MORTONS
28 BERKELEY SQUARE
LONDON
In it’s heyday, mounting the steps leading up to the seemingly permanently open door of Morton’s, added to the excitement and heightened blood pressure as you approached the welcome desk where luck, membership, good looks, and contacts might get you in the door.
Without these meant you had to walk back down the steps, having been turned away, and walk against the tide of those coming in; only fools or the stupid would attempt such a hopeless assault.
Women were proposed to, children conceived, divorce lawyers hired, property bought and adultery was committed behind those doors.
Positioned at the top of Berkeley Square, literally on raised ground, gave the super large window an incredible view of mature London Plane trees, emerald green grass, folks rushing across the gravel paths between wrought iron railings, and a view towards Piccadilly.
It was a positively poetic spot for customers consumed with themselves, conversation and each other as many a time I looked out and hummed “A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square….”
Mounting naked looking steps, missing the previous long serving familiar doorman in red brocade, directing a fleet of chauffer’s, double parked Rolls, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis it now all felt a bit dull.
I didn’t recognize the young lady behind the desk and I doubted if she was even born during Morton’s peak.
After giving her my business card and mumbling something about chef Robi I wondered off to the right and into the long bar that over looked the square and stood still with horror.
What had they done to that room?? It had been murdered! Someone with a pen, a name, an address and a tax number had taken the decision to remove all the vestiges of the classical, charming, brass, mirrored brasserie style long mahogany bar so many had fought to get near.
I was now standing alone in what felt like some miserable, grey, dull, faceless, half empty, unrecognizable, depressing room.
There are places of slaughter, torture, lies and fraud that have not been so hideously destroyed by a new interior designer who held some personal grudge against the original interior; and some one paid for that! Why??
I was outraged.
Sadness, now mixed with gratitude of having seen, felt, smelt, and witnessed the original era of the legendary Morton’s overwhelmed me.
It was a heavy and poignant lesson.
Nothing is forever; fun, excitement, style is a fragile mix with no particular formula and an interior designer with a fat budget can wipe all that away with a sweep of their pen, then send the bill. Disgusting. They should be made to restore it back or hung in public in Berkeley Square with Morton’s supplying the drinks and hors d’oeuvres to the baying crowd.
“Have you seen this? Have you seen what they have done to the bar…? Do you even remember the place before it was ripped to shreds..?? I asked her as she stared at me expressionless.
“No sorry I didn’t” she answered not wanting ask why I was so upset.
“What have they done to the restaurant? Did they rip out the restaurant and murder that as well…they must have! They would not have saved the restaurant and slaughtered the bar… I don’t want to see…I can’t stand any more. Sorry you have my card. Say hello to chef Robie I’m sure he’s busy. I need to go”
“When is the scaffolding going up in Berkeley Square to hang the two idiots for doing this? The client who paid and the interior designer with zero taste?” I asked her from the door. She shrugged. How could she know or care.
She was probably relieved to see the back of me and shared none of my pain or the lesson I had just learnt.
As I walked down the stairs back into the sunlight a passed a couple of grey ‘suits’, badly dressed, boring, young men coming up the stairs chatting and probably thinking they had ‘arrived’ in life.
“Appreciate what special places there are left in London and give them your business, patronage and support before they go” I lectured myself and promised to make a list.
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