I reach back in memory farther in touch with Claridge's than with any other hostelry in London, One of the stories of her early life that my mother often told me when I was a small boy was how my grandfather, as crotchety an elderly widower as ever ruled an Indian district, when he finally retired from the service of John Company, arrived in London with his bullock trunks and sandalwood boxes lined with tin, his bedding rolled up in bundles, his guns, his fly-whisks, and palm-fans, and all the strange paraphernalia that an Anglo-Indian official gathered about him in those days. With him came his faithful bearer, and an ayah, and his little pale daughter, and they all descended at Claridge's Hotel—though perhaps in those days it might have been Mivart's. The first great grief of the little girl's life was that the "Nabob," as my grandfather was called in the family, delivered a "hookum" to the manager of the hotel that an English nurse must be provided directly for his small daughter, as the ayah ought to return at once to her own country, and my mother was obliged to say good-bye to her devoted Indian attendant. My first personal introduction to Claridge's was when, as a schoolboy, I was invited by another schoolboy, who wished to show off, to go with him to visit a GermanGraf, a nobleman with a very long string of minor titles, whose greatest glory was that he owned a castle on the Rhine. TheGrafwas very polite tothe two little English boys, and talked to us in very bad English; and when we took our departure he saw us to the door as though we had been persons of the greatest importance. Mr Claridge, wearing a skull-cap of velvet, happened to be in the hall as we passed through, and I remember well the beautiful bow that he gave to the Count. Mr Claridge's bows were celebrated; they were of a different depth, according to the rank of the person to whom he bowed, and there was even a delicate difference in the salute that he gave to a Serene Highness to that with which he welcomed a Royal Highness. Claridge's in those days consisted of half-a-dozen houses connected with each other, and the best rooms in these houses formed the suites where the various royalties who patronised the hotel lodged, Mr Claridge and his staff of servants being always on the watch that the privacy of his guests should not be invaded. On one occasion, when a famous caricaturist took a room at the hotel, Mr Claridge waited on him and informed him that he must transfer his custom elsewhere, for, though he, Mr Claridge, was a great admirer of the artist's talent, and decorated the walls of some of the rooms with his work, he could never allow a royal personage to be caricatured within the walls of his hotel. Not that Mr Claridge himself always spoke too respectfully of the great ones of the earth. Archbishop Temple used to tell a story that when in 1846 the Pope seriously thought of taking refuge in England, Mr Claridge remarked that he was so full up with kings and royal dukes that he could only offer his Holiness a small back room, but that, being a bachelor, he, the Pope, would probably not mind.
The old Claridge's was pulled down and the new Claridge's built in the nineties, and I remember the opening day, when a great crowd of fashionable people came to look at itssalonsand ballroom andrestaurant, and the royal suite. The india-rubber roadway in the entrance, then a novelty, was much admired, and the six footmen in the hall, in their state livery, looked mighty splendid. Mr D'Oyly Carte, who more than anyone else had been the moving spirit in the creation of the new hotel, was wheeled about in a chair through the crush of pretty ladies and distinguished gentlemen, for he was then very ill.
The new Claridge's soon found its own particular atmosphere, an atmosphere of perfect serenity. The little army of footmen, who were too gorgeous for ordinary occasions, were reduced in numbers, and now only one superb being in plush and silken calves moves about the hall and arranges the papers in the reading-room. The inner hall, with its pillars and walls of white, and its reflected light, is a most comfortable lounge in which to sit after dinner and listen to the orchestra, and out of this open two rooms, one of Wedgwood blue with Wedgwood designs on it, and the other of old gold. The restaurant has been considerably altered since its first opening, for it has been divided into two rooms, the colouring of it has been brightened, and at night an abundance of light is now thrown on to the painted ceilings from cunningly concealed lamps. The bases of the great arches which support the roof are cased in dark oak, with an inset of olive wood; the carpet is of rose and grey and the chairs are of green leather with the arms of the hotel stamped upon it.
It is a restaurant in which dinner takes its right place as one of the tranquil pleasures of life. The music of the band is never too loud, the fine napery and the admirable glass are pleasant to the touch, the flowers in the silvered stands of the table lamps give an agreeable touch of colour, the cut glass of thependent electroliers sparkles, and the first and the secondmaîtres d'hôtel, M. Invernizzi, who comes from the Palace Hotel, at St Moritz, to London for the season, and M. Castelani, who is a permanency at Claridge's, are tactfully attentive, while M. Gehlardi, the manager of the hotel, walks through the rooms during the course of dinner to bow here and there at a table, and to assure himself that all is well. It is the clientele of Claridge's that has made its atmosphere, for the well-dressed, good-looking, quiet people who dine at the tables, put a comfortable distance apart, are folk whose names bulk largely in the Society columns of the newspapers, and the list of the diners on any given night in Claridge's Restaurant would be for the most part a string of titles. Good manners are in the air, and I do not think that even the rawest plutocrat could be unmannerly amidst such surroundings.
On the night that I last dined at Claridge's, I had written beforehand asking that a table for three should be reserved for me, and I had intended to give my guests the larger of the two dinners of the restaurant, the twelve-and-six one, which runs through the usual courses, and which is by no means a set dinner, for any dish which does not exactly match the fancy of a dinner-giver is changed for another to suit his whim or his palate. But I found that a special little feast had been ordered for me by M. Gehlardi, and the menu of it was as follows:—
Melon Cantaloup.Bortch à la Russe.Filets de Sole Newnham-Davis.Noisette d'Agneau aux Fines Herbes.Petits pois frais. Pommes Noisettes.Coq en Pâte.Salade de Romaine à l'Estragon.Fraises Parisienne.Friandises.
Thechef de cuisineat Claridge's is M. Maurice Bonhomme, who had passed through the kitchens of two great Parisian restaurants, the Café de Paris, and Ledoyen's, in the Champs Elysées, before he came to London. He is a chef of high repute, and these are the specialities of his kitchen:—filet de sole Tosca, suprême de sole Pré Catalan, Coulibiac de saumon, suprême de volaille d'Orléans, cailles Hacchi Pacha, Coq en Pâte Claridge's, pêches Caprice, fraises Delphine.
Of the dishes of my dinner, the excellentBortch à la Russewas served as it is in Russia, with littlepâtésto break into it. The list of thesepâtésin the menu of a Russian dinner is often a long one. Thefilet de sole, which M. Bonhomme paid me the compliment of christening to my name, is a quite admirablesole poché au Madère, with all the fumet of the fish retained and served with slicedchampignonsandpointes d'asperges. I sent my very best compliments to M. Bonhomme on his masterpiece. Thecoq en pâteis an ornamental dish, for the fowl stuffed with all manner of rich things is encased in a paste shaped like a cock, crest and all. The outer covering is broken before the bird is carved. It is a dish of almost terrifying richness.
Quite a number of the great people of the land give their banquets at Claridge's, and out of the sheaf of the menus of these feasts I select one of the Surrey Magistrates' Club Dinner, which shows that our Solons across the Thames dine and wine with much discretion and taste:
Royal Natives.Hors d'œuvre.Consommé Monte-Carlo.Bisque de Crabes.Turbotin braisé au Champagne.Whitebait diable noir.Selle de Béhague à l'Estragon.Haricots verts de Nice.Pommes nouvelles au Beurre.Timbale à la Galoise.Caneton d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise.Salades d'Oranges.Asperges vertes Sauce Hollandaise.Pêches Melba.Friandises.Bonne Bouche.Vins.Oloroso Fine Old.Piesporter, 1904.George Goulet (mag.), 1900.Moët et Chandon.Dry Imper., 1904.Dow's 1896.Courvoisier Brandy.Fine Champagne, 1865.
I wonder how a club dinner of magistrates of fifty years ago would contrast with such a dinner as the above.
Old "Rats," which is the disrespectful title by which most of his friends call Major-General Sir Ulysses Ratbourne, late of the Bundlekund Fusiliers, was holding forth to his crony, Colonel Bunthunder, late of the same distinguished regiment, in the hall of the Cutlass and Cross-bow Club as I passed through it, and the General paused for a second in his denunciation of Radicals and Socialists to say that he wanted to have a word with me, and then finished his peroration. Colonel Bunthunder muttered: "Very true, very true," and went on into the smoking-room shaking his head sorrowfully, and the General turned to me.
"Look here, my lad"—anyone under seventy is "my lad" to the General—said he, "I want you to give me a bit of advice."
I said the correct platitude, and awaited developments.
"My nephew Bill, the one in the Hussars, has just married, and he and his wife are coming up to town, and I want to know where to take 'em to dine."
I reeled off the list of the half-dozen most fashionable restaurants; but the General cut me short. "Ay, my lad, that's all very well; but the girl that poor old Bill's been and married is a vegetarian. What d'ye say to that, now?"
The General had put into the word "vegetarian"just the tone of astonished disgust he would have employed had he told me that the young lady was a militant suffragette; but I did not echo that at all. "Take them to the Eustace Miles Restaurant in Chandos Street," I advised; "and whatever your niece's fads may be, you can give her what she wants there."
Old "Rats" thanked me with the chastened thankfulness that men show when given the address of a specialist for some obscure disease of which they think they are a victim, wrote the address down on a card, and went after Colonel Bunthunder into the smoking-room to tell him all about it.
It occurred to me, however, directly the old General had left me, that I was sending him to a restaurant into which I had never myself been, and concerning which I knew nothing, except that I always look into its windows and at its bill of fare whenever I pass down Chandos Street; and, therefore, in order that I might be able to give the old man some detailed information from my own experience, I went next day to Chandos Street to lunch.
Before I set down what my experiences were, I wish to express my personal admiration for the single-mindedness of Mr Miles and his wife in doing the work they have set themselves to do. That Eustace Miles, half trained, went into a tennis court to defend his title of amateur world champion against a young American gentleman trained to the second, and that he made a fine fight for the championship with the odds desperately against him, shows that a diet of non-flesh food doesn't kill pluck or stamina. And before the authorities asked Mrs Miles not to send the E.M. soup barrow down to the Embankment on winter nights, as they wished to clear that thoroughfare of derelicts, she and her helpers had done much to feed the hungry and to reclaim some of those whowere not irreclaimable, which shows that a kind heart thrives on Emprote and Protonnic and Compacto, and the other meatless foods with strange names. Lastly, that the Eustace Miles Restaurant celebrated last year the seventh anniversary of its opening, shows that London wanted such a restaurant, and that it has kept its clientele.
The big windows of the Eustace Miles Restaurant are "dressed" as if they were shop-windows. Sometimes they are full of tins and packets of the non-flesh foods arranged in piles and pyramids; sometimes they look like the windows of a book shop, piles of literature and charts of the human frame being in evidence; and sometimes boxing-gloves and foils and pictures of young men holding themselves upright and sticking out chests as full as those of pouter-pigeons draw attention to the fact that a physical school high up in the building is one of the Eustace Miles activities. Sometimes the windows look like those of a pastry-cook's shop, and sometimes they bristle with copies ofHealthward Ho!the monthly magazine which Mr Miles edits. Always outside the door in a glazed case is the bill of fare for the day printed in red and green type, and I have often wondered what "Egg and Mushroom Fillets and Duxelles Sauce with Asparagus and New Potatoes (N.)," or "Pinekernel Quenelles and Onion Sauce with Spring Cabbage and Potatoes (N., F.U.)," or "Hazel-nut Sausages and Gravy with Cauliflower and Roast Potatoes (N., F.U.)," taste like, and what the capital letters after each dish mean. Now, however, there was no reason to linger and look at the card. I was about to plunge into the great unknown, to sample the dishes with strange names, and to learn the secret of N.N. and F.U.
A commissionaire, looking just like other commissionaires, though he, like all the other employeesof the restaurant, eats the food of the restaurant, opened the door to me and gave me a card for my bill, and my first impression was that I was in a Food and Cookery Exhibition, for in front of me was a stall piled high with tins of Emprote and a cash desk with a little model of the E.M. barrow by it, a stall for pastry and biscuits, and a book-stall; but beyond this first line of defence I saw little tables with white cloths on them, and many people sitting at them, and I walked on looking for a vacant seat. I came to a table with only one occupant, and sat down; a little waitress in a neat brown dress put the red and green printed bill of fare into my hand, and I found myself suddenly faced by a puzzle to which the purple inkcarte du jourof a small provincial French restaurant is as ABC is to a jig-saw puzzle. However, in larger print than anything else on the card was the announcement that a half-crowntable d'hôteluncheon and dinner was served, so I said to the waitress in an offhand manner, as though I were an habitué: "I'll take the half-crown lunch, please." She never budged. "Compactacroûtesor roasted cashews?" she asked me, and I gasped out, "Compacta," and wondered what on earth I was going to eat.
Then, while the little waitress had gone to get me the first instalment of the unknown, I looked down the menu and made up my mind which of the two soups, the two entrées, the two sweets and two savouries I would order when the waitress came back again, and then turned my attention to the room and the people at the tables. There is a suggestion of a gymnasium about the restaurant, for it is a high room with a broad gallery running round it about half-way up its height, and it is lighted by a great space of skylight. All the boarding, and there is a good deal of it, is painted dark green, and on the walls is adark green and white paper. A tea-stall, green and white, and a long buffet of green wood, with pots of flowers on it, are at one end of the restaurant; the floor is covered with oilcloth, with strips of crimson cocoa-nut matting laid over it, and there are flowers in vases on the little white-clothed tables which occupy all the floor space below and in the gallery. There is a sense of airiness and spotless cleanliness about the place. Big notices draw attention to the Normal Physical School and other of the Eustace Miles activities, and a request to gentlemen not to smoke till after sixp.m.was just above my head.
The people at the tables were just like the people one sees at any other restaurant where the prices are not high—ladies who might be stenographers, or country cousins up for a day's shopping, young men who, I daresay, are bank clerks—a good, level, healthy-looking gathering. A man with clear blue eyes and a close-clipped white beard sat down in the seat opposite to mine, and ordered something without looking at the menu; a youngster in golfing kit took the other unoccupied place at the table, and a wrinkle came across his forehead as he plunged mentally into the intricacies of theà la cartesheet, until the waitress helped him by pointing with her pencil to some dish printed in red ink, and he joyfully assented to her suggestion. A young man brought in a bull-dog on a leash, and the dog was petted on his progress up the floor by all the little waitresses.
The waitress who had me in her charge returned with the Compactocroûtes, two little angles of hot toast with something spread on them, and she took my order for the next course, of lettuce and sorrelpotage, and for some ginger ale, which I ordered as having a vague feeling that it would be in keeping with the meal. The Compacto had a far-off taste of potted meat, and I had noticed that it was labelled N., F.U., whicha note at the top of the menu told me meant nourishing and free from uric acid. The dishes marked N.N. are "Very Nourishing." The lettuce and sorrel soup, when it came, was distinctly to be commended, a trifle thin, perhaps, but having the taste of the vegetables in it, and being excellently hot. This also, I was pleased to see, was noted as N. and F.U.; and had I been subject to gout, which—"touch wood," I am not, I should have been eating an admirable non-gouty meal. Then came what on the menu was described as a main dish. It was asparagus and lentil timbale, cucumber sauce, stuffed vegetable marrow and new potatoessautés. I rather hope that this will not be the main dish that old "Rats" will stumble up against when he takes his niece to dine at the Eustace Miles Restaurant, for the timbale did not seem to me to have any strong taste of asparagus in it—perhaps the lentils had killed it. The stuffed vegetable marrow was rather a watery delicacy, but I ate up thesautéspotatoes, feeling quite glad that I knew what their taste was going to be. The next dish, however—honey shortbread and stewed apricots—I can unreservedly praise; the shortbread was excellently light and the stewed apricots were good things of their kind. I had told the waitress that as a savoury I would havemateloteeggs on toast, but I cancelled that order, for I look on savouries as superfluities, and ate some cheese as a finish to my repast.
The little waitress totalled up my bill on the card that the commissionaire at the door had given me, and I was making my way to the pay-desk when I saw in a corner by the book-stall a lady engaged in opening letters; and, thinking that this must be Mrs Eustace Miles, I asked her if such was the case, and when she said "Yes," introduced myself. She welcomed me to the restaurant, explained that her husband was away playing a championship game attennis, and said how sorry she was that she had not met me before I lunched, as she would have liked to suggest to me the dishes that best suit anyone making their first essay on non-flesh foods. I told her, however, that I had wished to make my first attack just as any other meat-eating member of the public would do, and I was very glad to be able to compliment her on the cook's soup and the shortbread. I had bought at the book-stall the May number ofHealthward Ho!and had carried off from the dinner-table a sheaf of leaflets giving information concerning the restaurant and thesalons, and in addition to these Mrs Miles gave me a leaflet describing the exhibit that the then chef of the restaurant, Mr Blatch, N.C.A., sent to the Food and Cookery Exhibition in 1910, and which won a gold medal there, and an account of thedéjeunerat which M. Escoffier and the editor ofFood and CookeryandThe Catering Worldwere present, and which was described by the latter in glowing terms, "excellent," "delightful" and "delicious" being adjectives used for every course. This was the menu of the feast:
Milk Cheese and Celery Mayonnaise.Salsify and Barley Cream Soup.Cashew Nut Timbale and Cranberry Sauce.Nut and Vegetable en Casserole.Vegetables (Conservatively Cooked).Jamaican Fruit Salad.Devilled Compacto.
It was recorded that M. Escoffier very much enjoyed the devilled Compacto, and praised the work of the chef who had prepared thehors d'œuvreand the entrées. As, however, since the date of thisdéjeuner, which was in March 1910, M. Escoffier has given the world his famousDodine, and his not less famousPoularde Poincaré, he was evidently not weanedfrom the errors of flesh-eating by his visit to the Eustace Miles Restaurant, nor shall I be lured away by any stuffed vegetable marrow from creamy salmon and plump quails.
But I shall say no word to dissuade old "Rats" from going to dine at the Eustace Miles Restaurant, for I am quite sure that what he will eat there will certainly do him no harm, and if he chooses F.U. dishes may probably do him a lot of good, but I should like to be present when the old man first looks down the green and red bill of fare of the day and finds himself faced by all the strange new dishes, for his remarks will be worthy of the occasion.
When the house for the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours—that classic stone building with busts of great painters in the ovals that ornament its façade, busts on which the sparrows perch and watch the traffic in Piccadilly—was put up in the early eighties, there was space below the galleries for some shops and for a large hall. It occurred to somebody, probably M. Benoist, whose great charcutier's shop was just over the way, that Princes' Hall was eminently suitable to be a dining-room, and Princes' Restaurant came into existence, M. Benoist being the moving spirit, his brother-in-law, M. Fourault, being the manager, and M. Azema, a chef of much fame, being at the head of the kitchen.
Princes' Restaurant, as I first remember it, was not the beautiful room it is now. The painted ceiling with its concealed lights, as fine an example of this kind of art as we have in London, was a later addition; the garden outside the windows of the restaurant had still to be made, and I think that the windows which look towards St James's Church were not in the great room when it was first built. The hotel, which has an entrance in Jermyn Street, and in which there are some noble rooms for banquets and balls, was another afterthought. The lessees of some of the shops on the Piccadilly front were bought out before the palm garden, in whichimpatient gentlemen wait for ladies who are late, and where satisfied diners smoke their after-dinner cigars and drink their coffee, could be made, and comparatively lately communication has been established between the restaurant and the galleries above, in order that when there is a ball in the picture-hung halls the dancers can troop down to sup below.
If Princes' Restaurant and Princes' grill-room and Princes' Hotel are like Rome in that they were not built in a day, they are very good to look upon in their finished state. The restaurant has a great height, and the early diners can smoke there without the least taint of tobacco greeting the later comers. Its ceiling is, as I have already written, a beautiful example of decorative art, and a bill of exceeding length, the sum total of which astonished me when I was told how many figures it comprised, was paid for this embellishment. Its walls are creamy in colour, the curtains are of soft pink, and the tall windows south and east are reflected in mirrors, looking like other windows on the northern side, where the space is not occupied by the Palm Lounge. A musicians' gallery runs along the western side, and the doors into the kitchen are below this, but the red-coated musicians have forsaken their aerie, which now forms a way to ballrooms and galleries, and have found a snug corner on the floor of the restaurant. There are some fine marble statues of nymphs on pedestals and palms and banked-up plants and flowers in the restaurant, and the general effect suggests that one has stepped out of London greyness into some Southern clime where all is light and bright and spacious. At night the electroliers are shaded so as to give a mixed golden and pink light, which is most comfortable to the eyes, and is, I am sure, very becoming to the complexions of the ladies, and thecarpets and the upholstering of the chairs carry on the harmony of deep rose and pink.
The history of the present success of the Princes' Restaurant is the story of the triumph of the short dinner over the long one. As a lunching place Princes' was a great success from the day its doors first opened. The ladies of Mayfair and Belgravia and Tyburnia found that it was comfortably near their shopping centres, and the little ladies of the stage also liked to lunch there. The musical comedy ladies monopolised the first half-dozen tables to the right as one entered, leaving the rest of the tables to the other ladies, and Stage looked at Society's hats, and Society looked at Stage's furs, and no doubt each envied what the other wore. But for quite a while—it seemed a long while to the shareholders—Princes' did not find its destiny as a dining place. M. Benoist wished it to be a greatà la carterestaurant such as he has made the restaurant of the Hermitage at Monte Carlo, but for some unexplainable reason diners did not flock to Princes' to eat expensive dinners, nor did a longtable d'hôtedinner tempt them. At last it was determined that new methods should be tried and new men came on to the Board of Directors to try them, that very energetic and very successful organiser, Mr Harry Preston, of Brighton, being one of them. A short theatre dinner became the trump card of the restaurant in the evening, the Princes' ballrooms became the scene of most of the dances organised in theatreland, and when the company began to earn an annual dividend for its shareholders the advantages of brief dinners became very apparent to them.
This was the dinner of the day that I took a lady to eat at seven o'clock on an evening on which Sir George Alexander produced a new play at the St James's:—
Hors d'œuvre à la Russe.Petite Marmite Henri IV.Crème Lamballe.Suprême de Saumon Doria.Agneau de Pauillac à la Grecque.Boutons de Crucifères aux Fines Herbes.Chapons à la Broche.Salade.Biscuit Glacé au Chocolat Praliné.Friandises.
This was the six-and-six theatre dinner of the day, not too long to be eaten during the hour that theatre-goers allow themselves for a meal, and quite long enough for those for whom dinner is the one event of an evening. M. Roux, themaître d'hôtel, who has been at the Princes' for eighteen years, also showed me the menu of a half-guinea dinner which the Princes' holds in reserve should the little dinner not be impressive enough for some of its clients. The dinner was excellently cooked, and the tinypilauwhich came to the table with the lamb would have caught the appreciative attention of any gourmet, and assured me that M. Génie, the present head of the kitchen, who had previously won his spurs at the Carlton and the Brighton Metropole, and had at one period learned all there is to learn in Egypt, the land ofpilau, is a worthy successor to M. Azema and M. Granvilliers. The lady who dined with me was much impressed by the two Pierrots sitting on the moon, a work of art which came to table with thebiscuit, and was enthusiastic as to the playing of the orchestra. I thought myself that the musicians insisted a little too much that their music and not my conversation was what the pretty lady had come to Princes' to hear, but the question of music in a restaurant is a matter on which the gentler sex and the denser one are never in accord and the managers of most establishments find it a thorny question. Ifan orchestra of distinction is engaged nothing in the world will persuade its head that his music should be merely an accompaniment to conversation, and the opinion concerning music of a young man who has so much to say to a pretty girl that a dinner never lasts long enough to allow him to say it all, is very different to that of a bored husband, who has nothing in particular to remark to his wife after they have reached the soup course.
At seven, when we commenced our dinner, two other tables were already occupied. By half-past seven the room was comfortably full, and at a quarter to eight, when we left to go to the St James's, diners were still coming in to their tables. Most certainly what the dwellers in the leafy lanes of Mayfair and by the snipe-ground of Belgrave Square required was a restaurant in Piccadilly, where they can dine well and at not too great a length, nor at too great a price, on their way to the theatre, and Princes' has at last given them what they wanted.
The East Room at the Criterion is a trophy of one of woman's victories over man, for it was one of the first, if not the very first, restaurant-rooms designed and decorated to harmonise with feminine frocks and frills, and made beautiful that mankind should bring beautiful womankind there to eat things delicate. In the sixties, restaurants were few and far between, and were mostly places where men dined without their feminine belongings. But all this was changed in the seventies, and the East Room did its full share in persuading man that it added pleasure to a good dinner in a restaurant to be faced by a pretty woman. The East Room of to-day is twice the size of the one that Messrs Spiers and Pond first built, and its decoration of white and gold, and panels painted with Watteau subjects, its harmony of greys and pink in carpets and furniture and curtains, its ante-room with old French furniture, and the satisfactory arrangement by which the music of the orchestra, perched in a gilded cage above the big entrance hall, comes softened by distance to the diners in the East Room, are all happy second thoughts. But the East Room was, in 1873, when it was first opened, the dining place to which every lady asked her husband to take her, and it has held its own against ever-increasing competition through the years. Its windows look down on the rush and swirl of Piccadilly Circus, a wonderful scene either by day or night, and it addsto the pleasure of an unhurried meal to watch the hurry of thousands of one's fellow-creatures.
At one period, after the extension of the building, there were two East Rooms, a dividing wall being where the arches and curtains now are. The one of these nearest the grand staircase was a strictlyà la carterestaurant, while in the other, approached through a corridor, atable d'hôtemeal was served. The East Room of to-day smiles on both classes of diners. When a man sits down at his table there at dinner-time, M. Kugi, themaître d'hôtel, puts before him thecarte du jour, an ample one, with any special delicacies in larger print than the others, and also lays on the table the menus of the half-sovereign and seven-and-sixtable d'hôtedinners, and it is his experience that the greater number of diners look at thecarte du jourand then, mistrusting their own judgment, order one or the other of thetable d'hôtemeals.
This was the menu of the seven-and-six dinner one night when I dined at the East Room at a tiny dinner-party, before going to the theatre down in the cellars of the big building to see the play running there:
Hors d'œuvre.Consommé Rossolnick.Crème aux huîtres.Truite de rivière Dona Louise.Selle d'Agneau Mascotte.Pommes nouvelles.Poularde du Surrey à la broche.Salade.Parfait au moka.Friandises.Dessert.
It was a very well-selected, well-served dinner. Had we chosen the half-guinea dinner we should have had an addition to this menu ofcailles à laGrecqueandchou de mer, sauce vierge. TheRossolnick, with its flavour of cucumber, was excellent, the trout were fresh and firm, and the Surrey fowl as plump as any foreigner from Mans. M. Auguste Pannier, the chef of to-day, is worthy of the great men who have preceded him in the kitchen of the East Room. And not only have there been great cooks, but great managers as well at the Criterion, with the East Room as the particular object of their care. Oddenino, Mantell, Gerard, who all moved on to other posts, were predecessors of M. Emile Campenhaut, the manager of to-day, as was also M. Lefèvre, whose health broke down, but whom I remember as being an enthusiast on the subject of the art of cookery, a man who brought plenty of brain power to bear on the subject of delicate food. I think that the best of the many dinners I have eatenà deuxin the East Room was one ordered in consultation with him, and I subjoin it as a good specimen of an East Roomà la cartefeast:
Caviar.Consommé à la Diane.Filets de sole aux délices.Suprêmes de volaille grillés.Carottes nouvelles à la crème.Laitues braisées en cocotte.Cailles à la Sainte-Alliance.Salade de chicorée frisée.Croûtes à la Caume.Soufflé glacé à la mandarine.
Thecaille à la Sainte-Alliance, in imitation of Brillat Savarin'sfaisan à la Sainte-Alliance, consisted of a truffle in an ortolan, the ortolan being in the quail. TheCroûte Caumeis an admirable banana dish in which the tastes of the banana and pine-apple and apricot and kirsch all mingle.
The East Room is, of course, only one of the manyrestaurant-rooms in the great stone building. Immediately under the East Room are the Marble Restaurant and the grill-room. The Marble Restaurant, in old days, when men of position did not think it undignified to stand at a bar and drink brandy and soda, was the Long Bar, and a wonderful sight this bar, running the whole length of the building, used to be at midnight, crowded with Londoners of all the leisured classes and with a score or more of good-looking barmaids in black behind the bar. When the habits of the men of London began to change, and the Long Bar did not draw so many devotees, the firm of Spiers and Pond was not quite convinced for some time that the "palmy" days of the bars were gone, and they made the Long Bar one of the most beautiful saloons in London, decorating it with marbles and inlay of Venetian glass. That beautiful saloon is now the Marble Restaurant, in which a five-shillingtable d'hôtemeal is served, and where singers on Sundays discourse music to the diners.
The American Bar had its period of great success, and in the grill-room, which formed part of the bar's surroundings, chops and steaks, unsurpassed anywhere in London, used to be grilled. But the character of some of the habitués of the American Bar was too pronouncedly sporting to be altogether satisfactory, and the American Bar passed away from the front part of the building as the Long Bar did. There is a buffet now at the Jermyn Street side, but it is no longer the haunt of the gentlemen who were so overwhelmingly devoted to sport. The grill-room, without the American Bar, is a very flourishing section of the Criterion. It differs from most other grill-rooms in having plenty of sunlight and fresh air, and has this distinctive feature, that there is an American cook in its kitchen and that Americandishes can always be obtained there even when they are not on the bill of fare. I have eaten clam broth, terrapin, dry hash, scalloped sweet potatoes, and Graham pudding, when dining there with Americans.
The Criterion contains a score of banqueting-rooms, including a huge one at the top of the house, where a statue of Shakespeare looks down upon the diners. The West Room, which is now one of the banqueting-rooms, has been used by the management for many experiments. For a long time aDîner Parisienwas served there, and as its cost was only five shillings, and as one got a great deal of very good food to eat for that sum, I used to patronise it very regularly in my subaltern days, when a dinner in the East Room could not be budgeted for. At one time it was given over to the vegetarians, and good-looking damsels in art clothing brought the diners dishes of nut cutlets and vegetable steaks; but the nut-eaters did not hold possession of the room for long.
It is not easy to-day to associate the great stone building in Piccadilly Circus with the revels of miners in an Australian township. But it was in Melbourne, during the gold fever, that the seed was sown which blossomed into the big stone house in the centre of London. Felix Spiers and Christopher Pond were both young Englishmen. Felix was born in one of the old houses on Tower Hill, which was then the office of the General Steam Navigation Company, whose agent his father then was. The family of the Spiers moved to Paris, and young Felix was put into a banking house, where he remained until he was eighteen. Then he went to Melbourne, with the gold fever upon him, to make his fortune. In Melbourne, he met young Christopher Pond, also an Englishman, and also determined to make his pile. Spiers had become, for the time being, a wine merchant, anexperience which later was to serve him to excellent purpose at the Criterion, for he laid down some admirable wine there, amongst it some hock which as long as it lasted I used to drink in preference to any other wine on the Criterion list. The miners were spending money in Melbourne as though it were water, and the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, received much of the golden shower. It occurred to young Spiers and young Pond that it would be a profitable undertaking to start a restaurant next door to a theatre, and they established, in Collins Street, the Café de Paris. Their next enterprise was to become caterers for the Melbourne and Ballarat Railway. They were full of ideas in those days, and one of these was to bring out to Australia a team of English cricketers and to tour them as a speculation. This was the thought of which the test matches were born. Spiers and Pond came to England intending to persuade Charles Dickens to make a great reading tour in Australia, and then it was that they espied the nakedness of the land in regard to railway catering. Dickens came to their aid with his attack on Mugby Junction, and he wrote an article inAll the Worldentitled "The Genii of the Cave," in which he described the then novelty of the "Silver Grill" under the arch at Ludgate Circus, which Spiers and Pond established. The Criterion was the pet child of the two great caterers. It rose on historic ground, for it occupied the site of the old "White Bear," which had been a celebrated coaching-house, one of those fine old inns of many galleries. The theatre was opened four months later than the restaurant; but it was not until 1879 that Sir Charles Wyndham, with whom so many of its successes are associated, took over sole management, though he had been a partner for the previous three years with Mr Alexander Henderson in its control.
Many of the City chop-houses nestle together in the alleys and courts between Cornhill and Lombard Street. There, on either side of one of the narrow little passages, you will find Simpson's Chop-houses, with pleasant grey-green walls to their rooms and a window in which simple food, cooked and uncooked, is shown as bait to draw in the hungry passer-by; and there in Castle Court is the George and Vulture, which is also Thomas' Chop-rooms, which dates back to 1660, is proud of its Dickens' traditions, and is more ambitious in its bill of fare than most of the chop-houses.
There also, in Chance Alley, is Baker's Chop-house, which, that there may be no mistake as to its pretensions, describes itself on a board at the Lombard Street entrance to the alley as a tavern, and a chop-house, a coffee-house, and soup-rooms. It is a dignified little house, which bears its years well—it was founded in the seventeenth century—and which, with its two bow-windows with small panes of glass and its glass door in between, commands confidence even before one has crossed the threshold. Inside one of the windows are wire screens to give privacy to the company in the house, but the other window begs all men to look in and see the fish and the joints, the vegetables, the salad stuff, and, perhaps, a loin of cold beef, samples of what the larder contains. Beyond this rampart of good things edible you maysee dames and damsels attired in black, busy in a glassed-in little room drawing beer, taking payment from satisfied customers for what they have eaten, and a grave gentleman, with white hair and beard, making entries in a large ledger; for the little portioned-off space you are looking into serves as bar and counting-house, some old punch-bowls on a shelf giving it its right old-world note.
Once inside the door you find yourself in as snug and cosy an eating-house as you can find in London. The ground floor is partitioned off into many boxes. There is one to your left as you come in, the counting-house being on your right, and two, one of them with a curtain to give it privacy, facing you, and another just beyond the grill, and yet another one below the round clock in a black frame which is on the back wall. The partitions and the walls are of wood panelling painted and grained to resemble light oak, but whoever the craftsman was who worked at it with feather and comb, he must have passed away long ago, for the painting, like everything else in the house, has been mellowed by time. The partitions are carried up high wherever there is any possibility of a draught reaching anyone sitting in one of the boxes, and in the high partitions the top panels are of glass. There are pegs for hats and coats on the wall and a stand for umbrellas near the fireplace. The fireplace, a big grill in a stone frame, is in one of the side walls, and close in front of it, his body partially sheltered by a wooden screen, stands the cook, white-bearded and in white cap, white jacket and apron. At his elbow is a compartment, a big box without a lid, in which are chops, steaks, and all other things grillable, and any man who thinks he is a judge of a raw chop or steak, looks over into this box before he finds a seat for himself, and indicates to the cook which particular fragment ofred meat he wishes to have prepared according to his liking. Above the fireplace is a framed water-colour picture of the outside of the house, and on either side of this work of art are pewter plates in a splendid state of polish. The other interesting work of art on the walls is a portrait of "James," who was a waiter at Baker's for thirty-five years. James was, I imagine, early Victorian. He has a benign appearance, and his watch-chain is almost as large as a cable. The waiters of to-day are as British as James was, and they go about their business with much quickness and dexterity. To complete my description of the lower room at Baker's, I should add that there is sawdust on the floor, and that a narrow staircase, the steps of which are covered with lead, leads up to the rooms on the other floors.
You will have seen written in little frames on one side of the counting-house window looking into the chop-room some of the dishes of the day that are ready—curried chicken, Irish stew (one-chop and two-chop portions), stewed steak, and the like, and your waiter will tell you of other good things—pies and puddings, each a portion for one—that are ready. If you are for something from the grill, you make your selection from the cook's stores. If a cut from the joint is to your taste, you go upstairs to the big room on the first floor, where there are red walls and no partitions.
A basket of great chunks of household bread is on the white-clothed table at which you find a place; your chop, if you have selected a chop, will come to you on a willow-patterned dish, and you will transfer it to a willow-patterned plate. In old days all meat at Baker's used to be served on pewter. But if the four plates over the fireplace are the only survivors of the pewter set, your beer will be brought you in a pewter tankard, and most of the glass is of oldpattern. When you come to the cheese stage your slice of Cheddar and pat of butter are both excellent. Indeed all the food at Baker's is good. No eating place which does not give good food at reasonable prices ever survives in the City, and Baker's has seen nearly three hundred years pass away. Who the original Baker was who gave his name to the chop-house no one knows, but a guess is made that he was a relation of that Mr Baker who was Master of Lloyd's Coffee-House in Lombard Street in 1740, and who carried to Sir Robert Walpole the news of Admiral Vernon's taking of Portobello, being suitably rewarded as a bringer of good tidings.
The customers of Baker's Chop-house are excellent walking advertisements of the house. They all seem to be prosperous City men, young and old; they are well groomed and they look well-fed and contented.
When you have finished your meal at Baker's you leave twopence by your plate as the waiter's tip, you give the grill-cook another penny, if you have eaten grilled fare, as you pass him on your way out, and then, pausing at the wicket of the counting-room, you recite to the lady who faces you the things you have eaten and what you have imbibed, and she, doing a sum of mental arithmetic, tells you instantly what you have to pay. As a souvenir of the house she will give you a post card, if you ask for it, carrying a miniature copy of the work of art over the fireplace.
But there are chop-houses in London outside the City limits, and I know of three of them within arrow-flight of Piccadilly Circus. There is Snow's, for instance, in Sherwood Street, almost in the Circus. Snow's has a reputation for its steaks, and I know men who declare that the best bacon and eggs in the world are those brought in between two plates from the kitchen and placed on the tables at Snow's. It has lately been rebuilt, and is a modernreproduction of a Tudor house, its three little gables and the green gallery before its upper windows being very picturesque. The old tables and the old partitions are in their old places in the lower rooms, but the walls of glazed tiles and the curved brass hangings for coats and hats are scarcely Tudor. The company at Snow's at its busy times of the day is a curious mixture. Your neighbour at table may be a clergyman up from the country, or the man who shaves you at Shipwright's round the corner, or a young artist, or a taxi chauffeur.
Stone's in Panton Street, which dates back to 1770, is another chop-house, though it is better known as a wine-house. It has its coffee-room, where good, plain grilled food is obtainable, though it rather sinks the title "chop-house" in the more aristocratic "à la carterestaurant." Stone's has always been a favourite resort of men of the theatre.
Not very many Londoners know of the Sceptre Chop-house, Number 5 Warwick Street, a little street which runs parallel, on the east, to part of Regent Street, for it is not in a main thoroughfare. It is a typical early Victorian chop-house, and it used to be a haunt of Charles Dickens when he was making his first successes as an author. The front of the house has been newly painted, but the interior remains as it was in 1830, when it first opened its door. Its window is frosted half-way up to obviate the necessity for blinds, with a pattern and announcements that the house supplies chops and coffee left in plain glass amidst the frosting. I warrant that window created considerable enthusiasm in Warwick Street in 1830. At least three of the proprietors, past and present, of the Sceptre have their names recorded on the front of the building. Sanders' name is almost obliterated on the length of brass that forms the window-sill, and shows faintly on the glassof the door. Gosling is preserved to memory by his name in gold letters over the door, while Purcell's is very large above the window. Inside, the long room is a harmony of quiet colours. There is brown boarding half-way up the walls, and above that green that rests the eye. By the door is an enclosed cosy corner, with a mirror in an old black frame over the fireplace. All down the room are low mahogany partitions with seats cushioned in black. The tables are of mahogany, polished by constant rubbing of the waitresses' napkins, and no tablecloths ever hide the deep colour of the old wood. At the end of the room is a screen of three arches of dark wood. The two side arches are filled with panelling and mirrors; but through the centre arch can be seen the kitchen with its sawdusted floor, its ranges of plates and dishes, and the cook and the cookmaids in print dresses going about their work. The waitresses in black dresses and white aprons and caps bustle up and down the room and in and out of the kitchen. A stove heats the long room, and glazing in the roof gives it light. A staircase of black wood leads to the upper rooms, and by the doorway into the street is a little compartment, no larger than a sentry-box, which is the pay-desk.
The food at The Sceptre is of the simplest kind, and a haricot chop or roast chicken are about its highest flights. Your soup, mutton broth, or mock turtle or kidney costs you 4d. or 6d., according to the size of the soup plate. You can pay 9d. or 10d. for your chop and 10d. for your steak. A cut from the joint, for The Sceptre gives you a choice of three joints, is a 9d. matter; but you can get a very ample helping of apple tart for 3d. It is under the heading of entrées that The Sceptre puts such high flights of cookery as curried mutton and rice, boiled tripe and onions, Irish pie and mixed grill.
Many men distinguished in art and music and literature have felt, and still feel, the fascination of The Sceptre Chop-house. You may, very likely, amongst the company at the old mahogany tables, see one of the brightest writers onPunch, or our greatest living painter of battle pictures, or the man who composed "In the Shadows."
Upstairs are two delightful old rooms, browned by time and the London climate, with old wooden shelves, old clocks, old brass candlesticks, old chairs and tables. In one corner of the front room, by a window, stands Dickens' chair, for it is here, so the tradition of the house has it, that Dickens used to come in his early days to write, and it was in this corner that many of his "Sketches by Boz" were jotted down on paper. The Sceptre was a spruce, new little house at this period of Dickens' life, and probability as well as tradition is on the side of its having been one of his early haunts.
The modern grill-room we owe, I think, to the Americans, for the travelling American, who has his own very sensible ideas as to what comfort is, does not wish every night of his life to attire himself in a "claw-hammer" evening coat, but he feels that without that garment he would be out of place in the restaurant of any of the fashionable hotels. The grill-room gives him an excellent dinner, just as long or just as short as he likes, served quickly, in luxurious surroundings, and he can dress as he likes, to eat it. An American always knows what he wants, asks for it, and keeps on asking until he gets it. Quite a number of Britons of both sexes wanted all the conveniences of the grill-rooms long before the modern grill-room came into existence. (Hard-working men of business who had not time to go home to the suburbs to change their clothes, men of the theatre, authors and managers who work late in the evening, actors and actresses who like a very light meal before going to the theatre, and to sup after their work without wearing gorgeous raiment, and a host of other people who get their living by their brains.) But they had not the pertinacity of the American in demanding what they wanted.
Quite the beginning of the modern grill-room was that silver grill which Messrs Spiers and Pond established some time in the sixties under the arch at Ludgate Hill; but I look to the little grill-roomin the old Savoy Hotel in the days before the new building had pushed through to the Strand as being the ideal of a modern grill-room, and I always measure any grill-room of to-day by the standard of that little place of good eating. It was small, and its windows looked up an unlovely cul-de-sac of which it formed the end. The people who controlled the Savoy Hotel and the Savoy Theatre all used it as their own dining-room; the general public scarcely knew of its existence; the food there was excellent. Besides the chops and steaks and other real grill-room fare, there were always one or two savoury entrées kept hot in metal pots and pans on a miniature hot plate in the middle of the room, and when themaître d'hôtelbrought over one of these and took off the cover under one's nose, the savour of its contents alone gave one an appetite.
The present Café Parisien at the Savoy, which the russet-bearded Gustave steered to a great success, is the legitimate successor to that other grill-room which was hidden away in the midst of the building, but it has not the charm of discovery felt by those who used the old grill-room. The Café Parisien, which has its entrance in the Savoy forecourt, where gorgeous servitors in French-grey uniforms of State take one's coat and hat just as they do if one is going to spend one's money in the restaurant, is a great Adams room painted a very light grey, withportièresof light pink, and with chairs and carpets of a deeper rose. It has a little space outside, aterrasse, as the French would call it, which is railed off from the courtyard by a white trellis, over which roses are trained. This is a very pleasant spot in hot weather, if so be that no motor sighing out deep breaths of petrol is standing in the vicinity. This Café Parisien is a place of pleasant, clean-shirted Bohemianism, much patronised by the aristocracy of the theatre. There isan elaborateà la cartemenu with stars against those dishes which are ready. A man in a hurry can eat a four-course dinner here in half-an-hour without risking indigestion, but a couple who wish to talk over their meal can make a cutlet and an ice an excuse for sitting out an hour.
The grill-room of the Princes' Restaurant, to which one descends from an entrance in Piccadilly, is a comfortable white room, with white pillars and mirrors in the panelled walls, where quite good food is served, and where there are always the dishes of the day ready as well as the chops and steaks, kidneys and sausages, and other legitimate grill fare. The Brussels carpets and the dark leather of the chairs are restful to the eye, and the lights in the crystal bouquets which hang from the ceiling are not too glaring.
Almost across the way, in the great building of the Piccadilly Hotel, quite an unpretentious entrance and a small staircase with marble walls lead down to the grill-room. There is a lift by the stairs which is much used by the people coming up from the grill-room, though only lazy folk use it to go down there. This unpretentious entrance and staircase are the portals to a suite of very high, very spacious rooms, running the full length of the building. There are pilasters with gilt capitols; and casemented mirrors in the walls. The electroliers holding imitation candles give abundant light. The grill is behind a great glass screen; carvers in white wheel about big joint waggons and a Turk in gorgeous raiment is ready to make Oriental coffee. The deep rose of the carpet contrasts with the white of the walls. At a multitude of tables are hundreds of people of every comfortable class in life, from the bank clerk to the field-marshal, and from the typist to the duchess, eating meals simple or elaborate, just as they will. This grill-room, likemost of the others, caters for every taste; for there is an elaboratecarte du jour, twotable d'hôteluncheons at half-a-crown and three-and-six, and atable d'hôtedinner at five-and-six. Electric fans keep the atmosphere pure. This grill-room is all day long a very busy place, and as many as five hundred dinners are served nightly.
Of the Criterion grill-room, the great airy hall on the ground floor of the building, I have already written in another article.
On the other side of Piccadilly Circus the Monaco has a grill-room with light buff walls and light buff marble pilasters. Its entrance gives on to Shaftesbury Avenue. Near by is the Trocadero grill-room, down to which a staircase of green and grey marble descends, and which, with its walls of grey marble and gold and buff, its mirrors, its hammered copper-work, its great grill and its orchestra, is handsome almost to the point of gorgeousness. Atable d'hôtedinner is served here, as it is now in most modern grill-rooms.
In Regent Street the Café Royal possesses a heavily gilded grill-room, with entrances through the café and from Air Street, a grill-room in which the bestentrecôteand the best pint of Burgundy in London are obtainable; and on the other side of Regent Street, its entrance hidden away in that dead little road, Haddon Street, is the grill-room restaurant of the New Gallery Cinema Theatre, in the basement of that establishment. It consists of two rooms, panelled with oak and hung with copies of old tapestries. From these it takes its name Les Gobelins. Mr Goetz, of the Vienna Café, opened this little place of refreshment, and there were always Austrian and German dishes on its bill of fare, but it has now changed hands, and M. Victor, late of the Imperial and Les Lauriers, is in command. Its cookery remains very good.
The Carlton grill, which has its own entrance inthe Haymarket, is as good a specimen of the grill-room of to-day as one could select to show to anyone who wished to understand the differences between the chop-houses of yesterday and the grill-rooms of to-day. The staircase which leads down to it is oak-panelled. In the little ante-chamber where hats and coats are given up there is a newspaper stall, and in another ante-room are easy-chairs, dark green in colour, and small tables with tops of burnished copper. The grill-room itself is all white, little pilasters breaking the smooth sides of the walls. Blue china stands on the shelves, a Cromwell clock ticks on a bracket, and at one side of the room are arched recesses with stained glass windows at the back of them. The lights in the electroliers burn here day and night, but the atmosphere is never stuffy. A glass screen keeps the heat of the grill from the room, and in front of this screen are piles of crimson tomatoes, and chops and steaks of deeper red, and mushrooms yellow, grey and warm brown, a harmony in reds and greys. Itscarte du jouris all-embracing, and some of the dishes are always ready. M. Ventura is the presiding spirit in this grill-room. He knows the tastes of his clientele and which tables they prefer, and when there are no unoccupied tables and people have to be turned away, as sometimes happens, or asked to wait in the ante-room until tables are free, his grief is really heartfelt.
At the very gateway of the Strand the Grand Hotel has a popular grill-room, walled with shining tiles of white and buff; the Cecil has a great Indian room of blue and yellow tiles; and, indeed, every big hotel from the great pile of the Kensington Palace, in the west, to the hotel of the Great Eastern Railway in Liverpool Street in the east, has its grill-room, the simplicity of the fare and the fact that the raw material is always on view to the diner beforeit is placed on the grill being a guarantee of the quality of the meat.
Most of the restaurants also have their grills.
Romano's turned its old kitchen into a reproduction of a room in a Russian farmhouse with horns on the walls and an icon up in a corner, and even at one time carried realism to the point of putting the waiters in this part of the establishment into white blouses with red sashes at the waist, the dress the Tartar waiters in Moscow wear. You get the restaurant food in this grill-room at about half the restaurant prices. A new electric grill has been installed in this Russian room which grills just as well and far more quickly than a charcoal or a coal grill.
The Frascati, in Oxford Street, has a grill-room on the ground floor with walls of white marble veined with grey, and with mirrors in Oriental frames; and at the entrance to Tottenham Court Road the Horseshoe has an excellent grill above its oyster saloon.
The Holborn shows originality in devoting a grill-room to ladies, and in the old Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, which now calls itself the Connaught Rooms, there is in the basement a large grill-room, with a choice of three joints at luncheon time as well as an extensivecarte du jour, a grill which is much patronised by the lawyers from Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the evening a dinner is served in a smaller room, and I have dined there before going across the way to the Kingsway Theatre. Those who dine are, I think, mostly connected in some way or another with Freemasonry, and the talk that goes on at the tables has reference to high offices in the Craft and Mark, to "raising" and "passing," and to that ancient and sacred ritual which ladies still believe to be in some way connected with a red-hot poker.
Alfonso Nicolino Romano, a head waiter at the Café Royal, in 1874 bought with his savings a small fried fish shop in the Strand, converted it into a bar and restaurant, and in addition to his own name on its front added Café Vaudeville, for it was, and is, almost next door to the Vaudeville Theatre. Romano's in those days possessed a central window flanked by two doors, one leading into the bar and the other to the rooms above. In the window as an ornament was a small aquarium which contained goldfish, and those fish must have lived exciting, if short, lives, for the patrons of the bar tried to feed them with cigar ash, lemon rind, burnt almonds, and torn-up notepaper, and it is even said that "Hughie" Drummond, one of the most amusing and most reckless of the clean-shirted Bohemians who made "the Roman's" known all the world over, tried to take a swim with them.
Romano was a curly-haired, humorous, quick-witted little Italian who talked a strange Anglo-Italian jargon—"Pore ole Romano e got badda addick this morning" his usual morning greeting, was an example of it—and who was on the easiest terms of familiarity with most of his clients without ever overstepping the line. He had not very many rules as to the conduct of his business, but one from which he never departed was that he would under no circumstances make a reduction in the total of a bill.He would give an aggrieved customer some of the very best "cognac" of the house or split a bottle of the most expensive champagne with him or ask him to dinner next day, but what he would not do was to reduce any item in the account. One of the most frequent forms of verbal invitation given by "The Roman" was to a Sunday midday inspection of his cellars in the Adelphi arches. "You coma see my cellars, Mister So-and-So Eskwire, best in London" was the actual wording. Romano had come from a good school, and he laid down an excellent cellar. The food in the restaurant was also beyond reproach.
Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists, coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town—for those were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be seen standing up in a place of refreshment—was the restaurant. It was little more than a corridor, a long, narrow room with space for one line of tables only; but at those tables used habitually to sit the merriest gathering of good fellows, and I include the ladies in that term, that ever came together in a London restaurant. There were witty journalists such as Shirley Brooks, "Pot" Stephens, "Jimmy" Davis, and "Shifter," and there were men of the theatre—Cecil Raleigh, for instance, and "Charlie" Harris, who when the waiter called the order for his dinner down the speaking-tube always added himself "pour le patron," for Romano, who lunched and dined at the table nearest the bar door, was not likely to get a tough steak or a thin quail. There were Guardsmen, such at "The Windsor Warrior," "Billie FitzDitto," "Haddocks," and "The Bonetwister," and men about town, of whom Hughie Drummond and Fred Russell were perhaps the best known, and coaching men, "Dickie the Driver" and "Swish" and "Partner,"who used to delight in bringing jolly old Jim Selby to dine; and Arthur Roberts, then at the very top of his form, and "Mons" Marius, as representatives of the actor fraternity. And around this kernel of good-fellowship formed a fringe of other good fellows who came and went, men from the country, men from the far parts of the world, soldiers, sailors, planters, explorers, country squires. It was rather a clannish gathering, for everybody seemed to know everybody else at the line of tables, and people who were not taken into companionship, no difficult matter if they were kindred souls, felt "out of it," and went elsewhere.
Between the Gaiety Theatre and Romano's there grew up an indefinite alliance, and golden-hearted Nellie Farren would lunch there when a new burlesque was in rehearsal, and "the Child" and dear "Jack" St John and others of the principals looked with favour on the restaurant, and on Lord Mayors' days made a brave show of beauty at the windows of the first floor. The Gaiety Girls of those days, splendid women and jolly good fellows, who enjoyed life, and by their beauty and sociability helped other people to enjoy life, lunched and supped at the Roman's. I have a dozen names at the tip of my pen, but if I wrote them down I should stray into a gossip over the ladies of the burlesque and light opera stages in the seventies and eighties, and should require columns and columns of space to deal adequately with such a subject. Most of them married, and, as the fairy tales have it, "lived happy ever after." And the "halls," we didn't call them variety theatres then, were also represented at the Roman's. Jolly, humorous Bessie Bellwood lunched there five days out of six, though she kept the Roman humble by asserting that she preferred the tripe and onions at Chick's to anything his kitchen could produce, and when she was ingood anecdotal form kept everybody near her tremulous with laughter. And the sisters Leamar, who used to sing a duet as to Romano's being "a paradise, sure, in the Strand" and added the information that "the wines and the women are grand," naturally paid frequent visits to the restaurant to assure themselves that the description was a correct one.
The Roman gathered about him a staff which exactly suited the tone of the restaurant, proof thereof being that so many of them remain in its service to this day. M. Luigi Naintre, the manager of Romano's, has climbed the ladder of promotion steadily through all the grades at the restaurant, and though for a while after Romano's death he wandered into other folds, one of the first acts of the company which now controls the restaurant was to ask him to come back to it. Long experience has taught him the art of making each frequenter of the restaurant believe that the establishment is maintained entirely to meet his or her taste and whims, and he is essentially the right man in the right place. M. Minola, his second in command, also graduated in the "Roman" school. The cellarman, L. Bendi, and the wine-butler, L. Villa, have been in the restaurant as far back as I can remember.
I must pass quickly over the fire which burned down the old Romano's and its rebuilding on the site of the old restaurant and on that of another house next door. The panelled hall and, in the restaurant, the Moorish arches with the pictures of the Bosphorus seen through them were features of the new building, and remain to-day as they then were. In the nineties Romano died of pneumonia, contracted by standing one cold winter day outside the restaurant door with no great-coat on, and the restaurant came under the Court of Chancery.
The Court of Chancery was not at all sorry to hand over its duties to a company, with Mr WalterPallant, the then chairman of the Gaiety Company, as its chairman, which was formed to purchase the restaurant. Mr "Teddy" Bayly, who as a patron of the restaurant had helped materially in making the fortune of the Roman, became manager, and Luigi was appointed as second in command. When Mr Bayly left Romano's for a restaurant of his very own M. Luigi mounted one rung more of the ladder of promotion and was appointed manager.
The first business of the company, after giving the building "a wash and brush up," was to find a chef of celebrity and experience to take charge of the kitchens. They found in M. Ferrario exactly the man for whom they were looking. M. Ferrario had learned his art under M. Coste in the kitchens of the Cecil, and when he himself became the commander of the kitchens of a restaurant of the first class he showed that he had used his powers of observation, that not only did he know all that there was to be learned concerning thehaute cuisine française, but that he had an open mind with regard to the cookery of all other nations. Themouzakkasthat M. Ferrario sends from his kitchen are the best I have eaten outside Bucharest. He makes a ground-nut soup, the one delicacy that Nigeria has added to the cookery book, quite admirably, and Romano's is the only restaurant that I know of in Europe where one can eat a Malay curry cooked as it is cooked in Malaya and served in the Malay fashion, with sambals and with shining Malayan shell spoons for the rice. What substitute M. Ferrario has found for the fresh cocoa-nut pulp which is the foundation of all Malay curries I do not know, but he has found something which replaces it admirably. In the winter at lunch-time north countrymen say that Romano's Lancashire hot-pot is the real thing, and there is another British luncheon dish, gipsy-pot, which I eat at Romano's,a savoury stew of chicken and cabbage and other vegetables and other meats, which I find exceptionally good.