There are two ways to get to the restaurant at the Cipriani in Venice. The first way - favoured by your merely 'average' moneybags customer - is to wait for the hotel's private motor launch to pick you up at the picturesque jetty near St Mark's Square. The second way is simply to leave your palatial suite overlooking the lagoon (obviously you have to be staying here to do this, as some of us undeservedly are) and come down via the fragrant, formal gardens, perhaps casting an eye over the Olympic-size swimming pool (the only pool in Venice) and tennis court (ditto), remembering to walk leisurely at all times and to check that your flies aren't undone before entering the dining room.
It is at this point, though, that we find ourselves (me and my friend Neil) sort of hovering at the door, dazzled by the chandeliers. 'Come on,' he hisses. But now someone in a tuxedo is heading our way with a big smile on his face. 'Actually, maybe we should have a drink first,' I say. We beat a retreat to the bar. Don't ask me why. I mean I have actually been to a restaurant before, though admittedly not one where you have to wear proper shoes.
In the bar, the waiter brings some toothsome little baby pizzas to eat ('Brilliant! Maybe we could just stay in here ...') and a couple of 'Canalettos', which are made of raspberry juice and prosecco. We were hoping for Bellinis - famously the house cocktail at Harry's Bar, invented by its founder, the original Mr Cipriani - but the waiter says peaches are out of season. 'We use only fresh fruits,' he explains before I have a chance to ask why they don't just open a tin.
Still, this is great. Nice bar. Big glass seagull on the piano. Elegant people sitting around just like us, though real ones obviously. Another drink? Why not.
Fortified thus, we saunter back to the restaurant. The trick, I have decided, is to try not to appear as though you can't believe your luck. And don't order the foie gras, because it will just look like you've never had it before.
Four or five waiters are soon flitting back and forth, bringing us menus and the wine list ('um, house red, please ...') and different sorts of olive oil and flapping our napkins open and reminding us what the knives and forks do. Now it's their turn to hover, which is like having your own presidential guard, except instead of them looking out for snipers (man in unlikely toupee at three o'clock ...) they're patiently listening to Neil having to read the menu out loud because I have left my glasses on top of the minibar.
'I'll have the foie gras,' I announce.
Neil is starting with carpaccio, first created here at the Cipriani and named after the Venetian painter, which you have to admit is quite civilised. 'You wouldn't get that in Britain,' I say.
'You might,' Neil says. 'What about Francis Bacon?'
We get stuck into the bread and oil and watch the sun go down over the water, the white boats winking at the far side, the blue of the sky getting deeper and darker. You can eat out there on the starry terrace if you don't mind your dinner going cold.
The food, when it comes, is pretty much divine and at one point during the ravioli course Neil is obliged to inform me that I'm gobbling.
I have ordered the seabass (my default panic buy), which arrives in a huge brick of baked salt and provides a brief floor show while the performance waiter retrieves it following a neat archaelogical dig. Having had the 100 per cent raw beef starter, Neil (and I'm not necessarily suggesting he might be feeling the heat of dining so intimately with a person who isn't his idea of a woman) opts for red meat again, this time the filetto with stewed shallots and extra-heterosexual pimento sauce au gratin. Yum's the word from both of us.
Between courses, dainty dishes - a mini-choc ice, nutty things - come and go at speed (the service is so efficient I'm beginning to think Elton John must be waiting for our table), making no end of washing-up, until we are so stuffed we very nearly can't manage another drink.
But, yes, the bar is still open, and, listen ... I think they're playing our song.
· A room at the Hotel Cipriani, costs from £562 per night, 020 7960 0500 or www.hotelcipriani.com. Phil Hogan travelled on the Orient Express, 0845 077 22 22 or www.orient-express.com.
