Place a pen in Floridita's ashtray instead of a cigar.
Forget having a ciggy with your pint or topping off your grand multicourse meal with a fine cigar. On 1st July, England's smoking ban will go into effect, prohibiting lighting up in enclosed public spaces, which means that bars and restaurants – the enclosed public spaces where people are most likely to smoke – are bound to feel somewhat different in a few days. At the very least, expect to see flocks of smokers puffing outside establishments.
Some restaurants have been very proactive regarding the ban. Pearl has been serving a nicotini, a cocktail made from tobacco-infused rum and tobacco-infused Demerara sugar, since May. And since customers admiring the stylish ashtrays at Bluebird, Quaglino's, Floridita and Sartoria can no longer pilfer them – as they have been known to do – these restaurants will continue to sell them for £15 each.
Orrery, the elegant French restaurant in Marylebone, is auctioning off its entire cigar stock this evening. It has an outdoor seating area, but because it's covered with an awning, it will be illegal to smoke there after 1st July. Prior to the ban, Orrery, like many London restaurants, only let diners smoke outside or in the bar area.
Yet general manager Bertrand Pierson says he welcomes the new law.
"For me, the greatest achievement [of the law] is that restaurant staff are going to be able to work in an environment where health and safety are respected," he said.
Robert Seigler, owner of The Forge, which opened in Covent Garden in March, will be able to permit smoking in his small outdoor seating area. But he says that the new law worries him for two reasons: because he feels that the government is taking away a personal freedom and because it could have an ill effect on business.
“If restaurant and bar operators thought for one moment that barring smoking would lift their business by one percent, they would have done it voluntarily,” said Seigler, who doesn't allow smoking in the restaurant of The Forge, but does permit it in the downstairs bar area – that is until 1st July. "Smoking and drinking are activities that go hand in hand," he said.
But Pierson remains optimistic that the new legislation will not keep Londoners from dining out and that they'll adapt quickly.
“If the Italians can do it, then the English can," said Pierson, referring to Italy's ban on smoking in public places, which went into effect in January 2005. – Liz Borod Wright