The Xtra Diary - Bar Italia stirs into future

Published: 3 February, 2011

IT is a West End institution that has barely changed in more than 60 years and has counted Mick Jagger, Al Pacino and Francis Ford Coppola among its customers. 

A one-of-a-kind café that has been immortalised in cult songs and films, Bar Italia in Soho, is about as far away as you can get from the likes of the omnipresent Starbucks or Costa. 

The Frith Street favourite is intimately bound up with its locale – but don’t be surprised if you see it branching out into other areas sometime soon. Owner Antonio “Antony” Polledri this week revealed that his family is considering franchising the café’s world-famous image. 

He said: “We are heading for exciting times. My brother’s children are coming through and I am hoping they can take Bar Italia to the next stage. 

“There has been a lot of interest recently in a franchise for Bar Italia. People are constantly telling us how strong the brand is – but we need to be careful because we are not all about money and branding.”

A Bar Italia walking tour of Soho could also be on the cards, he said, and Eurythmics star Dave Stewart is reportedly writing Bar Italia the Musical – about a wayward son of Italian immigrants who returns to the family fold to take over the running of a coffee house. 

Asked if the character is based on himself, Mr Polledri said: “He could be.”

A commemorative brochure celebrating six decades of Bar Italia was recently launched and the blog on the café’s website is updated frequently.

Perhaps the Polledri family’s industrious oomph is what comes of drinking lashings of the black stuff.

Friends, Ross and Rachel era is over!

PAUL Mason describes himself as a “weatherman in a hurricane”. The Newsnight economics editor has certainly seen a few things in the last few years: the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the testimony of Alan Greenspan and rioting on the streets of Athens.

But as he talked to a packed hall at London School of Economics (LSE) on Monday evening it wasn’t the colourful stories observed from the front row of the financial meltdown that piqued the audience’s curiosity, rather the constant references to a once obscure economist Hyman Minsky.

Mason said no world leader, including any British politician to his knowledge, had seriously engaged with the late Amercian economist known for his theories about private debt and the fragility of financial markets. Although “Mervyn” – King, our great Bank of England Governor – is apparently a fan.

While Mason lowered expectations about his wisdom (likening himself speaking at LSE to Woody Allen giving a clarinet concerto at Carnegie Hall), he held forth on Minsky’s theories in atomic detail. Endless graphs were produced to show what happens when the state intervenes and what Minsky would have to say about what he calls “phase three of the crisis”.

The outlook, if you believe Mason, is bleak. As he put it “the Ross and Rachel era” is over. The world will never be the same. 

He invited the audience to order some pizzas and thrash out a protectionist policy for the UK with him overnight (“it’s simple”). But on a global solution he is more opaque. And as the interviewer became the interviewee Mason didn’t seem to like the idea that his employer the Big British Castle might think he was advocating a remedy.

Spouting wisdom about our fountains

FOUNTAINS, fountains everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

West End ward councillor Jonathan Glanz has called for disused drinking fountains to be brought back into action so tourists and Londoners can wet their whistles without having to fork out for costly and environmentally harmful plastic bottles of water.

“Taking water out of a tap is 3,000 times greener than drinking bottled water,” he told Diary. Cllr Glanz said it was “unrealistic” to expect the funds to come from City Hall but that he hoped more big developers would be steered into providing fountains for the public – as Ham Yard developers Firmdale are set to do.

“We have some wonderful, historic fountains in Westminster,” he added. “There is an old fountain in the St Anne’s churchyard that we may be able to bring back to life.”

The fountain in Mount Street Gardens, Mayfair, could also be revived, he said.