Escoffier photoM. ESCOFFIER
M. ESCOFFIER
Thevelouté froidis a test dish, for only a master hand can give it the right consistency without allowing it to become pasty. Themousselineswere beautifully light, each in the form of a cygnet, surrounding a central figure of a swan. Thepoularde Enawas the one dish in the banquet to which, because of its richness, I kissed my hand and passed it by. The combination of quails and grapes is one of M. Escoffier's happiest inspirations, and thepêches Ste Allianceis one of those delicateentremetsin which Escoffier excels any other great chef of to-day, or of the past. Thetrou Normandis rather a violent stimulus to appetite, and consists of a liqueur-glass of old brandy. When M. Escoffier came with the coffee, to ask us what our verdict was on his dinner, our only difficulty was to find a sufficiency of complimentary adjectives.
There is a little restaurant in Old Compton Street, the Au Petit Riche, with the outside of which I was acquainted for some years before I put foot inside it. It so evidently kept itself to itself that I felt that my presence might be resented. It has little casemented windows in white frames, and inside the windows are muslin curtains, on a rail, hung sufficiently high to prevent anyone from looking over them. Below the windows are green tiles, and above it a stretch of little panes of bottle-glass in white frames to give additional light to the rooms inside. A little ground-glass lantern hung outside the door, and the name of the restaurant was painted over the window, but there was no bill of fare put up outside, no attempt to draw in a diner unless he had made up his mind to dine at the Au Petit Riche and nowhere else. I had been told all about the restaurant by those gallant souls who experiment at every new eating-place that springs up between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, and though all I heard about the little place was pleasant and interested me, I felt that the Petit Riche was not anxious to make my acquaintance. But when the Petit Riche put up outside its windows an illuminated sign and its number, 44, in big figures, I felt that it had abandoned its haughty reserve andwas beckoning to me, and the rest of London, to come in. And in I went, and have been going in at intervals ever since, for the little restaurant is artistic and French and amusing.
When you open the glazed door and go in you are faced by the question: "On the level or down below?" A door to the right leads into the little series of rooms on the ground floor, and a flight of stairs plunges down into the basement. Come, first of all, through the door to the right. We are in the first of three little rooms, with light-coloured walls. A row of small tables is on either side of each room, and in the first room a white desk, with palms on it, faces towards the door. A score of pretty little French waitresses, Bretonnes all, in white and black, are bustling about, and Mademoiselle, if she is not sitting at the white desk, will probably receive you at the door and smile and pilot you to a table. And I should, before going any further, explain to you who Mademoiselle is, and tell you the story of the Au Petit Riche. A good Breton and his wife came to London and established a little restaurant in Old Compton Street, and with them came their two very pretty daughters. And they made the Au Petit Riche a corner of Brittany in London. The chef, who had graduated at the Escargot d'Or, a big bourgeois house near the Halles in Paris, is a Breton by birth, and all the merry little waitresses are from Brittany. The elder of the two daughters married a young journalist and for a while left the restaurant, but when her father and mother thought that the time had come for them to retire, she and her husband took up the management of the restaurant, with her sister to help them. And Mademoiselle, fresh and smiling, with a bunch of roses pinned to her blouse, is in command in the upper rooms, while Madame, as gracious as she is handsome, sits at her desk in one of the lowerrooms with a great bowl of flowers before her, and laughs with the young artists, who form a large portion of the clientele of the Au Petit Riche, and controls the waitresses, and sends the waiters, of whom there are two, out to fetch the wine, which comes from a wineshop a few paces away.
Established at a table in the first of the upstairs rooms, a glance at the walls will tell anyone that the place is a haunt of artists, for the pictures are just the omnium gatherum of artistic trifles that an artist generally puts on the walls of his den. Pencil drawings, rough things in charcoal, etchings, mezzotints, caricatures, sketches in colour, Japanese coloured prints—a gallery of scraps at which a Philistine would turn up his nose, but which look comfortable and homelike to the eye artistic. And at the head of thecarte du jour, which a little waitress holds out to you, there is a good black and white of the exterior of the little restaurant—there is the atmosphere of art about the place.
Let us look down the list of dishes and order our dinner. The little waitress, on chance, has addressed us in French, but if she is answered in English can carry on a conversation in that language. There are two soups on the list,consommé Colbert, which costs sixpence, no doubt because of the egg, andcrème Cressonière, which costs only threepence, and we will choose the cheaper of the two. Amongst the fish dishes, the salmon and the sole cost a shilling, but we will choose thevol au vent de Turbot Joinville, which costs ninepence. Amongst the entrées is an item, twoquails en Cocotte, for a shilling. Curiosity prompts me to suggest that we should order this, having in mind what the price of a single quail is on a club bill of fare, but we shall be on safer ground in ordering one of the dishes of the house, thefilet mignon Petit Riche, which costs a shilling, and withit some peas, fourpence, and some new potatoes, also fourpence. Amongst theentremetsis aPêche Petit Riche, which the little waitress strongly recommends, butbeignets de pommesat threepence seems to me a more fitting ending for our repast.
There is no long waiting for one's food at the Au Petit Riche; the soup arrives almost immediately and is wonderful value for threepence. Thevol au ventis an admirable little fish pie, and thefilet mignona most toothsome morsel of meat, while thebeignetsare all that they should be. The little waitress, when we have arrived at thefilet mignonstage of the dinner, asks with the utmost solicitude: "Do you like eet?" and I have replied for both of us "Very much indeed." At the table to one side of us are a young couple whose dinner has consisted of curried chicken and plum pudding au Rhum, and at the table to our other side, two ladies are eating a typical woman's dinner ofhors d'œuvre, poached eggs and spinach, and a vanilla ice. The Au Petit Riche finds room on its smallcarte du jourfor dishes to suit all tastes.
The little waitress brings the total of the bill on a bit of green paper; and having finished our dinner, and having paid for it, we will go down into the lower rooms before leaving the restaurant. In the lower rooms every table is always occupied, and I fancy that the habitués of the restaurant prefer them to the upper ones. One of them is decorated with golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue ground, and another is an admirable representation of the kitchen of a Breton farmhouse, crockery and all complete. There is a great buzz of talk in these lower rooms, and Madame la Patronne, sitting at her desk amidst the tables, takes her share in the conversation and attends to the making out of the bills at one and the same time.
If you go to the Au Petit Riche in the right frame mind you will be abundantly amused and interested, and you will get wonderful value for the very small sum your dinner will cost you.
And now for my other little restaurant in Soho. It is the Moulin d'Or at 27 Church Street. When Karl Thiele, who was in the employ of Peter Gallina at the Rendez-Vous Restaurant, married the pretty book-keeper at the Richelieu Restaurant, they determined to set up in business on their own account, and took a ground-floor room in Church Street, gave it a good-looking window, put a row of little trees outside, hung baskets of ferns within, and christened it Le Moulin d'Or, hoping that their mill would grind golden grist. It was a doll's house restaurant when I first discovered it two years ago, and the great ambition then of its proprietor and proprietress was that they might in time become sufficiently prosperous to add the first-floor room to their establishment. They have prospered, and when I lately went to dine there I found that the lower room with a restful green paper had been increased in size by taking in the passage, and that upstairs is a new restaurant room also with green walls and a large window, the dream realised of the young couple. And not only have these improvements and additions been made, but quite close to the Moulin d'Or there has been put up a wonderful windmill with electrically lighted sails which revolve, and below it a hand pointing in the direction of the restaurant and a transparency whereon see inscribed the prices of thetable d'hôtemeals, luncheon, and dinner, and supper, for the Moulin d'Or has both itscarte du jourand itstable d'hôtemeals. For half-a-crown, on the occasion of my last visit, I could have eatenhors d'œuvre, made my choice between aconsomméand acrème soupand partaken of salmon,filet de bœuf, roast chicken and caramelcream, but I preferred to turn my attention to thecarte du jour, and orderedcrème Suzette, 6d.;truite au bleu, 1s. 3d.;escalope de veau Viennoise, 10d.;haricots verts, 6d.; and anomelette au Rhum, 10d., all very well cooked and served piping hot. The restaurant has not yet a wine licence, but for all that a special wine is reserved for it at a neighbouring wineshop, an excellent light burgundy,Château Villy, at 4s. 6d. a quart, and 2s. 6d. a pint, and, besides, there is a quite comprehensive wine list. Karl Thiele and his wife, looking for new kingdoms to conquer, have moved to Brighton, where they are established in St James's Street, and the new host at the Moulin d'Or is M. Combes, a very young man, assisted by a very young wife. They are, in spite of their youth, maintaining the reputation of the house for good cookery.
My little French cousin who has married the Comte de St Solidor (if that is not his exact title it is, literally, next door to it) has brought her Breton husband across the Channel to make the acquaintance of his English relatives, and is desperately anxious that he shall not be depressed by London. He is a jolly, round-faced Frenchman, with a rather straggly light beard and a great head of intractable light hair, and, were it not that he cannot speak a word of our language, might pass for a young Yorkshire squire. My little French cousin was particularly afraid that Robert, that is his first name, would suffer all the tortures of ennui on Sunday, for her mother, who was English-born, had told her that the English in England spend their Sunday afternoons, when they are grown-up, in singing hymns, and when they are children in repeating aloud the catechism. I told my little cousin to have no fear, that London Sundays are no longer what they were when her mother was a child, and I offered to take charge of Robert and herself on their first Sunday in London, from after lunch-time till bed-time, and to try and keep them amused.
I asked my little French cousin whether rag-time had penetrated to Brittany, and she, pitying my ignorance, told me that at Dinard, last summer, they had talked to rag-time music, and bathed to it, and hadeven played syncopatedchemin de ferto it, as well as danced to it. But, when I asked her if at Dinard she had ever eaten to it, she said, "But no," and gave a mimetic sketch of eating food to the air of "Everybody's doing it now," which was very funny. That settled where we should dine on Sunday, and I wrote off at once to the Imperial Restaurant to secure a dinner-table for four, and asked another cousin, a British one, to complete thepartie carrée.
The afternoon of Sunday caused me no anxiety. Robert is devoted to music, so I took him and the Comtesse to the Queen's Hall to one of Sir Henry Wood's concerts, and on to the Royal Automobile Club to tea, and neither of them showed any sign of being oppressed by Sabbath gloom.
At ten minutes past eight I was waiting in the vestibule between the street entrance and the restaurant, where a marble bust of the late King Edward smiles at each customer who enters. I had ordered my dinner, a very simple one—potage Germiny, truites au bleu, noisettes de mouton,new peas and potatoes, ham and spinach, asparagus, and abombe, and a magnum of Goulet, 1900, to drink therewith. For ten minutes I sat in the window-seat watching pretty ladies and men of all ages and types pass through the vestibule, give up their coats and cloaks, shake hands, and go in little coveys into the restaurant. The orchestra in the distance was sawing away at an operatic overture, the ante-room was comfortably warmed, and as dinner was the only event of the evening I did not fidget because my little cousin delayed in her coming. I was not the only solitary man waiting. In front of the fireplace stood a beautiful young man, with sleeve-links and studs and buttons to his white waistcoat that must have cost a fortune. Now and again he glanced at the clock, a work of art, in which a gilded cupid points with afinger to the revolving girdle of hours on a vase, and when he had ascertained how lateshewas already he surveyed the other human creatures about him with tolerant pride and slight hauteur. I have no gift of telepathy, but I was quite sure that he was waiting for some very beautiful lady of the stage, and pitied those of us who had no such divinity to be our guest.
The British cousin arrived to time, and not very long afterwards my French cousins appeared. She looked at the clock and declared that they were late because Robert could not find his evening studs, and Robert laughed, as men do when called upon to substantiate a white fib told by their wives. She had asked me whether she ought to dine in her hair, or in a hat, and I had answered that either way would be quite correct. She had decided not to wear a hat in order to be quite English, and she looked entirely charming. I could not help glancing at the beautiful young man who monopolised the fire to see what he thought of my star guest. He was slightly interested, but he answered my glance by one which meant "Wait and see."
I had secured a corner table at a reasonable distance from the band, which occupies a platform about half-way down the room, and we enthroned the little cousin on the chair in the angle, so that she could see everybody and everything in the room. Every table but one was occupied, and that I knew was reserved for the beautiful young man whom we had left looking with a frown at cupid's finger. My little French cousin was in high spirits, and Robert acted as an amiable chorus. She recognised that the room was French—it is a copy of one of the salons at Fontainebleau, and perceived that the pictures of cupids, which are between the round windows and the tall casemented glasses, were inspired by Boucher. She liked the carved marble mantelpiece and the crystaland gold electroliers. I was called upon to tell her who everybody was at the other tables, and I launched out recklessly into fiction. I knew by sight a dozen of our fellow-diners, and the rest I described as M.P.'s and ladies of title, officers of the Household Brigade, and divettes of the Gaiety, Daly's, the Lyric, and the Shaftesbury, which they probably are, celebrated painters and prima donnas, according to their appearance. My British cousin choked over a bone of the trout, so he said, but my little French cousin and her spouse were much impressed by my exhaustive acquaintance with all the celebrities of my native city, which was just the effect I wished to produce.
Little Oddenino, going the round of the tables, saying a word or two to all his clientele, came to our corner, asked if all was as it should be, took up the menu, and lifted his eyebrows. Of course I know that to follow thenoisettesby ham was inartistic, but being in the vein of romance I said that my little French cousin was passionately fond of ham, and demanded it at all her meals, and not that I prefer ham to mutton, which would have been the truth. The little man bowed and smiled and passed on; My cousin asked who he was, and when I replied, "Oddy," she inquired if it was he who would presently make the rag-time. Pleased to be on bed-rock truth at last I gave her a shorthand sketch of Oddenino's career; how Turin is his native town; how he opened one of the great hotels at Cimiez, and earned the thanks of the late Queen Victoria and a fine tie-pin when she stayed there; how he was manager of the East Room at the Criterion, and of the Café Royal, and from the latter restaurant stepped two doors farther down Regent Street and built the Imperial Restaurant. I described story upon story of banqueting-rooms that are to be found on the Glasshouse Street side, and how Freemasons—good, charitable British Freemasons,not troublesome political French Freemasons—feast in them in great numbers every night in the year. I sketched out the little man's other ventures, and I ended by telling her that Oddenino is a man of much consideration in the Italian colony in London, and has been decorated by his king. Surely she did not expect a Cavaliere to make rag-time music? And my little French cousin said "assuredly not."
When we had come to thenoisettes'stage of our dinner the beautiful young man whom we had left waiting in the vestibule came in—alone. He looked as gloomy as Hamlet, and held in his hand a letter, which he tore into small pieces and thrust into the ice pail beside his table. "The poor animal!" said my little cousin pityingly. "He is dining with an excuse." He drank two glasses of champagne in quick succession, and then felt strong enough to sup his soup.
About this period a change came over the music of the band, which had conscientiously worked off the barcarole from "Hoffman," a Viennese waltz and a minuet. A clean-shaven young man, Mr Gideon, the clever composer of the rag-time successes who had been eating his dinner like the rest of us, took his place at the piano, and the orchestra subordinated itself to his leadership. Mr Gideon can make the piano speak as few men can, and my little French cousin and Robert both pricked up their ears and even let the asparagus get cold in their new-found interest. When Mr Gideon, dispensing with orchestral aid, sang "Honolulu," and here and there a girl's voice joined in the refrain, my little cousin turned sharply to me. "Ought one to sing?" she asked, and I told her that it was as she pleased. She listened with all her ears to catch the words, and at last trilled out with the rest: "Ma onaleuleu oné leu," and then laughed at her own boldness.
A quarter of an hour later my little French cousin, with both elbows on the table, a cigarette between her fingers, and sipping at intervals somecrème de menthe, was singing "Hitchy Koo" with the best of them, and Robert was booming away harmonising a bassbouche-fermeéaccompaniment. It was curious how this general singing brought together those who dined. We had been separate little parties before, but the humanity of song made us into one big friendly audience. Even the beautiful young man recovered his spirits sufficiently to try to start an eye flirtation with my little cousin.
The heat in the room grew and the atmosphere thickened with tobacco smoke, but we all sat on till close on eleven o'clock, when the vestibule doors were opened to let out the smoke and let in the cold air, and the ladies put their stoles round their necks, and the men called for their bills. Mine, including cigars and liqueurs, came to exactly a guinea a head.
Before bidding me good-night my little cousin, speaking for herself and Robert, said that they had well dined and had amused themselves, and that the Britannic Sunday was not frightening. But I told her that all our Sunday entertainment was not yet at end, that Robert, when he had taken her home to their hotel, was going to drink a whisky-and-soda with me at the club, and that then I would take him on to an hospitable house, wherechemin de feris played, and that if there was no police raid she would see him back about fivea.m.
My little French cousin looked at me to see whether I was serious, laughed in my face, and taking Robert by the arm led him to the taxi that was waiting for them.
One of the questions people are fond of asking and, like "jesting Pilate," do not stay to have answered, is, "Which is the best place in London at which to dine?" This is generally only a prologue to their opinion on the subject, but when it is an inquiry, and not an overture, I always reply by another question, "Whom are you going to take out to dine?" for there are so many "best places" that the selection of the right one depends entirely on what are the tastes of the person, or persons, you wish to please.—If a man were to answermyquestion by saying that he wished to entertain some bachelors of his own ripe age and ripe tastes, and that he would like to go somewhere where the food is very good, the rooms comfortable, and where there is no band to interfere with conversation, I should diagnose his case at once as a Café Royal one.
The Café Royal is pleasantly conservative, and it is more like a good French restaurant of the Second Empire than is any other dining-place I know in London. Its fame has reached to all other countries in the world, and a French waiter who hopes to become in due time a manager looks on an engagement at "The Café" as a step in his career. Therefore, if ever you feel inclined to be tight-fisted in the matter of tips to the waiters at the Café Royal, reflect that you may meet them again where their good word can help to make a meal comfortable for you. Once in Paris, when I went to dine at Maire's, farup the boulevards, a restaurant into which I had not been for years, I was surprised to be received as though I was the prodigal son of the establishment, amaître d'hôteltaking especial care to find a pleasant table for me, and suggesting various dishes from thecarte du jour, which shaped into a dinner after my own heart. I asked him if I had ever seen him before, and he replied: "I waited on monsieur at the Café Royal in the days when he used to drink theCliquot vin rosée." I pause here to sigh regretfully over the memory of thatcuvéeof Cliquot, at which many men shied because of its colour, but which was the most delightful wine that ever came from the great house of the widow of Rheims. On the first occasion that I entered the restaurant of the Esplanade Hotel in Berlin, feeling rather like a boy going to a new school, I was received by amaître d'hôtelwho knew that I liked a table at the side of the room, suggested to me three of the lightest dishes on thecarteas my dinner, and told me that he remembered that at the Café Royal I always asked for the table in the far corner of the first room and that I liked short and light dinners.
It may be that in a few years, when the Quadrant of Regent Street must be rebuilt, and all the other houses in it will be obliged to conform in some respects to the Piccadilly Hotel, the sample building of the new style, the Café Royal as we know it to-day may be altered in appearance and in the arrangement of its rooms, but I hope that this will not happen in my time. It was the first restaurant at which I learned the joys of dining out in pleasant company—asole Colbert, aChateaubriandandpommes sautés, anomelette au rhumand a bottle of good Burgundy was my idea of a suitable dinner in those my strenuous days, and I have for the house all the affection I have for old friends.The influence of Madame Nicols is against any unnecessary change. An old lady with white hair and dressed in black walks every day through the rooms of the Café Royal, and the habitués know that this is Madame Nicols on her tour of inspection. She still gives personal supervision to the work in the linen-room, as she did in the early days of the café, and her wish is that everything should remain as much as is possible as it was when M. Nicols was alive.
There is a romance in the history of most restaurants that have existed for any length of time, and the rise of the Café Royal from small beginnings is interwoven with the Franco-Prussian War and with the rise and destruction of the Commune. On 11th February 1865 M. Daniel Nicols, who had been in the wine trade at Bercy, that part of Paris where the great wine depots are, opened a modest little café-restaurant in the lower part of Regent Street. It occupied the space where the entrance and hall now are. A photograph of the front of the house at that time is extant, showing the plate-glass window with a broad brass band below it, and on the glass in white letters announcements of the good things to be found within. In front of the modest doorway stands M. Nicols, looking very proud of his establishment, while two of his friends lean gracefully against the pilasters of the entrance, and the head waiter stands respectfully a step or two farther back. On the little balcony before the windows of the entresol stand the ladies of M. Nicols' family. The interior of the window was in those days decked with salads and with any foods that looked tempting, to catch the attention of the passer-by. In fact, it was just such an unpretentious little restaurant as any young foreigner coming to London and determined to make a competence might start nowadays hoping that Fortune would turn herwheel in his direction. But most young foreigners do not have the chance, or the judgment, to establish themselves in Regent Street. I have a dim memory when I was a schoolboy of being impressed by some stuffed pheasants in the Café Royal window, and at the time of the great war I was first taken inside it to meet there a distant connection of my family, a Buonapartist, who had been one of the Empress's ministers during the short period when the Government of France fell into her hands and had gone into exile when the Republic was proclaimed. Those are my first two recollections of the Café Royal.
It was the flood of non-combatants and political exiles, business men, authors and actors; Red Republicans, Monarchists, and Buonapartists, whom the war and the political upheavals in France sent over to this country, that made the fortune of the little restaurant. However they might differ as to the colour of their politics, they were all Frenchmen, they all sighed for the blue skies of France; they found in the Café Royal a little corner of their beloved native land, and they naturally all gravitated to it. The house was much too small for the number of its frequenters, when, fortunately, the old Union Tavern in Glasshouse Street came into the market, was bought, and converted into the café as we know it, with its painted ceiling and its wealth of gilding, and the restaurant and the private dining-rooms were established on the other floors. This was the first of many extensions and alterations. A building on the Air Street side was absorbed, and a billiard-room established on the ground floor, but very soon the billiard-tables were given marching orders, and the space they occupied was turned into a grill-room. An enlargement of the kitchen, the installation of a lift on the Air Street side, the making of a little ante-room and cloakrooms outside the restaurant—beforethis improvement any man waiting for a lady who was going to dine with him did so in the passage leading to the café or on the stairs—and the construction somewhere very near the roof of a masonic temple and a ballroom were all additions.
M. Nicols and Madame Nicols gave personal attention to all details, and the experience M. Nicols had gained at Bercy was of great use to him in laying down the fine cellar of wines, particularly of red wines, which is the great pride of the house. To draw a very fine distinction, I would say of the Café Royal that it is a restaurant to which gourmets go to drink fine wines and to eat good food therewith, while at other first-class restaurants gourmets go to eat good food and to drink fine wines therewith. The only cellar of red wines that I know which can compare with that of the Café Royal is the cellar of Voisin's in Paris. The wine-list of the Café Royal is splendidly comprehensive, and in its pages are to be found all the fine wines grown in Europe, even Switzerland being recognised, and the wines of the Rhone Valley above the Lake of Geneva being given a place in the book. M. Delacoste, the first manager I remember at the Café Royal, under M. Nicols, was a great authority on wines, and he bought so largely that there came a time when M. Nicols recognised that his clients with the utmost good will could never drink all the wine laid down for them, and sold a portion of it by auction. Other managers of the Café Royal have been Wolschleger; Oddenino, who was appointed when M. Nicols died in 1897, and during whose tenancy of the post many of the improvements in the house were made; Gerard, mighty of girth, who had been in the kitchen of the Café Anglais under Dugleré, and who moved on to the Ocean Hotel, Sandown; and now Judah, who had been manager of the Cecil, and who keeps a very steady hand on the tiller. M. Judah,on the occasion of the visit of the President of the French Republic to London in 1913, was created an officer of the Order of Mérite Agricole.
Sportsmen have always had a special affection for the Café Royal. The men who were prominent in the revival of road-coaching were all patrons of the restaurant, and any night you may see half-a-dozen well-known owners of race-horses dining there. The Stage, the Stock Exchange, and Literature also have a liking for the old house, and hunting men love it.
When I mentioned it as the ideal place for a dinner of bachelor gourmets, I did not mean that men do not bring their wives and sisters and sweethearts there. They do. But the Café Royal does not lay itself out to capture the ladies. I never heard of anyone having afternoon tea there, and when a lady tells me that she likes dining at the Café Royal I always mentally give her a good mark, for it shows that she places in her affections good things to drink and good things to eat before those "springes to catch woodcock," gipsy bands in crimson coats, and palm lounges.
In the great gilded cage of the restaurant and the big room the windows of which open on to Glasshouse Street, the custom is to eat the lunch of the day, or to select dishes from it, while dinner is anà la cartemeal. If one entertains a lady at dinner one probably orders a dinner which canters through the accepted courses, and I have by me the menu of such a one:
Hors d'œuvre Russe.Pot-au-feu.Sole Waleska.Noisette d'agneau Lavallière.Haricots verts à l'Anglaise.Parfait de foie gras.Caille en cocotte.Salade.Pôle Nord.
And with this dinner we drank a good bottle of St Marceaux.
But men when they dine together think little of the rightful sequence of courses, and order what their taste prompts them to eat. I have dined at the Café Royal, and dined well onmoules Marinières—and one can eatmoulesat the Café without fear, half a cold grouse, a salad and apetit Suissecheese. When the ham is a dish of the day it always tempts me, for the Café Royal hams are princes of their kind, and the coldmoussesthat thechef de cuisine, M. François Maître, makes are beautifully light. The specialities of the cuisine of the Café Royal areœufs Magenta, œufs Wallace, homard Thérmidor, sole Beaumanoir, filet de sole Simone, darne de saumon à l'Ecossaise, truite Dartois, turbotin Paysanne, poularde bisque, faisan Carême, perdreau à la Royal, caille Châtelaine, poulet sauté Sigurd, suprême de volaille à la Patti, tournedos Figaro, noisette de pré salé moderne, côte d'agneau Sultane, filet de bœuf Cambacères, selle d'agneau favorite.
Down in the café atable d'hôtemeal is served, wonderful value for very few shillings, but I am not smoke-proof, and I like eating my meals without the taste and smell of tobacco added to them. The grill-room is always full, and perhaps more solid eating, of juicy fillets and grilled chops and cutlets, is done there than anywhere else in the house, except in the banqueting-rooms. I have banqueted with the Bons Frères, a club of cheery connoisseurs who like their dinner to be light and the songs that follow it also to be airy, in the great gilded banqueting-room with, as part of its decoration, many crowned N's, which might stand for Napoleon, but really indicate Nicols; I have dined in smaller rooms with the Foxhunters' Lodge, and with many other groups of good Freemasons and good diners; I have assisted at "Au Revoir" banquets without number, and I know when I am bidden tofeast in a private room at the Café Royal that I shall be given a good dinner on sound if perhaps conservative lines. This menu of a banquet given not long since, which is typical, will convey more what I mean than many words of description:
Natives.Petite Marmite.Saumon Sauce Genévoise.Blanchailles.Caille à la Cavour.Jambon d'York aux Petits Pois.Caneton de Rouen à la Presse.Salade d'Orange.Asperges Sauce Divine.Bombe Alexandra.Friandises.Os à la Moëlle.Café.Dessert.Vins.Graves Monopole, Dry.Heidsieck and Co., 1898.Louis Roederer, 1899.Ch. Le Tertre, 1888.Martinez Port, 1884.Denis Mouniés, 1860.Liqueurs.
As a final word of praise for the Café Royal, let me record that just as many of its waiters grow grey-headed in its service, so the steps of any man who is a lover of good cheer and who has been an habitué of the restaurant seem unconsciously to lead him to its doors. It was my first love amongst the restaurants, and—well, you know how the proverb runs.
The great catastrophe of my life, I think, was that the first oyster I ate was a bad one. I was at school for a year or two at Dedham, as a preparation for Harrow, and Dedham is in Essex, and not far from Colchester. An old man used to wheel a barrow of oysters to the playing field, and dispensed his shell-fish at a penny an oyster. One day when I was in funds I thought that I would begin to enjoy the luxuries of life, and bought an oyster. That oyster was a bad one. Not just an ordinary bad oyster, but of a superlative badness, the most horrible oyster that any small boy ever tried to swallow—and failed. The memory of that oyster kept me for many years from making a second attempt. When I was first bidden to a Colchester oyster feast and sat amidst Cabinet Ministers and mayors and aldermen in their robes of office, and generals and admirals all pitching into the bivalves like winking, I, to the great surprise of the waiters, ate twice as many oysters as any alderman present. Had I been given an opportunity of making a speech after lunch I should have told the assembled company that my unparalleled feat in the absorption of Colchester natives that day was my revenge for the horrors of the first Colchester oyster I tried to eat one sunlit spring afternoon on the Dedham playing field. I have not yet been invited by a Mayor of Whitstable to accompany him to sea to eat oysters afloat on the first day of the dredging season, but Ihave eaten many oysters plain and oysters scalloped at the "Bear and Key," and I never have had a grudge against any individual Whitstable oyster, so there is no injury to redress.
All this, I know, should be reserved for my autobiography; but as I am never likely to autobiograph myself it has to be set down here.
And now to talk of some of the oyster-houses of London. If on the "Roof of the World," the great tableland of Thibet, one British explorer met another British explorer, and the first man suddenly said "Scott's!" the second man inevitably would answer "Oysters," for Scott's window at the top of the Haymarket, with its little barrels of oysters and its crimson lobsters reposing on beds of salad stuff, and its big crabs lying on their backs and folding their vandyke-brown claws, as if in pious meditation, over their buff stomachs, is one of the landmarks of London. The old Scott's, before the fire that gutted it, has faded from the memory of most Londoners, and the new building, with its pillars, which are apparently of mother-o'-pearl pressed into black marble, with bands of ornamental brass about them, and its red blinds and red-shaded lamps in the upper storeys, is accepted as being the hub of the West End of London, just as the old one was. Inside the doors are the two marble-topped counters with piles of plates upon them, and on their fronts long napkins hanging from rails. Behind the counters men in white jackets are busy opening oysters and pouring out tumblers of stout and glasses of Chablis all day long. There are on the counters stacks of thin slices of brown bread and butter and other stacks of sandwiches of various kinds of fish and plates of prawns of coral-pink. I know of no better place than this wide oyster hall of Scott's for a theatre-goer to eat a very light meal before going early to a theatre whenhe intends to sup luxuriously after the show. Scott's, though its shell-fish are its trump cards, desires to be all things to all men, and to all women. It possesses a "dive" in its basement with tiled walls, on which Japanese fish swim in and out through Japanesy weeds, and behind the oyster hall is the grill-room, shut off from draughts by a great glass screen, in which a white-clothed cook stands with a table of viands at his elbow, turning the chops and steaks, sausages and rashers on the big grill. Upstairs there is anà la carterestaurant, where all kinds of luxuries are obtainable, and Scott's is a very popular place at which to sup after the theatre.
If you would like to see how popular oysters are with Londoners at lunch-time, come with me to the Macclesfield in the street of that name leading out of Shaftesbury Avenue. When "Papa" De Hem first took over the Macclesfield it was just a public-house in the Soho district, but "Papa," who is a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, and who was through the Siege of Paris, brought the thorough methods of an old soldier to bear upon the house. He turned all the old clientele out of its doors, and, though he kept a bar in the premises, it was by selling very large quantities of Whitstable oysters at a price that left him a very small profit that he saw his way to a fortune. Journalists and actors and artists and other dwellers in the realms of artistic Bohemia soon learnt of the new resort. Dagonet chatted of it inMustard and Cress, Pitcher told tales concerning it inGals' Gossip, and took the chair at the smoking concerts for charities held in the grotto upstairs, and as the prices have been kept rigorously low, and as the oysters have always been excellent, the Macclesfield is now one of the most popular oyster-houses in London. Come in through the glass door, and you find on one side the long bar,and on the other side little tables, at which every seat is occupied by lunchers who are eating Whitstables on the deep shell, or oyster stew, or oysters fried, or oysters grilled, or broiled lobsters, or the mayonnaise of lobster which is one of the specialities of the house. There are luncheon dishes of meat and fowl also obtainable, but when I go to the Macclesfield I go there to eat shell-fish, and am not to be turned from my purpose by any roast chicken or grilled chop. We are not in the least likely to find a vacant seat at any of these first tables, so we will move on into the wider space where is the oyster bar, with men in white behind it, busy with their oyster knives, and behind them a background of barrels of Meux's stout. Here is the entrance to the grotto—an entrance beautified by trellis-work and Japanese lanterns. The walls of the grotto are of oyster-shells, with here and there an irregular piece of mirror showing through, and all Papa De Hem's best customers have written their names on the oyster-shells. The tables in the grotto are set close together, and there are two of them in a snug corner, towards which every customer first makes his way, only to find nine times out of ten that there is no place for him. The waitresses bustle about, and the proprietor has a word to say to all old friends. Upstairs on the first floor is another grotto, larger than the downstairs one, and quieter, and here ladies are often brought to lunch.
Stout is the classic accompaniment to oysters, and it is possible to eat the bivalves actually in the shadow of Meux's great Horseshoe Brewery, for the Horseshoe Tavern next door has an oyster dive down in the basement, just below its grill-room. On the way down to the dive you pass the great spirit casks of the Horseshoe safely placed behind a grille, the biggest cask of all being that of theten-year-old "Annie Laurie" whisky, which holds 1000 gallons. The oyster bar resembles a horseshoe in shape, and behind it is a wall of small kegs of Meux's stout. The Horseshoe is a good old-fashioned British house, with one of the largest open fires in London, and I remember that once when there was an especially splendid haunch of venison to be cooked for a party of gourmets Mr Baker was approached, and the venison feast was held at the Horseshoe.
Rule's Oyster-house, in Maiden Lane, in the window of which are two huge shells from Singapore and many big champagne bottles, is a house of many associations with the men of the pen of Victorian days. Albert Smith was the demigod of the establishment. Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold, Henry Irving, Besant and Rice, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Yates and Sala were some of the men who used to eat oysters in Maiden Lane and who have accorded appreciation of them. There are busts and portraits on the walls of the rooms of many theatrical celebrities, and in one room is a fine collection of Dighton caricatures.
White's and Gow's, in the Strand, both old-established fish and oyster houses, each deserve a word, and the Chandos, over against the National Portrait Gallery, gives its oyster-eating patrons six oysters, a glass of stout, and bread and butter for a shilling.
Sweeting's, in Fleet Street, is especially dear to me, because of its sawdusted floor. The front of the house has been set back in the widening of the street, but the house remains very much as it was. By the marble-topped counters are wooden stools, on which the lunchers perch like sparrows, and besides the oysters there are fish snacks and big lobsters, and on one of the counters is a selectionof sandwiches of all kinds. Upstairs there are two floors of dining-rooms for people who want something more solid than oysters or sandwiches.
No chapter on oyster-houses would be complete without reference to Driver's in Glasshouse Street, and Wilton's in King Street, both houses which supply the clubs and great restaurants with oysters, and which, as well, open oysters for hungry customers at their counters. At Driver's a little screen of stained glass only partially conceals the oysters which are spread out on the broad space behind the glass. On the door is the simple legend, "Driver, Oysterman," and inside are three black-coated men opening oysters behind the counter. In a little glass box sits a lady cashier. This in old days used to be where Mrs Driver sat, and could always spare time for a smile and a word to an old customer. On the wall behind the counter is a board with the orders for oysters contained by clips, and two shelves, on which are rows of big shells, showing wide surfaces of mother-o'-pearl. A little staircase leads to an upper room, where sybarites can sit and eat oysters and caviare and bread and cheese, and there is a little table downstairs tucked away behind the staircase; but I am one of the stalwarts who have always stood at the counter at Driver's to eat my oysters and to wipe my fingers afterwards on the pendant napkins.
Behind Wilton's plate-glass windows there are warrants suitably framed, and the proprietor is generally to be seen either behind his counting-desk or the little oyster bar in the spacious shop. Wilton's at one time used to purvey Irish oysters, as well as other British varieties, but the supply was so uncertain that they have been taken off the list.
If I have omitted to give the prices of the oysters at the various oyster-houses, it is because they vary so much. One can buy native oysters in the shopsat Whitstable for 1s. a dozen, or 1s. 9d. for twenty-five. By the time they arrive in London their cheapest price is 1s. 6d. a dozen, and the specially selected ones, which are sometimes called "Royal Natives," cost as much at some oyster-houses as 3s. 6d. a dozen. Seconds, Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Portuguese are each a step lower down in price. American oysters are to be obtained in Paris at Prunier's, but I know of no house in London at the present time which imports them. Ten years ago they were obtainable at two of the houses.
Gone are the great days of the whitebait dinners at Blackwall and Greenwich. No longer doesThe Morning Postever publish such a paragraph as this, "Yesterday the Cabinet Ministers went down the river in the ordnance barges to Lovegrove's West India Dock Tavern, Blackwall, to partake of their annual fish dinner. Covers were laid for thirty-five gentlemen," which appeared on 10th September 1835. No longer is there a great rivalry between the two Greenwich taverns, the Trafalgar and the Ship. The Ship still remains and the whitebait have not deserted the Thames, but though at intervals I read paragraphs that fish dinners are still to be obtained at the Ship, I never meet anyone who has journeyed to Greenwich to see whether this is so, and the last time that I went there to dine my reception was so chilly that I have not experimented again. But the account of that dinner may interest as showing what a Greenwich fish dinner was in the days of good King Edward.
It was pleasant to see Miss Dainty's (of all the principal London theatres) handwriting again. She had been very ill—at the point of death, indeed—owing to a sprained ankle, which prevented her going to Ascot, for which race meeting she had ordered three dresses, each of which was a dream. When was I going to take her out to dinner? The parrotwas very well, but was pecking the feathers out of his tail. She had some new pets—two goldfish, whose glass bowl had been broken and who now lived in a big yellow vase. The cat had eaten one of the lovebirds, and was ill for two days afterwards. The pug had been exchanged for a fox-terrier—Jack, the dearest dog in the world. Jack had gone up the river on the electric launch and had fought two dogs, and had been bitten over the eye, and had covered all his mistress's white piqué skirt with blood; but for all that he was a duck and his mother's own darling.
This, much summarised, was the pretty little lady's letter, and I wrote back at once to say that the pleasure of entertaining a princess of the blood-royal was as nothing to the honour of her company, and if the foot was well enough, would she honour me with her presence at dinner anywhere she liked? And, as the weather had turned tropical, I suggested either Greenwich or the restaurant at Earl's Court.
For Greenwich the fair lady gave her decision, and then I made a further suggestion: that, if she did not mind unaristocratic company, the pleasantest way was to go by boat.
This suggestion was accepted, and Miss Dainty in the late afternoon called for me at a dingy Fleet Street office. I was delighted to see the little lady, looking very fresh and nice as she sat back in her cab, and I trust that my face showed nothing except pleasure when I perceived a small fox-terrier with a large muzzle and a long leash sitting by her side. Miss Dainty explained that as she had allowed her maid to go out for the afternoon she had to bring Jack, and of course I said that I was delighted.
We embarked at the Temple pier on a boat, which was as most river boats are. There were gentlemen who had neglected to shave, smoking strong pipes; there were affable ladies of a conversational tendencyand there were a violin and harp; but there were as a compensation all the beautiful sights of the river to be seen, the cathedral-like Tower Bridge, the forest of shipping, the red-sailed boats fighting their way up against the tide, the line of barges in picturesque zigzag following the puffing tugs; and all these things Miss Dainty saw and appreciated. There was much to tell, too, that Miss Dainty had not written in her letter, and Jack was a never-failing source of interest. Jack wound his leash round the legs of the pipe-smoking gentlemen, was not quite sure that the babies of the conversational ladies were not things that he ought to eat, and at intervals wanted to go overboard and fight imaginary dogs in the Thames.
Arrived at Greenwich, at the Ship (the tavern with a rather dingy front, with two tiers of bow windows, with its little garden gay with white and green lamps, and with its fountain and rockery which had bits of paper and straws floating in the basin), I asked for the proprietor. Mr Bale, thick-set, and with a little moustache, came out of his room, and whether it was that Fleet Street and the Thames had given me a tramplike appearance, or whether it was that he did not at once take a fancy to Jack, I could not say, but he did not seem overjoyed to see us. Yet presently he thawed, told me that he had kept a table by the window for us, and that our dinner would be ready at six-thirty as I had telegraphed.
In the meantime I suggested that we should see the rest of the house. "Would it not be better to leave the dog downstairs?" suggested Mr Bale, and Jack was tied up somewhere below, while we went round the upper two storeys of dining-rooms—for the Ship is a house of nothing but dining-rooms. It is a tavern, not a hotel, and there are no bedrooms for guests. We went into the pleasant bow-windowed rooms on the first floor, in one of which a table waslaid ready, with a very beautiful decoration of pink and white flowers, and in the other of which stand the busts of Fox and Pitt. We looked at the two curious wooden images in the passage, at the chairs with the picture of a ship let into their backs, and at the flags of all nations which hang in the long banqueting-room; and all the time Jack, tied up below, lifted up his voice and wept.
I asked if Jack might be allowed to come into the dining-room and sit beside his mistress while we had dinner, giving the dog a character for peacefulness and quiet for which I might have been prosecuted for perjury; but it was against the rules of the house, and Mr Bale suggested that if Jack was tied up to a pole of the awning just outside the window he would be able to gaze through the glass at his mistress and be happy.
A fine old Britannic waiter, who looked like a very much reduced copy of Sir William Vernon-Harcourt, put down two round silver dishes, lifted up the covers, and there were twosouchés, one of salmon and one of flounder. I helped Miss Dainty to some of the salmon and filled her glass with the Pommery, which, after much thought, I had selected from the wine list. But she touched neither; her eyes were on Jack outside, for that accomplished dog, after doing a maypole dance round the pole, had now arrived at the end of his leash—and incipient strangulation. Miss Dainty went outside to rescue her pet from instant death, and I, having eaten mysouché, followed. Jack wanted water, and a sympathetic hall porter who appeared on the scene volunteered to get him a soup-plateful, and tie him somewhere where he could not strangle himself.
Thesouchéshad been removed, and some lobster rissoles and fried slips had taken their place. Miss Dainty took a rissole and ate it while she watchedthe hall porter put Jack's plate of water down, and I made short work of a slip and was going to try the rissoles when Jack, in a plaintive tone of voice, informed the world that something was the matter. His mistress understood him at once. The poor dear would not drink his water unless she stood by; and this having been proved by actual fact, Miss Dainty, with myself in attendance, came back to find that whiting puddings and stewed eels had taken the place of former dishes.
Miss Dainty took a small helping of the eels, looked at it, and then turned her eyes again to Jack, who was going through a series of gymnastics. I ate my whiting pudding, which I love, in fevered haste, and had got half-way through my helping of eels when Miss Dainty discovered what was the matter with Jack. The boys on the steps below were annoying him, and the only way to keep him quiet would be to give him some bones. The sympathetic hall porter again came to the rescue, and Jack, under his mistress's eye, made fine trencher play with two bones.
There was a look of reproach in the veteran waiter's eye when we came back and found that the crab omelette and salmon cutletsà l'indiennewere cooling. I tried to draw Miss Dainty's attention away from Jack. I told her how Mr Punch had called her Faustine, and had written a page about her; but when she found there was nothing to quote in her book of press notices she lost all interest in the hump-backed gentleman.
With the advent of the plain whitebait a new danger to Jack arose. A turtle was brought by three men on to the lawn and turned loose, and Miss Dainty had to go out and assure herself that Jack was not frightened, and that the turtle was not meditating an attack upon him.
The turtle was found to be a harmless and interesting insect, and having been shown, with practical illustrations, how the beast was captured by savages, Miss Dainty took great pity on it, collected water in the soup-plate from the fountain, poured it over its head, and tried to induce it to drink, which the turtle steadfastly refused to do.
The veteran waiter was stern when we returned and found the devilled whitebait on the table. I told him to bring the coffee and liqueurs and bill out into the garden, because Miss Dainty, having been separated from her dog so long, wanted to nurse and pet him.
This was the bill: Two dinners, 14s.; one Pommery, 18s.; two liqueurs, 1s. 6d.; coffee, 1s.; attendance, 1s.; total, £1, 15s. 6d.
We sat and watched St Paul's stand clear against the sunset, and Miss Dainty, her dog happy in her lap, suddenly said: "If you give this place a good notice, I'll never speak to you again."
"Why?" I replied. "The whitebait was delicious, the whiting pudding capital, the omelette good. I liked the fried slips and the rissoles."
"Yes, perhaps," said Miss Dainty, with a pout. "But they wouldn't let me have my dog in the dining-room!"
I wonder whether Jabez Balfour, the genius who jumped at Park Lane and landed on Broadmoor, ever comes to London from his country retreat, where, under another name, he earns his daily bread, and looks at the great palaces which were one of his money-spinning schemes and notes the changes that are made in them. He certainly would scarcely recognise to-day in the modern Hotel Cecil the great red-brick and stone block of chambers and flats which first grew up, some seventeen or eighteen years ago, next to the Adelphi Terrace overlooking the Embankment Gardens. A company with some very distinguished gentlemen on the list of the directors was formed to buy the great building, and they have worked with indomitable perseverance to make a house that was not intended to be an hotel into one of the most comfortable hotels in London, and to popularise a restaurant which at first refused to respond to their efforts.
The Cecil Restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, with M. Bertini, a clever, quick-eyed, bearded Italian as manager, and M. Coste, who was one of the greatest of the great chefs of the close of the Victorian era, in command of the kitchens. But the company had been in too great a hurry to begin to earn money, and the arrangements were not yet working quite smoothly when London that dines and thinks about its dinners was first asked to sit in judgment on the new dining-place.
The first roughnesses soon wore off; M. Bertini was an admirablemaître d'hôtel—I have lost sight of him of late years, but I think he went for a time to South Africa, and he made a short appearance as proprietor of a small restaurant in the Haymarket—and M. Coste, "the old man," as the rest of the staff affectionately called him behind his back, sent out through the doors that separate the kitchen from the restaurant little dinners that delighted the palates of connoisseurs. This propinquity of kitchen to restaurant is a great advantage. As you sit at your table in the Cecil Restaurant you can, if you listen for it, hear the voices of the men who call out the orders to the cooks—an unceasing chant, a hymn to Gastronomy, and as a result no dish ever comes cold to table at the Cecil Restaurant.
What, however, was radically wrong at first with the Cecil Restaurant was its decoration. It is a very large, very high pillared hall, with a glazed balcony overlooking the Victoria Gardens, and big windows on the west giving a glorious view of Westminster; but its decorations were at first too sombre in colour. The panelling was of walnut wood, a large square of deep crimson velvet was embroidered with the Cecil arms, the great mantelpieces of purple-grey Sicilian marble conformed to the quiet scheme of colour, and the pillars and great window casings all harmonised in the minor key. The mantelpieces are all that remain to-day of the original scheme of colouring, and they are scarcely noticeable amidst the shimmer of pink and white and gold. A minor drawback was that the restaurant had no ante-room, and that a dinner-giver had to await his guests in the bustling hall of the hotel. People who dined at the Cecil Restaurant in those days praised the cooking, and had nothing except good words for the attendance and wine, but they said it was not "cheery." Nine out of ten ladies or men did not trouble to analysetheir feelings, but it was the coldness of their surroundings that affected them.
To tear down all the decorations of a newly built hall is an heroic remedy which no board of directors would willingly face, and before this was done other less expensive remedies were tried. A separate entrance for the restaurant was made in the courtyard, and a lounge built and quite charmingly decorated. M. Paillard, the great Parisian restaurateur, crossed the Channel and became for a time manager of the restaurant, making with M. Coste in the kitchen a remarkable combination of talent. A Roumanian band, fierce-looking gentlemen in embroidered garments, who had been sensationally successful at one of the great exhibitions in Paris, were imported, were perched up on a rostrum and made the roof reverberate with their czardas. The services of "Smiler," a curry-cook of great renown, were exclusively retained for the Cecil. (Sherry's in New York offered "Smiler" large sums of money to transfer his services, and he crossed the Atlantic with a little band of underlings of his own nationality. "Smiler" travelled first class, and the reporters on the other side not unnaturally took him to be an Indian Prince on his travels. "Smiler" did not undeceive them, and enjoyed for some days all the privileges given to royalty in a republic. Then he reported at Sherry's.) Mr Hector Tenant, the managing director of the Empire, joined the Cecil board, and a series of variety performances after dinner on Sundays filled the big restaurant to its holding capacity on those evenings. Harry Lauder, concerning whose talent and fine voice everybody was talking at that time, sang, I remember, on one of those occasions. But there must have been some excellent reasons for not continuing these variety performances, for after a time they ceased.
At last the board took its courage in both hands and redecorated the restaurant from floor to ceiling. It is now a hall of white and gold and pink. The panels are of Rose du Barri silk, the pillars are gleaming white, while the frieze is of the lightest blue. A dark rose carpet gives relief to this shimmering, shining restaurant, and in its centre is a handsome table of many tiers for fruit and sweet things, a table of gilt sphinx heads and many electric lamps. The waiters wear knee-breeches; the band plays in an ante-room. The redecorated restaurant at once jumped into the affections of the world that dines, and further to add to the good temper of this place of butterfly colouring, the directors engaged as themaître d'hôtelin charge of the restaurant, M. Califano, who is known to the patrons of the Cecil as "Sunny Jim." One of the advantages with which M. Califano has been endowed by Nature is a smiling face, and some wit at the time that "Sunny Jim" was a favourite figure on all the hoardings, gave M. Califano his nickname.
To complete their work of betterment, the board added to the restaurant and hotel the new palm court, a sumptuous lounge, upholstered in powdered blue and gold, which has eaten up more than a half of the great forecourt of the Cecil. This forecourt, which was almost of the size and shape of a Roman hippodrome, was a great comfort in past days to the cabdrivers of London, for there was unlimited room in it for them to wait to take up guests at the hotel; but it was a great waste of space. The new palm court is a very splendid place, and besides giving the restaurant a noble reception-room, it has shut away from the hotel all the noise of the street and all the bustle of the reception hall. It has, however, done away with the most American spot in London,the space of paving outside the front entrance of the Cecil which used to be known as "The Beach." Here used to be cane chairs and rocking-chairs and piles of luggage, and a newspaper stall, and in the summer-time pretty girls sunning themselves, and waiters hurrying to and fro with cold drinks and long straws in them; and the American guests of the hotel who loved the brightness and the bustle of the spot christened it "The Beach," and preferred it to any of the gilded parlours inside the hotel. The new palm court, however, in a stately manner, has taken the place of "The Beach" as a meeting-ground for the hotel guests. Mr Kaiser, the general manager of the Hotel Cecil, tells me that the building of this fine lounge has been of benefit to the restaurant as giving a finishing touch to its comforts, and I have no doubt that this is so, for dining in the restaurant, I found it comfortably filled by people staying in the hotel, and guests from outside, and "Sunny Jim" told me of the vast numbers whom on such special occasions as Christmas and New Year's Eve he manages to accommodate in the restaurant and balcony.
I ate the Cecilian dinner, a seven-and-sixpennytable d'hôtemeal, which I found quite excellent. This is the menu:
Huîtres Natives on Hors d'Œuvre.Consommé Princesse.Crème Parisienne.Filets de Sole Carême.Quartier d'Agneau Arléquine.Pommes Macaire.Caille en Cocotte au Jus d'Ananas.Salade.Asperges, Sauce Hollandaise.Glacé à l'Andalouse.Friandises.
The delicate sauce with the sole, the neatness ofthe garnish of the vegetables with the quarter of lamb, the plumpness of the quail and their contrast of taste with the pine-apple, would have assured me that the kitchen is in first-class hands, even had I not known that M. Jean Alletru, a chef who stands very high in the estimation of his brother chefs, had succeeded M. Coste, when that great man retired.
I might have spent a shilling less and have eaten an alternative dinner without the oysters in it, or I might have taken advantage of an arrangement by which anyone dining at the Cecil can pay a fixed price for his or her dinner, and choose practically anything they like from thecarte du jour, which is a very ample one, and which generally contains some of thespécialitéscreated by M. Alletru. This is the list of thesespécialitésand a couple of very pretty little dinners can be arranged from amongst them, the only thing needed in addition being a soup.Tomate en surprise au caviar, turbotin Prince de Galles, filet de sole Clarence, timbale de truite froide Norvégienne, ris de veau St Cloud, caille à la Salvini, poitrine de volaille Providence, selle d'agneau Cecil, poularde à la Jacques, fraises Tetrazzini, bouteille de champagne en surprise.
I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that amaître-chefcan receive is that which comes from his brothers in art, and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel Cecil and theirchef de cuisinethan that the Ligue des Gourmands, the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier, placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who, with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which there were three hundred guestspresent, in preference to that of any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the perfection of a dinner of ceremony. TheDodineand theFraises Sarah-Bernhardtwere the two sensational dishes of the feast, but it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting without being heavy:
Hors d'œuvre.Petite Marmite Béarnaise.Truite Saumonée aux Crevettes Roses.Dodine de Canard au Chambertin.Nouilles au Beurre Noisette.Agneau de Pauillac à la Bordelaise.Petits pois frais de Clamart.Poularde de France.Cœur de Romaine aux Pommes d'Amour.Asperges d'Argenteuil Crème Mousseline.Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt.Dessert.Café—Liqueurs.Bénédictine.
Whether the Cecil was the first of the great banqueting houses to effect a reform in the service of public banquets I am not sure, but it was at the Cecil that I first found that such a reform had taken place. In old days it was the custom for the waiters to trail a dish along the whole length of a banqueting-table, and the salmon, which went up the room a noble-looking fish, came down five minutes later to starvation corner, a head, a tail and a skeleton. It was at the Cecil that I first noticed the breaking up of the tables into manageable sections of guests, with a waiter and his aids to each section, and the dinner served straight from the kitchen to that section. The restaurant and the banqueting halls and the private dining-rooms by no means exhaust the list of the accommodations of those who dine thatthe Cecil affords. There is below the Rose du Barri room another one, the Indian room, decorated in Oriental fashion with blue and yellow tiles, and in this a grill dinner and atable d'hôtedinner are both served, and when this room overflows another equally spacious room is opened and becomes the grill-room.
(As I correct the proofs of this chapter news comes to me that "Sunny Jim" will in 1914 become a joint partner in the management of the St James's Palace Hotel in Bury Street and will give special attention to its restaurant.)