Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held up aching over the world’s most charismatic puddle; Harry’s is a transgressive anti-palazzo. It is a world-famous restaurant, the jewel of the Cipriani brand, and it is very conscious of this honour; it sells branded tagliarelli and books about the meals it served 30 years ago to the rich and famous; it is into auto-iconography, like the city it lives in. For this, and so much else, I blame Ernest Hemingway. He ate here after shooting birds in the lagoon and doesn’t the world know it? Some men fought against Hitler. Others ate against him.
Outside, people pose for photographs by the signage. I do not know why the tourists need such comprehensive evidence of proximity to Harry’s, but they snap away. Venice has this impact; people take photographs so they can believe it exists.
I dropped The Spectator’s name for a reservation because I was once turned away with a postcard (it was a selfie) and a pitying look from the maitre d’. But that was during the film festival and Kenneth Branagh was palely loitering. I needn’t have bothered. On a Thursday night in May only three tables are taken: a group of Indians extracted, as if surgically, from a gondola and plonked down here, where they enjoy themselves with the kind of clenched teeth aggression only a very expensive meal-of-a-lifetime can induce; three boastful American businessmen (one of whom looks like an evil Ronnie Corbett) boring each other, and some elderly Spaniards with the drooping, fascinating, corrupt faces of puppets. Or Muppets.
The decor is pleasing because it is so unlike the rest of Venice, which is still obsessed with embossed fabrics and overhead lighting from those terrible Murano chandeliers, like Barbara Cartland marauding down the Bishops Avenue in hell; it is pared-down art deco, with pale brown chairs and a long brown bar, and it is painted in soft shades of gold.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in