Imagine an Orient Express dining carriage, exclusive in the best sense, trundling through Mittel-Europa not long after the fashion for the Grand Tour has ended. Picture that, but with Jarvis Cocker playing with his Würstchen to one side, and Salman Rushdie in discourse over his Gugelhupf on the other, and you’re on the right track. But this is not one of those odd dreams where you’re naked at a dinner party, this is Fischer’s in Marylebone, and our fellow diners were as unexpected as this restaurant’s USP.
Celebrities love these restaurants not merely for their two-track booking system (fast-track for slebs; sidings for the hoi polloi), but also because they exude an ageless elegance. The interior of Fischer’s is a thrilling permutation of the European Grand Café, but with some 20th-century modern-art touches that evoke a sense of place: the Vienna of Gustav Klimt and Art Nouveau.
The menu would be familiar to anyone doing a whirl during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And no waltz with Viennese cooking would be complete without Wiener Schnitzel. Beaten flat, breaded and crisply fried, this veal cutlet is a paragon of the Teutonic kitchen; our ‘Holstein’ version varied by a topping of anchovies, fried egg and a caper sauce. We loved the details: the lemon inside a muslin sock to catch the pips, the silverware, the embossed plates. Simple but good quality ingredients distinguished the Bismarck herring – a starter of the plump Baltic fish pickled and served on a tangle of preserved vegetables.
So for a little taste of Continental Europe before we had Easyjet flights, Fischer’s is an eyeopener The setback is that the celebs have already found it, which might mean the wait for the next free table could be as long as a steam-train ride through the Alps.