GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

I'm a hack. I've always been a hack and I can't pretend this isn't a hackish attempt at a piece of Bourdain brilliance. But like Bowie in the Nineties, try something new even if it isn't perfect, because at least you're evolving. 

It's been four years since Anthony Bourdain died, and while he left a world that was fucking itself, it seems we've really doubled down on insular, myopic, self righteous bullshit that is really condemning us as a species. I wrote about a beloved, but lost place I knew before he died. I revisited it afterwards, and now in retrospect I realise it was as much about him, as it was a damn fine martini. 

What has changed since? Maybe some distance, I'd like to think a little wisdom, certainly a few more miles on the clock. And with all this a deep yearning to fight against what seems to be the prevailing, and accelerating, direction of the world. To take a path less travelled instead of the one that's been Instagrammed, to have an amicable conversation with a person that voted, believed or grew up differently to me, and perhaps lost importantly to keep on eating well, because that's what makes those extra miles afford me.

And to me, the place on question, Cafe Anglais, was the light of London in the rain.

The hack in me sees a clunky and obvious metaphor - in Tony we had a beacon, one who left an indelible after-burn for anyone who happened to be looking at it. 

The now defunct Le Cafe Anglais was a sparkly and shiny place. But you could only generously describe the entrances as dull. One way in was via the tedium of a shopping centre. That bit isn’t a metaphor. You had to walk through a fricking shopping centre, over lit, full of high street stores and tourists. The second way in was a shady, anonymous side door that offered all the promised of a basement shop that provided photocopying and printer repair services.

There was no upside in entering by the shopping centre route. But the side door was different. You suddenly slipped through to a small private elevator that did hint at the glamour awaiting above. This small mirrored box, was a human sized kaleidoscope, designed by Gatsby. Maybe. But as the doors pinged open to a grand room, you were greeted to something in French Brasserie style, and of the finest tradition. Now I think about it, there is absolutely a metaphor in there. 

But once in, it was shiny! Chandeliers and polished brass framing crisp linen tables. That sort of lined frosted glass framed in deep dark wooden frames. Cutlery that seems to have heft, and proper napkins. But before you reached these alters of cuisine you had to cross a bank of red leather booths. It was like the bistro they never built on Route 66, or the diner the Parisiens would have built in Gare du Nord. And whilst different, both sides flooded with the sort of happy yellow light that is the perfect counterbalance to the diffuse sunlight of London in the rain.

In the years since its untimely demise I often think back. Not to the grand haute cuisine dining, as fine as it was. But rather the U shaped bar and the booths it provided for the casual diner. No dress code here. A collar was never demanded but I’m sure they weren’t adverse to one as a means of supplication. It was the half of the place I liked the most because it said, “I know you got here through a shopping centre. Now have a drink. It’ll be excellent.”

I miss the martinis. I do. They were effective and perfect. Just the right amount of Noilly Prat. The ice whisked through grain vodka until super chilled and all topped off with lemon zest. The sliver of yellow rind expertly twisted to spray the surface of the clear crisp liquid with a thousand tiny iridescent drops of citrus oil. The light was the last ingredient, rendering the drink for the eye before the tongue and ultimately the soul. I had dined in the main space a few times, but the red leather booths were closer to the door and my heart. They were for me, they spoke to me, and ultimately they brought me comfort. 

I felt happy there in the crook of the days that make up the armpit of the year. When the early nights threaten to make me feel it has all ended too soon. The blends of people, the view into the very private life of an open kitchen, and the constant stream of people walking in from the shopping centre with a "holy fuck" look on their face. It slammed worlds together, in a good way. 

I always ordered a martini and a cheeseburger. Complementary opposites like the gloomy flatness of the sky and bright yellow light that burbles off the cut crystal chandeliers. They also cooked the beef patty medium rare, it was as if a steak tartare had accidentally wandered into a bun at some point and they’d added it to the menu. 

Like Bourdain, it fostered a different sort of world view for me. Now the hack in me would immediately grasp for the worlds colliding, lost traveller, finding commonality with others, and the deep sense that I was in a culinary world. The hack in me sorely wants to, but you'll have drawn your own conclusions. 

All that needs to be known, apart from my hatred of the clanging mediocrity of shopping centres, is that I know I can’t revisit the past, but fuck, I do miss somethings that I didn't cherish while I had them.