waitress, on chance, has addressed us in French, but if she is answered
in English can carry on a conversation in that language. There are
two soups on the list, _consommé Colbert_, which costs sixpence, no
doubt because of the egg, and _crème Cressonière_, which costs only
threepence, and we will choose the cheaper of the two. Amongst the fish
dishes, the salmon and the sole cost a shilling, but we will choose
the _vol au vent de Turbot Joinville_, which costs ninepence. Amongst
the entrées is an item, two _quails en Cocotte_, for a shilling.
Curiosity prompts me to suggest that we should order this, having in
mind what the price of a single quail is on a club bill of fare, but we
shall be on safer ground in ordering one of the dishes of the house,
the _filet mignon Petit Riche_, which costs a shilling, and with it
some peas, fourpence, and some new potatoes, also fourpence. Amongst
the _entremets_ is a _Pêche Petit Riche_, which the little waitress
strongly recommends, but _beignets de pommes_ at threepence seems to me
a more fitting ending for our repast.
There is no long waiting for one's food at the Au Petit Riche; the soup
arrives almost immediately and is wonderful value for threepence. The
_vol au vent_ is an admirable little fish pie, and the _filet mignon_ a
most toothsome morsel of meat, while the _beignets_ are all that they
should be. The little waitress, when we have arrived at the _filet
mignon_ stage of the dinner, asks with the utmost solicitude: "Do you
like eet?" and I have replied for both of us "Very much indeed." At the
table to one side of us are a young couple whose dinner has consisted
of curried chicken and plum pudding au Rhum, and at the table to our
other side, two ladies are eating a typical woman's dinner of _hors
d'œuvre_, poached eggs and spinach, and a vanilla ice. The Au Petit
Riche finds room on its small _carte du jour_ for dishes to suit all
tastes.
The little waitress brings the total of the bill on a bit of green
paper; and having finished our dinner, and having paid for it, we
will go down into the lower rooms before leaving the restaurant. In
the lower rooms every table is always occupied, and I fancy that the
habitués of the restaurant prefer them to the upper ones. One of them
is decorated with golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue ground, and another
is an admirable representation of the kitchen of a Breton farmhouse,
crockery and all complete. There is a great buzz of talk in these lower
rooms, and Madame la Patronne, sitting at her desk amidst the tables,
takes her share in the conversation and attends to the making out of
the bills at one and the same time.
If you go to the Au Petit Riche in the right frame mind you will be
abundantly amused and interested, and you will get wonderful value for
the very small sum your dinner will cost you.
And now for my other little restaurant in Soho. It is the Moulin d'Or
at 27 Church Street. When Karl Thiele, who was in the employ of Peter
Gallina at the Rendez-Vous Restaurant, married the pretty book-keeper
at the Richelieu Restaurant, they determined to set up in business
on their own account, and took a ground-floor room in Church Street,
gave it a good-looking window, put a row of little trees outside, hung
baskets of ferns within, and christened it Le Moulin d'Or, hoping that
their mill would grind golden grist. It was a doll's house restaurant
when I first discovered it two years ago, and the great ambition
then of its proprietor and proprietress was that they might in time
become sufficiently prosperous to add the first-floor room to their
establishment. They have prospered, and when I lately went to dine
there I found that the lower room with a restful green paper had been
increased in size by taking in the passage, and that upstairs is a new
restaurant room also with green walls and a large window, the dream
realised of the young couple. And not only have these improvements
and additions been made, but quite close to the Moulin d'Or there
has been put up a wonderful windmill with electrically lighted sails
which revolve, and below it a hand pointing in the direction of the
restaurant and a transparency whereon see inscribed the prices of the
_table d'hôte_ meals, luncheon, and dinner, and supper, for the Moulin
d'Or has both its _carte du jour_ and its _table d'hôte_ meals. For
half-a-crown, on the occasion of my last visit, I could have eaten
_hors d'œuvre_, made my choice between a _consommé_ and a _crème soup_
and partaken of salmon, _filet de bœuf_, roast chicken and caramel
cream, but I preferred to turn my attention to the _carte du jour_,
and ordered _crème Suzette_, 6d.; _truite au bleu_, 1s. 3d.; _escalope
de veau Viennoise_, 10d.; _haricots verts_, 6d.; and an _omelette au
Rhum_, 10d., all very well cooked and served piping hot. The restaurant
has not yet a wine licence, but for all that a special wine is reserved
for it at a neighbouring wineshop, an excellent light burgundy,
_Château Villy_, at 4s. 6d. a quart, and 2s. 6d. a pint, and, besides,
there is a quite comprehensive wine list. Karl Thiele and his wife,
looking for new kingdoms to conquer, have moved to Brighton, where they
are established in St James's Street, and the new host at the Moulin
d'Or is M. Combes, a very young man, assisted by a very young wife.
They are, in spite of their youth, maintaining the reputation of the
house for good cookery.
VI
A RAG-TIME DINNER
AT THE IMPERIAL RESTAURANT
My little French cousin who has married the Comte de St Solidor (if
that is not his exact title it is, literally, next door to it) has
brought her Breton husband across the Channel to make the acquaintance
of his English relatives, and is desperately anxious that he shall not
be depressed by London. He is a jolly, round-faced Frenchman, with
a rather straggly light beard and a great head of intractable light
hair, and, were it not that he cannot speak a word of our language,
might pass for a young Yorkshire squire. My little French cousin
was particularly afraid that Robert, that is his first name, would
suffer all the tortures of ennui on Sunday, for her mother, who was
English-born, had told her that the English in England spend their
Sunday afternoons, when they are grown-up, in singing hymns, and
when they are children in repeating aloud the catechism. I told my
little cousin to have no fear, that London Sundays are no longer what
they were when her mother was a child, and I offered to take charge
of Robert and herself on their first Sunday in London, from after
lunch-time till bed-time, and to try and keep them amused.
I asked my little French cousin whether rag-time had penetrated to
Brittany, and she, pitying my ignorance, told me that at Dinard, last
summer, they had talked to rag-time music, and bathed to it, and had
even played syncopated _chemin de fer_ to it, as well as danced to
it. But, when I asked her if at Dinard she had ever eaten to it, she
said, "But no," and gave a mimetic sketch of eating food to the air of
"Everybody's doing it now," which was very funny. That settled where
we should dine on Sunday, and I wrote off at once to the Imperial
Restaurant to secure a dinner-table for four, and asked another cousin,
a British one, to complete the _partie carrée_.
The afternoon of Sunday caused me no anxiety. Robert is devoted to
music, so I took him and the Comtesse to the Queen's Hall to one of Sir
Henry Wood's concerts, and on to the Royal Automobile Club to tea, and
neither of them showed any sign of being oppressed by Sabbath gloom.
At ten minutes past eight I was waiting in the vestibule between the
street entrance and the restaurant, where a marble bust of the late
King Edward smiles at each customer who enters. I had ordered my
dinner, a very simple one--_potage Germiny, truites au bleu, noisettes
de mouton,_ new peas and potatoes, ham and spinach, asparagus, and a
_bombe_, and a magnum of Goulet, 1900, to drink therewith. For ten
minutes I sat in the window-seat watching pretty ladies and men of all
ages and types pass through the vestibule, give up their coats and
cloaks, shake hands, and go in little coveys into the restaurant. The
orchestra in the distance was sawing away at an operatic overture, the
ante-room was comfortably warmed, and as dinner was the only event
of the evening I did not fidget because my little cousin delayed in
her coming. I was not the only solitary man waiting. In front of the
fireplace stood a beautiful young man, with sleeve-links and studs and
buttons to his white waistcoat that must have cost a fortune. Now and
again he glanced at the clock, a work of art, in which a gilded cupid
points with a finger to the revolving girdle of hours on a vase, and
when he had ascertained how late _she_ was already he surveyed the
other human creatures about him with tolerant pride and slight hauteur.
I have no gift of telepathy, but I was quite sure that he was waiting
for some very beautiful lady of the stage, and pitied those of us who
had no such divinity to be our guest.
The British cousin arrived to time, and not very long afterwards my
French cousins appeared. She looked at the clock and declared that they
were late because Robert could not find his evening studs, and Robert
laughed, as men do when called upon to substantiate a white fib told by
their wives. She had asked me whether she ought to dine in her hair, or
in a hat, and I had answered that either way would be quite correct.
She had decided not to wear a hat in order to be quite English, and she
looked entirely charming. I could not help glancing at the beautiful
young man who monopolised the fire to see what he thought of my star
guest. He was slightly interested, but he answered my glance by one
which meant "Wait and see."
I had secured a corner table at a reasonable distance from the band,
which occupies a platform about half-way down the room, and we
enthroned the little cousin on the chair in the angle, so that she
could see everybody and everything in the room. Every table but one was
occupied, and that I knew was reserved for the beautiful young man whom
we had left looking with a frown at cupid's finger. My little French
cousin was in high spirits, and Robert acted as an amiable chorus.
She recognised that the room was French--it is a copy of one of the
salons at Fontainebleau, and perceived that the pictures of cupids,
which are between the round windows and the tall casemented glasses,
were inspired by Boucher. She liked the carved marble mantelpiece and
the crystal and gold electroliers. I was called upon to tell her who
everybody was at the other tables, and I launched out recklessly into
fiction. I knew by sight a dozen of our fellow-diners, and the rest
I described as M.P.'s and ladies of title, officers of the Household
Brigade, and divettes of the Gaiety, Daly's, the Lyric, and the
Shaftesbury, which they probably are, celebrated painters and prima
donnas, according to their appearance. My British cousin choked over
a bone of the trout, so he said, but my little French cousin and her
spouse were much impressed by my exhaustive acquaintance with all the
celebrities of my native city, which was just the effect I wished to
produce.
Little Oddenino, going the round of the tables, saying a word or two to
all his clientele, came to our corner, asked if all was as it should
be, took up the menu, and lifted his eyebrows. Of course I know that
to follow the _noisettes_ by ham was inartistic, but being in the
vein of romance I said that my little French cousin was passionately
fond of ham, and demanded it at all her meals, and not that I prefer
ham to mutton, which would have been the truth. The little man bowed
and smiled and passed on; My cousin asked who he was, and when I
replied, "Oddy," she inquired if it was he who would presently make
the rag-time. Pleased to be on bed-rock truth at last I gave her a
shorthand sketch of Oddenino's career; how Turin is his native town;
how he opened one of the great hotels at Cimiez, and earned the thanks
of the late Queen Victoria and a fine tie-pin when she stayed there;
how he was manager of the East Room at the Criterion, and of the Café
Royal, and from the latter restaurant stepped two doors farther down
Regent Street and built the Imperial Restaurant. I described story
upon story of banqueting-rooms that are to be found on the Glasshouse
Street side, and how Freemasons--good, charitable British Freemasons,
not troublesome political French Freemasons--feast in them in great
numbers every night in the year. I sketched out the little man's other
ventures, and I ended by telling her that Oddenino is a man of much
consideration in the Italian colony in London, and has been decorated
by his king. Surely she did not expect a Cavaliere to make rag-time
music? And my little French cousin said "assuredly not."
When we had come to the _noisettes'_ stage of our dinner the beautiful
young man whom we had left waiting in the vestibule came in--alone. He
looked as gloomy as Hamlet, and held in his hand a letter, which he
tore into small pieces and thrust into the ice pail beside his table.
"The poor animal!" said my little cousin pityingly. "He is dining with
an excuse." He drank two glasses of champagne in quick succession, and
then felt strong enough to sup his soup.
About this period a change came over the music of the band, which had
conscientiously worked off the barcarole from "Hoffman," a Viennese
waltz and a minuet. A clean-shaven young man, Mr Gideon, the clever
composer of the rag-time successes who had been eating his dinner
like the rest of us, took his place at the piano, and the orchestra
subordinated itself to his leadership. Mr Gideon can make the piano
speak as few men can, and my little French cousin and Robert both
pricked up their ears and even let the asparagus get cold in their
new-found interest. When Mr Gideon, dispensing with orchestral aid,
sang "Honolulu," and here and there a girl's voice joined in the
refrain, my little cousin turned sharply to me. "Ought one to sing?"
she asked, and I told her that it was as she pleased. She listened with
all her ears to catch the words, and at last trilled out with the rest:
"Ma onaleuleu oné leu," and then laughed at her own boldness.
A quarter of an hour later my little French cousin, with both elbows on
the table, a cigarette between her fingers, and sipping at intervals
some _crème de menthe_, was singing "Hitchy Koo" with the best of
them, and Robert was booming away harmonising a bass _bouche-fermeé_
accompaniment. It was curious how this general singing brought together
those who dined. We had been separate little parties before, but the
humanity of song made us into one big friendly audience. Even the
beautiful young man recovered his spirits sufficiently to try to start
an eye flirtation with my little cousin.
The heat in the room grew and the atmosphere thickened with tobacco
smoke, but we all sat on till close on eleven o'clock, when the
vestibule doors were opened to let out the smoke and let in the cold
air, and the ladies put their stoles round their necks, and the men
called for their bills. Mine, including cigars and liqueurs, came to
exactly a guinea a head.
Before bidding me good-night my little cousin, speaking for herself and
Robert, said that they had well dined and had amused themselves, and
that the Britannic Sunday was not frightening. But I told her that all
our Sunday entertainment was not yet at end, that Robert, when he had
taken her home to their hotel, was going to drink a whisky-and-soda
with me at the club, and that then I would take him on to an hospitable
house, where _chemin de fer_ is played, and that if there was no police
raid she would see him back about five A.M.
My little French cousin looked at me to see whether I was serious,
laughed in my face, and taking Robert by the arm led him to the taxi
that was waiting for them.
VII
THE CAFÉ ROYAL
One of the questions people are fond of asking and, like "jesting
Pilate," do not stay to have answered, is, "Which is the best place in
London at which to dine?" This is generally only a prologue to their
opinion on the subject, but when it is an inquiry, and not an overture,
I always reply by another question, "Whom are you going to take out to
dine?" for there are so many "best places" that the selection of the
right one depends entirely on what are the tastes of the person, or
persons, you wish to please.--If a man were to answer _my_ question
by saying that he wished to entertain some bachelors of his own ripe
age and ripe tastes, and that he would like to go somewhere where the
food is very good, the rooms comfortable, and where there is no band to
interfere with conversation, I should diagnose his case at once as a
Café Royal one.
The Café Royal is pleasantly conservative, and it is more like a good
French restaurant of the Second Empire than is any other dining-place
I know in London. Its fame has reached to all other countries in
the world, and a French waiter who hopes to become in due time a
manager looks on an engagement at "The Café" as a step in his career.
Therefore, if ever you feel inclined to be tight-fisted in the matter
of tips to the waiters at the Café Royal, reflect that you may meet
them again where their good word can help to make a meal comfortable
for you. Once in Paris, when I went to dine at Maire's, far up the
boulevards, a restaurant into which I had not been for years, I was
surprised to be received as though I was the prodigal son of the
establishment, a _maître d'hôtel_ taking especial care to find a
pleasant table for me, and suggesting various dishes from the _carte du
jour_, which shaped into a dinner after my own heart. I asked him if I
had ever seen him before, and he replied: "I waited on monsieur at the
Café Royal in the days when he used to drink the _Cliquot vin rosée_."
I pause here to sigh regretfully over the memory of that _cuvée_ of
Cliquot, at which many men shied because of its colour, but which was
the most delightful wine that ever came from the great house of the
widow of Rheims. On the first occasion that I entered the restaurant
of the Esplanade Hotel in Berlin, feeling rather like a boy going to a
new school, I was received by a _maître d'hôtel_ who knew that I liked
a table at the side of the room, suggested to me three of the lightest
dishes on the _carte_ as my dinner, and told me that he remembered that
at the Café Royal I always asked for the table in the far corner of the
first room and that I liked short and light dinners.
It may be that in a few years, when the Quadrant of Regent Street must
be rebuilt, and all the other houses in it will be obliged to conform
in some respects to the Piccadilly Hotel, the sample building of the
new style, the Café Royal as we know it to-day may be altered in
appearance and in the arrangement of its rooms, but I hope that this
will not happen in my time. It was the first restaurant at which I
learned the joys of dining out in pleasant company--a _sole Colbert_,
a _Chateaubriand_ and _pommes sautés_, an _omelette au rhum_ and a
bottle of good Burgundy was my idea of a suitable dinner in those my
strenuous days, and I have for the house all the affection I have for
old friends. The influence of Madame Nicols is against any unnecessary
change. An old lady with white hair and dressed in black walks every
day through the rooms of the Café Royal, and the habitués know that
this is Madame Nicols on her tour of inspection. She still gives
personal supervision to the work in the linen-room, as she did in the
early days of the café, and her wish is that everything should remain
as much as is possible as it was when M. Nicols was alive.
There is a romance in the history of most restaurants that have existed
for any length of time, and the rise of the Café Royal from small
beginnings is interwoven with the Franco-Prussian War and with the rise
and destruction of the Commune. On 11th February 1865 M. Daniel Nicols,
who had been in the wine trade at Bercy, that part of Paris where the
great wine depots are, opened a modest little café-restaurant in the
lower part of Regent Street. It occupied the space where the entrance
and hall now are. A photograph of the front of the house at that time
is extant, showing the plate-glass window with a broad brass band below
it, and on the glass in white letters announcements of the good things
to be found within. In front of the modest doorway stands M. Nicols,
looking very proud of his establishment, while two of his friends lean
gracefully against the pilasters of the entrance, and the head waiter
stands respectfully a step or two farther back. On the little balcony
before the windows of the entresol stand the ladies of M. Nicols'
family. The interior of the window was in those days decked with
salads and with any foods that looked tempting, to catch the attention
of the passer-by. In fact, it was just such an unpretentious little
restaurant as any young foreigner coming to London and determined
to make a competence might start nowadays hoping that Fortune would
turn her wheel in his direction. But most young foreigners do not
have the chance, or the judgment, to establish themselves in Regent
Street. I have a dim memory when I was a schoolboy of being impressed
by some stuffed pheasants in the Café Royal window, and at the time
of the great war I was first taken inside it to meet there a distant
connection of my family, a Buonapartist, who had been one of the
Empress's ministers during the short period when the Government of
France fell into her hands and had gone into exile when the Republic
was proclaimed. Those are my first two recollections of the Café Royal.
It was the flood of non-combatants and political exiles, business men,
authors and actors; Red Republicans, Monarchists, and Buonapartists,
whom the war and the political upheavals in France sent over to this
country, that made the fortune of the little restaurant. However
they might differ as to the colour of their politics, they were all
Frenchmen, they all sighed for the blue skies of France; they found
in the Café Royal a little corner of their beloved native land, and
they naturally all gravitated to it. The house was much too small for
the number of its frequenters, when, fortunately, the old Union Tavern
in Glasshouse Street came into the market, was bought, and converted
into the café as we know it, with its painted ceiling and its wealth
of gilding, and the restaurant and the private dining-rooms were
established on the other floors. This was the first of many extensions
and alterations. A building on the Air Street side was absorbed,
and a billiard-room established on the ground floor, but very soon
the billiard-tables were given marching orders, and the space they
occupied was turned into a grill-room. An enlargement of the kitchen,
the installation of a lift on the Air Street side, the making of a
little ante-room and cloakrooms outside the restaurant--before this
improvement any man waiting for a lady who was going to dine with him
did so in the passage leading to the café or on the stairs--and the
construction somewhere very near the roof of a masonic temple and a
ballroom were all additions.
M. Nicols and Madame Nicols gave personal attention to all details, and
the experience M. Nicols had gained at Bercy was of great use to him in
laying down the fine cellar of wines, particularly of red wines, which
is the great pride of the house. To draw a very fine distinction, I
would say of the Café Royal that it is a restaurant to which gourmets
go to drink fine wines and to eat good food therewith, while at other
first-class restaurants gourmets go to eat good food and to drink
fine wines therewith. The only cellar of red wines that I know which
can compare with that of the Café Royal is the cellar of Voisin's in
Paris. The wine-list of the Café Royal is splendidly comprehensive,
and in its pages are to be found all the fine wines grown in Europe,
even Switzerland being recognised, and the wines of the Rhone Valley
above the Lake of Geneva being given a place in the book. M. Delacoste,
the first manager I remember at the Café Royal, under M. Nicols, was a
great authority on wines, and he bought so largely that there came a
time when M. Nicols recognised that his clients with the utmost good
will could never drink all the wine laid down for them, and sold a
portion of it by auction. Other managers of the Café Royal have been
Wolschleger; Oddenino, who was appointed when M. Nicols died in 1897,
and during whose tenancy of the post many of the improvements in the
house were made; Gerard, mighty of girth, who had been in the kitchen
of the Café Anglais under Dugleré, and who moved on to the Ocean Hotel,
Sandown; and now Judah, who had been manager of the Cecil, and who
keeps a very steady hand on the tiller. M. Judah, on the occasion of
the visit of the President of the French Republic to London in 1913,
was created an officer of the Order of Mérite Agricole.