El Vino, Fleet Street

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have returned to an old watering hole, seldom visited now: the famous El Vino in Fleet Street. Their nostalgia is tempered by changes in their surroundings...

MrO: I didn’t think it had changed much.
MrV: Not changed? Are you mad? The place was completely different.
MrO: The decor is exactly as it’s always been. They have the paint specially mixed to look like tobacco stain. They even have the same chairs in the back bar, polished by decades of fat lawyers’ bottoms.
MrV: Yes but there are bar stools in the front bar, and people not wearing jackets or ties, and the foreigners go completely unchastised, and I think I saw a television. Horribly common. I liked it when all they offered you to eat at the bar was a giant sausage. Now it looks like an Italian sandwich bar up there.
MrO: That’s progress, I’m afraid. The bar stools do get in the way when it’s busy but when it’s quiet I quite like to perch on one while I read the paper.
MrV: That’s precisely the sort of attitude that wasn’t tolerated in the old days. It was fun when they used to chuck women out for being improperly dressed. There was that big court case with those leftie harridans complaining about having to look presentable and not clutter up the bar space with their handbags.
MrO: Those weren’t exactly the grounds on which the legal action was taken. It was quite a cause célèbre, though.
MrV: Do you remember David the manager? He used to love coming round the bar to tell some foreigner or half-dressed fool to leave.
MrO: Quite often they were happy to go as they’d been verbally assaulted by Bruce Kinlock of the Daily Telegraph. He particularly liked to pick on Germans. As soon as they came through the door, Bruce demanded to know what they did in the war. It quite rattled them.
MrV: Good old Bruce. He was the old school of journalist regular at El Vino – rude to everyone and occasionally dangerous.
MrO: Setting light to people’s ties used to upset them a great deal, but he was always very generous with the champagne. He very seldom lunched there, though.
MrV: He had more sense than we did.
MrO: Not entirely fair on the El Vino kitchen, although I admit that there were one or two dishes which seemed permanently to elude the capabilities of the chef. The steak and chips was always reliable.
MrV: The most exciting thing I ever saw the chef cook was himself and the owner, Anthony Mitchell.
MrO: That was terrifying. The poor chef had just lost his father and wasn’t concentrating. I thought that pan fire was going to kill us all.
MrV: Quite impressive of Mitchell to step into the middle of it and cover the pan. He was horribly blistered afterwards.
MrO: Yes but he still came round and offered us a free glass of port to compensate for the inconvenience.
MrV: Not to mention the pong. Those were the days. I felt the steak was rather better in those days, too. This time, mine was tasty enough but a bit on the chewy side. The smoked salmon starter was alright though.
MrO: Smoked salmon followed by steak is a pretty reliable combination there. But most of all I like the wine prices.
MrV: That Chateau de Respide was so reasonable I didn’t bother noting how much we paid for it.
MrO: Nor did I but they sell it for £9.95 in the off-sales department, so it won’t be too much more than that in the restaurant.
MrV: That’s the main attraction, now, isn’t it – the cheap booze. It used to be the people but nobody one knows ever goes there anymore.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar consumed a plate of smoked salmon each, a serving of steak and chips each, some cheese and so much wine that they cannot recall how much it cost, but feel it would have been about £70 per head.

El Vino

47 Fleet Street
London EC4Y 1BJ
+44 (0) 207 353 6786

www.elvino.co.uk