It was in 1946, when the war in Europe
had hardly ended and Venice was still under the
control of the Allied armies, that I first poked
my nose through the doors of Harry's Bar in Venice.
I was young, rather shy, and extremely unworldly,
and I did not know what to expect. From the outside
the place hardly looked like a bar, occupying as
it did an elegant building like a little palazzo.
The frosted glass of its windows made it difficult
to peer inside.
I had heard tales of vast prices and an excruciatingly
grand clientele.
My friends, feeling much as I did, pushed me through
the door first, sheepishly treading on my heels;
but the moment I got inside, adjusting my eyes from
the sunshine to the shade, I found myself in thrall.
This is how I remember it. The room
was smallish and unexpectedly cozy. At the tables
around it, sure enough, were smoky-looking, hooded-eyed,
tweedy, sometimes hatted, heavily made-up but rather
weather-beaten persons I took to be members of the
Italian aristocracy. Sitting at the bar were three
or four Allied officers, the British looking uncomfortably
suave to me, the Americans dauntingly experienced.
The conversation level was low but intense, there
was a discreet clinking of plates somewhere out
of sight, and a solitary ample man at a table by
himself was already well into a plate of scampi.
Everybody, even the scampi man, looked up as I made
my entrance.
The officers looked up in a cool officerlike way,
holding their glasses. The patricians looked up
patricianly, rather disappointedly, as though they
had been hoping for better things. The fat man looked
up with his eyes only.
But it was the contact I had with the three pairs
of eyes behind the counter that I remember best
- the eyes of the boss sitting behind his cash till
beside the door the eyes of the two busy barmen
in their white jackets.
Then again, Harrry's Bar is a bar;
it began as one, and it remains one. Napoleon said
the Piazza San Marco was the best drawing room in
Europe; I would nominate Harry's as one of the two
or three best saloons. This means that however sophisticated
the food, the service must have a particular slickness
and intimacy.
Nobody wants to sit around twiddling thumbs in a
bar, and Harry's sees to it that your drink arrives
almost instantly, followed extremely quickly by
your toasted sandwiches. The regulars are addressed
by name (or title), the newcomers are welcomed with
an extremely soigné but still workmanlike
equivalent of "Well, what'll it be?" British
aficionados like to call Harry's Bar a pub, and
the word is not inappropriate.
At the same time it is a cafe. It
offers in some ways the very essence of the cafe
society that once played so large a part in the
affairs of Europe. It is not that one would normally
go into Harry's just for a cup of coffee, though
some people do; but the atmosphere of the restaurant,
the warm immediacy of it, the company always of
people who know each other, the ease of converse,
the somehow knowing attitudes of the staff - all
these add up to the clublike feeling that all the
best European cafes possess. I have often sat for
hours alone in a corner of Harry's Bar, working,
eating and drinking, watching the people come and
go, sometimes greeting acquaintances, sometimes
knowing nobody; and I have felt then happily at
one with all the myriad poets and novelists, in
every European country, who have done their writing
alone in the corners of coffee shops.
I am by no means a gourmet; I am
certainly not a scowling, smoky countess or a peregrinating
socialite; I sit in Harry's Bar generally alone
and usually unnoticed. I have, however, though I
say it myself, one qualification for writing this
foreword: long ago, when I was young and innocent,
I recognized the look in the eye of Harry's Bar
for what it was - the sign of a truly great restaurant,
whose cuisine speaks for itself in the pages of
Arrigo Cipriani's books and whose atmosphere I can
immediately reconjure, wherever I am in the world,
simply by imagining myself opening those doors.
Jan Morris
(from his foreword to Arrigo Cipriani's "The
Harry's Bar Cookbook")
Without pausing in their work they
looked up one and all, and the expression in their
gaze seemed to me generic to the place.
It was at once interested, speculative, faintly
amused, and all but collusive.
It was not at all lofty or world-weary.
It put me simultaneously at my ease and on my guard,
made me feel in some curious way a member of the
establishment, and has kept me going back there,
with many but not all of the same sensations, from
that day to this.
Harry's Bar is by now one of the
world's most celebrated restaurants, but its style
has not changed one iota since I first set foot
in it.
It is a style altogether sui generis, bequeathed
by its founder Giuseppe Cipriani, to his successors
and employees, and apparently effortlessly maintained.
The very name of the place evokes not simply a cuisine,
or a kind of drink, but a frame of mind.
There are times in life - very few
in my own case, but still occasional - when,it seems
right for the ambience to be a little inflexible,
when a strict code of dress can be forgiven, when
napery, cutlery, exquisitely printed menu, slightly
patronizing welcome, perceptibly stiff service,
the kind of decor that one would rather die than
have to live in at home all quite properly combine
to create, as the guidebooks say, a particular kind
of dining experience.
cucina 45
cantina 14
servizio 8
ambiente 7
bonus 0
totale 74
chiuso:
sempre aperto
ferie:
mai
coperti:
100
prezzo:
90 euro
carte di credito:
tutte
aria condizionata
Harry's Bar
San Marco, 1323
Venezia (VE)
tel. 0415285777
E' famoso in tutto il mondo e non ha bisogno di
presentazioni. L'atmosfera è unica e l'esperienza
vale la pena, sia che si tratti di aperitivo o un
drink sia che si tratti di una cena vera e propria.
Tra le proposte il carpaccio (che qui vide i natali),
gamberetti con castraure, scampi alla Thermidor
con riso pilaf, tagliolini alle seppie, San Pietro
con pomodoro e capperi, fegato alla veneziana. In
chiusura sorbetto del giorno e mousse al cioccolato.
Carta dei vini adeguata (soprattutto nei ricarichi);
personale di servizio qualificato e professionale.
Prenotare sempre.
da internet restaurant
A due passi da piazza San Marco,
l’Harry’s Bar è il Bar per eccellenza
delle calli veneziane. La sua fama internazionale
ben oltrepassa i confini della città lagunare
ed entra nella leggenda con Ernest Hemingway che
nel dopoguerra aveva un tavolino d’angolo a
lui riservato e dedicò al locale alcune pagine
del suo romanzo “Di là dal fiume e tra
gli alberi”.
Tra gli illustri frequentatori ad apprezzare lo
stile del Bar vi furono Arturo Toscanini, Guglielmo
Marconi, Charlie Chaplin, Truman Capote, Orson Welles
e recentemente Woody Allen che vi ha cenato la sera
prima di sposarsi nel 1997.
Nel 1931 Giuseppe Cipriani, fonda
il locale che subito diventa punto d'incontro preferito
della buona società internazionale e dall’aristocrazia
europea.
I suoi eredi, tramite la Cipriani
International – che oggi conta, oltre all'Harry's
Bar di Venezia, altri sei ristoranti e attività
correlate a Venezia, New York e Buenos Aires –
rappresentano ormai un'istituzione dell'alta gastronomia
mondiale, nota per lo stile dei suoi locali e la
raffinatezza delle specialità alimentari.
Il segreto dell’Harry’s Bar è l'attenzione
ad ogni più piccolo dettaglio per creare
un’atmosfera elegante e raffinata eppure semplice.
La cura e l’attenzione per il cliente sono
al massimo livello.
La cucina è una miscela di specialità
veneziane ed internazionali. Qui sono nati piatti
come il carpaccio e il Bellini Long Drink.
