To wander into a church crypt in Mayfair and spend £11 on a glass of blanc de noir and £12.50 on a sandwich. This is the way of the world, I suppose? Though there is beauty in it: one, it is St Mark’s Church, built in the 1830s in the Greek Revival style; and two, doing the selling is De Santis, famous for panini shops in Milan since the Sixties. Now we have one here. In come the cured meats, the negronis, the brilliant chrome.
De Santis is glorious in Milan. The original of four outposts is a little shop in soothing green, its awning outstretched. Inside, celebrity pictures on mottled walls, stained glass lampshades and dark wooden benches. And it is in the Magenta district, home to the bourgeoisie. Mayfair and its locale suddenly make sense.
But then it is burdensome to transpose decades of stories to a new city, one in which sandwiches, in recent years, have become largely trivial — great doorstops to be Instagrammed rather than eaten. Likewise, London might be lacking in an appreciation of the chicness of 5pm Campari. If the world is warming, we might want to become better acquainted with the nibbling of olives, the sipping of Americanos and the gentler chatter of Continental being. Our usual four pints and a kebab this is not.
There is room for both in London, surely? I’d like to think there is room for everything and all. Well, here Milanese culture is prescribed, only tucked away from everything in a Victorian church crypt. There is no lager, no beers of any kind; the cheapest glass is the aforementioned sparkling at £11, while in Milan — itself an expensive city — white wines begin at €7.50; cocktails, aromatic, bitter and dry, €8.
I struggle to process De Santis here. It looks good, that’s for sure, and Mayfair will always pursue sparkling wine, fine cheeses and folds of brightly sourced pork. The negronis are diligent and the panini replete with proud produce. But I cannot love the place. How would I ever? Milan, Mayfair is not. I would like to sit on a wooden bench as Aperol is sipped about me. But London is not ready. I said earlier that this is a city of multitudes, and it is. What is also clear is that it is far from an aperitivo town.
Mercato Metropolitano Mayfair, St. Mark's Church, North Audley Street, W1K 6ZA, paninidesantis.it
