Ideal for winter: The Dover reviewed

For British people, America is an idea brought by cinema, and The Dover, the New York Italian bar and restaurant in Mayfair, meets a version of it. It’s not quite the ballroom in Some Like It Hot, not quite Rick’s Café in Casablanca, but it’s as close as you will find near Green Park Underground, and that has a charm to it, because Americans can speak. It’s from Martin Kuczmarski, formerly of the once preening, now ragged Soho House. He has named his company Difficult Name. There’s a message there, and a story, and it made a glorious restaurant with the tagline ‘A good place to be since 2023’.

The Dover has the confidence Britain lacks, and it is behind a black awning on a Portland stone townhouse. It’s on Dover Street which is, among other things, the site of P.G. Wodehouse’s fictional Drones Club, but The Dover is nothing like it, thank God. The entrance hall is ruby red and features – and this is notable nowadays – a reservations book made of paper. (The website is likewise understated, which also causes comment. Are we in 1983?) Pass through a black curtain, real and metaphorical – like Titanic, The Dover never sees daylight – and find a long, dim Art Deco bar made for plotting or even romance. It has chequered floors – is life chess? – and deep, buttery leathers. (I have been on a lifestyle press trip. Can you tell?) It smells of good wood – walnut, apparently – and hard alcohol. It is ideal for winter, being a cave. Kuczmarski has placed a record player on a shelf: above it, Diana Ross’s All the Great Hits is on display.