Chinese characters
In full view of all who pass to and fro through Piccadilly Circus, there shines on one of the tall houses which encircle it the announcement that the upper part of the building is occupied by the Cathay Restaurant, which modestly on its menu describes itself as a "pioneer, first-class, Chinese restaurant."
As I take into my descriptive net every manner of eating-house, so long as the food and drink to be obtained there is good of its kind, I experimented in the first days of this year of grace, at lunch-time, on the Cathay Restaurant, and found that it has selected in its very longcarte du jourthose Chinese dishes which are palatable to the European, as well as to the Chinese taste.
Chinese food is no novelty to me, for during the five years that I was quartered in the Far East—at Penang, Singapore and Hong-Kong—I was frequently one of the guests at feasts given by Chinese merchants, and learned by experience which were the dishes that one could safely eat and which were the Chinese delicacies that it was wise to drop under the table. A Chinaman, when he wishes to be very polite at table, takes up with his chop-sticks someespecially dainty morsel from his own plate and pops it into the mouth of his European neighbour at table. A kindly young Chinaman once thus put into my mouth a slip of cold pig's liver wrapped round a prune, and I do not think that I ever tasted any nastier combination.
Two Chinese banquets at which I was a guest remain very clearly marked in my memory. One was given by a rich Chinaman at Penang, on the occasion of the marriage of his son, to all the European officials and the officers of the garrison and the leading British merchants. It was a feast at which the dishes were alternately Chinese and European ones, and by each man's and by each lady's dish, for the ladies were also invited, were chop-sticks, and knives and forks and spoons. One Chinese dish I remember at this feast as being quite excellent—a salad of vegetables and of small fish of all kinds. All the guests ate quite heartily both of the European dishes and the Chinese dishes, but that night nearly all the Europeans who had been to the banquet believed that they had suddenly been stricken with Asiatic cholera. I was one of the happy exceptions, and I suppose that I must have skipped whatever was the dish that worked such havoc amongst my fellow-guests.
Messengers from half the bungalows in the leafy lanes of Penang were sent off post-haste to the civil surgeon, begging him to come at once to the bedside of unhappy sufferers, and each messenger as he arrived at the civil surgeon's house received the news that the doctor believed himself to be in the throes of the same dread Asiatic disease, and did not think that he would survive the dawn. Nobody, however, did die, and two or three days later all the aristocracy of Penang, looking even paler than Europeans always are in that land of lily-white complexions, and veryshaky about the knees, gathered together at a cricket match and discussed the matter. Somebody had already gone to the Chinese merchant and had told him of the havoc that his banquet had made. He was profoundly grieved, pointed out that none of his Chinese guests had suffered the slightest inconvenience, and laid the blame on the European dishes, which he had procured as a compliment to his white guests, saying that he "always mistrusted the cookery of the barbarians."
The other unforgettable feast was given by the head Shroff, the native cashier, of one of the banks in Hong-Kong. I had been talking at the house of one of the bankers as to my experiences of Chinese dishes, and had rather decried the cookery of the Flowery Land. I had (I was afterwards told) been especially sarcastic as to the Chinaman's partiality for puppy-dog, and more or less ranked all Chinese dishes with the detestable rat soup which a Chinaman sold in the early mornings just outside the barrack gates to the coolies on their way to their work. The orderly officer going to inspect rations always had to pass the unsavoury cauldron from which the soup was ladled out, and, in the hot weather, the only thing to do was to put a handkerchief to one's nose and run past it.
Some little time after these conversational flourishes of mine the banker asked me if I would like to eat a real, well-cooked Chinese dinner, for the head Shroff of his bank had asked him to honour him with his company at his villa in Kowlun—which is where the "Mr Wu's" come from—and had told him that he would be delighted if he would bring some of his European friends. The dinner, which consisted chiefly of fish, was an excellent one, the all-pervading taste of soy not being too persistent, and I was especially delighted with a white stew of what myhost said was Cantonese rabbit, which I thought quite the most tender and the fattest rabbit I had ever tasted. When the dinner was over, the banker told me that the "Cantonese rabbit" to which I had given such unlimited praise was really a Cantonese edible puppy, fattened on milk and rice. After that incident I found that whenever I dined out in Hong-Kong, conversation always seemed to turn on to Cantonese puppies, and I was gently chaffed for at least six months as to my sudden conversion to the delights of baby chow as apièce de résistance.
I found, however, neither puppy-dog nor rat on thecarte du jourof the Cathay Restaurant.
The restaurant is on the first floor above a bank. A commissionaire stands at the outer portals, and there is a lift for the benefit of anyone who is too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs. The restaurant itself is hardly sufficiently Oriental in appearance to be a Cockney's beau ideal of a Chinese restaurant. It is just what a progressive restaurant for Chinamen in Peking would be, for though the food is Chinese food, cooked by a Chinese cook, the appearance of the restaurant is almost European, an exaggerated copy of a French restaurant, with here and there Chinese touches which redeem the place from tawdriness. There is on the wall a paper with a pattern of gold fleurs-de-lis, the carpet is crimson, the chairs and tables are of European make, the waiters are of European nationalities and wear dress clothes. But a strip of good Chinese embroidery is hung along that side of the restaurant where the serving-room is behind a glassed screen; there are porcelain vases on the two mantelshelves; a great Chinese ornament of carved wood, gold and crimson and black, hangs by a ribbon just inside one of the windows; the big curtains to the windows are of old gold Chinese silk, and the little curtains, also ofOriental silk, are lilac in tint. The manager of the restaurant is a Chinaman with short-cut hair, and he wears the same neat, dark garments that all European managers assume. I sat down at one of the tables, asked the young Italian who came to wait on me to show me acarte du jourand the menu of the set lunch, if there was one, and then looked round at the people who were taking their meal there.
The Chinese in London certainly patronise their own restaurant, for quite half the people who were eating luncheon were Celestials. There were two young Chinese boys in the charge of a grey-haired English lady. There were several young Chinamen whom I mentally put down as students. An older Chinese gentleman had brought his wife out to lunch; and before I left, a party of Chinese gentlemen came in, whom, from the respect shown to them by the manager, I judged to be secretaries of the Chinese Embassy—the Chinese Ambassador, whom I know by sight, was not amongst them.
Nowadays when Chinese gentlemen and ladies wear European clothes, and the men have their hair short, one has to look at their faces to detect the difference between them and Europeans.
There were some Londoners lunching in the restaurant. A party of ladies in furs were enjoying the novelty of the Chinese dishes; two youngsters, whom I took to be medical students, were ordering various dishes from thecarte du jour, and were cross-examining the waiter keenly as to the cooking arrangements and how the delicacies were imported from China; and two schoolgirls, one of the flapper age and one younger, came into the restaurant giggling and looking round as though they expected a pantomime Chinaman to spring up before them or to jump round a corner.
The menu of the day at the Cathay is on a largefolding mauve card, and the dishes are both in Chinese characters and in English letters with an explanation in English below each name. The first division is for chop sueys and noodles. A chop suey is to the Chinese what Irish stew is to the English and aragoûtis to the French. Pork is its foundation, and chicken livers and chicken gizzards, celery, mushrooms, peas, onion, garlic, peppers, oil and salt all go into it. Noodle is any paste dish, and macaroni or vermicelli would be described on a Chinese menu as a noodle.
Of the dishes on the card, Loo min is noodle in Pekinese style. Lat chew chop suey is chop suey with green chutney. Chop suey min is chop suey with noodle, and so on. There is a little list of dishes which are ready, and a longer list of dishes which will take some minutes to prepare, such as fried crab and Chinese omelet; fried rice, with meat, mushroom, egg and vegetables; sliced jelly-fish with pickle; and soyed pork. Some especial dishes are on the menu for which a day's notice must be given, one of these being birds'-nests with minced chicken and another shark's fin with sliced chicken, ham, bamboo shoots, etc. At the end of the list comes the catalogue of teas, pastries and sweets, pickled onions being included in this category.
After looking down thecarte du jour, I turned my attention to the set luncheon, and first of all took up the card on which it was written in Chinese. In case you may be able to read Chinese fluently I reproduce this card on the next page.
The first word on this only means menu. The first dish is a soup of chicken, ham, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. The second dish is fried chicken liver and vegetables, and the last dish is simply roast pork.
I opted for this half-crown meal, and as apreliminary, the waiter put a tiny cup of soy and a Chinese porcelain spoon by the side of the European knives and forks and spoons which were already on the table. A wine list was offered me, but I preferred, as I was going to eat Chinese meats, to drink Chinese tea with them, and ordered a cup of Loong Cheng. The plates used at the Chinese restaurant are, like the cutlery, of European pattern, but the dishes in which the soups and the meats are brought to table are Chinese ones of all kinds of shapes and ornamented with Chinese paintings. My soup, with tiny strips of bamboo in it and morsels of chicken flesh, tasted very much like the chicken broth that one is given when one is ill and on a low diet. The fried chicken and vegetables were quite good eating, and the taste of the bamboo shoots in it wasparticularly pleasant to the palate. The roast pork I shied at, and asked instead to be given a plate of chow chow, an admirable sweet which I have known ever since boyhood, for one of my uncles, who was Consul at Foo Chow, used to send home to all his small nephews presents of this delicacy. The tea was excellent, and doing as the Chinese do, I did not spoil its taste by adding either sugar or milk to it.
Chinese menu
Altogether my luncheon at the Chinese Restaurant was quite a pleasant experiment, and I can advise any gourmets who would like to test the cookery of the Far East in comfortable surroundings to follow my lead.
A little glass canopy with a clock above it juts out into Piccadilly, and a tall commissionaire stands at an entrance where some stairs dive down, apparently into the bowels of the earth. Where the stairs make their first plunge there is above them on the wall the device of a white horse—a fine prancing animal, somewhat resembling the White Horse of Kent.
The stairs, with oak panelling on either side of them, give a twist before they reach the bottom, where is the modern restaurant that occupies the site of what were originally known as the New White Horse Cellars, but which are now called the Old White Horse Cellars, probably on thelucus a non lucendoprinciple, for they have been modernised out of all recognition since the days when Charles Dickens recorded the departure of Mr Pickwick from these Cellars on his coach journey down to Bath.
The Old White Horse Cellars were originally on the Green Park side of Piccadilly, and their number was 156, as some way-bills to be seen at the present White Horse Cellars testify. This ground is now occupied by the Ritz Hotel. Strype mentions the original cellar as being in existence in 1720.
On the staircase walls of the New White Horse Cellars is a little collection of prints and way-bills, caricatures, etchings, old bills of Hatchett's Hotel, posters and advertisements fromThe Timesand other papers of the hours at which the coaches for the weststarted. In this curious little gallery of odds and ends are some documents relating to the old cellar on the other side of the road. But the White Horse Cellars were under Hatchett's in the great coaching days, from the year of the battle of Waterloo to 1840. It was from Hatchett's that Jerry, in Pierce Egan's book, took his departure when going back to Hawthorn Hall, and said farewell to Tom and Logic, and it was in the travellers' room of the White Horse Cellars, a title that was used alternatively with "Hatchett's," that Mr Pickwick and his friends sheltered from the rain, waiting for the Bath coach.
Hatchett's in Dickens's time was not the comfortable house that I knew in the eighties, when the revival of stage-coaching was at its height. Indeed, there could not be a picture of greater discomfort than Dickens sketched in a few words when he wrote: "The travellers' room at 'The White Horse Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable; it would be no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen fireplace appears to have walked, accompanied by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is divided into boxes for the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in a small kennel for washing glasses, in a corner of the apartment." Dickens's word picture of the scene at the start of the coach at half-past seven on a damp, muggy and drizzly day is a fine pen-and-ink sketch, and Cruikshank, in one of his caricatures, "The Piccadilly Nuisance," shows very much the scene as Dickens described it, with the orange-women and the sellers of all kinds of useless trifles on the kerb; the coaches jostling each other, passengers falling off from them, and the pavement an absolute hustle of humanity.
Cruikshank's various drawings and caricatures preservethe appearance of Hatchett's of the old days in the memory better than any word pictures could do. The bow-windows of the old hotel with many panes of glass in them; the stiff pillared portico, with on it the name "Hatchett's," and a little lamp before it, and above it the board with the inscription, "The New White Horse Cellar. Coaches and waggons to all parts of the kingdom." Above this board again was a painting of an old white horse. I fancy that the title of the Cellars, when they were on the other side of the way, must have been taken from some celebrated old horse—though Williams, who was the first landlord of the original cellars, is said to have given them their name as a compliment to the House of Hanover, and that it was the white horse, not the cellar, that was old.
There are various other legends with respect to the horse that gave Hatchett's its title, one of them being that Abraham Hatchett, a proprietor of the tavern, had an old white horse with a turn of speed which had won him many a wager against more showy animals.
The entrance to the Cellars below Hatchett's, in the old days, was down some very steep stairs just in front of one of the bow-windows, and an oval notice, hanging from a little arch of iron, directed people down into the depths to the booking-office.
My reminiscences of Hatchett's are of the later revivals of road coaches; the days of old "Jim" Selby, the famous coachman who, though everybody called him "old," died a comparatively young man. His grey hair and his jolly, fat, rosy face gave him an appearance of being older than he really was. Those were the days when the late Lord Londesborough and Captain Hargreaves, Mr Walter Shoolbred, Captain Beckett, Baron Oppenheim and Mr Edwin Fownes were well-known whips, and when "Hughie"Drummond, and the host of other good fellows and lively customers in whose veins the red blood flowed in a lively current, who drank old port and despised early hours, were the men about town. "Hughie" Drummond taking old "Jim" Selby out to dinner after the arrival of the "Old Times" from Brighton and changing hats with him, which generally took place early in the evening, is one of my remembrances of Hatchett's. And many a time have I split a pint with "Dickie-the-Driver," the oldest in standing amongst my friends, then not the least lively of the young fellows, before climbing up on to the coach at Hatchett's to go down to the Derby. For many years eight of us, always the same men, went down by coach from Hatchett's on Derby Day, always with "Dickie" driving out of London and the last stage on to the downs, and our gallop down and up the hill on the course was a really breakneck performance.
It was from Hatchett's that "Jim" Selby started on his celebrated drive with the Brighton coach, "Old Times," to Brighton and back, for a wager of a thousand pounds to five hundred against his accomplishing the journey in eight hours. On the coach were: Selby himself, driving; Captain Beckett, whom we all called "Partner"; Mr Carleton Blyth, who still sends yearly from Bude his greeting of "Cheero" to his old friends; Mr "Swish" Broadwood, Mr "Bob" Cosier, Mr A. F. M'Adam, and the guard. Harrington Bird's picture of the coach during the galloping stage, with the horses going at racing pace, gives an idea of how Selby drove on that day when he had a clear road. The coach reached the "Old Sip" at Brighton, having done the first half of the journey in just under four hours; stayed there only long enough to turn the coach round and to read a telegram from the old Duke of Beaufort, who was most keenly interested in the revival ofcoaching, and who was a very good man himself on the box seat—and then started again for London, reaching the White Horse Cellars ten minutes under the stipulated time and forty minutes within the record. I was one of the men amongst the crowd that gathered to see the return of the coach and to cheer old "Jim" Selby, who brought his last team in no more distressed than they would have been doing their journey under ordinary circumstances. How highly respected Selby was by all coaching men was shown by the long string of stage-coaches, every coach on the road having suspended its usual journey, which followed his body to the grave.
In those days the bill of fare at Hatchett's was roast beef or boiled mutton and trimmings; duck and green peas, or fowl and bath-chap. There was an inner sanctuary then called "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was the bar parlour, into which only the most favoured patrons of the house were admitted, and Miss Wills, the manageress, used to keep any unruly spirits very much in order.
When Hatchett's was rebuilt and changed its name it changed hands very frequently, though the White Horse Cellars always remained a restaurant. The Cercle de Luxe, a dining club, at one time occupied the upper floors of the building, and then it became the Avondale Hotel, with M. Garin as manager and M. Dutruz as chef. Since then the rooms have been put to many uses, and are now, I see, once again in the market.
It is the memory of what Hatchett's and the White Horse Cellars have been in their old days—memories that haunt me like the sound of a horn afar off on one of the great roads—that makes me disinclined nowadays to eat a French dinner in what was a home of good English fare; and whenever I lunch or dine in the White Horse Cellars to-day I always, for the sakeof old times, order a plate of soup, a mixed grill and a scoop from the cheese. The three-and-sixpenny dinner of to-day is, I have no doubt, a good one, and Mr Stump, the present manager, is most courteous and anxious to oblige. I look at the menu when I am in the restaurant, but for the old sake's sake I keep as close to the meals of old days as the resources of the establishment allow me to do.
The White Horse Cellars of to-day is a modern, up-to-date restaurant, below the level of the ground, though the ventilation is so excellent and the lighting arrangements so good that one never has the sensation of being in a cellar. Half-way down the staircase, just where the little picture gallery commences, a door leads into a buffet. One's great-coat and hat are taken at the bottom of the stairs, and then one enters quite a lofty room with a groined roof, and with cosy nooks and various extensions of the bigger room, which, I fancy, have been thrown out under the side-walk above. The walls of the restaurant are of cream colour; the ornamentation is in the style of Adams, and there is deep rose colour in the arches of the roof. Many mirrors reflect the vistas and give the rooms the appearance of being more extensive than they really are: a string band is perched up in a little gallery; there are palms here and there, and a bronze galloping horse in a recess does something to recall the old horsy days of Hatchett's.
There are many little tables, each with its pink-shaded lamp, in this restaurant, and it has a chic clientele, the "Nuts" of to-day appearing to patronise it just as much as the bucks and the bloods, the swells, and the "whips" of the last two generations used to. I see pretty actresses sometimes dining at Hatchett's, and it is a very cheerful restaurant in which to take a meal. It is, I believe, always crowded at supper-time, and the Glorias, the two excellent dancerswho appear earlier in the evening on the Empire stage, dance the Tango, at midnight, in and out of the little tables.
But to me the charm of the White Horse Cellars is that I can live again in memory, when lunching or dining there, those joyous days of youth and fresh air, when a jolly coach-load used to start from before its door for a day of delight in sitting behind good horses driven by a good whip, listening to the music of the shod hooves and the guard's horn, receiving a greeting from everyone along the road, and feeling that no king on a throne is happier than a man riding behind a picked team on a good coach. Motor cars have their uses and their pleasures, but they seem to have killed the fuller-blooded joys that came with coaching.
The Monico, in Piccadilly Circus, which is both café and restaurant, is an establishment which has been brought to its present prosperity by Swiss industry and Swiss thrift. The original M. Monico, the father of the present proprietors of the restaurant, came from the same village in the Val Blegno, in the Italian provinces of Switzerland, as did the Gattis. M. Monico was with that Gatti, the great-uncle of the present Messrs Gatti, who soldgaufresand penny ices in Villiers Street, and who when Hungerford Market was swept away and Charing Cross Station built established the Gatti's restaurant under the arches.
About fifty years ago, just at the time that MM. A. and S. Gatti were establishing themselves in the Adelaide Gallery, young M. Monico, who died only three years ago, was also making an independent start on the road to fortune. Looking about for a site on which to build a café he had found, off Tichborne Street, a large yard where coaches and waggons stood, and round which was stabling for horses. This yard he leased, and built on its site the Grand Café with the present International Hall above it. M. Monico had intended to put up a tall building, but the neighbours objected to this; he was obliged to alter his plans, and in consequence, whereas the café is a very high room, the International Hall above it is rather squat in its proportions. Those were the days inwhich billiards was a game much in favour, and in the International Hall above the café M. Monico established a number of billiard-tables. When the craze for billiards died away the long upper room, with its arched ceiling, became a banqueting hall. Fifty years ago the licensing magistrates looked with just as much suspicion on any new enterprises in restaurants as they do at the present day, and the Monico could not at first obtain a licence to sell wines and spirits. This, however, was later on granted to M. Monico.
I fancy that there must have been a good deal of the Italian combative spirit in old M. Monico, for he seems to have been at loggerheads with more than one of his neighbours. To-day, when you have gone in under the glass canopy with two gables which protects the Piccadilly Circus entrance, when you have passed the little stall for the sale of foreign newspapers and have come into the café which acts as an ante-room to the great gilded saloon, you will notice that part of this café has a solid ceiling and that the other half is glazed over. The glazed-over portion was, in old M. Monico's time, an open space, and into this open space a neighbour, a perfumer, had the right to bring carts and horses in the course of his business. This right the perfumer exercised on occasion, to the great annoyance of M. Monico, and the present Messrs Monico recall with a smile how the perfumer would often bring in a great van with two horses to deliver a couple of small packages that any messenger boy could have carried.
The clearing away of a block of houses when Piccadilly Circus was given its present proportions gave the Monico its entrance on to that centre, and when Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the network of small streets in Soho, M. Monico and his sons obtained a second frontage for their restaurantand built the block which contains the grill-room, the buffet and banqueting-rooms, now topped by the new masonic temple, the latest addition to the Monico.
The Monico of to-day is one of those great bee-hives of dining-rooms that cater for every class of diner. It has its little café and its bigà la cartedining-saloon, its grill-room, its banqueting-rooms and its German beer cellar down in the basement. It has two marble staircases, one leading down to Piccadilly Circus and one to Shaftesbury Avenue, and its big saloon, the original café, is as gorgeous a hall as gilding can make it. Its walls are of gold and mirrors and raised ornamentation, with the windows high up, and with a golden balcony for the musicians. It has a gilded ceiling and its pilasters are also golden. An orchestra plays in this room, whereas in the grill-room those who like their meals without orchestral accompaniment can eat them in peace. Up and down the great gilded room walk fourmaîtres d'hôtelin frock-coats and black ties, and a battalion of waiters are busy running from tables to kitchen. The bill of fare in the gilded chamber is a most comprehensive one, and any man of any nationality can find some of the dishes of his country on it. It is a beer restaurant as well as a wine restaurant, and the simplest possible meal, very well cooked, can be eaten there as well as elaborate feasts.
The grill-room is less gorgeous in its decorations, though its buff marble pillars and walls are handsome enough. It is in this room that thetable d'hôtedinners at half-a-crown and three-and-six are served, and it is here that many men of business feed, and feed excellently well. Not many days ago I lunched in the grill-room, my host being a gourmet who knew all the resources of the establishment, and I enjoyed thesole Monico, a sole with an excellent white sauce; awoodcockflambéand a salad of tender lettuce which, like the beautiful peaches with which we finished our repast, must have been grown in some Southern, sunshiny clime. I also enjoyed the cheesefondue, made, I think, from therecettethat Brillat Savarin set down in his "Physiologie du Goût."
The Monico has gained special celebrity for its banquets, and the requests for dates for such feasts made to the Messrs Monico have been so overwhelming that they have turned the Renaissance Saloon, which used to be devoted to atable d'hôtedinner, into a banqueting-room, and have redecorated it for its new uses.
It remains in my memory that men who were present at the banquet given to Lord Milner in the International Hall of the Monico before he left England to take up his duties as Pro-Consul in South Africa, and who talked to me afterwards of the feast, told me that it was the best public dinner, best served and best cooked, that they had ever eaten, and last year, when I dined at the Poincaré dinner of the Ligue des Gourmands, which was held in the Renaissance Room (the occasion on which M. Escoffier's "creation" of thepoulet Poincaréwas first disclosed to a discriminating gathering), I thought then that M. Sieffert's (thechef) handiwork was worthy of all the praise lavished on it, and that M. G. Ramoni, the manager, had arranged most admirably all the details of the banquet. The Renaissance Room now quite justifies its title, for its decoration of peacock blue panels and frames of gilded briar, with strange birds perched on the sprays, somewhat suggests Burne-Jones and the colouring of his school.
As a specimen of a Monico banquet I cannot do better than give you one eaten by that famous Kentish cricketing club, the Band of Brothers, the menu ofwhose dinner bears their badge in dark and light blue, and has also a bow of their ribbon:
Huîtres de WhitstableFantaisie Epicurienne.Tortue verte en Tasse.Turbotin poché, Sauce Mousseline.Julienne de Sole Parisienne.Mousse de Volaille Régence.Côtelettes d'Agneau Rothschild.Pommes Anna.Punch Romaine.Bécassine sur Canapé.Salade de Laitue.Escalope de Homard Pompadour.Pêche Flambé au Kirsch.Paillettes au Parmesan.Fruits.Corbeille de FriandisesCafé.Vins.Amontillado.Marcobrunner, 1904.Bollinger and Co., 1904.Lanson, 1906.Martinez Port, 1896.Grand Fine Champagne, 1875.
Many of the banquets given at the Monico are masonic ones, and the new temple at the top of the house on the Shaftesbury Avenue side is a very splendid shrine, with walls of marble and a dome round which the signs of the zodiac circle, and with doors and furniture of great beauty.
The plains of Lombardy, the pleasant mountain land of Emilia and the champaign that surrounds Turin, are studded with comfortable villas, the property of successful Italian restaurateurs who have made a comfortable little fortune in London and who go to their own much-loved country to spend the autumn of their days. Every young North Italian waiter who comes to England believes that in the folds of his napkin he holds one of these pleasant villas, just as every French conscript in Napoleonic days thought that he, amongst all his fellows, alone felt the extra weight of the field-marshal's baton in his knapsack. No race in the world is more thrifty and more industrious than are these North Italians, and they rival the Swiss in their aptitude for making considerable sums of money by charging very small prices.
Spain and Great Britain are usually classed together as the two countries in which the natives know least of economy in housekeeping and cookery, and the Italians, spying the wastefulness of the land, have descended on England as a friendly invading force, whereas the Swiss have taken Spain in hand. There is no Spanish town in which there is not a café Suizio, and there are very few English towns in which an Italian name is not found over a restaurant, which is often a pastry-cook's shop as well.
I have in preceding chapters written of some of the restaurants owned by Italians in London, butwere I to deal at length with all the well-managed restaurants, large and small, controlled by Italians in London, I should have to extend the size of my book to very swollen proportions, so I propose to mention briefly those Italian restaurants at which at one time or another I have lunched or dined with satisfaction.
One of the largest Italian restaurants is the Florence, in Rupert Street, which the late M. Azario, a gentleman of much importance in the London Italian colony, made one of the most successful moderate-priced restaurants in London. He was decorated with an Italian order, and when he died, not long ago, he was much mourned by his countrymen. Madame Azario (who is now Madame Mainardi and who has appointed her husband, whom I remember at the Savoy, to the supreme command of the establishment), to whom he left the restaurant, has made some changes in it, bringing it up to date. It now has a lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, and it has fallen a victim to the prevailing craze for Tango dancing at supper-time. Its three-shilling dinner is a most satisfying one at the price. The Florence is not too whole-heartedly Italian to please diners of other nationalities, but when an Italian gives a lunch or a dinner to his fellow-countrymen or to those who love the cookery of Italy, it can be as patriotic in the matter of dishes as any restaurant in Italy. This is the menu of a lunch given to one of the most Italian of Englishmen. It is a capital example of an Italian meal, and there is a little joke tucked away in it, for the "Neapolitan Vanilla" is another way of writing garlic:
Antipasto Assortito.Ravioli alla Fiorentina.Trotta à l'Italiana.Scalloppine di Vitello alla Milanese.Asparagi alla Sant'Ambrogio.Pollo alla Spiedo.Insalata Rosa alla Vaniglia di Napoli.Zabaglione al Marsala.Formaggio.Frutta.* * * * *Chianti.Barolo vecchio.Asti naturale.Caffe.Liquori.
One of the first established and one of the best of the Italian restaurants is Previtali's, in Arundel Street, that little thoroughfare that runs up into a cul-de-sac square, off Coventry Street. It was said a while ago that this little square and its approach were to be eaten up by a new great variety theatre, but I see that the ground is now advertised as being for sale. Below the great board which announces this is a smaller one, which tells that Previtali's is to remain where it is till September 1915, when it will find other quarters. Itstable d'hôteluncheon costs half-a-crown, and itstable d'hôtedinners are priced at three-and-six and five shillings, the latter giving such a choice of food that not even a starving man would ask for more when he had gone through the menu. Previtali's has an excellent cellar of Italian wines.
Many of the restaurants owned by Italians in London have a clientele that suits the size of the house, and they do not cry aloud by bold advertisements for fresh guests. Such a quiet, unassuming restaurant is the Quadrant, in Regent Street, the windows of which keep their eyes half closed by pink blinds which shut off the view of the interior from passers-by. Messrs Formaggia and Galiardi cater there for very faithful customers, and I always look with interest as I pass at the menu of the half-crown dinner which is written in a bold hand and shown in a small frame by the window. It isalways a well-chosen meal, and on the occasions that I have eaten at the Quadrant, I have been well satisfied with its fare. It was at the Quadrant that a gourmet with a taste for strange foods gave me a lunch of land-crabs which had been imported with much difficulty from either Barbadoes or the West Indies, and which Mr Formaggia's chef had cooked strictly in accordance with the recipe that came with them. They had, I remember, rather a bitter taste, but perhaps land-crabs, like snails, are not to everybody's taste.
In Soho, the Italian restaurants jostle the French restaurants in every street. Perhaps the best known of the Soho restaurants owned by Italians is the Ristorante d'Italia, whereof Signor Baglioni is the proprietor, which thrusts out an illuminated arum amidst the electric globes and glittering signs of Old Compton Street. My memories of the half-crowntable d'hôtedinner there is of food excellently cooked under the superintendence of an erstwhilechef de cuisineof the Prince of Monaco, of the noise of much talking in vehement Italian, of rather close quarters at little tables laid for four, and of a menu of rather portentous provender.
The most Italian of any restaurant that I have discovered in my explorations in Soho is the Treviglio in Church Street, a little restaurant that might have been lifted bodily from a canal-side in Venice or a small street in Florence. It is whole-heartedly Italian, and puts to the forefront of its window a list of the specialities of Italian cookery on which it prides itself. It is a favoured haunt of the Italian journalists in London, and that, I think, can be taken as a certificate that its cookery is not only thoroughly Italian but is also good Italian. Signori Pozzi and Valdoni are its proprietors.
Pinoli's is a restaurant in Lower Wardour Streetthat offers almost as much at its two-shillingtable d'hôtedinner as some other restaurants do at twice or more that price.
A quiet, flourishing restaurant owned by an Italian, Signor Antonio Audagna, who began life as a waiter at Romano's, is the Comedy Restaurant, in Panton Street, Haymarket. It is a comfortable restaurant, with cream walls and oval mirrors and pink-shaded lamps, and its back rooms are on a higher level than those of its Panton Street front. Its customers are very faithful to it, and, as its proprietor once told me, "when the fathers die the sons take their places as customers." There was some time ago a proposal to extend it so as to give it a front to the Haymarket, but that plan came to naught, and the Comedy goes on just as before in its old premises. This is a menu of the Comedytable d'hôtedinner, and its proprietor apparently took a hint from Philippe of the Cavour for the menu bears the legend, "No beer served with this dinner":
Hors d'œuvre Variés.Queue de Bœuf PrintanièreCrème Chasseur.Sole à la Bourguignonne.Noisette de Pré-Salé Volnay.Spaghetti al Sugo.Poulet en Casserole.Salade.Glacé Comedy.Dessert.
Another quiet restaurant with a faithful clientele is Signor Pratti's, the Ship, in Whitehall. Histable d'hôtedinners are half-a-crown and three-and-six, and his eighteenpenny lunch, I fancy, brings to the restaurant many of the hard-worked gentlemen from Cox's Bank, just across the way, and from the Admiralty, which is suitably just behind the Ship.Signor Pratti, if I remember rightly, fines teetotalers by charging them sixpence extra.
From Hampstead to Surbiton, from Richmond to Epping, the little Italian restaurants flourish. One gourmet whom I know, with a delicate taste in Italian wines, makes pilgrimages regularly to Reggiori's, opposite King's Cross Station, because he gets there a particular wine which this restaurateur imports; while I take an almost paternal interest in Canuto's Restaurant in Baker Street. The rise of that restaurant from a very humble place, that put out two boards with great sheets of paper on them, giving the dishes ready and the dinner of the day, to a rather haughty little restaurant with a very beautiful window and thecarte du jourand the menus oftable d'hôtedinners behind the glass in frames of restrained gorgeousness, typifies the gradual advance in social splendour of the long street that leads to Regent's Park.
Newly engaged couples are rather kittle cattle to entertain at any meal. There was once a pretty young widow who was about to marry a charming young man, and I asked the pair to lunch with me one day at the Savoy and was very particular to secure a table in the balcony, for I thought that the view over the Gardens and up the Thames to the House of Lords and Westminster Abbey would harmonise very well with love's young dream. And it did harmonise only too well with it, for the pretty widow sat with her face in her two hands gazing up the river with far-away eyes while the grilled lamb cutlets grew cold and thebomb pralinégrew warm, and the charming young man, sat opposite to her with hands tightly clasped, gazing into her face and thinking poetry hard the while. Conversation there was none on that occasion. I do not believe that the couple knew in the least whether they were eating sole or cream cheese, and I still have such remnants of good manners that were instilled into me in the days of the nursery that I felt that I was doing an impolite thing to eat heartily while my guests were neglecting their food. I often subsequently wondered whether in the days when I fell desperately in love at least once in every six months, I behaved in public as much like a patient suffering from softening of the brain as did that nice young man on the day he lunched with me at the Savoy.
One of my nephews, a young soldier doctor, is going to do a very sensible thing in marrying an exceedingly nice girl early in his career, and as he is on leave in London it seemed to me that it would be a pleasant thing to ask him and the young lady to lunch or dine with me. Though I did not for a moment believe that the presence of his intended would cause him to neglect his food, I was not prepared, after my previous experience, to put the young lady to the tremendous trial of the view of the Thames from the Savoy balcony, and I decided that dinner, not lunch, should be the meal.
As I was curious to see whether a little dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel was as well cooked as the great banquets are in that flourishing establishment, I asked them to dine there with me one Sunday evening, and gave Mr Kerpen, the manager of the hotel, warning of our coming, asking him to suggest to M. Müller, thechef de cuisine, that I should like one or two specialities of his kitchen included in a very short menu.
If lunch had been the meal to which I invited the young couple the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room would have been a spot as inducive to day dreams as are the balconies at the Savoy and the Cecil, for the view the Hyde Park Hotel commands over the Park is one of the most beautiful and most varied in London. A strip of garden lies between the Hotel and the Ladies' Mile, and beyond that is the branch of Rotten Row that runs up past the Knightsbridge Barracks. Beyond that again are green lawns and clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, and the grassy rise up to the banks of the Serpentine, the glitter of the water of which and the big trees about it closing in the landscape. The carriages go rumbling past; there are generally some riders in the Row and there isalways movement on the footpath, and it seems to be one of the duties of the regiment of Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge to supply as a figure in the immediate foreground either a young orderly officer in his blue frock-coat setting out or returning from his rounds on a big black charger, or a rough-riding corporal in scarlet jacket teaching a young horse manners. The view up the river to Westminster may have a dreamy beauty on a sunshiny day, the vista of the long walk in the Green Park, down which the windows of the Ritz dining-room look, may have more sylvan beauty, but the outlook of the Hyde Park Hotel has more colour and more variety than those of the other big hotels I have mentioned.
The Hyde Park Hotel was one of Jabez Balfour's speculations, and for a time it was a great pile of flats before it became technically an hotel. It had a fire, and I fancy that it was after the fire that M. Ritz was consulted as to its redecoration—for he had a great talent and indisputable taste in suggesting the ornamentation of large rooms—and that the Hyde Park Hotel became the exceedingly comfortable, quiet, luxurious house it is to-day.
In the big hall, with its dark-coloured marbles and handsome fireplace, I found the young couple waiting for me. They were before their time and were in holiday spirits, which reassured me, for no laughing girl is likely to slip suddenly into day dreams. After I had given my hat and coat to the dark-complexioned servitor in blue and gold Oriental dress, who looks like a very good-natured Othello, we waited for a while in the big cream and green drawing-room—a room so fresh in colour that it does not suggest an environment of London atmosphere, though it looks out on to Knightsbridge. At the quarter past eight we went into the big dining-room, and M. Binder, themaître d'hôtel, showed us to the table in a corner by a window which had been set for us.
The Hyde Park Hotel dining-room is an exceedingly handsome hall of mahogany, with panels of gold and deep crimson brocade; its pillars are of deep red wood with gilt Corinthian capitals; a band plays in a gallery above the crystal service doors and the colours of the panels are echoed in carpet and curtains and upholstery. In its comfortable colouring the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room reminds me very much of what the Savoy dining-room used to be before its beautiful mahogany panelling was taken down and the colour of the walls and ceiling changed to cream.
I soon found that I was not either to be silent or to have the conversation all to myself, for the young people laughed and chatted away, and I found myself comparing descriptions of the Curragh as it was in the seventies, when we used to lie in bed in the huts and watch the marking at the butts through the cracks in the walls, with the Curragh of to-day when the last of the Crimean wooden huts are about to disappear. The reading of the menu, however, was gone through with due solemnity, and the young lady knew that an important moment in her life was about to approach, for she was going to taste caviare for the first time. This was the menu of our dinner:
Caviar Blinis.Crème d'Asperges.Sole à la H.P.H.Selle d'Agneau de lait poëlée.Haricots verts aux fines herbes.Bécassines Chasseur.Salade.Pêches Petit Duc.Comtesse Marie.Friandises.Dessert.
The young soldier doctor watched his bride-that-is-to-be eat her first mouthful of caviare and little angle of the Russian pancake with interest and some curiosity. If she did not like the delicacy there would be no caviare for him in the days of their honeymoon, while if she took a violent fancy to them it might strain the resources of a very young establishment to provide caviare at two meals a day. She took her first mouthful, considered, and said that she liked it; but did not express any overwhelming attachment to it, so I think that so far as caviare is concerned it will be eaten with appreciation in the household-that-is-to-be but will not appear every day at table. The soup was an excellent thick cream; the sole was one of the specialities of the kitchen put by thechef de cuisineinto the menu, and a most admirable sole it is. It is amousseof chicken sandwiched between fillets of sole, and lobster and oysters and, I fancy, mushrooms also, have their part in this very noble dish. The tiny saddle of lamb was the plain dish of the dinner; the snipe were given a baptism of fire before they were brought to table. The peaches were another dish that is a speciality of the house. With theBar-le-Duccurrant jelly about the peaches there was mingled some old Fine Champagne, while the ice and the vanilla cream that went with it were served separately, as is the modern fashion, which is a great improvement on sending up the ice in a messy state with the fruit. The wine we drank was Clicquot 1904. I was charged half-a-guinea a head for our dinner, which was excellent value for the money: altogether an admirable dinner, admirably cooked, and I sent my compliments to the chef.
The other people who had dined had gradually melted away; the band had left its gallery and we could hear its strains coming from some distantroom. The young people chattered away about theatres and dances and we might have sat at table until midnight had not themaître d'hôtelsuggested that we might like to look at the other rooms on the ground floor before going into the smoking lounge, where the band was playing and where a lady was presently to sing. We walked through a charming little ante-room with golden furniture, into the great pink banqueting-room which is used for dances and balls as well as for great feasts. It is the part of the Hyde Park Hotel with which I am most familiar, and I told the young people, who were more anxious to know which way the boards ran and whether it was a good floor for dancing than they were for descriptions of banquets, how at one of the dinners of the Gastronomes in this fine room the table decorations were so arranged as to be high above the diners' heads and that the air seemed full of flowers and how M. Müller had invented for that feast the beau-ideal of a vegetablesorbet—tomates givrées. I had thoughts of giving them details of a wonderful banquet given at the hotel by the Society of Merchants, but I am sure they would not have had patience to listen, so what I abstained from telling them then, lest they might think me a gluttonous old bore, I here set down for your consideration, for you can skip it if you will, whereas the two young people would, I am sure, have been kind enough to listen and to pretend to appreciate its beauties:
Cantaloup Grande Fine Champagne.Caviar.Consommé Florentine.Crème de Pois frais.Filets de Truite Saumonée au Coulis d'Ecrevisses.Volaille de la Bresse Châtelaine.Selle de Béhague à la Provençale.Aubergines au Beurre Noisette.Cailles Royales à l'Ananas.Pommes Colerette.Dodines de Canard à la Gelée.Cœurs de Laitues aux œufs.Pêches Framboisées.Friandises.Dessert.Vins.Sandringham Sherry.Schloss Volkrads, 1904.Pommery and Greno, 1900.Château Brane Cantenac, 1899.Sandeman's, 1884.Marett Gautier, 1830.Liqueurs.
Then we went into the big room, a room of mahogany, and views of lake and river and sea painted on the panels, which is the room most used by the people who live in the hotel, where the papers and great arm-chairs are and where a man can smoke comfortably, and we listened to the little orchestra and to a young lady who sang us songs sentimental and songs cheerful until it was time for my nephew to do escort duty in taking the young lady back to the northern heights where she lives.
The one thing in the world that the friends of Germany do not tell us poor Englishmen is to be obtained better in the Fatherland than on this side of the Channel is things to eat, though of course Munich beer has been held up to our brewers for generations as an example of what they should brew. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are fewer German restaurants in London in comparison with the size of the German colony than there are French and Italian restaurants in comparison with the colonies of those countries.
Yet good, simple German cookery is quite excellent of its kind. A German housewife knows how to make a goose into many delectable dishes which an English housewife knows nothing of, and the German tarts are excellent things amongst dishes of pastry.
There are one or two German restaurants in Soho, and Mr Appenrodt in his restaurants considers the tastes of his fellow-countrymen, but the best known London restaurant devoted entirely to German and Austrian cookery is the Olde Gambrinus, in Regent Street, and it was an Italian, little Oddenino, who appreciated the long-felt want of the Germans in London and who gave them a restaurant in which they can imagine that they are once again back in their own country, eating German foods and drinking German drinks.
The Gambrinus has entrances both in Glasshouse Street and in Regent Street. The Regent Streetentrance echoes the decoration of that of its big brother, the Imperial Restaurant, a few paces farther along the street, and its marble pillars and revolving door do not suggest the entirely German surroundings we are in as soon as we have crossed the threshold. A comparatively narrow room, panelled half-way up its height with dark wood and with two rows of tables, is the first portion of the restaurant we see on entering from Regent Street, and it is here that those good Germans sit who do not want to eat a meal but wish to drink their "steins" of beer. Above the panelling on the walls are the heads of many deer and wild beasts from all parts of the world, and the first impression that this gives to anyone who does not know the Gambrinus is that it is a Valhalla for the denizens of some Wonder Zoo. In the midst of these heads of the wild things of the woods and the plains is that of a fine dog. No doubt he was the chosen companion of some mighty hunter, and one hopes that he was not like the rest, a spoil of the chase.
After this first narrow room there comes a wider one with an arched roof, glazed with bottle-glass, and then the main restaurant itself, which has the appearance of a baronial hall. Its floor is of wooden blocks; there are many little tables in it, and chairs with backs of dark leather, and it is panelled like the entrance, with dark wood. Any chair not occupied is at our disposal, and we have found seats, and a waiter has put in front of us the big sheet with the menu of the day on it and a picture in blue of a crowned gentleman with a long white beard astride on a beer cask and drinking from a foaming tankard. We will order our dinner first and then look at our surroundings.
For every day in the week there are special dishes: four soups, one of which is generallybouillon mit ei; three meat dishes and a fruit dish. There is a list ofhors d'œuvre, amongst themBerliner rollmopsandBrabant sardellen, Nürnberger ochsenmaul salatand Bismarck herring. There is a column in print of cold dishes in which various German sausages are given the place of honour, and then, written in violet ink, many ready dishes beyond those sacred to the day, and another list of dishes which can be had to order.
As the most typical German dishes amongst those of the day let us order goose soup with dumplings, roast veal and peas, and pear tart, and we cannot do better than wash this down with two large glasses of light-coloured Munich beer.
The waiter takes our orders, and from a pile of rounds of wadding put down by us two with some blue printing on them, which shows that we are going to drink Munich beer, whereas had we elected for the beer of Pilsen we should have been given rounds of wadding with red on them.
On all the seats at all the tables are Germans of all types. Dark-haired Germans from the south, looking almost like Italians, and the typical fair-haired Teutons of the north with fat necks and hair cropped to a stubble. Anyone who thinks that the German fraus and frauleins resemble at all the unkind caricatures the French make of them should see the pretty ladies who accompany the worthy Germans who eat their dinners at the Gambrinus. They are as fresh and charming, as well dressed and as daintily mannered as the ladies who go to any restaurant of any other nationality.
The windows that give on to Glasshouse Street are of the glass that looks as though the bottoms of wine bottles had been used, and in the centre of each window is an escutcheon with armorial bearings. At one side of the room is a gallery of dark wood, and on the front of this is also a wealth of heraldry. The heads of animals of all kinds, which seemed a little strange in thebrasserieby the entrance, seem quite inplace in the big hall which has all the appearance of the dining-room of some old baronial castle converted into a German inn. On the side opposite to the gallery is a long counter under two arches of dark wood. On this counter are many beer mugs, and fruit in baskets, and on a series of shelves all thedelicatessenwhich are recorded on thespiese karte. On the wall at the back of the two arches hang the beer mugs which belong to the customers, rows upon rows of them forming a background of coloured earthenware and glass. By the side of this long counter is another, where a pretty girl sits and hands out to the waiters the liqueur bottles and keeps the necessary accounts.
If the trophies of the chase in thebrasserieare various they are infinitely more various in the big hall, for the Herr Baron must have hunted on all the continents and did not disdain to add monsters of the deep to his trophies, for a spiky fish, looking like a marine hedgehog, dangles from the ceiling, and below it is one of those curious things which sailors call mermaids and the right name of which is, I believe, manati. He was a collector of curios also, this imaginary baron, for a curious lamp in the shape of an eight-pointed star hangs above the gallery, there is a carved owl immediately below it and various other wood carvings in different parts of the restaurant, and on the broad shelf above the panelling are a wonderful variety of earthenware and china and pewter mugs and dishes and jugs and candlesticks in quantities that would set up half-a-dozen antique shops.
The heads of animals on the wall would supply material for an exhaustive lesson in zoology. There is the skull of an elephant, the head of a rhino, a bear grins sardonically on one side, and opposite to him a zebra appears to have thrust his head and neck through the wall. There are several boars' heads, an eagle with his wings spread dangles from the balcony,and a black cock appears to be rising from a forest of liqueur bottles. There are horns or heads of half-a-hundred varieties of deer, from the wapiti and elk to those tiny little fellows with horns a couple of inches long who run about like rabbits in the German forests. There are antlers of red deer and fallow deer, and heads of wildebeeste and hartebeeste, and black buck and buffalo, and of many more that are beyond my knowledge of horned beasts.
There are in the room glass screens to keep off all draughts; there are bent-wood stands on which to hang coats and hats, and a staircase with a luxurious carpet on it and a brass rail leads down into the grill-room of the Imperial Restaurant next door.
But the waiter, who had already put down by our places two long sloping glasses of the clear cold beer, now brings us the plates of smoking goose soup, and excellent soup it is, with the suet dumplings, as light as possible, in it, and pieces of the breast of the goose. Why we English neglect the goose as a soup-maker I do not know, as indeed I do not know why we neglect the goose at all and consign him to the kitchen as a meal for the servants while the turkey is being eaten upstairs. The veal, which, I should imagine, is imported from Germany, is excellent, and the huge chop of it that is given to each of us must, I think, be an extra attention on the part of the management, for M. Oddenino has just come in and has taken a seat at a table in a recess, where he dines frugally every night so as to be within call of his restaurant next door, and he has called the attention of the little manager to our presence. So perhaps we are being given what in Club life is known as the "Committee-man's chop."
Our third venture is just as satisfactory as the two previous ones, for the great angle of open pear tart is in every way excellent. The bill presented atthe close of our meal is as moderate as the food was good. We have each in our meal consumed three shillings and three pence worth of well-cooked food and cold beer.
So again I ask, Why should the Germancuisinein London be the Cinderella of the daughters of Gastronomy?
No one can be more aware than I am of the things I have left undone in writing of the restaurants of London, of the many interesting dining-places of which I have made no mention, of the eating-houses with historical associations that I have overlooked.
I have done no more than touch the hem of the garment of the City. As I write I recall that the Ship and Turtle, the Palmerston and other notable restaurants I have passed by without even a word, and that I have given only a line to Pim's and Simpson's, and the George and Vulture, each of which is worthy of a chapter.
The Liverpool Street Hotel, which I have singled out, is not by any means the only great railway hotel in London where the catering is excellent. I used at one time to dine every Derby night with the late Mr George Dobell at the St Pancras Hotel, and a better cooked dinner no one could have given me. The Euston Hotel had, and I have no doubt has, an admirable cellar of wines.
There is a chapter waiting to be written concerning the changes that have taken place in railway refreshment-room catering, with, as examples, the dining-rooms at the two Victoria stations and thetable d'hôtedinner that is provided for playgoers at Waterloo.
The luncheons provided for golfers in the club-houses of the golf courses near London was anothersubject to which I intended to devote a chapter, and yet another to the excellent luncheons that the racing clubs, following Sandown's example, provide for their members.
There are roadside and riverside inns that deserve mention besides those of which I have written.
Many of the large hotels that I have not mentioned deserve attention, but there is a certain similarity in thetable d'hôtemeals at all big hotels nowadays and the difference between the rank and file of them lies more in their situation and decoration than in theircuisine.
My excuse for paying a vague compliment to the big hotels in bulk will not hold good with respect to the many small hotels that I have not mentioned where the cookery is excellent. They at least have, each one, its distinct individuality. I can only plead that I have been frightened by their number. Almond's in Clifford Street, Brown's in Albemarle Street, where M. Peròs is the chef, are two which occur to me as I write in which I have dined admirably, and I have no doubt that "Sunny Jim" will make the restaurant of the St James's Palace Hotel a favourite dining-place.
I feel that I have slighted Oxford Street and Holborn in having merely nodded as I passed by to some of the many restaurants, some of them important ones, that are to be found on the road from Prince Albert's Statue to the Marble Arch. My hope of making amends to them for this neglect lies in a hope that my book may run into more than one edition.
In the streets that branch off from Shaftesbury Avenue there are several restaurants for which I should have found room in this book. The Coventry is one, and the by-ways of Soho teem with little eating-houses waiting to be discovered and to becomeprosperous and to possess globes of electric light and rows of Noah's ark trees in green tubs. I am not such a hardy explorer as I used to be, but I have gone through some terrible times in experimenting on some of the little restaurants in Soho—the ones that had better remain undiscovered.
Some of my correspondents have asked me why I only write of places that I can conscientiously praise, and why I do not describe my failures. My answer to this is that it is not fair to condemn any restaurant, however humble it may be, on one trial, and that, when I have been given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion. I prefer to consign to oblivion the stories I could tell of bad eggs and rank butter and cold potatoes, stringy meat and skeleton fowls.
It is so much better for one's digestion to think of pleasant things than to brood over horrors.
Adieu, or rather, I trust, au revoir.
P. S.—That changes have taken place in the personnel of the restaurants even in the space of time that it takes to pass the proofs of this book shows how difficult it is to keep such a publication right up to date. Most of the changes I have been able to note in their proper position, but the sale of Rule's by Mr and Mrs O'Brien to one of their old servants and the appointment of M. Mambrino to the managership of the Berkeley Hotel I must record here.