Paradiso Lost

Hit me. Hit me now.

With a frying pan if you happen to have one to hand. And who doesn't?

"Have you written your blog yet?" said d when we met up.
"Nah," I said. "Nothing's happened to me yet today."

We'd met up in the High Street Kensington book store we often use as a rendez-vous. We didn't exactly discuss it or 'decide' to do it, but our Farewell Tour continued pretty much organically. We wanted to say goodbye to a favourite cheap Japanese place, the Hare and Tortoise, but they were busier than usual, so we figured we'd pop in to one of the better burger joints we know - Byron, again on High Street Kensington. After an hour or so of naked burgers and Iceberg wedges and sketching room plans on graph-paper and getting excited again, we jumped on a bus. On her way in to Kensington, d had gone through Picadilly, and she thought it would be nice to take the bus through that area, as a way to say farewell and do a little reminiscing.

There's so much to spot in this city...the church where d and two of her matrons of honour, Karen and Lori, had tea in the rector's garden. Lori's Cock (It's a tavern, of course). The Cheshire Cheese, Doctor Johnson's favourite haunt. Doctor Johnson's house, come to that. The Lions of Trafalgar Square, where our goddaughters climbed on the day of the Camden Town entry in this blog. The Phantom. Discovering CyberCandy...walking across bridges with Tig and her precocious son. Running after rickshaws full of Tig and Mae to Charing Cross...

"Oh my GOD!"
I blinked at the sound. d pointed.
"It's gone!"
I followed the track of her finger. Oh my God. She was right. It was gone.

It can't be gone. It just...can't.
'It' in this case is Paradiso e Inferno, an Italian restaurant on the Strand.

Paradiso wasn't our first date. Our first date was a Thai restaurant in Covent Garden, where we ate experimental food to the sound of Frosty the Snowman, sung in, oddly enough, Chinese. Great dumplings, but that was about it. But Paradiso really felt like our first date - it was the first place we went to as a couple, rather than as two people forging their relationship. We went there as just us first, and then we went back with Tig (the woman chiefly responsible for us getting together), and her then-boyfriend Ray, a seven-foot Dutchman. It was our coming-out party, if you like. We enjoyed something about the ambience so much we were prepared to name it as our wedding reception venue...

...and then, admittedly, a just ten days before the big day, we had our minds and tastebuds blown by somewhere else, and cancelled them.

It was never quite the same after that. We went back occasionally over the years, coming to a growing understanding that the food wasn't actually that good. But it was still our place.

And tonight, it was closed, and dark. The tables were still set for service, but a notice on the window said it was to let.

"No!" we said, as one. It's not only a sign that our time here is coming to an end, it's an unfortunate pattern we have. Places we really like but don't visit often enough...that then go bust or close down.

There was a great place at the top of our street. They seemed to like us there, and the chef was waaay too good for Stratford, when Stratford wasn't about to host the Olympics. The Polish waitress told us "you like it so much here, tell your friends, come often..." We didn't. We horded that little gem of a place all to ourselves, fretting that if we told too many people, it would stop being 'our place,' stop being special. It stopped being special alright, it went out of business.

There was an Indian place. It was d's first Indian place, her curried cherry, if you like. We went a handful of times. It died. It came back from the dead. We never went. It recently died again.

One of our favourite breakfast spots, Selmos, is not going bust. It's Portugese, and gorgeous, and last weekend we popped in to start our Farewell Tour there. We spoke to the woman who, with her husband, owns the place. She wants to leave, and damn fast. So it's matter of pride that we haven't closed them down...but it seems like a race to the finish line with them.

Back at Paradiso, we didn't really know what to do - to laugh at the 'omenic' status of such a thing happening just as we're preparing to leave, or heatbreak that a place that had been such a fundamental part of our initial getting-to-know-you period no longer existed. Or maybe both.

Heartbreak won out, I think. We're just one couple who fell deeper in love at Paradiso. If it becomes the Strand McDonalds, people may still fall in love there, will still have stories, but it'll be less unique somehow.

A little part of our getting-together story just died. And we hardly have time or space to mourn it. Mind you, part of Paradiso will always be alive in our minds and memories.

Probably the orange sorbet, if we had to choose...