The Ivy Now by Fernando Peire

Author:Fernando Peire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Quadrille
Published: 2017-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

By 1993, we could have sold every table at The Ivy probably fifty times over. A busy night, when we served more than 300 people at just 33 tables, was like mounting a racing horse and then having to ride it at full speed for the next seven hours. By the time we hit the finishing line at the end of the night, we were literally out of breath and exhausted. It was not uncommon for me to be woken in my sleep by dreams brought on by the stress of running The Ivy’s front desk. For example, it might be at the end of a busy night when I had seated the last guests, to my huge relief, only to walk back into the bar and find that I had forgotten a table and that the kitchen was now closed.

However hard we worked on planning the reservations in the run-up to dinner, nothing ever worked out the way we expected: everything would change the moment service started and the phones began to ring. The Head of the National Theatre would need a table for two at seven thirty; a table for five was required at nine o’clock for an artist and his American collectors after an opening at the White Cube gallery; three tables were suddenly needed for regular customers around ten o’clock, all coming from different events and openings across the capital. They would have been to a party already that evening and they would expect it to continue at The Ivy. Familiar faces, famous faces, pretty faces seen for the first time, the inevitable bottlenecks and log-jams, the funny stories, celebrations and commiserations. Nights on the front desk at The Ivy were a constant whirl.

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