At Harry's Bar

“May I have a glass of Sancerre, please?” I asked the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. That’s the full, correct name of the place, but, like Harry’s Bar in Venice, it’s usually referred to simply as Harry’s Bar. Harry’s Bar in Venice belongs to the Cipriani international conglomerate now. It looks out on the Grand Canal. It is easy to tell these two places apart. One is in Venice and the other one is in Paris.

Immediately I thought I should have said, “May I have a glass of Sancerre,” in French. Could I have said it in French? Probably not.  Je ne parle pas français is most of my French. Okay, I admit it. Paris makes me nervous. It always has. The French make me nervous. 

The bartender turned out to be a very nice, soft-spoken young man with perfect English. And since I seemed to be the only customer in the bar that afternoon, he was able to give me his complete attention. And what he told me was, “We are an American bar, sir. We do not serve wine.” There was no attempt at one-upmanship, no Gallic putdown of any kind—just information.

“No wine?”

“Only spirits, sir.”

I was trying to think of a bar in America that served no wine. I could not. Maybe the one in Deadwood, South Dakota, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back by Jack McCall?

“I'll have a double Jim Beam with one lump of ice, please,” I told the bartender. The first sip tasted . . . very American. I should have had a Bloody Mary. Harry's Bar was, after all, where that concoction was invented.

The walls of the back room of Harry’s Bar were a poisonous yellow-brown, possibly from decades of heavy cigarette smoking or a clever mix of paints by some romantically minded decorator. Framed and faded photographs covered the walls. Somewhere on the premises was supposed to be the piano George Gershwin used to compose "An American in Paris." I understand that Harry's has had a recent makeover and is elegant and ultra-posh now. They even do American fast food and have live jazz. 

After Harry’s Bar, I had just one more spot, one more drink, in order to complete the circle of Ernest Hemingway’s main international watering holes. I’d already visited his other spots in Paris—Le Select, Le Dome, Deux Magots. They wouldn’t let me into the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz. I'm not sure why, but I think it was because I had too many cameras hanging on me.

I’ve downed a few glasses of Valpolicella at the Gritti Palace in Venice and a martini at the Venice Harry's Bar, several glasses of Rioja at Botin in Madrid. I had something at both tourist traps in Key West, Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's. The only obligatory spot left for me to tip a glass is La Floridita in Havana, Cuba for a daiquiri. I suppose I’ll have to have a mojito at the Bodeguita del Medio as well. But I don't like cocktails. I'd rather have a beer.

Does the present generation of young writers and readers still retrace the steps of Joyce, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald in Paris? Or is that all forgotten now, passé? For me the echo of that time is still there, still lurking in the streets and cafes of Montparnasse. You turn a corner and the decades drop away. Paris in the 1920s was a rare coming together of ideas, energy, creativity, literature, and a new ex-pat culture, all in a perfect setting.