Cipriani, 25 Davies Street, London W1 (020 7399 0500). Meal for two, including wine and service, £180
In London's Mayfair, everything happens more elegantly, even the muggings. At Cipriani, the new British outpost of the famed Venetian institution Harry's Bar, you will be separated from your cash by a dashing chap in white jacket and bow tie. It will still bloody hurt, but you will admire the style with which it is done.
As I looked at the prices, I ventured to my wife that she might like to buy us dinner by popping out to nearby Shepherd's Market to sell her body with the hookers up there. She looked balefully at the prices. 'Sorry, darling,' Pat replied. 'But I don't think this body is going to get us beyond the starters.' It is probably less than gallant of me to agree, but I have to. Cipriani is nose-bleedingly expensive.
So what are you getting for your money? Well, the room is nice. There's elegant wood panelling, and a clever use of chrome circles to make the 'C' for the Cipriani motif. There's the marble floor, which looks authentically aged, though it can't be, because the building in which it is housed is a bland modern office block. There's the company of the moneyed Middle Eastern communities of London and a certain bustle. And of course there's the intimation that you are part of a legendary experience.
Harry's Bar, founded by Giuseppe Cipriani in 1931 on the St Mark's Bay waterfront, is where Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles hung out. It's where carpaccio of beef was invented (for a countess on a raw-meat diet) and where the Bellini - prosecco and white peach puree - was born. Its fans, and they are legion, will tell you it is a place of timeless and substantial virtues, of simple things done well, of great ingredients prepared perfectly. The various Ciprianis - there's one in Hong Kong, one in Uruguay and three in New York- are meant to replicate this experience down to the off-yellow linen, the stylised logo of the cocktail barman on every glass, and the menu.
Ah yes, the cooking. Almost an incidental, and well it might be, for at Cipriani you are buying only comfort food. Pat's home-made Cipriani lightly baked tagliolini with ham? A flat dish of lightly gratinated cheese and ham pasta. It's rich and comforting and outrageously priced at £18. My carpaccio of beef with its Jackson Pollock spray of lemony mayonnaise was superb meat, as it should be at £22. Main courses: a beautifully filleted and slightly overseasoned grilled sea bass for her; for me, veal kidneys sauteed in a rich wine and cream sauce and served with a risotto Milanese, light on the saffron, heavy on the salt. That's £50 for the two. Eleven pounds each for slices of modestly good cake, a couple of mint teas at £4 each (a mark-up of, ooh, a billion per cent on raw materials), a Bellini and a glass of red wine each and then a bill of - wait for it - £180. Am I making too much of the price? For the people who go there, yes. This is a casual dinner place for people with so much cash they deserve to be fleeced. Nothing I say about Cipriani will trouble that client base at all - still, I will say it: YOU ARE BEING ROBBED. To everyone else I say this: even in a city as overpriced as London, £180 can buy an awful lot of dinner. You could eat at Lindsay House or Club Gascon and have change for a cab both ways. You could experience French classicism at its best at Le Gavroche or Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. Three of you could go to Hakkasan, four of you could go to Le Cercle, six of you could have a great night at St John Bread & Wine. Please do that instead.
As I settled the bill, Pat said: 'I am horrified The Observer is spending this much money on such mediocre food.' And so was I. But thank God it was their dime and not mine.
