The Ivy is a London pre- and post-theatre dinner institution where A list celebs rub shoulders with mere mortals such as you and I. Located at the point where two West End streets
converge it is a snug and classy bar and dining room nestled behind a discrete little entrance with a doorman that appears to materialise out of the ether. It is highly likely you will miss it the first time you go - I did - and as a consequence I looked like a dimwit as I stumbled up and down the road in my vertiginous heels attempting to find the door. I had hoped to make a gracious and refined impression or at the very least be taken for some B list celebrity but as the doorman appeared like a genie from nowhere and guided me into the hallowed space my heels skidded on the impeccable Italian tiles and in an attempt to stay upright I launched myself headlong at the reception desk. The young beauty behind it smiled at me as if this was the kind of thing that happened with guests all the time. I knew that my ruse had been rumbled though because I got a table squeezed right up by the kitchen door. Ho Hum. The Ivy prides itself on it’s egalitarian approach to its customers and when I last ate there six or seven years ago, it is fair to say that the staff were as arrogant and offhand with me as with anybody else. Actually I say that as a pun, the staff were beautifully professional and impeccably behaved and I am sure they only slagged us all off afterwards. But really, the twice I have eaten there before, once at a very early evening table with my beau of the time and the second time with friends after a show I had been appearing in at a small theatre in Covent Garden the food and service were as good as you might hope. The Ivy www.the-ivy.co.uk according to its many and effusive reviews remains 
one of the best places to eat in London and what makes it enduringly and timelessly appealing is the fact that it serves good old fashioned or popular dishes made with ingredients we can all recognise and at a surprisingly affordable price. And it’s for that reason I suppose that when I went online to book a table I couldn’t get anything before 11pm between now and August 6th and they weren’t taking bookings beyond that. Not to be deterred I rang them direct and spoke to a sexy voiced west coast American guy in the reservations team (so sexy I rang back and got his name, it’s Manny) and who laughed, nicely, when I tried my charm on him because I KNOW that they keep back a couple of tables just in case of a last minute booking by which ever flighty big name is in town. I knew I wasn’t a flighty big name, he knew I wasn’t a flighty big name but we both pretended for a moment and then he gently let me down and told me to ring back in ten days time. And that, I suppose, is what I shall have to do during which time I shall use my time wisely by practicing my impersonation of, well, flighty big names currently in circulation. Send suggestions please.
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 3:41PM