THE IVY

"HURRAH, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A TABLE!

Ah… The Ivy. How to write about it without invoking a splutter of fin-de-siècle Brutishness, in all its tortured spasms of saucer-eyed anxiety, desperate aspiration, zingy bling and unadorned stupidity…? For nearly two decades, The Ivy was so much more than a mere restaurant: here was not just a temperature gauge for the fevered state of the nation, but a scalpel-sharp arbiter of status: can you get a table or not? Is you is, or is you ain’t?

Most people by definition, ain’t – and that’s just how everyone liked it. the sainted few who could secure a table at will, and even at short notice, felt suitably superior and cosseted (most of the point of the thing) – and the huddled masses denied the limelight, awed by the restaurant’s absolute exclusivity, became even more dementedly determined to get in.

They would be on the telephone pleading for a table for lunch on Tuesday week, maybe…or dinner, conceivably, one Thursday a month hence, or perhaps sometime early next century  - it didn’t actually matter, because the response would always be a polite “no”.

So things remained throughout the tenure of Chris Corbin and Jeremy King – the architects of The Ivy’s phenomenal success – well into the ownership of Richard Caring, who also has J Sheekey, Le Caprice and – oh, loads of other very good places. But gradually, The Ivy’s star began to wane, thanks to the new and fashionable places (most notably Corbin and King’s Wolseley) but also to self-inflicted wound: the introduction of The Club at The Ivy, where the cream of celeb diners immediately graduated, leaving the restaurant feeling just a little bit B-List. The C-List.

Suddenly it was rather easier to bag a table… but the hitherto excluded didn’t like this one bit, because if it was no longer the undisputed choice of the beautiful people, then they were damned of they would want to go there either. They wanted to not get a table at the Chiltern Firehouse instead (though that, too has grown a shade more…available in recent months).

In January of this year, an expensive risk was taken: to shut up shop for a five-month total refurbishment; for all the famous artefacts to be auctioned off, amid a fanfare of publicity. This month sees the opening of a bran spanking new Ivy, still under the directorship of the peerless Fernando Peire, wooed back by Caring in 2007. Yes, but what have we got though? A mess? A mishmash? A catastrophe?  No, no and thrice no, we have an unmitigated triumph, that’s what we’ve got. Oh God, I love it. It is so much better than the old and dusty version: at a stroke, The Ivy has become once again one of the very best and buzziest restaurants in town.

It’s a funny shape – a snub-nosed triangle. And whereas before it was something of a warren of blind spots and walkways with a bar wedged into the corner, the new bar dominates the very heart of the space – a beautiful Art Deco creation of peachy onyx, mirror, red and pink velvet and leather, with dinky little Lalique-ish lamps. All now is sweetness and light, courtesy of the trademark harlequin stained glass windows and mighty bronze and glass pendants. Here’s the real cleverness though, the absolute masterstroke: there is no such thing as a ‘bad table’: on whatever green banquette or red leather chair you are seated, you will feel special.

The menu itself is rather more adventurous than before- with even a nod to Asia – but The Ivy has never been about gourmet cooking: simply what people actually want to eat, done extraordinarily well. So all the old favourites are here: the signature shepherd’s pie – beef and lamb, and amazingly just as good as ever. You can dine frugally on sausages and mash or fish and chips with a £19.50 bottle of wine, go nuts with Dover sole, share a whole roast Devonshire chicken… or have what we did: for my guest, an excellent thick sirloin, cooked precisely rare as requested; for me, the finest veal chop I have ever eaten – large, tender, juicy, very deeply flavoursome, not to say full, Top-rate chips as well.

Before that, a little circular cake of finely chopped white crabmeat topped by a perfect creamy mousse made up of the dark Evesham asparagus with utterly lean and nutty prosciutto, and just the oozily gorgeous yolk of a Burford Brown poached egg. Joy upon joy.

Service? Nigh-on perfect. The waiters – in smart Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge garb – are just friendly enough, and professionally attentive. Glasses are imperceptibly – never aggressively – replenished; but crucially, never neglected.

For pud we could have a Knickerbocker Glory - very fitting, I thought – but instead went for a blush apricot tart with amaretti ice cream. This was a kind-of individual tarte tation. Its slightly soggy base and unyielding rim are the nearest I can get to faulting this meal. Just two days after opening, the place was alive with all the old-style cool and razzmatazz, and a smattering of shiny celebs.

The Ivy is back! The Ivy is hot! The Ivy is unutterably fabulous again! And we can’t get a table! Yay! All, once more, is right with the world." - The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 4 July 2015