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The Good Old Days, Today

Posted: Monday, July 19, 2004

By Gordon Mott

Imagine a place where you can walk into a bar and announce that you'd like to smoke a cigar. The headwaiter, in formal attire, points to a table that is directly in front of the main door into the bar. Before you can pull your smoke out your jacket, he has gone over to the humidor and is bringing it back to the table. When you say you'll be smoking your own cigar, he quickly asks if you need a cutter and a light. He brings the drinks menu, and you have to decide between Scotch whiskey, a Cognac or a Port. There's no one scowling at you. No one walks out of the bar when you light up. In fact, people walk in and sit at adjacent tables.

Such a place not only exists, but it is thriving. It's just not in America. I had the exact experience I describe above at the Rivoli Bar in The Ritz in London last week. I wanted to enjoy a lovely Partagas Edición Limitada that I had been given by a friend there, and the family was more interested in getting out of their walking shoes and taking a rest. I suddenly had a few moments to relax at the end of another day of being a tourist.

London, by the way, is looking better than ever before. There is an upbeat aura there, and in the height of summer, everyone seems to be enjoying himself. Yes, the exchange rate makes it extremely expensive for Americans right now. But it's difficult to find anywhere else that wonderful British combination of reverence for the past with a focus on the modern world.

The Ritz embodies those two elements as well as any place in London. It will celebrate a 100th anniversary in 2006, but you would never guess. The hotel is as up-to-date as it can be in every aspect, while still looking as though Cornelius Vanderbilt in a top hat might come walking into the dining room at any second. It just retains that turn-of-the-century elegance (that's nineteenth to twentieth century) for which it has always been famous. Best of all, the Ritz has one of the top concierge desks in the world; ask anyone for a reservation at a popular restaurant, tickets for the theater, the easiest way to get to and from the new Tate Modern, or where best to stand at the daily changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and you will be accommodated.

The Rivoli bar is simply icing on the cake. It's not a big bar, but with that table near the door, you can keep an eye on the main entrance into the hotel, and be close enough to call to the bartender for another glass of Port. I chose the Taylor 10-year-old Tawny, and sipped away while I finished the Partagas Serie D No. 1 Edición Limitada. It is a big, spicy cigar that will only get better with the passage of a couple of years. But it already has that deep, earthy quality so associated with Cuba's best cigars. I smoked it down to the band before realizing that I'd been gone much longer from the room than the promised half an hour.

At that moment, I couldn't help but feel that London had been the perfect choice for a summer vacation.