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
American dishes 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 a _Dîner Parisien_ was 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, an experience 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 in
_All the World_ entitled "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.
XV
SOME CHOP-HOUSES
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 may see 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 of red 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 old
pattern. 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 modern reproduction 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
carte_ restaurant." 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 glass of 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 on _Punch_, 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.
XVI
SOME GRILL-ROOMS
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-room in 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 the
_maître d'hôtel_ brought 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, with _portières_ of light pink, and with chairs and carpets of
a deeper rose. It has a little space outside, a _terrasse_, 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 is an elaborate _à la carte_ menu 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, like most of the others, caters for every taste; for
there is an elaborate _carte du jour_, two _table d'hôte_ luncheons
at half-a-crown and three-and-six, and a _table d'hôte_ dinner 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. A _table d'hôte_ dinner 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 best _entrecôte_ and 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 in the 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. Its _carte
du jour_ is 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.