The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is always a pleasure. This year I visited with a friend and we prepared ourselves for an evening of culture by indulging in a glass of fizz on the steps of Joshua Reynolds, bars at evening exhibitions are a really good idea.
On entering each room we tried to guess which pieces the other liked. This confirmed what I knew about my taste in art, it is pretty limited to bright pop art pieces.
Unlike other exhibitions, you can actually buy prints of the pictures featured. It’s fun to wander around and decide which piece you’d have in the lounge, only to find it’s 160 grand.
After realising we could afford little of the art we decided to drown our sorrows across the road at The Ritz. Here we could just about run to an eye wateringly expensive cocktail.
After a false start and a rather rude security guard (we didn’t really look like guests) we located the entrance which is NOT on Piccadilly, must remember that for my next visit.
I always rate a place by it’s amenities so we headed straight to the loo. It was disappointing, the decor was tacky and outdated and the whole place felt like it needed a refresh.
However, we were not disappointed by The Rivoli Bar, the service was excellent, there were lots of nibbles and my £20 ‘New York Sour’ cocktail was delicious. As far as I can remember it was some sort of combination of gin, lemon juice, cherry wine and egg white all poured over huge ice cubes. It sounds totally disgusting but when combined by a Ritz trained mixologist it was sensational.
My friend chose a ‘Prudence’, which included gin, aperol and was elegantly finished with some kind of small purple flowers. It too was delicious.
After slowly drinking our cocktails we decided we’d better leave. Another drink would have slipped down nicely but by then we were both feeling a bit peckish and might have been tempted by the £26 sandwich.