Putting the iced prosecco behind us, we made our way through Soho, our spirits gradually revived by Edith and Lou’s banter and earnest enthusiasm for our mad quest. Was there a decent Bellini in Londinium? Did we always have to pay top dollar, or in this case pound, for the sake of a few salacious bubbles and a brief whiff of summer? Would the barman at the Connaught be fired? Time and a few more drinks would only tell.
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), born in Cork, Ireland
Last week was such a whirl of activity, starting on Monday- yes, another Monday out, Monday is now our new Friday- with a late night Bellini tour, and ending on Friday with the very romantic and intimate wedding at the ICA, of my friend Mel and her husband Rupert. This week feels ever so slow by comparison. The kids are off school, Christmas is still 2 days away, and it is still very cold outside.
There is a new restaurant/small hotel on Dean St. in Soho, which stands out like a pearl in pot of black beans. Shiny, white and looking slightly out of place among all the other busy, full-windowed restaurants and neon-flashing pubs, the façade of the Dean St. Townhouse looks more like a prim, 19th century girls’ school in a much smaller town, where carriages full of long-skirted girls might suddenly appear.
Lulu dropped these off the other day…. Heloise, take note! Now Luke can mix his own Bellinis at home over the holidays. Available at Speck Delicatessen in Holland Park here in London, or selected liquor stores in the USA.
My girlfriend Heloise back home in Princeton, N.J., is one of my best readers…she reads my blog and sends lovely, enthusiastic messages which inspire, and make me wish she were here to partake in the grand, Bellini search. She makes art and writes, and lives with her art historian husband Gill, and their younger son Luke- the older son is travelling the world.
When Heloise last visited London, I told her about my quest, and she responded with the following, which she has very kindly allowed me to share, a sort of Bellini coming-of-age story, involving her handsome Luke. Heloise writes:
I realize this has nothing to do with Bellini’s, but Lulu, Sinclair and I were having coffee this morning, and The Sun had this on the cover. I couldn’t resist sharing it with all my friends across the pond. The English have such a way with words.
In my experience, Monday night parties are a rare occurrence, but when they do happen, you just think, “Wow, what a way to start the week! There should be more Monday night parties! Why didn’t we think of it first?!” But we didn’t. Stella and Ambrose did, for his birthday, and for this reason, we thank them.
Stella and Ambrose have the most grown-up parties of anyone we know in London. Going to a party at their house is like stepping into the past, into a swanky, New York apartment circa 1932. Finding a young Hedy Lamarr at the grand piano would be no surprise. Their combined hospitality, gracious and easy, seems old-world as well, and one can’t help but feel both special, and spoiled in their company.
American Thanksgiving in London is very much a do-it-yourself, home-made, ‘let’s pull it together, and celebrate anyway!’ kind of effort, squeezed in this year between a Christmas street fair, and lots of math homework.
While everyone else is already thinking Christmas (don’t even mention Hanukkah, Jews don’t exist in England as far as the shops are concerned), we Americans here in London are thinking Turkey! Stuffing! Apple Pie! And, of course Bellinis!
Lulu just sent me this, from today's Daily Telegraph:
"At the recent opening of the Galvin brothers' new restaurant, La Chapelle in Shoreditch, guests including Gary Rhodes and Giles Coren sipped Puccinis, a mixture of mandarin juice and champagne. It was a long way from a rainy Spanish citrus grove."
I might add that Galvin on Baker St. is one of our favorite restaurants in London. The question is, do they serve Bellinis? We will investigate and report back to you soon.
Flora Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) c.1515-1520. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
My friend Sofia grew up with her extended family, in a fabulous house on the Grand Canal in Venice. With her fair complexion and luxuriant red hair, she could easily have stepped out of a painting by Titian or Tintoretto, or any of the great Venetian painters of the Renaissance.
Sofia and I have known each other for twenty years, and even though you can know somebody for so long, sometimes it is easy to forget what they are actually like. Sofia has always called the shots in terms of food, where we should eat. Usually, I don’t mind because I know how much she loves Asian food, for example. But when I asked her to join me for a Bellini, I assumed she’d understand it would have to be a restaurant that actually served a Bellini.
Okay, so I got a little carried away in my last post, waxing poetic about nature, and so forth. It turns out that Prosecco, when drunk on its own, should be merrily enjoyed, drunk quickly, and not sipped at all. In the form of a classic Bellini, which is 5 parts fresh peach puree and 1 part Prosecco, it can be consumed either way, swigged, downed or sipped.
The words and phrases used by various wine writers to describe the taste of Prosecco are inspiring. You might really believe you are drinking the nectar of the gods, with Pliny the Elder on the banks of the River Tiber, in Ancient Rome. Apparently, the grapes that Prosecco is made from are that old.
Why a Bellini and not another drink, you may ask. I’m not sure why. Something to do with a summer I spent in Venice when I was 27 years old, and the fact that it is essentially a wine and fruit based drink. Could there be anything more pure? More natural? More of this earth? Grapes and fruit, the vine and the tree, the cluster and the single fruit. Need I say more? Perhaps…
http://www.barschool.com/drink-recipes/bellini
My friend Lulu sent me this link from the 'American Bartenders School' as a joke, and I thought it was worth posting, as a clear, and uninspiring demonstration on how not to make a Bellini.
I must give him credit for his description of a fluted glass, and for economy- a bottle of Champagne and what looks like a tin of a Goya fruit juice, a staple product of every Latin American bodega in the US.
It was in a gastro pub in lovely Primrose Hill that the unexpected happened- a gorgeous looking drink appeared, complete with decorative strawberry, hanging on the rim of the glass, perched like a bright Sunday hat with a green bow.
Emma is my good friend who has very kindly agreed to help me with the Bellini Project, as I am now calling it- my endeavor in finding a well-priced, delicious Bellini in London. This all started because of a £14.00 Bellini, which I thought was ridiculously over-priced. I was outraged, and perhaps a little naïve, to find that one of my favorite cocktails should cost so much, and so I guess I am trying to find out why. I realize that there are other significant causes around the world and in this city, where I might better direct my energies…. and maybe one day I will fight against the urgent crisis of poverty and hunger and ignorance, but right now, I am consumed by the injustice of an overpriced cocktail, and will fight my battles in the bars and dining rooms of London’s swankiest (and some not so swanky) restaurants. All for the good of my beloved Bellini.
Women of a certain age like to celebrate their birthdays not only once a year, but throughout the birthday week, with family, and more often with a lunch or dinner with girl-friends. They deserve to be feted more than once a year. Two to three times during the birthday week is rightly justified for the working girl, the overstretched mum, and the beleaguered wife.
It was thus, how I found myself recently celebrating a friend’s forty-something birthday, in an upscale Marylebone eatery, which to my dismay featured a little too much daylight. At our age, natural light can be hideously cruel, and so I avoided the mirrors at the back, and made a mental note to book only the dimmest of restaurants for my next birthday.
We gathered in the cocktail lounge, where we exchanged the obligatory kisses, cards and gifts- a girl can’t have too many twenty-pound, fig-scented candles, can she? I did wonder if I was missing something. I’d never received a candle as a gift before I turned forty, and now I have masses of them, accrued from the last 4 birthdays. Part of me also wondered if it was an English thing, women and candles. They feature so much in classic English literature and period films, but usually in some sort of ornate holder and for practical reasons. They needed light. Perhaps a few of them were even scented, with lemon balm, hyssop or comfrey.
At the present gathering, I asked the women if they ever used their candles, and they all answered affirmatively, gently sighing into relaxed murmurs of yes, mm, oh yes, every evening, first thing in the morning, in the bath. In the bath? When did they have time to ‘bathe’?! What was I doing wrong? One of them put it very nicely when she said, ‘lighting a candle when I come home just puts everything right.’ I loved that description, and have since dug out and dusted off the candles that I normally lit only once or twice a year, around the holidays it seemed, and let their perfume infuse my hallway and kitchen, since those are the places where I seem to spend most of my time. So far, I’d like to think that everything has been ‘put right,’ and even if it hasn’t, I like the illusion.
I digress. We gathered in the cocktail room, and when the waiter came to take our orders for drinks, there was some hesitation. We all looked towards the birthday girl, all seven of us, and she looked back out at us, eyebrows raised, as though in question. I was feeling rather reckless, and took initiative by speaking first in what I thought was an inspired gesture, ‘A Bellini!’ I blurted out, ‘I think I’ll have a Bellini!.’ One by one, the women fell behind me, and Bellinis were ordered all around, their resolve toppling over into one big heap of peach puree and champagne fizzle.
The waiter brought us our drinks which were just right as Bellinis go. I’ll admit, I don’t have a huge amount of experience when it comes to cocktails and other pre-dinner drinks, but I have had my share of Bellinis at the eponymous Harry’s Bar in Venice, birthplace of the Bellini. Usually made with fresh, white peach puree and a good prosecco, they were once a seasonal drink, consumed only when the peaches were in season. Nowadays, a girl can get a Bellini just about anywhere and at any time of year, due to the clever introduction of packaged ‘peach puree.’ Though the quality of the drink will suffer substantially, and mixing it with champagne rather than prosecco can dampen the taste, the illusion of sitting at a table on the Zattare in summer, with lovely views across to the Guidecca, is not completely lost.
Our Bellinis had just enough of late summer peaches, and the bubbles were delicate and fresh. They were nicely cold, and looked very pretty, peachy and pink, and appropriately celebratory in our hands. We sipped them with ease, feeling ever so slightly decadent, as though we were indeed sitting in an open-air restaurant on the Zattare in Venice, rather than in an upstairs darkly upholstered bar, in rainy London. If we closed our eyes, we might even be able to see the sun setting on RendentoreChurch on the Guidecca across the water, and feel the still warm breeze of early October, which until recently, belonged to late September.
All in all, I believed the Bellinis were a success. Our maître’d, who seemed far too friendly, and accessible and busy to be our maître’d, showed us to our table, and there we sat and spoke of our children, not of our work, and our new aches and pains. Among us were hip, knee and an upper back (my very own) ailments. We discussed remedies, osteopaths, and exercise routines, and sadly, our wine flutes were soon emptied, and the Bellinis were all but a soft glow in our memories. Like an orange sun in summer which sets fire to all it touches as it goes down, and then suddenly disappears all too quickly, our glasses were empty, with bits of peach puree left abandoned on the sides.
Lunch was ordered. There was a pre-fixe menu which was welcomed; our birthday girl was aware that lunch out these days is a treat, but one to be taken with recession-era frugality. Still feeling a bit careless, and desperately wanting that pink glow of late summer to be present, I ordered the least expensive glass of white wine to have with my meal. Only one other woman ordered a glass of wine. In retrospect, I think she perhaps felt a bit sorry for me, that my Bellini moment had ended. ‘Had they heard?’ I asked suddenly remembering, and feeling inspired once again, ‘Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize! I had tears in my eyes,’ I told them rather too emotional now. ‘For what?’ One of them answered in sharp retort, ‘what has he done to deserve it?’ ‘Oh, but yes, of course, you’re right,’ I answered, stymied by the truth. He hadn’t done anything yet. But oh the joy of it, oh the hope! I was thinking, but answered instead, ‘Yes, no, he hasn’t done a thing to deserve it.’ There was a brief moment of silence before we fell back into the easy rapport of a lovely, mid-week birthday lunch, in a nice restaurant in London, where wrapped boxes of scented candles and other perfumed, female toiletries lay in wait to be opened.
They left in pairs and ones, leaving many pond notes to cover our bill, until only my good friend Lulu and I were left. I knew Lulu perhaps better than any of the other women, and in the safety of her company, I relaxed. We asked for the bill, and chatted easily, now that the group was gone. The waiter had looked to me on several occasions throughout the meal, letting me guide him with a slight nod of my head or a raised eyebrow, as to when to take plates away, and when to bring the next course. I don’t know why it was me- perhaps it had to do with the Bellini moment? At any rate, I was also the one to whom he now expertly handed the bill.
I expected it would be a few hundred, but when I saw that the seven Bellinis were almost one hundred pounds on their own, I felt hugely embarrassed, and slightly cheated. ‘Oh my god,’ I said to Lulu, who was counting the money, ‘the Bellinis…’ Lulu took the bill from my hands, and shared my surprise. ‘But it’s only a cocktail- peaches and prosecco, how could they be so expensive? About fourteen pounds each! We could have ordered two bottles of good champagne for that price!’ I prattled on, feeling ever so conned. Lulu assured me that all was not lost, she might be able to write some of it off as a business expense, and I needn’t worry too much, she said. I thought I ought to apologize to the others for my rashness at ordering them in the first place. ‘No,’ said Lulu with great conviction, ‘they were the perfect drink, and besides, we are all grownups, and we can cope, and they were a treat!”
I gratefully accepted her rational, though the injustice of it all still haunts me. Since then, I’ve learned that a bottle of prosecco at the same restaurant would have put us back thirty-seven pounds. We could have ordered two bottles, and still come under the hundred quid mark. I hope to do an investigatory report of the cost and exact components of the Bellinis in the better restaurants of central London, to make a fair price comparison. Perhaps it was the cost of the late summer peaches that made our drinks so expensive? I also hope Obama might reconsider his prize, and give it to the more deserving contenders for what they have actually achieved, and not what they hope, one day to do. Somehow, I’d like to blame the Nobel Prize committee for my Bellini moment and its consequences, for just getting so carried away that they couldn’t see the peaches for the trees.
A bottle of Prosecco Spumante, Conegliano e Valdobbiadene, Ca’ Morlin, Veneto, £37
A freelance writer, junior sports club founder, who seeks to bring a measure of good quality, whimsy and sanity of life to central London, all within budget, and who also enjoys a good cocktail every once in a while.
