My Negroni-soaked lunch with Laurence Olivier
From our UK edition
Breakfast is my preferred meal, in case you’re interested. I broke my fast this week with my walking laser-light of a friend, William Shawcross, at Fischer’s in Marylebone, which serves an egg rosti to rival that of Café Sacher in Vienna. Fischer’s consists of a small entrance area, a bar to the left, and at the rear a faux Austrian dining room with wall-to-wall antlers (synthetic, but that’s how the strudel crumbles these days). The main room forms a St Helena to which second class patrons are exiled. Preferred clients, selected with unerring snobisme, are placed at the front. Novelising to Mantel was as solemn a business as trimming a beard is to a German barber We, of course, were allotted an impeccable position by the window.
