This cheetah on Calea Victoriei has always reminded me of Lampedusa. It is a gorgeous old villa, showing off all the scars time left on its fa?ade, with an entrance that makes you think of a derelict castle.
Il Gatopardo Blu Restaurant
Everything is out of time in there. The drawing room you enter hits first with its old library smell, the smell of dust and old wood that I thought was lost in Bucharest, eliminated by the smell of detergents removing I don’t know how many thousands of stains. There it was again!
The interior is impressive, with a lot of inter-war style woodwork. Once you get inside, in the main hallway, there is no sign indicating which way the restaurant is. That is because you are in a rectangular room, with a piano, which is also old, looking as if it rests on one of the sides on the immemorial parquet. If you have the inspiration and the courage to go forward, and try out a copper doorknob, itself tired of being handled by who knows how many hands out of which many are now decomposing at Bellu, you can gain access to the salon, which has the same antique design. You wouldn?t like to sleep in here, especially on some stormy night.
You are welcomed in the salon by two young smiling girls, who seem to impersonate the Fates in this time-forgotten world and they generally try to do their best. They do not show the refinement of old times, but they’ll do, they’re ok, they smile, move rapidly and serve from the right.
The terrace, instead, makes a leap in time. No, not quite up to this day, but to around the 70s-80s. The only contemporary things in there are the plastic chairs. There are a chestnut tree, three pine trees, a lime-tree, and a kind of an old locust tree, there is ivy and little white cedar fences. The terrace is green and quite wet and it is populated by the characters of the writers’ world. One of them, in his mid sixties, is trying to persuade one of the waitresses that the present times are worse than Ceausescu?s. He thinks the schedule is too short, that is, they close too early… The girl does not agree with him at all and the argument ends without any outcome. That is, she leaves, throwing the last reply over her shoulder. The writer still looks dissatisfied. Reality brutally flows over him; the young girl seems to ignore him. Probably, in the times he longs for waitresses used to be swept off their feet when he made a melodramatic scene like this one. Now, the girl is probably looking at the laptop that I use to write these lines, not even at me, even though I look a little younger than the writer. I think my laptop makes her think of hi5, youtube or of chatting on messenger at midnight, using a high resolution webcam. The writer blends in that place, he is anachronistic and puzzled. She is from another picture, serving some characters she doesn’t understand, and for which she probably feels pity. She’s a nice girl. She was born in troubled times, it’s not her fault for being who she is. The grilled salmon is ok, the risotto is delicious, but the tiramisu is bad. The cheetah doesn’t like sweets. The writer doesn?t like anything. But the girl probably likes boys her age. The writer is anachronistic. The writer will soon be gone; the girl will be gone too, in the end. And this house, like an old witch, seems to be the only one wanting to survive and bury us all.
The writer has left, with a look on his face that is worthy of a warrior who has lost a battle, but not the war. I ask for the bill and notice that the girl has a considerable gap between her teeth. The writer has missed something great! Lampedusa immortalized a tin cheetah. We have the original!