Fernando Peire was maître d’ of the Ivy in the 1990s, “when it was the centre of everything”, and for the past decade has run the Ivy Club ANDREW TESTA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKIt’s hard to remember now, but there was a period in the 1990s when Britain was genuinely cool. It was partly Britpop, partly the Young British Artists shocking people with their portraits of child killers and pickled sharks, and partly the arrival of a raft of swanky restaurants that ditched the stuffy tablecloths, binned the sweet trolley and ushered in an era of “democratic eating” that saw caviar and burgers appear on the same menu. The centre of this coolness was the Ivy, a grande dame of the West End, which despite, or maybe because of, its illustrious history of serving Winston Churchill, Merle Oberon and John Gielgud, became the place to be seen. Everyone from Kate Moss and Tracey Emin to Princess Margaret and…

Source: The Times June 26, 2019 16:08 UTC