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I wrote the book on the Ivy, but I haven’t looked at it for years. I remember that Chris and Jere- my, who owned the restaurant, spent hundreds of hours sweat- ing over the minutiae of every page, which is, incidentally, also how you make a good restaurant. I’ve just been looking at the book. It might be one of the best
things I’ve ever done.
Almost 20 years ago. And I still haven’t got any better. I haven’t been back to the Ivy
AA Gill revisits the Ivy after more than a decade away, and finds it sympathetic and middle-aged with a newly pared-down menu
for at least a decade. Nobody I know goes there now. It’s had a thorough redesign, a new menu and they’re rolling out the concept with lumpy results. The old bar has gone and the new one is now running down the middle of the dining room, with the tables arranged around the sides. It feels more opulent, more grand hotel. The lighting is nice, there are still a lot of the old paintings, and the diamond stained-glass windows, which were always its distinguishing feature and gave the place a slightly ecclesiastical and arts- and-crafts feel. Altogether, it’s sympathetic and middle-aged. The cleverest bit of the pre-millennial Ivy was its menu; the new menu is a pared-down version. I started with foie gras – it came on an apple tart that
Gemma Bowes says the Treehouse hotel at wildlife park Port Lympne, Kent, is not quite what she was led to believe Having never been on a proper African safari before, or even to a safari park, I feel quite excited as I pass through the gates of Port Lympne – dispro- portionately so for a journey from Ashford International that isn’t Paris-bound. This is main- ly on behalf of my 22-month- old daughter, who for the first time will get to see animals that aren’t ratty park pigeons or cats, but also on account of the fun safari-camp vibe.
The word ‘treehouse’ is, as usual, misleading: these are slick cabins at the top of a steep slope above the rhino
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enclosure, with trees dotted around, and terraces overlook- ing 26 miles of flat savannah- esque-if-you-squint scenery to the Channel and France. Interior designer Tara Bernerd has done good: the obligatory grey/neutral colour scheme has enough unusual textures and taste not to bore – midcentury- style lounge chairs and bench, concrete
lampshades, sandy
fabric wallpaper, sliding ryo- kan-style
glass-panelled door,
black-and-white wildlife photos (including a terrifying shot in the bathroom of some fighting, snarling gorillas). There are two bedrooms off an open-plan liv- ing space with a decent kitchen, and floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening on to the terrace. Very stylish, I like it.
Price: Treehouses sleep four and cost from £300 a night during the low season or £500 for the high season and are self-catering
“The food is competent; it makes no great claims for itself and isn’t caught lying” AA Gill
was tooth-defyingly tough. The crispy duck salad was OK, not quite as I remembered it. My fish and chips were ex- cellent. There’s a lot of unnec- essary steak on the menu. The food is competent; it makes no great claims for itself and isn’t caught lying.
The Ivy doesn’t need a fresh start, but it did need this makeover.
Price: £85 for a meal for two, including service
Richard Ehrlich visits Smith & Wollensky, as the famous New York steakhouse group opens its first restaurant in London, just off the Strand
A top-drawer American steak- house cruises like an aircraft carrier: infinitely powerful and supremely self-confident. The original Smith & Wollensky has been that kind of place since it opened in Manhattan in 1977, and has since spread to other big American cities. Now the ship has docked in a two-storey space in the Adelphi Building. S&W London looks the part, with lots of dark wood, green leather banquettes, low lighting and art deco mirrors. Food came out lukewarm on more than one occasion,
and initial efforts to deal with the problems were clumsy and sometimes painfully slow. But that they were problems was recognised, and the restaurant gave us our whole meal for free. (This is astonishingly rare in the restaurant business.) Having eaten at S&W in I
Manhattan, know this is
not how they do things there. They wouldn’t have lasted four weeks, never mind four dec- ades. So I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and as- sume that the catastrophic mis- haps in our meal will have been steadily eliminated by improve- ments in training and systems.
Price: around £120 for a meal for two with drinks and service
31 July 2015 | The Caterer | 17
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