody wants to sit around twiddling thumbs in a bar, and Harry’s sees to it that your drink arrives almost instantly.”

I’m sure it does, if you are a great traveller, historian and writer. But it didn’t happen to me at Cipriani London, the latest offshoot of the now almost global Harry’s/ Cipriani chain. I sat ignored at that bar like I was made of air. I twiddled my thumbs so fast and long I nearly started a fire.

When I phoned for a table, I had been told that 7 o’clock was impossible but that 6.45 was fine. I wondered what would happen if I did arrive at seven. With hindsight, I should imagine the same as what happened when I arrived on the dot of quarter to: nothing. The barmen polished glasses, chatted to waiters and greeters, made drinks for other people, and occasionally glanced at me as at a turd goujon that has floated up against one’s gumboot in a flooded yard.

The dining room was empty but for two tables and half a dozen people at the bar. Which was good, because it afforded a better view of the sumptuous (I consider the word not absolutely positive) dining room. The room is identical to Cipriani Hong Kong, and was, in fact, built in China by a Hong Kong designer - brass, mahogany, chandeliers of human teeth, the lot - before being shipped, sumptuously, no doubt, to Mayfair.

It is also very similar to Harry’s Bars in Venice, New York, etc. Very plush, very creamy brown, very wealthy. Exactly the sort of place I would expect to be ignored. After about 20 drinkless minutes I was led to an outpost of the empty restaurant which I thought they had called the Venusian room (alas, it was merely the Venetian room) and finally got a chance to order bellinis (famously invented by some Venetian Cipriani of old). They arrived in the middle of the following week. As autumn nestled its frosty cloak around the city, they took our order.

The bellini came in a funny little tumbler, which is apparently traditional. The wine was poured into a tiny glass, too. I asked if they had anything bigger, as it was a cheap Rosso di Somewhere and could do with the space. They said, no, this glass was used for every wine at Harry’s or Cipriani’s or wherever the hell we were supposed to be, and had been since 1931. And then he leaned forward and said that he had tried to serve red wine to customers in the slightly larger water glasses, but had been slapped down by management.

A waitress arrived to pour the wine. I held it up for a sniff and noticed another little grace note.

“This chrysanthemum lipstick mark on the rim,” I asked. “Is that a Harry’s Bar tradition, too?”

“You must be mistaken, sir,” she said. I looked again.

“You’re right, I am,” I said. “It’s more of a fuchsia.”
She took the glass and squinted at it, cynically. And then her face fell. And with it her world. I told her not to worry. I said she needn’t change the bottle - although I am the only diner they’ll ever have who won’t insist that she does - I said she could just pour the wine into another glass. Mostly to see her perform an act so fantastically un-chic in such a strenuously chic environment, a trick more usually performed by drunks sharing out the almost-empties at closing time. But she did it, to be fair, with aplomb.

Other diners who had now arrived, it being well into the evening of the third Thursday after I had first walked in, looked aghast. But magnificently so: gold-skinned women in silk, with hairdos that brushed the ceiling like dodgem connectors, and men in dark double-breasteds with fulminous knots in blossoming ties. Everyone had come dressed as a sneery Italian duke and his decaying mother. (Only the octogenarian Arrigo Cipriani himself, the son of the founder, looked right - as venerable and serene as a great palazzo, and walking the room in the sharpest suit I have ever seen.)

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