PAGANI'S (GREAT PORTLAND STREET)
"If you will dine with me on Sunday night I will give you dinner in the
most interesting private dining-room that any restaurant in London can
show," I said to little Mrs. Tota.
"She'll do nothing of the sort," said George, her husband, from behind
his paper.
"George!" said little Mrs. Tota, and there was a mixture of
astonishment, query, and reproof in the way she spoke her husband's
name.
George laid down his newspaper. "Since you took her to dine in that
private room at Kettner's nothing has been good enough for her. She
would like a _maître d'hôtel_ and a head waiter dancing round her at
every meal, and she can't go out of the front door without looking
round to see if there is a manager there to bow her out."
"You are perfectly horrid, George," said little Mrs. Tota with some
asperity. "You won't take me out yourself, and when other people are
kind enough to offer to do so you are as cross and sarcastic as you can
be."
George looked at me with the corners of his mouth drawn up by a
suppressed smile, and his left eyebrow twitched as if he felt inclined
to wink. I poured oil on the troubled waters. If Mrs. Tota, with her
husband's permission, would dine with me at Pagani's on Sunday we would
dine in the public dining-room on the first floor, and look afterwards
at the drawings and signatures in the celebrated little room on the
second floor.
"It is real good of you to take the wife out," said George, as he saw
me off the premises. "I hate going out at night, as you know, but she
enjoys it all thoroughly. She chattered about that last dinner for a
good month."
On the Saturday I went to Pagani's, secured a table for the next
evening in the room on the first floor, a very pretty dining-room with
soft blue curtains to the windows, a blue paper on the walls, shaded
electric lights, and a little bow-window at the back, which makes the
snuggest of nooks. Then M. Giuseppe Pagani, one of the two proprietors,
having appeared, we talked over the important matter of the menu. The
difficulty that vexed our minds was whether _filets de sole Pagani_ or
_turbot à la Pellegrini_ would best suit a lady's appetite. Finally the
sole won the day. I hesitated a moment over the _Bortsch_ soup, for it
has become almost as much a standing dish as _croûte au pot_ in most
restaurants; but _Bortsch_ is the customary Sunday soup at Pagani's, so
it had to be included in the menu.
This was our list completed:--
Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Potage Bortsch.
Filets de sole Pagani.
Tournedos aux truffes.
Haricots verts sautés. Pommes croquettes.
Perdreau Voisin. Salade.
Soufflé au curaçoa.
At eight o'clock on Sunday I was waiting for Mrs. Tota in the arched
entrance which is one of the distinctive features of the modern
Pagani's. Glazed grey tiles front the whole of the ground floor, the
rest of the building being red brick, and the deep entrance arches are
supported by squat little blue pillars. The curve of the arches are
set with rows of electric light, which give the little restaurant the
appearance of having been illuminated for a fête every night.
"Now mind, I want to see everything, and be told who everybody is,"
said Mrs. Tota as she got out of the cab, and I promised to do my best
to carry out her wishes, and suggested that we should peep into the
room on the ground floor before we went upstairs.
The long room, with its golden paper, its mirrors painted with flowers
and trellis-work, its little counter piled with fruit, was crowded with
diners, not one of the many little tables being vacant. A great hum of
talk fell on our ears, and many of the gentlemen at the tables were
gesticulating as only foreigners can. I told Mrs. Tota that at least
half the guests were musicians or singers, and immediately she was all
attention. One gentleman, with long hair and a close-clipped beard,
she recognised as a well-known violinist; and a gentleman with a black
moustache and a great bush of rebellious hair, she identified as a
celebrated baritone, though he looked strange, she thought, without a
frock-coat, lavender kid gloves, and a roll of music in his hands.
In the blue room on the first floor the tables were mostly occupied by
couples, and Mrs. Tota wished to know if this was where the married
musicians came. The gentleman with the clean-shaven face at the next
table to ours, deep in conversation with a very pretty lady in a
fur toque, was certainly a doctor, and the gentleman with a white
moustache, who had secured the table in the little bow-window, was
evidently a soldier; the two ladies dining _tête-à-tête_ did not look
musical, but on the first floor, as on the ground floor, the majority
of the guests were evidently of the artistic temperament.
The _Bortsch_ was excellent, and when the _sole Pagani_ made its
appearance M. Meschini, the partner of M. Pagani, came to our table to
ask whether the dish was approved of. "It is beautiful," said little
Mrs. Tota. "What are the wonderful little pink things with such a
delicious taste?" M. Meschini, without moving a muscle of his face,
told her that they were shrimps, which, with fresh mushrooms and
_moules_, help to give a distinctiveness to this excellent dish. "How
was I to know a shrimp without his head and tail and scales?" said Mrs.
Tota, when M. Meschini had moved on.
Mrs. Tota ate some of the _tournedos truffés_, and gave her opinion
that the truffles were perfectly heavenly; but I preferred to wait for
the partridge and its casserole, with all its savoury surroundings. M.
Notari, the chef, is an artist in his kitchen, and nowhere in London
could we have found a better-cooked bird.
To establish my claim to be critical, I said that I had tasted better
_soufflés_, but Mrs. Tota, telling me that I was a pampered Sybarite,
ate her helping with perfect content. The two pints of Veuve Clicquot
we drank were excellent, and with a Biscuit Pagani, two cups of Café
Pagani and liqueurs, we ended a very good dinner.
I paid my bill: bread and butter, 4d.; hors-d'œuvre, 6d.; soup, 1s.
6d.; fish, 2s.; joint, 2s.; game, 5s.; vegetables, 1s.; sweets, 1s.
6d.; ices, 1s.; salad, 10d.; wine, 14s.; coffee, 1s.; liqueurs, 2s.
6d.; total, £1: 13: 2, and then asked M. Meschini to take us upstairs
and show us the private dining-room, which is known as the artists'
room.
When we came to the little room with its ruby velvet curtains and
mantel drapings, its squares of what looks like brown paper, at about
the height of a man's head, covered with drawings and writings, and
protected by glass, its framed drawings and paintings, Mrs. Tota turned
to me and asked me if I often brought my invalid maiden aunt to dine
here.
"Invalid maiden aunt?" I said with astonishment, but remembered in a
second that I had mentioned some such relative (or was it an uncle?)
when we dined in the private room at Kettner's. Mrs. Tota laughed and
turned to M. Meschini, who was beginning to explain the various works
of art.
The name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye
as soon as any other inscription on these sections of a wall of days
gone by; but it is well worth while to take the panels one by one, and
to go over these sections of brown plaster inch by inch. Mascagni has
written the first bars of one of the airs from "Cavalleria Rusticana,"
Denza has scribbled the opening bars of "Funiculi, Funicula," Lamoureux
has written a tiny hymn of praise to the cook, Ysaye has lamented
that he is always tied to "notes," which, with a waiter and a bill
at his elbow, might have a double meaning. Phil May has dashed some
caricatures upon the wall, a well-meant attempt on the part of a German
waiter to wash one of these out having resulted in the "sack" of the
said waiter and the glazing of the wall. Mario has drawn a picture
of a fashionable lady, and Val Prinsep and a dozen artists of like
calibre have, in pencil, or sepia, or pastel, noted brilliant trifles
on the wall. Paderewski, Pucchini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti, Plançon,
De Lucia, Melba, Menpes, Tosti, are some of the signatures; and as
little Mrs. Tota read the names she became as serious as if she were in
church, for this little chamber is in its way a temple dedicated to the
artistic great who have dined.
17_th December_.
* * * * *
I asked M. Meschini if he would be so kind as to give me the _recette_
for the _filets de sole Pagani_, and here it is just as he wrote it
down for me.
_Filets sole Pagani_
The sole is first of all filleted, and with the bones, some mussels,
and a little white wine, a _fumée de poisson_ is made in which the
fillets of the sole are then cooked.
The cook takes this _cuisson_, and by adding some well-chopped fresh
mushrooms, makes with that what he calls a _réduction_; to this he adds
some _velouté_, little cream, fresh butter, some lemon juice, pepper
and salt, and cooks the whole together till well mixed, then passes
it _à l'étamine_. With this the sauce is made. The cooked fillets of
sole and eight or ten mussels are then placed ready on a silver dish,
and the above made sauce poured over them. The top is well sprinkled
with fresh Parmesan cheese, and after allowing them to _gratiner_ for a
minute or two, are ready to be put on the customer's table.