Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)

Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a concentration camp, and because it is in Marylebone High Street, not Linz. It is the new restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who opened the Wolseley, the Delaunay and Brasserie Zédel, and it is more profound and lovely than any of them.

There is always a clock in a Corbin and King restaurant, a big old clock from some fairytale train station, poised over the clientele as they stuff and age; for remembrance of mortality, I guess. Or maybe they just like big clocks? In any case, the guests here need it, for they are the surviving remnants of pre-war central European Jewry, who know about time and its meaning and importance, and who used to go to Cosmo in the Finchley Road and then, when it closed, to Oslo Court, a restaurant so ancient it serves crudités with salad cream, and so pink it thinks the Disney Princess brand is butch. They have huge Miami Jewish woman hair and ravaged, very interesting faces; they glide, as if on skateboards, across history. If you can canvass with dining, Fischer’s should be mandatory for Ukip supporters and xenophobes everywhere. It is an advertisement for the benefits of refugees, and it is very beautiful: art deco, well-lit, with polished wood, and long. It has good tablecloths, serious silverware and lots of art, so the wandering Jew can visit Austria in its mind while sitting down, and laugh, or weep, or simply have a panic attack face down in a strudel. I cannot emphasise how wonderful it is for a Jew to visit Austria without actually having to visit Austria; it is comforting.