Harry's Bar Mayfair

After a prolonged absence from the dining circuit, caused by the demands of summer holidays followed by the shooting season, Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have popped back to London for some white truffles at Harry’s Bar.

MrO: There’s nowhere in London, I think, that can source white truffles as well as Harry’s Bar. There used to be Il Fontana in Pimlico...
MrV: Yes it was all right but not quite up to Harry’s Bar standard, and anyway the old boy who ran it so well moved on to the next world years ago.
MrO: And Antonio Carluccio used to specialise in them...
MrV: But all he runs now are his chain of Caffes – ghastly name – which I doubt ever see a truffle from one year to the next.
MrO: Perhaps unfair. But anyway, Harry’s continues to be reliably excellent.
MrV: I worried about this place when Richard Caring bought it from the Birleys after they had their big family bust-up. It looked like a dead cert that the whole Birley empire would be plunged downhill by cost-cutting on the one hand and opening the membership to all Carin’s East End rag trade friends on the other.
MrO: I know what you mean, but he’s actually managed to preserve it all very well. He seems to have quite good judgement.
MrV: With the exception of Annabel’s. That’s a hideous place now. It got worse and worse after Gavin Rankin gave up the management to set up Bellamy’s. Mind you, it’s never been my favourite.
MrO: Isn’t that because you’ve been carried out twice, near unconsciousness, and told never to return, and the members who took you almost thrown out, too? And I don’t think you were popular when you stood on Keanu Reeve’ foot and tried to suggest it was his fault.
MrV: That was all a very long time ago and I’ve been back many times since, but it never improves, just gets worse. All those men from overseas with girls who look like they charge an hourly rate.
MrO: Like lawyers, you mean?
MrV: Very similar in many ways. Actually, most of those girls claim to be studying law in somewhere like Prague.
MrO: You have clearly spoken to them at some length. But we were discussing Harry’s Bar. I wish you’d let me have the scrambled egg with white truffle. I had it once before when you weren’t there and it’s one of the finest starters I’ve ever had.
MrV: Well, I’m sorry but I just can’t abide eggs. They give me the shivers. The idea of eating a recently-discharged ovum is quite the most disgusting thought – the sort of thing only a mad feminist ought to consider - and I can’t have them on the table in front of me.
MrO: I the event, the truffles were pretty good with the scallop carpaccio, but I think they would probably have gone better with the tuna or beef carpaccio.
MrV: That’s what you get for taking a waiter’s advice. Mine on the other hand went perfectly with the linguine.
MrO: Which you ordered on the advice of the waiter.
MrV: You have to pick up every little thing, don’t you?
MrO: I liked the lamb off the trolley. Am I right in thinking you had the same?
MrV: Yes, it was very good. Peculiar, wasn’t it, paying four times for the starter what we paid for the main course?
MrO: Yes, and also rather odd paying more for the food than the wine. Highly unusual in my experience.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar had two starters at £120 each, two main courses at about £30 each, and shared a bottle of Barbera at around £50.

Harry’s Bar
26 South Audley Street,
London W1K 2PD
+44 (0) 207 408 0844

www.harrysbar.co.uk