Orsini’s

Grandfather took me there for my eighth birthday. Childhood memories, so vivid. Wearing paper hats, singing Happy Birthday. Sending back the Veal Prince Orlov.

RIP Orsini’s. After fifty three years, it was all over. And this is in 1995. Mad props to anyone setting up a business during a World War. There’s only two of them to choose from as well. Currently. At the time of writing we’re a week before the 2024 US election, so maybe we’re due another one.

For this one, I’m taking a sort of alternative timeline approach. In the sense that I don’t think a restaurant that opened in 1942 would have a logo that looked like this. So rather this is a refurb of Orsini’s. I mean…given what the Crane brothers walked into during this episode, it could’ve happened. And what they did is typical rich person behaviour – underestimate how difficult something is and expect to solve it just by throwing money at it. So ‘Les Freres Heureux‘ (The Happy Brothers) rises phoenix-like from the ashes aaaaand ultimately fails miserably. With sprinklers. And failed eel cookery.

The logo was actually a bit tricky. According to certain sources, Orsini’s is a French restaurant – Veal Prince Orlov is from France after all. However, some of the internal decor is Roman and the surname Orsini is hugely Italian, coming from the Latin for ‘bear-like’. So what do you do with that?! Is it French or Italian?! Well, neither, then.

With the country of origin off limits, all I’ve got is a bear. After much deliberation, Paddington, Yogi, Winnie the Pooh and larger hairy gay men bit the dust and I went with the star constellation ‘Great Bear’. Ursa Major to all you sky-gazing boffins out there. Brian May on guitar, Brian Cox on keyboards. Brian ‘Patrick’ Moore on xylophone from beyond the grave.