Myths and legends

The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is more ancient and threatening. It has mullioned windows, a photogenic lamp post and a parking space for paparazzi to shoot people who want to be shot, as in early Martin Amis novels. It has been refurbished for its 100th birthday, in the manner of an ancient dowager empress seeking new fingers. Of the ‘celebrities’ or ‘notables’ or ‘people who are better than you’ who used to dine here I cannot speak; but apparently it was a live-action re-enactment of a Nigel Dempster diary. Christopher Biggins blah. The pig from Babe blah.

It is, you must understand, a ‘legendary restaurant’. It is, with its new fingers, currently engaged in some made-up PR-created ‘war’ with the Chiltern Firehouse in Marylebone, fought on the papery battlefields of the style pages. My spoons! My money! My quiche! I loathe the brittle spells of PR witchery. I do not wish to be told that I — or my readers — am not good enough to eat iconic shepherd’s pie in this dismal corner of the universe and should go somewhere less fashionable and more dismal still. Lies, all lies. Perhaps I should write a Network-themed restaurant review, and tell you instead — stop reading this review! Stop it! Stick your head in a KFC Bargain Bucket instead, for there is as much truth — and, yes, joy — there! Or maybe I should just say that I do not trust tales of ‘legendary restaurants’ or ‘legendary parties’, or anything that was, socially speaking, ‘legendary’. ‘Legendary’, here, is usually a synonym for ‘many alcoholics’. Why were they in the Antibes, or the Ivy, or even in the pages of The Spectator’s gossip column, in the first place? Because, reader, theyhad nothing better to do.