THE nerve of this guy. He breezes in from the wild west, takes a hard, business-like look at George Street, virtually all tied up with its elbow-to-elbow array of bars and restaurants, and thinks to himself "there's still room for me".
Mario Gizzi duly made room, acquiring for £2 million the premises long occupied by suits-and-shorts specialists Aitken and Niven and, for an additional £8m, embarking on a six-month elaborate conversion into what has to be Edinburgh's classiest Span
ish restaurant, Andaluz. The city desperately needed one, as did starting-to-look-a-tad-tired George Street.
Gizzi, 49, has muscled (gentlemanly) in from his native Glasgow where the family-run Di Maggio's chain of Italian eateries opened in 1985.
"This street is well off for restaurants when it can boast the likes of Le Monde and Tigerlily but it's been short on Spanish. With 220 covers including corporate upstairs the plan's been to make it as authentic as possible.
"I imported the tiles from Seville, the plates from Malaga. Hopefully the ambience looks expensive and it was. But the food's not OTT, nor are our 50 Spanish wines."
Gizzi's no dyed-in-the-wool Weegie. "I learned to do my sums here in Edinburgh. I lodged with Carlo and Olivia Crolla of the Elm Row dynasty while I studied chartered accountancy." It's all adding up now.
Plain speaking Couldn't resist a peek at Dirk Bogarde's recently-published private letters in which he describes Glenda Jackson, the Labour MP and memorable leading lady in Women In Love: "A plain girl, with feet like a goatherd, hands like a bricklayer, bad teeth."
How cruel of Sir Dirk. Had he still been with us, he'd have been mercilessly sued by goatherds and brickies everywhere.
Afterwords . . . . . It's no' Donald we're asking. It's Lulu. Wherever your troosers are, get them on. Quick. That picture of her in a mini-dress did her no favours. None at all.
She loves to project herself as Wonderwoman, at 59, and in some respects she is. But those excessively wrinkly knees in that dress blew her cover. They're almost as unsightly as mine.
The full article contains 367 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
