Harry’s Bar: A Venetian Legend

A meeting place for writers, artists, models, stars of stage, screen, and corporate boardrooms, a luxurious restaurant whose fabulous concoctions and timeless decor have often been imitated but never matched, Harry's Bar in Venice has remained one of the world's most renowned watering holes for more than sixty years. Here for the first time is the history of this most venerable of saloons, as entrenched a fixture of the Venetian landscape as the Doge's Palace, the Basilica, and the Piazza San Marco. Beginning with its founding in 1931 by a humble but enterprising Venetian barman named Giuseppe Cipriani and a wealthy American named Harry Pickering, we follow Giuseppe and his son Arrigo through World War II, when Harry's Bar was requisitioned by the fascists and turned into a mess hall for Mussolini's navy, while the real festive meals were served at the Cipriani house; the raucous liberation in 1945, when Allied Army officers took up virtual residence at the bar and tossed Giuseppe around the dining room like a rugby ball; and up through the postwar years, when Harry's Bar became a virtual club for the world's glitterati. Here too are the stories behind the Ciprianis' great inventions, from the "carpaccio" appetizer, which has become a generic term for thinly sliced raw meat or raw fish with a white sauce, to the bellini, the now famous pink cocktail made of pureed white peaches and Italian champagne. The author also treats us to the adventures and misadventures of Harry's New York nephews, Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue, the only restaurant that was ever stolen from its director between lunch and dinner, and the Bellini in the old Taft Hotel.