London – a real life Monopoly board

Life in London is like living on a Monopoly board, stationed as we are at the Royal Air Force Club on Piccadilly for the next two days.
I arrived yesterday and took a taxi from Heathrow to Mayfair where I slept off jetlag at the stylish accommodation in Chesterfield House rented by long-time friend, Adelaide lawyer, Diane Myers, who is also holidaying here.
Olivier, my French-Australian husband will join us in early evening and we are to stay at the Club. It’s a balmy summer’s evening as monsieur rolls my suitcase along the road into Park Lane, past the iconic Hilton Hotel, veering left into Piccadilly and a few footsteps later abutting the popular Hard Rock Café is our destination.
The Club sits opposite The Green Park and just across the road, we can walk into its lush canopy of greenness to visit Buckingham Palace.
It is pure upper crust Britishness in the heart of London, and oozes RAF memorabilia with walls covered with precious wartime artworks of aircraft depicting how Britain’s fighter pilots and brave airmen in their Spitfires saved England beating back the mighty German Messerschmidts in the Battle of Britain.

We are privileged to arrive on an important day – the 70th anniversary of when Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader said those amazing words “Never has so much been owed by so many to so few’’ in a tribute to the RAF which defeated Hitler’s plans to invade Britain andpushed the Luftwaffe back across the Channel.
Dinner is an adventure as we take the first left turn off Piccadilly into Down Street, an idyllic London street , all pristine cheek by jowl Victorian town houses. All glamorous with bay windows, ornate Victorian doorways, painted railings, hedges and window boxes spilling with summertime flowers.
We are in search of an iconic London pub or a quaint British restaurant, but take a left instead of a right as instructed and find ourselves in a throng of Islamic men pouring out of a meeting house on to the pavement in such numbers they spill onto the roadway.
Oops! We back track and turn right happily finding ourselves amidst embassies, any number of restaurants, quaint corner buildings of iconic British pubs milling with young people, coffee houses and a delicatessen.
This is Shepherds Square, a small square in Mayfair and we explore alleyways which runs this way and that before we find a quaint restaurant with bubble-glass paned windows. It is the only restaurant without any diners at the tables outside.
Monsieur wants to sit on the pavement, I peep inside the restaurant L’Autre, to find it empty but for a table occupied by four Londoners.
“We don’t want French in London for goodness sake,’’ I say.
But he points out that the signage also says it is Polish/Mexican, so we venture in. It is beautiful, low ceilinged with gnarled old English exposed timber beams, a fireplace, ledges jammed with old empty bottles and the walls decorated with black and white pictures of 1940s film stars.
A restaurant with a French name, serving Polish and Mexican fare in London’s posh Mayfair with 1940s decor. It beckons.
The waiters are Polish and pretty soon we have piping plates of delicious Borscht with authentic dumplings of various fillings, potato and cheeses and sauerkraut and mushrooms, being the most memorable.
Monsieur had lamb shank and shows with delight how the meat falls neatly from the bone.
“Why Mexican?’’ we ask when it is established the waiter and waitress are recent arrivals from Poland.
“This has always been a Polish restaurant since the 1940s and opened just after the war,’’ the waiter says.
“Not all the Polish officers were killed at Katyn,’’ adds my knowledgeable French hubby. Some fled to London and formed their own fighting squadron for the Allies here.’’
The waiter adds that in the 1960s the then owner added Mexican dishes to his menu when a Mexican embassy opened closeby.
We are joined at a nearby table by a large, buxom brunette of “l’air du Mexicaine’’ appearance ordering Mexican fare and pretty soon, a party of three young Londoners breeze in, bubbling with levity – to reflect the truly multi-cultural nature of London today. It is a delightful entrée tour London holiday.

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