THE GOURMET'S GUIDE TO LONDON
BY
LIEUT.-COL. NEWNHAM-DAVIS
_Author of
"The Gourmet's Guide to Europe"_
NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
1914
PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
[Illustration: THE CHESHIRE CHEESE
_From a drawing by Harry Morley_]
_The pleasures of the table are common to all ages and ranks, to
all countries and times; they not only harmonise with all the other
pleasures, but remain to console us for their loss.--_
BRILLAT SAVARIN.
TO ALL GOOD GOURMETS
PREFACE
In describing in this book some of the restaurants and taverns in and
near London, I have selected those that seem to me to be typical of the
various classes, giving preference to those of each kind which have
some picturesque incident in their history, or are situated amidst
beautiful surroundings, or possess amongst their personnel a celebrated
chef or _maître d'hôtel_.
The English language has not enough nicely graduated terms of praise to
enable me to give to a fraction its value to each restaurant, from the
unpretentious little establishments in Soho to such palaces as the Ritz
and Savoy, but I have included no dining-place in this volume that does
not give good value for the money it charges.
Twelve years ago I wrote a somewhat similar book, "Dinners and Diners,"
which ran through two editions, but when I looked it through last
year I found that there had been so many changes in the world of
restaurants, so many old houses had vanished and so many new ones had
arisen, that it was easier to write a new book than to bring the old
one up to date. Mr Astor very kindly gave me permission to use in this
volume any of the series of "Dinners and Diners" articles that appeared
in _The Pall Mall Gazette_, but it will be found that I have availed
myself very sparingly of his kind permission. The chapters of this
book appeared, with very few exceptions, in _Town Topics_, and I am
indebted to the editor of that paper for his leave to gather them into
book form.
Mr Grant Richards, the publisher of this book, quite agrees with me
that no advertisements of restaurants shall find a place within its
covers.
Should "The Gourmet's Guide to London" find a welcome from an
appreciative public, and should, in due time, other editions of it be
called for, I shall hope to broaden its scope to include in it some of
the hostelries of Brighton and other seaside towns, also those of the
great cities and great ports, and to describe some of those fine old
country inns scattered about the kingdom where good old English cookery
is still to be found in good old English surroundings.
For the French of the menus I do not hold myself responsible. The
kitchen writes the French that it talks and who am I, a mere Briton,
that I should attempt to alter it?
N. NEWNHAM-DAVIS.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I OLD ENGLISH FARE 1
II SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND 6
III A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 12
IV THE CARLTON 19
V TWO LITTLE SOHO RESTAURANTS 26
VI A RAG-TIME DINNER 32
VII THE CAFÉ ROYAL 38
VIII OYSTER-HOUSES 46
IX WHITEBAIT AT GREENWICH 53
X THE CECIL 59
XI CLARIDGE'S 67
XII THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT 73
XIII THE PRINCES' RESTAURANT 81
XIV THE CRITERION 86
XV SOME CHOP-HOUSES 92
XVI SOME GRILL-ROOMS 99
XVII ROMANO'S 105
XVIII IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 115
XIX A REGIMENTAL DINNER 122
XX "JOLLY GOOD" 128
XXI IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE THEATRE 134
XXII THE WELCOME CLUB 141
XXIII GOLDSTEIN'S 147
XXIV THE MITRE 152
XXV IN THE HANDS OF PI(E)RATES 158
XXVI APPENRODT'S 166
XXVII THE BURFORD BRIDGE HOTEL 174
XXVIII THE RITZ 180
XXIX SOME OUTLYING RESTAURANTS 190
XXX THE KING'S GUARD 195
XXXI THE OLD BULL AND BUSH 201
XXXII THE BERKELEY 206
XXXIII THE JOYS OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 214
XXXIV A SUPPER TRAIN 220
XXXV THE ADELAIDE GALLERY 226
XXXVI THE COMPLEAT ANGLER 235
XXXVII ARTISTS' ROOMS 241
XXXVIII THE PICCADILLY RESTAURANT 249
XXXIX THE RENDEZVOUS 255
XL THE PALL MALL RESTAURANT 261
XLI IN JERMYN STREET 267
XLII THE MEN WHO MADE THE SAVOY 272
XLIII THE DUTIES OF A _MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL_ 279
XLIV THE SAVOY TO-DAY 283
XLV THE RESTAURANT DES GOURMETS 290
XLVI THE MAXIM RESTAURANT 294
XLVII BIRCH'S 300
XLVIII A CITY BANQUET 308
XLIX THE CAVENDISH HOTEL 313
L THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES 320
LI THE LIGUE DES GOURMANDS 325
LII THE CAVOUR RESTAURANT 333
LIII VERREY'S 338
LIV THE CATHAY RESTAURANT 345
LV THE WHITE HORSE CELLARS 353
LVI THE MONICO 360
LVII THE ITALIAN INVASION 365
LVIII THE HYDE PARK HOTEL 371
LIX YE OLDE GAMBRINUS 378
LX MY SINS OF OMISSION 384
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
M. ESCOFFIER 24
M. RITZ 184
JOSEPH CARVING A DUCK 276
MRS LEWIS 314
I
OLD ENGLISH FARE
When a foreigner or one of our American cousins, or a man from one of
the Colonies, comes to England, the first question he generally asks
is: "Where can I get a typical good old English dinner?" Good old
English fare is by no means too abundant in London--and old English
fare I would define as being the very best native material, cooked in
the plainest possible manner. We talk of English cookery, though it
should really be termed British cookery, for Irish stew and Welsh lamb,
Scotch beef and cock-a-leekie soup, and even a haggis, can fairly be
included in the comprehensive term.
When men on short commons on an exploring expedition, or on a sporting
trip, or on active service, talk of the good things they will eat when
they get home to England, the first idea that occurs to most of them
is how delightful it will be to eat a good fried sole once again; and
with fried sole may be coupled English bacon, for no bacon anywhere
else in the world is as good as that which the kitchenmaids fry in
thousands of British kitchens. Perhaps the Channel sole and the bacon
of the Southern Counties, Oxford marmalade and Cambridge sausages
belong to the home breakfast-table more than to meals in the haunts
of the gourmet, though the sole plays a most important part in many
dinners, and the Christmas dinner turkey would be unhappy without its
accompanying sausages. It is, however, at lunch-time, the time of
pasties, puddings and pies, that old English cookery is seen at its
best.
I do not know of any eating-house that makes a speciality of the
mutton-chop pudding with oysters, that Abraham Hayward praises so
unrestrictedly, but now and again I meet in restaurants such good
English dishes as Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy pie, which is an
admirable stew of chicken and cabbage; shepherd's pie, in which the
minced meat is covered with a well-browned layer of mashed potato,
I am given sometimes at shooting luncheons. Toad-in-the-hole and
bubble-and-squeak are pleasant memories of my schoolboy days, but if
some Frenchman, who has studied Dickens, asked me where he could eat
the stew described in "The Old Curiosity Shop," which consisted of
tripe, and cow-heel, and bacon, and steak, and peas and cauliflower,
new potatoes and asparagus "all worked up together in one delicious
gravy," I should have to admit my inability to direct him. A fish pie
is excellent at any meal, but a woodcock pie or a snipe pudding, I
think, should be reserved for the dinner-table. The pork-pie now seems
sacred to railway refreshment-rooms, picnics and race-courses. Oysters
are real British fare, though other countries have learned from us
to appreciate them; but I fancy that the old Romans first taught the
gentlemen who clothed themselves in woad tattooings what delicacies
they had waiting for them in their shallow waters. Oysters are
admirable creatures when eaten out of their deep shell, and they play
their part well in oyster soup and scalloped oysters and oyster fries.
And there are many puddings and "made dishes" that would be incomplete
without the presence of oysters in them. Jugged duck and oysters is a
good old British dish, and there are oysters in the majestic pudding of
the Cheshire Cheese. I may perhaps be allowed to suggest to some cooks
who put the oysters into puddings and pies with the other raw materials
that a better way is to cook the dish, then remove the crust or paste,
slip in the oysters, fix the crust again and cook till the oysters are
warmed through.
The typical British dinner most often quoted is that which the Lord
Dudley of the thirties, a noted epicure, declared was a dinner "fit
for an emperor," and it runs thus: "A good soup, a small turbot, a
neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus,
and an apricot tart." Of British soups turtle always takes precedence
in the list of honour, but as the turtle comes from Ascension or the
West Indies, it can hardly claim to be a denizen of these islands.
Hare soup and mock turtle, mulligatawny, mutton broth and pea soup are
distinctively British, though the curry powder in the mulligatawny--a
soup which takes its name from two Tamil words: Mŭllĭgă = pepper, and
Tunni = water--comes, of course, from India. Oxtail soup has a good
British sound, but I fancy that French housewives first discovered the
virtue that there is in the tail of an ox.
Lord Dudley loved a turbot, but other judges of good British dinners
sometimes give the preference to cod. Walker, of "Original" fame, gave
a Christmas Day dinner to two friends, and the fare he provided for
them was: crimped cod, a woodcock a man, and plum pudding. One of the
most typical British dinners I have eaten was that which a gallant
colonel, who very worthily filled the mayoral chair at Westminster,
used to give annually at the Cavour Restaurant. It consisted of
a large turbot, a sucking-pig nicely roasted, and apple pudding.
Roast sucking-pig is a dinner dish better understood in England than
anywhere else in the world, except, perhaps, in China. When the Duke of
Cambridge, brother of George the Fourth, was entertained in princely
fashion at Belvoir, and was shown the menu of a dinner on which a great
French chef had exhausted all his inventiveness, and was asked if there
were any dishes not included in the feast for which he had a fancy,
answered that he would like some roast pig and an apple dumpling, both
good British dishes. His son, the Commander-in-Chief of our days, also
had a liking for pork, and, at one time, word went round the British
army that at inspection lunches it was wise to give his Royal Highness
pork chops. Of course, the British army overdid it, and the old Duke
had so many pork chops put before him in the course of a year that
at last their presence on the menu was far more likely to assist in
the securing of an unfavourable report on a regiment than was their
absence. Gravy soup, a grilled sole, a boiled hen pheasant stuffed with
oysters, and an open tart formed the favourite dinner of a renowned
gourmet of my acquaintance.
Of the made dishes that belong to British cookery, jugged hare, I
think, has the leading place. Yorkshire pudding is as British as
Stonehenge is, and mince pies can claim to be to-day exactly what
they were when the Puritans used to preach against them. Marrow bones
and Welsh rarebits, buck rarebits, and stewed tripe and onions are
old British supper dishes, but the early closing laws have killed the
old-fashioned British supper in eating-houses.
Good British cookery in London has not fared well in its battle against
the invasion of good French cookery, and the number of houses which
made a speciality of British fare has decreased woefully in the last
twenty years. The old Blanchard's and its half-a-crown British dinner
is a memory of the past (for the new Blanchard's turned towards the
goddess A la), and the "Blue Posts" in Cork Street has been converted
into a club. It was curious that the prosperity of this typical old
English house depended to a great extent on a German head waiter; for
Frank, who had all the best traditions of British cookery at heart,
had served under the old Emperor Wilhelm in the great war, and had
been wounded by a French bayonet thrust. There were certain rules of
the house that were excellent. One was that, no matter what orders you
might give beforehand, no fish was ever put near the fire until the man
who had ordered it was inside the building, which ensured it going to
table cooked to the second; and another was that the steaks, which were
a great stand-by of the house, were cut from the mass of beef just in
time to be transferred at once to the grill, thus making sure that none
of the juices should drain away.
But there are still some temples of British cookery left in Cockaigne,
and to some of them presently I will direct your steps.
II
SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND
A wide entrance glowing with light, with Simpson's plain to see, on a
wrought-iron sign above it, is in the great block of the Savoy Hotel
building in the Strand, for the new Simpson's, though it retains all
its old associations and its old manager and its old head cook--Mr
Davey, the polite, white-haired little ruler of the roast, who wears a
velvet cap, and who for forty-six years has seen the joints turn before
the vast open fire in the kitchen--is now under the rule of the great
organisation that controls the Savoy.
Come into the entrance hall, where you can give up your hat and coat
to an attendant; though if you have been accustomed all your life to
take them into Simpson's you will still find in the dining-room stands
on which to hang them. The hall, with its marble pillars, white panels
and groined roof, is light and airy; a staircase runs down from it to
the smoking-room, and another one runs up to the dining-rooms upon the
first floor. There is a tobacconist's stall in it, and if the door
of the expense bar to one side be open you see through it shelves
of bottles and flasks. Through the wide door leading into the big
dining-room you see white-jacketed waiters moving hither and thither,
and white-coated and white-capped carvers pushing the dinner waggons,
crowned with big plated covers, before them, and as a background the
fine fireplace, with its carved wooden overmantel and its little
marble pilasters, and a picture of a knight and lady of Plantagenet
days feasting let into the central space.
Mr N. Wheeler, the rosy-faced manager, white-haired, and wearing the
frock-coat of ceremony, will probably greet you as you go into the
dining-room. He has seen all the various transformations of Simpson's
Chess Divan, which was originally Ries's Divan, and he probably knows
more about good old English fare than any man living. When we have
eaten our turbot and saddle of mutton we will ask him how it is that
these two best of British dishes are sent to table at Simpson's in such
absolutely perfect condition. But before we choose our seats at one of
the tables let us look round the room. The old Simpson's is still fresh
in my memory. The painted garlands of flowers and studies of fish,
flesh and fowl on the walls, glazed to a deep rich colour by the London
atmosphere, the ground-glass windows, the big bar opening into the
room, with Rembrandtesque shadows in its depths; the great dumb-waiter,
which looked like a catafalque, in the centre of the room; the folded
napkins in the glasses on the mantelpiece; the horsehair-stuffed,
black-cushioned chairs and benches; the divisions with brass rails and
dingy little curtains on the rails.
The pens with their brass rails are still in the old place, but they
are modernised pens; the wood is oak, and there is a comfortable
padded back of brown leather to lean against. The eating-room has been
transformed into a banqueting hall. The walls are panelled with light
oak, with pilasters to give variety, and an inlay of lighter wood at
the corners of the panels. There is a white frieze with good modelling
on it, and round the white-clothed tables which fill but do not crowd
the floor space are chairs copied from a fine Chippendale example. A
good old English clock is on a bracket, and fine cut-glass lustre
chandeliers hang from the ceiling. In old days the waiters at Simpson's
were mostly British veterans, and in the upstairs room Charles
Flowerdew, the head waiter, a genial old soul who always offered his
favourites amongst the customers a pinch from his snuff-box, had a
wealth of anecdotes about the great men of the Victorian era who were
habitués of Simpson's. The waiters of to-day are Britons, but they
are young men, and if anyone has doubts whether Englishmen properly
trained can be as quick and silent in the service of a dining house as
foreigners are, I would advise the doubter to eat a meal at Simpson's
and to watch how the waiters do their work. The boys who take round
the vegetables become in time full-blown serving-men. The waiters no
longer wear the dress-coats, heroes of many clashes with sauce-boats
and plates of soup, which used to be the official garb of the British
waiter. They wear white washing jackets, with at the breast a little
black shield, and on it the crest of the house--the knight of a set
of chessmen. All the tips are pooled, with the result that all the
serving-men work for the general good.
And now to look at the bill of fare. There are no such foreign
innovations as _hors d'œuvre_ allowed at Simpson's, where the only
concessions to France are in the wine cellar and that little French
rolls as well as household bread are in the bread baskets. You can
obtain a fish dinner of three kinds of fish for three and ninepence;
but we will order just what we feel our appetite demands, and take
no account of set dinners. If your taste is for turtle soup, a plate
of that luxury will cost you three shillings, but, if one of the
simpler British soups will content you, hare, pea, mock turtle, Scotch
hotch-potch, oxtail, giblet or mulligatawny are priced at one shilling
or one and sixpence. Then comes the important question of fish, and
the choice really lies between a _Sole Souchet_, which Simpson's ought
to write _Zouchet_, boiled codfish and oyster sauce, and boiled turbot
and lobster sauce--the last one of the dishes on which Simpson's
prides itself. Until I chatted with Mr Wheeler on the subject I always
understood that a turbot to come to table in perfection should be hung
for several days, but Mr Wheeler denounces this as rank heresy. A
turbot should be nicked to draw off the blood of the fish, it should
be soaked for twenty-four hours, and then it is ready to be boiled. It
is instructive to watch a real habitué of Simpson's who prefers cod
to turbot when a portly white-clad carver wheels his waggon up to the
table. There must be the right proportion of liver with the fish and
the due quantity of oyster in the sauce, or there will be dire threats
of report to higher quarters. A boiled potato to anyone who knows what
is good English fare is not to be accepted without criticism, and
he would be a bold carver who dared to give the knowledgeable man a
helping of saddle of mutton without a slice of the brown. But before
we go on to the supreme matter of the saddle let me point out to you
that whether you eat sole, or cod, or turbot, it means an item of two
shillings on your bill.
The joints ring the changes on roast sirloin, boiled beef, boiled leg
of mutton, roast loin of veal and bath chap, and saddle of mutton, and
it is the saddle that is the favourite dish. Forty saddles a day is the
quantity consumed at Simpson's, and now that the new room is opened
sixty are required. Simpson's employs a buyer whose duty in life is
to travel about England buying saddles wherever the finest mutton is
to be procured. For fourteen days the saddles hang in the stock-room
at Simpson's in a temperature of 38°, then they are moved for two
or three days to another store, through which there is a current of
air, and then they are ready for the fire. And whether you eat of
the mutton, the beef, or the veal, your portion and the accompanying
vegetables will cost you half-a-crown.
We will not trifle with such kickshaws as _salmi_ of game, or Irish
stew, or jugged hare, and to finish our dinner we will take a helping
of one of the pies or puddings on the bill of fare, or, better still, a
good scoop of Stilton cheese or a wedge of Cheshire.
If you wish to be as British in your drinking as in your eating, there
is cool British ale from the cask, which comes to table in a tankard,
and cider, and the whisky of Scotland and that of Ireland. The house is
also celebrated for its moderate-priced Bordeaux and Burgundy wines,
bottled in the cellars.
If we go upstairs before leaving we can see the dining-room to which
ladies are admitted--a handsome room of white with marble pillars--and
you will notice the great bunches of wild flowers which adorn all the
tables. On this floor there is a smaller private banqueting-room, and
the new white Adams' Room, the double windows of which look into the
Strand on one side and the entrance courtyard on the other. It is a
handsome room, with settees by the window tables, and at night hanging
baskets and lamps on the cornice throw light up to the ceiling to be
reflected down into the room.
Down in the smoking-room on the basement level you will find a little
band of chess-players, faithful to the old Divan, hard at the game,
using the old chess-boards and the huge pieces of the Divan days, and
it may further gratify your love for antiquarian lore to know that
Simpson's stands on the site occupied by the old Fountain tavern, of
which Strype wrote: "A very fine tavern, with excellent vaults, good
rooms for entertainments, and a curious kitchen for the dressing of
meat." It was at the Fountain that the opponents of Walpole held their
meetings and that the Earl of Derwentwater and the other Jacobite
lords on trial for rebellion, being taken daily backwards and forwards
between the Tower and Westminster, made favour with their jailer to let
them halt for an hour to eat what they expected to be their last good
dinner on earth.
III
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET
THE CHESHIRE CHEESE
Doctor Samuel Johnson stands in bronze before St Clement Danes and
faces his beloved Fleet Street. If the great dictionary maker took his
eyes off the book he holds in his hands, got down from his pedestal
without knocking over the inkpot which is perilously near his clumsy
old feet, and started for a walk down the street he loved so well, his
remarks on the changes that have been made by time and the architects
would be instructive. What would he say to Street's Law Courts? And
with what sesquipedalian words would he lament the disappearance of
Temple Bar and the appearance in its stead of the pantomime Griffin?
And how the old man would snort and fume to find the taverns he was
used to frequent altered out of recognition, or moved from their old
places. The Rainbow's lamp would bring him to a halt, for the Rainbow
stands to-day where Farr the barber set up his coffee-house, "by
inner Temple Gate." Farr was "presented," in 1657, as an abuse by his
neighbours, who protested against the smell of the coffee, but were in
reality afraid that the new drink was going to oust canary and other
wines. Johnson knew the old tavern in the brave days when Alexander
Moncrieff was the host, when it still, though its "stewed cheeses"
and its stout were celebrated, called itself a coffee-house, and the
largest room was the coffee-room, with a lofty bay-window at the south
end looking into the Temple. In this bay the table was set for the
worthies who frequented the house, and they could, through a glazed
screen, see all that went on in the kitchen. The old Doctor, reading
on the door-jamb that the Rainbow is occupied by the Bodega Company,
would discourse learnedly on the meaning and uses of a Bodega. He would
note with approval Groom's little coffee-house, a few steps farther
on, which, though it did not exist in his days, for it dates back only
to 1818, is one of the few establishments still existing which lives
by the sale of coffee as a beverage, and prospers on its best Mocha at
threepence a cup.
The Cock in its present condition would puzzle the old man most
consumedly, and he would look across the street to see what has become
of that tavern's old site; but if he went inside the house he would
find that Grinling Gibbons' wood-carving of the cock had flown across
the street, and that in the upper room is the panelling from the old
alehouse in which the festive Pepys drank and sang and ate a lobster
and afterwards "mightily merry" took Knip for a moonlight row on the
Thames. It would be useless to talk to the Doctor of Tennyson and the
plump head-waiter of the Cock, but pilgrims following the footsteps of
those poets who have lunched in Fleet Street will find that the Cock is
still a house where the "perfect pint of stout" and the "proper chop"
are reached out with deft hands to customers, and that no head waiter
unless he be plump is ever engaged for the upper room.
The Devil Tavern, which Ben Jonson made so famous by his Apollo Club,
and which stood between Temple Bar and the Middle Temple Gate, was
bought by Messrs Child, the bankers, in 1787, some years after the
death of Samuel Johnson, when it had fallen into disuse, and was
pulled down and dwelling-houses erected on its site. Ben's "Welcome"
and the Apollo bust were transferred to the bank. The most famous of
all the Johnsonian taverns, the Mitre, was another of the old houses
to fall a victim to bankers, for four years after the Doctor's death
it ceased to be a tavern, became in turn Macklin's Poets' Gallery and
Saunders's auction-rooms, and was finally pulled down that on its site
"Hoare's New Banking-house" should be erected. Joe's Coffee-house
in Mitre Court borrowed the derelict name when the Mitre closed its
shutters, and set up a copy of Nollekins' bust of the Doctor as homage
to his memory.
Opposite to Wine Office Court, the Sage of Fleet Street would stop in
his shamble and would wait for an opportunity to cross the road. If
Doctor Johnson hated the transit of the roadway when the traffic was
but of hackney carriages and the coaches of aldermen and stage coaches
and horsemen, how would he face the hurtling streams of taxi-cabs and
motor omnibuses which nowadays jostle in the road? And what, when he
had crossed the road, would he think of Fuller's little sweet-stuff
shop which, gay with colour, has fastened itself, where there used to
be a dingy wine merchant's office with cobwebbed bottles of old port in
its dim, solemn windows, on the Fleet Street front of the Old Cheshire
Cheese? The new-comer looks like a bright stamp stuck on some musty old
parchment deed. Doctor Johnson would, I am sure, growl as he rolled
through the narrow entrance into the court and on to the door of the
old tavern.
And as he and you and I stand in the narrow doorway and look to the
right at the little bar, a harmony in dark colours with the old china
punch-bowls in their accustomed corner, and glass and pewter and
silver catching reflections of light amidst the black of old oak; and
to the left at the old dining-room kept exactly as it was in Doctor
Johnson's time; and to the front at the old oak staircase leading
to the rooms above, let me explain to you that each white-haired
generation of frequenters of the Cheshire Cheese finds fault with the
arrangements made for the newer generation. When Johnson and Goldsmith
ceased to use the house I am sure that the comfortable gentlemen who
had sat at the long table and had listened to their conversation found
that of an evening the talk had grown dull; and when Colonel Lawrence,
who had carried one of the colours of the 20th Regiment at the battle
of Minden, had been a crony of Goldsmith, and had hobnobbed with him
and with Johnson over the port at the Cheese, died, the company at the
long table must have lamented that all the "good old sort" and the good
old customs were passing away. A sturdy supporter of the Cheese, who
is some fifteen years older than I am, sighs for the days when he was
first allowed to sit at the table where the Deputy-Governor of Newgate
and a head clerk of Somerset House led the conversation. And when I go
into the Cheese nowadays and find that two score belles from Baltimore,
or half-a-hundred pretty Puritans from Philadelphia, have taken
possession of the lower room, are drinking tea with their lunches, are
talking like an aviary in commotion, and are more intent on buying
souvenirs of Johnson than on appreciating the delights of the pudding,
I sigh for the days thirty years ago when the Cheese was a grumpy man's
paradise. I am quite sure that when Mr Dollamore, a host of the Cheese
who has grown to heroic size as seen through the mists of time, died,
people of that day thought that the great pudding would never again
be mixed and carved by a master hand. I look back now to the serious
expression, the sort of expression we all assume as we enter a church
door, that used to come upon the face of smiling Mr Moore as the vast
pudding was carried in and he prepared to pierce its snowy covering.
When Henry Todd, a waiter who entered Mr Dollamore's service two years
before the battle of Waterloo, left the house and his portrait was
painted by subscription and given as an heirloom to be hung in the
dining-room, no one believed that young William Simpson, then just
entering the service of the Cheese, would live to be even a more famous
head waiter, to have _his_ portrait painted to be hung in honour in the
coffee-room, and to give his name to one of the rooms upstairs.
And now, having explained that if an old frequenter of the Cheshire
Cheese sometimes grumbles at changes it is only through affection for
the old house, let us go into the dining-room and sit down and look
around us. We will leave Doctor Johnson's seat at the long table, with
its brass tablet and his portrait above it, for the Shade of the great
man. You shall sit in Oliver Goldsmith's seat with your back to the
windows looking out into Cheshire Cheese Court, roofed in now to make
a second dining-room; I will sit opposite to you, and we will take
note of our surroundings. The approval of the old Doctor can be safely
guaranteed. The sawdust on the floor; the wide grate with a shining
copper kettle on the hob; the old mirror; the churchwarden pipes on the
window-sill; the green-curtained cosy corner by the door, just like the
squire's pew in many old churches; the black-handled knives and forks
arranged in a row of black oak hutches; the willow-patterned plates and
dishes; the queer old receptacle for umbrellas in the middle of the
floor; the wire blinds, and the old tables and oak high-backed settles
are to-day exactly as they were when Johnson in the flesh frequented
the tavern. The "greybeard" and the leathern jack, gifts from Mr
Seymour Lucas, R.A., are quite in keeping with the room, and such of
the pictures as are not old deal with incidents in Johnson's life or
are sketches of the room and of the worthies who have frequented it.
The manager of to-day keeps the house just as it used to be a century
and a half ago, and being so, it is one of the most interesting old
buildings in London.
Upstairs are the kitchen, where the woman cook responds to the verbal
shorthand shouts of the waiters by putting chops and steaks on to the
grill and clanging the oven door as good things to bake go into its
recesses, and other old rooms, in which are some interesting relics of
the old lexicographer, the chair in which he always sat at the Mitre,
and other things curious and quaint, but they must await inspection
till after lunch, for to-day is a pudding day, and the fat waiter with
a moustache is waiting for our orders.
The pudding in its great earthenware bowl stands on a little table
in the middle of the room. It is a triumph of old British cookery.
In it are larks, kidneys, oysters, mushrooms, steak, and there are
ingredients in the gravy which are a secret of the house. There are
many imitations of the Cheshire Cheese pudding, but no such pudding
unless it comes from the Cheshire Cheese kitchen has quite the right
taste and quite the right richness of gravy. There is no stint in the
helpings at the Cheshire Cheese. Any man with an appetite has only to
ask for a "follow" to obtain it, and there are traditions that some men
of mighty capacity have even had three helpings. Monday, Wednesday and
Friday are pudding days. There is generally Irish stew on non-pudding
days, and the Cheese Irish stew is admirable. Marrow bones are another
speciality of the house, and a Cheshire Cheese bone holds much marrow.
The typical Cheshire Cheese meal, however--and I am sure Doctor
Johnson would agree with me--is The Pudding, and the strong Scotch
ale of the house therewith; stewed cheese, which comes to table in a
shallow little pan accompanied by hot toast, and to finish up a bowl
of the Cheshire Cheese punch served from an old china bowl with a good
old-fashioned silver ladle. But beware of drinking too much of this
punch, being deceived by its apparent innocence. I know one man who,
saying it was as mild as mother's milk, drank the greater portion of a
bowl of punch, remarked that he was a boy again, and behaved as a boy,
and not until noon next day came to the conclusion that he was a very
elderly man with a headache.
IV
THE CARLTON
If all the great French chefs all the world over were canvassed for
an opinion as to which amongst them is the greatest cook of the day,
I am sure that the majority of votes would be in favour of M. Auguste
Escoffier, the Maître-Chef of the Carlton Restaurant in London. When
any restaurant is exceeding successful, whether it appeals to popular
taste, or to the taste of the most cultured classes, there is sure to
be amongst those men who have brought it fame or brought it popularity,
some strongly marked personality, a great organiser, a great cook, or,
perhaps, a great _maître d'hôtel_, such as poor dead Joseph was. And
the commanding personality at the Carlton is M. Escoffier, who, had he
been a man of the pen and not a man of the spoon, would have been a
poet, and who, wearing the white cap and the white jacket, makes the
sense of taste respond to the beautiful things he invents, just as
the sense of hearing thrills to the cadence of a poet's words, or the
melody of a great composer's music. And M. Escoffier holds that things
which are beautiful to the taste should be fair to the eye, and should
have pleasant-sounding titles. He, for instance, rechristened frogs,
making them "nymphes," and _nymphes à l'Aurore_ has a place in his
great book on modern cookery.
The following is a typical Escoffier menu. It is for a little supper
after the Opera, and was published in _Le Carnet d'Epicure_, a
magazine, to the pages of which M. Escoffier is a prolific contributor.
Gelée de Poulet aux Nids d'Hirondelles.
Soufflé d'Ecrevisses Florentine.
Côtelettes d'Agneau de Lait Favorite.
Petits Pois Frais.
Ortolans au Champagne.
Salade d'Oranges.
Asperges de Serre.
Pêches à la Fraisette des Bois.
Baisers de Vierge.
Mignardises.
The menu reads as delicately as the dishes would taste. The _baisers
de Vierge_ are twin meringues, the cream perfumed with vanilla and
holding crystallised white rose leaves and white violets. Over each
pair of meringues is a veil of spun sugar. This is worthy of the man
who conceived the _bombe Nero_, a flaming ice, who gave all London a
new _entremet_ in _fraises à la Sarah Bernhardt_, and who added a new
glory to a great singer by creating the _pêche Melba_.
M. Escoffier is a little below the middle height, grey haired, and grey
of moustache. His face is the face of an artist, or a statesman, and
the quick eyes tell of his capacity for command. The quiet little man
who, amidst all the clangour of the great white-tiled kitchen below
the restaurant of the Carlton, seems to have nothing to do except to
occasionally glance at the dishes before they leave his realm or to
give a word of counsel when some very delicate _entremet_ is in the
making, to taste a sauce or give a final touch to the arrangement of
some elaborate cold entrée, has organised his brigade of vociferous
cooks of all nations as thoroughly as Crawford organised the Light
Division of Peninsular fame. There is never any difficulty, for every
difficulty has been foreseen. Only a man who has climbed the ladder
from its lowest rung possesses such knowledge and such authority. M.
Escoffier began his career as a boy in the kitchen of his uncle's
restaurant in Nice. He went to Russia to the kitchen of one of the
Grand Dukes, he served in the Franco-Prussian War as the Chef de
Cuisine to the General Staff of the Army of the Rhine, and he knows the
bitterness of captivity in the hands of an enemy. He was with Maréchal
MacMahon at the Elysée and left the Grand Hotel at Rome when Ritz and
he and Echenard came to London to make history at the Savoy. He writes
with a very pretty wit on subjects connected with his profession,
and he is married to a lady who, under her maiden name of Delphine
Daffis, is well known in France as a poetess, and who has recently been
decorated with the violet ribbon as Officier d'Académie.
If I have given so much space to a sketch of the great Maître-Chef, it
is not that he is the only man of talent amongst the personnel of the
Carlton. M. Kreamer, the manager, is eminent amongst his fellows. In
the restaurant M. Besserer, light of hair, and with a light curling
moustache, is an admirable Maître d'Hôtel, and the Carlton grill-room
(to which I shall give attention when I write of the grill-rooms of
London) owes much of its popularity to its manager, Signor Ventura.
And now for a little ancient history. Her Majesty's Opera House, with a
colonnade surrounding it in which were shops and a little restaurant,
Epitaux's, where the Iron Duke and other famous men gave dinner-parties
in the early Victorian days, stood at the corner of the Haymarket and
Pall Mall. If I wrote of the glories and the disasters of the big
house of song I should have to write a book. When a company bought
the site, and the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre rose on it, the
colonnade disappeared from three sides, and all the shops on those
sides also vanished except the offices of Justerini and Brooks. These
wine merchants held to their old position, and their window front was
encased in the building of the new hotel without the business of the
firm suffering a day's interruption. A cigar store has since then found
an abiding place on the Pall Mall frontage. The name of Epitaux's was
taken by the restaurant next door to the Haymarket Theatre, but was
eventually dropped in favour of a more attractive title, the Pall Mall.
The tall porter outside the entrance of the Carlton in Pall Mall sets
the swing door in motion to let us through; coats and hats, cloaks and
furs are garnered from us as we pass through the ante-room, and then we
are in the palm lounge, that happy inspiration of the architect which
has been copied in other hotels through the length and breadth of the
habitable world. The double glass roof, letting in light but keeping
out draughts, was a novelty when the hotel was built. But, though this
palm court has been copied far and wide, it has never been bettered.
The terrace breaks up pleasantly the great width of floor space. The
tall palms, and the flowers and smaller palms before the terrace, and
the green cane easy-chairs give a sylvan touch to this great hall in
the heart of London; and, as an instance of perfect taste, notice the
little medallions of Wedgwood ware dependent from the capitals of the
creamy marble pilasters.
Up the broad flight of steps we go into the restaurant, a restaurant
the colouring in which is such that it never clashes with the hues
of any lady's dress. The garlands of golden leaves on the ceiling,
the artful use of mirrors and evergreens to give the illusion that
outside the windows north and west there are gardens, the cut-glass
chandeliers converted into electroliers, and giving a soft rosy light,
the brown and deep rose of the carpet, the lighter rose of the chairs,
the gilt cornice, the _œil de bœuf_ windows towards the palm lounge,
all form a perfect setting for charming people eating delicate foods.
The keynote of the restaurant in decoration, as in the dinners which
come from Escoffier's kitchen, is refinement. It is a pity, perhaps,
that there is not daylight to brighten the restaurant from end to end,
and that the electric lamps are always alight; but at dinner-time this
is no drawback. An excellent string band plays on the terrace, but it
is as well at dinner-time to choose a table far enough away from the
musicians to ensure comfortable converse.
And now to describe to you a typical Carlton dinner. It is not easy,
for I have so many memories of so many typical dinners there. Once the
annual banquet of my old regiment was held at the Carlton in a great
space of the restaurant screened off from the other diners. That was a
noble feast! Again a memory comes to me of a silver wedding dinner, for
which the table was decorated with creamy white and light pink roses,
with silvered leaves. Escoffier composed for the occasion a dinner all
white and pink, in which the Bortch was the deepest note of colour, the
_filets de poulets à la Paprika_ halved the two hues, and the flesh of
an _agneau de lait_ formed the highest light in the picture. That was
the second occasion on which M. Escoffier sent to a dining-table the
_pêches Aiglon_, the first occasion being a supper which Madame Sarah
Bernhardt gave to Sir Henry Irving and other stars of our stage.
But most distinctive of all the dinners of ceremony at which I have
been a guest at the Carlton was the dinner which Mr William Heinemann,
the well-known publisher, gave to celebrate the publication by his
firm of Escoffier's great work, "A Guide to Modern Cookery." The
dinner was the idea of the Maître-Chef, who suggested that the best
way to criticise the book would be to invite some of the men in whose
judgment the publisher had faith to eat a dinner cooked by the man who
had written the book. We were fourteen in all, mostly "ink-stained
wretches," and amongst the signatures on the menu, which I religiously
pasted opposite the title-page of my autographed copy of the work, are
those of Sir Douglas Straight and of T. P. O'Connor, of a member of the
great house of Harmsworth, and of other men whose palates are as keen
as their pens.
This was the menu of the dinner and the list of the wines we drank that
30th May 1907:
Melon Cantaloup.
Caviar de Sterlet.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté Froid de Volaille.
Mousseline d'Ecrevisses Orientale.
Jeune Agneau Piqué de Sauge.
Morilles à la Crème.
Petits Pois à l'Anglaise.
Poularde Ena.
Trou Normand.
Cailles aux Raisins.
Asperges d'Argenteuil.
Pêches Sainte Alliance.
Mignardises.
VINS.
Vodka.
Amontillado, Dry.
Berncastler Doctor, 1893.
Heidsieck and Co., Dry, 1892.
Pommery and Greno, Nature, 1900.
Château Lafitte, 1878.
Dow's Port, 1887.
Café Double--Grandes Liqueurs.
[Illustration: M. ESCOFFIER]
The _velouté froid_ is a test dish, for only a master hand can give
it the right consistency without allowing it to become pasty. The
_mousselines_ were beautifully light, each in the form of a cygnet,
surrounding a central figure of a swan. The _poularde Ena_ was 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 the _pêches Ste Alliance_ is one
of those delicate _entremets_ in which Escoffier excels any other great
chef of to-day, or of the past. The _trou Normand_ is 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.
V
TWO LITTLE SOHO RESTAURANTS
AU PETIT RICHE. MOULIN D'OR
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 and was
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 lower rooms 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 the _carte 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.