grill-room, walled with shining tiles of white and buff; the Cecil has
a great Indian room of blue and yellow tiles; and, indeed, every big
hotel from the great pile of the Kensington Palace, in the west, to the
hotel of the Great Eastern Railway in Liverpool Street in the east, has
its grill-room, the simplicity of the fare and the fact that the raw
material is always on view to the diner before it is placed on the
grill being a guarantee of the quality of the meat.
Most of the restaurants also have their grills.
Romano's turned its old kitchen into a reproduction of a room in a
Russian farmhouse with horns on the walls and an icon up in a corner,
and even at one time carried realism to the point of putting the
waiters in this part of the establishment into white blouses with red
sashes at the waist, the dress the Tartar waiters in Moscow wear. You
get the restaurant food in this grill-room at about half the restaurant
prices. A new electric grill has been installed in this Russian room
which grills just as well and far more quickly than a charcoal or a
coal grill.
The Frascati, in Oxford Street, has a grill-room on the ground floor
with walls of white marble veined with grey, and with mirrors in
Oriental frames; and at the entrance to Tottenham Court Road the
Horseshoe has an excellent grill above its oyster saloon.
The Holborn shows originality in devoting a grill-room to ladies,
and in the old Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, which now
calls itself the Connaught Rooms, there is in the basement a large
grill-room, with a choice of three joints at luncheon time as well as
an extensive _carte du jour_, a grill which is much patronised by the
lawyers from Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the evening a dinner is served
in a smaller room, and I have dined there before going across the way
to the Kingsway Theatre. Those who dine are, I think, mostly connected
in some way or another with Freemasonry, and the talk that goes on at
the tables has reference to high offices in the Craft and Mark, to
"raising" and "passing," and to that ancient and sacred ritual which
ladies still believe to be in some way connected with a red-hot poker.
XVII
ROMANO'S
Alfonso Nicolino Romano, a head waiter at the Café Royal, in 1874
bought with his savings a small fried fish shop in the Strand,
converted it into a bar and restaurant, and in addition to his own
name on its front added Café Vaudeville, for it was, and is, almost
next door to the Vaudeville Theatre. Romano's in those days possessed
a central window flanked by two doors, one leading into the bar and
the other to the rooms above. In the window as an ornament was a small
aquarium which contained goldfish, and those fish must have lived
exciting, if short, lives, for the patrons of the bar tried to feed
them with cigar ash, lemon rind, burnt almonds, and torn-up notepaper,
and it is even said that "Hughie" Drummond, one of the most amusing and
most reckless of the clean-shirted Bohemians who made "the Roman's"
known all the world over, tried to take a swim with them.
Romano was a curly-haired, humorous, quick-witted little Italian who
talked a strange Anglo-Italian jargon--"Pore ole Romano e got badda
addick this morning" his usual morning greeting, was an example of
it--and who was on the easiest terms of familiarity with most of his
clients without ever overstepping the line. He had not very many
rules as to the conduct of his business, but one from which he never
departed was that he would under no circumstances make a reduction
in the total of a bill. He would give an aggrieved customer some of
the very best "cognac" of the house or split a bottle of the most
expensive champagne with him or ask him to dinner next day, but what
he would not do was to reduce any item in the account. One of the
most frequent forms of verbal invitation given by "The Roman" was to
a Sunday midday inspection of his cellars in the Adelphi arches. "You
coma see my cellars, Mister So-and-So Eskwire, best in London" was the
actual wording. Romano had come from a good school, and he laid down an
excellent cellar. The food in the restaurant was also beyond reproach.
Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists,
coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town--for those
were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be
seen standing up in a place of refreshment--was the restaurant. It was
little more than a corridor, a long, narrow room with space for one
line of tables only; but at those tables used habitually to sit the
merriest gathering of good fellows, and I include the ladies in that
term, that ever came together in a London restaurant. There were witty
journalists such as Shirley Brooks, "Pot" Stephens, "Jimmy" Davis,
and "Shifter," and there were men of the theatre--Cecil Raleigh, for
instance, and "Charlie" Harris, who when the waiter called the order
for his dinner down the speaking-tube always added himself "pour le
patron," for Romano, who lunched and dined at the table nearest the
bar door, was not likely to get a tough steak or a thin quail. There
were Guardsmen, such at "The Windsor Warrior," "Billie FitzDitto,"
"Haddocks," and "The Bonetwister," and men about town, of whom Hughie
Drummond and Fred Russell were perhaps the best known, and coaching
men, "Dickie the Driver" and "Swish" and "Partner," who used to
delight in bringing jolly old Jim Selby to dine; and Arthur Roberts,
then at the very top of his form, and "Mons" Marius, as representatives
of the actor fraternity. And around this kernel of good-fellowship
formed a fringe of other good fellows who came and went, men from
the country, men from the far parts of the world, soldiers, sailors,
planters, explorers, country squires. It was rather a clannish
gathering, for everybody seemed to know everybody else at the line of
tables, and people who were not taken into companionship, no difficult
matter if they were kindred souls, felt "out of it," and went elsewhere.
Between the Gaiety Theatre and Romano's there grew up an indefinite
alliance, and golden-hearted Nellie Farren would lunch there when a new
burlesque was in rehearsal, and "the Child" and dear "Jack" St John
and others of the principals looked with favour on the restaurant, and
on Lord Mayors' days made a brave show of beauty at the windows of the
first floor. The Gaiety Girls of those days, splendid women and jolly
good fellows, who enjoyed life, and by their beauty and sociability
helped other people to enjoy life, lunched and supped at the Roman's.
I have a dozen names at the tip of my pen, but if I wrote them down I
should stray into a gossip over the ladies of the burlesque and light
opera stages in the seventies and eighties, and should require columns
and columns of space to deal adequately with such a subject. Most
of them married, and, as the fairy tales have it, "lived happy ever
after." And the "halls," we didn't call them variety theatres then,
were also represented at the Roman's. Jolly, humorous Bessie Bellwood
lunched there five days out of six, though she kept the Roman humble
by asserting that she preferred the tripe and onions at Chick's to
anything his kitchen could produce, and when she was in good anecdotal
form kept everybody near her tremulous with laughter. And the sisters
Leamar, who used to sing a duet as to Romano's being "a paradise, sure,
in the Strand" and added the information that "the wines and the women
are grand," naturally paid frequent visits to the restaurant to assure
themselves that the description was a correct one.
The Roman gathered about him a staff which exactly suited the tone of
the restaurant, proof thereof being that so many of them remain in
its service to this day. M. Luigi Naintre, the manager of Romano's,
has climbed the ladder of promotion steadily through all the grades
at the restaurant, and though for a while after Romano's death he
wandered into other folds, one of the first acts of the company which
now controls the restaurant was to ask him to come back to it. Long
experience has taught him the art of making each frequenter of the
restaurant believe that the establishment is maintained entirely to
meet his or her taste and whims, and he is essentially the right man in
the right place. M. Minola, his second in command, also graduated in
the "Roman" school. The cellarman, L. Bendi, and the wine-butler, L.
Villa, have been in the restaurant as far back as I can remember.
I must pass quickly over the fire which burned down the old Romano's
and its rebuilding on the site of the old restaurant and on that of
another house next door. The panelled hall and, in the restaurant, the
Moorish arches with the pictures of the Bosphorus seen through them
were features of the new building, and remain to-day as they then were.
In the nineties Romano died of pneumonia, contracted by standing one
cold winter day outside the restaurant door with no great-coat on, and
the restaurant came under the Court of Chancery.
The Court of Chancery was not at all sorry to hand over its duties to
a company, with Mr Walter Pallant, the then chairman of the Gaiety
Company, as its chairman, which was formed to purchase the restaurant.
Mr "Teddy" Bayly, who as a patron of the restaurant had helped
materially in making the fortune of the Roman, became manager, and
Luigi was appointed as second in command. When Mr Bayly left Romano's
for a restaurant of his very own M. Luigi mounted one rung more of the
ladder of promotion and was appointed manager.
The first business of the company, after giving the building "a wash
and brush up," was to find a chef of celebrity and experience to take
charge of the kitchens. They found in M. Ferrario exactly the man for
whom they were looking. M. Ferrario had learned his art under M. Coste
in the kitchens of the Cecil, and when he himself became the commander
of the kitchens of a restaurant of the first class he showed that he
had used his powers of observation, that not only did he know all that
there was to be learned concerning the _haute cuisine française_,
but that he had an open mind with regard to the cookery of all other
nations. The _mouzakkas_ that M. Ferrario sends from his kitchen are
the best I have eaten outside Bucharest. He makes a ground-nut soup,
the one delicacy that Nigeria has added to the cookery book, quite
admirably, and Romano's is the only restaurant that I know of in Europe
where one can eat a Malay curry cooked as it is cooked in Malaya and
served in the Malay fashion, with sambals and with shining Malayan
shell spoons for the rice. What substitute M. Ferrario has found for
the fresh cocoa-nut pulp which is the foundation of all Malay curries
I do not know, but he has found something which replaces it admirably.
In the winter at lunch-time north countrymen say that Romano's
Lancashire hot-pot is the real thing, and there is another British
luncheon dish, gipsy-pot, which I eat at Romano's, a savoury stew of
chicken and cabbage and other vegetables and other meats, which I find
exceptionally good.
But perhaps I had better give you in detail what are the specialities
of Romano's kitchen. They are, for lunch: Malay curry of chicken,
Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy-pot. For dinner: _poule au pot, bortch à
la Russe, potage Normande, potage Nigérienne, filets de sole Romano,
filets de sole Sportive, sole au plat aux courgettes, sole à la crème,
truite George V., poulet nouveau Valencienne, perdreau Romano, mousse
de volaille au curry,_ the last being an admirable _mousse_ with just a
far-away reminiscence of India, a sort of dream of all the good curries
of the East, in it.
If I gave you the menus of all the nice little dinners for two of which
I have been one of the participators at Romano's I should fill a fat
volume. But here is a little spring dinner which will serve my purpose
very well:
Crevettes Roses.
Fumet de Volaille aux œufs Filés.
Filets de Sole Sportive.
Epaule de Pauillac Bergère.
Petits Pois Nouveaux à la Crème.
Asperges d'Argenteuil.
Sauce Divine.
Fraises Diva.
And the wine I drank with this was a bottle of 1900 St Marceaux, which
was the choice of the lady who honoured me with her company. The
_filets de sole Sportive_ are soles which bring to table with them just
a dream of Chablis, and which are nobly backed up by crayfish.
The old Romano's in its first period was very clannish. The new
Romano's, though it is a comparatively small restaurant, finds room for
all men and all ladies who love good food and who like the slightly
Bohemian, pleasantly Parisian, atmosphere of the "Paradise in the
Strand." I have seen a duchess dining at one of the corner tables,
and I do not suppose that there is a man about town, from dukes to
the latest emancipated Oxonian, who does not know Romano's and its
ways. The clientele varies with the different meals. At lunch-time,
particularly, if there are rehearsals in progress at the Adelphi or the
Gaiety or any of the other light opera or revue theatres, a host of
pretty little ladies go to Romano's and very probably the "Governor"
and the librettists and composers, and a stage director or two, will
be lunching at a corner table. Half-a-dozen other managers are sure
to be somewhere in the restaurant, and there will be ladies not of
the stage, and solicitors, and barristers from the Law Courts and a
plaintiff or two, and a journalist or two, a very interesting _salmis_
of the stage world and the business world and the world of Law, with a
good seasoning of men from the far parts of the world, and men about
town and soldiers and sailors. At dinner little parties going on to
the theatre finish their feasts about the time that the habitués of
the restaurant, who are going on nowhere or to a variety theatre, make
their appearance. At supper-time the stage is once again the most
strongly represented element, and there is no restaurant in Paris which
can show at this hour prettier faces or more unforced gaiety. The
bright young spirits from the 'varsities all love Romano's, but Luigi
has a wholesome fear of the "Twenty-firsters," as the boys call their
coming-of-age feasts, and the numbers at these gatherings at Romano's
are kept within very strict limits.
There is one happy young Oxonian who absolutely defeated Luigi at
a birthday feast. He had been solemnly warned that the spirits of
his party must not rise too high, and he and they had all behaved
with quite suspicious decorum during supper. The band had finished
playing, and the bandmaster, on departing, had locked the door of the
pulpit-like Moorish bandstand that projects high up into the room.
When closing hour came and all the guests were moving out except the
party of young Oxonians Luigi told them that they also must take their
departure. But their leader begged to be allowed to sit on for a few
seconds longer, even though the lights were turned out. Out went the
lights, and then here and there a single light was put up again that
the waiters might see to pile the chairs on the tables and put the
restaurant into its night attire. Luigi, looking at the supper-party,
thought that their numbers had diminished, and from the bandstand came
the sound of someone playing the piano. In the two seconds of darkness
the giver of the feast had performed a really wonderful gymnastic
feat. Jumping off from the back of one of his guests, he had climbed
up into the bandstand and had taken his seat at the piano. The door
was locked and the key gone home with the bandmaster; his fortress
was unstormable, and he was in complete possession. For a quarter of
an hour or so he played little selections at the piano, inquiring of
Luigi, who stood below, what were his favourite airs, and it was only
when his musical repertoire ran out that he climbed out of his aerie
and dropped to the floor.
On occasions, generally on the evening of first nights at the theatres,
when an extension has been obtained, suppers at Romano's sometimes
end in little dances. But the great dance of the year at Romano's
is the "Twelfth Night," one which is not so much a party given by
the restaurant as a party given to themselves by the habitués of the
restaurant. All the tables for this night are secured weeks in advance,
each host pays for his own party, but Romano's supplies all the toys
and the presents, the masks and tambourines, and anything new in
trifles that is to be bought in any city of the world. The shops of
Paris and Vienna are ransacked to provide novelties for this evening.
The spirit of Paris always hovers above Romano's, but this particular
night in its fun without rowdiness is the most Parisian night of the
year.
Romano's as it now is is very different in its arrangements from the
restaurant that the company took over from the Court of Chancery. What
was the linen room is now a gallery, which is nicknamed the "Bird
Cage," looking down on to the restaurant. The kitchen has been taken
away from below the restaurant and put behind it, and where the kitchen
was is now a grill-room with lattice-work arbours decked with vines and
a vista leading up to a little fountain. The whole scheme of decoration
of the restaurant is now of the lightest of light Moorish design, the
details being copied from the Alhambra at Granada. The most important
change of all is the disappearance of the old bar, a bar which in its
day made history, its place being taken by a little waiting-room,
which is a reproduction in most of its details of the Henri IV. room
in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A good deal of loving care has been
bestowed on all the details of the decoration and equipment of the
restaurant. Look at the brass handles on the doors leading into the
hall, and you will see that they are admirable works of art. In the
same way the napery put on the table at dinner-time before coffee is
served is well worth a glance. Some of the china is quite beautiful
in pattern, and the gilt finger-bowl brought you at dessert is very
probably a copy of some of the loot taken by Attila and now preserved
in the Budapest museum.
Banquets are sometimes given at Romano's in the private room looking
down on the Strand, which has been shut off from the balcony, and no
better indication of the type of these could be given than by setting
down the menu of the latest dinner of the Wine Connoisseurs' Club, at
which there were forty guests:
Cantaloup Glacé.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté de Volaille Duchesse.
Truite George V.
Ris de Veau aux Perles Noires.
Selle de Béhague aux Primeurs.
Pommes Ideal.
Granite au Clicquot.
Poularde Flanquée D'Ortolans.
Salade Romaine.
Asperges Vertes, Sauce Divine.
Pêches Orientales.
Mignardises.
Paillettes au Parmesan.
Dessert.
The _Truite George V._ which has a place in this menu is one of the
specialities of the house. It is a salmon trout, braized in port,
served cold on ice with sliced oranges and a luscious jelly.
Little Romano used to allude to his cellars, as I have written, as
"best in London," and the restaurant has always had a celebrity for
the great choice of champagnes of the great brands and great years it
offers its patrons. Most of the profits made during the last few years
have been expended on champagnes, and no restaurant in London is better
prepared to face that champagne famine which will so soon be upon us.
XVIII
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
One of our legislators had very kindly asked me to dine with him at
the House of Commons, at eight-fifteen P.M., and had told me that he
would meet me at the public entrance. When I mentioned his name to the
civil young policeman at the outer door he touched his helmet and said
that my host had just gone through, so I followed on his tracks. I went
past Westminster Hall, which was in splints, for the ceiling was under
repair, and along that other great hall where statesmen of the past
stand looking their very best in marble. There were two lines of the
public sitting on the benches in between the marble statues, no doubt
hoping eventually to obtain admission to the Strangers' Gallery, for it
was the winding-up night of the Marconi debate. I mentioned my host's
name to every policeman I came across, because I found that when I
did so they touched their helmets and looked pleased, and I am always
delighted to give inexpensive pleasure to any policeman.
In the public lobby the legislator, who, incidentally I may mention,
is Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, found me and took me in the
direction of the dining-rooms. We passed the new fireplace that the
House of Commons has presented to itself, quite the most tasty thing
in fireplaces I have ever seen, with a sort of glorified ingle-nook
seat on either side of it. I peeped through the glass door into the
members' dining-room with its handsome panelling, and the Ministerial
Room, where some fine portraits hang on the walls, and eventually we
went down the staircase with the good napkin panelling on either side,
looked at that other staircase which was in course of construction
for the convenience of lady guests, came to the long corridor where
the photographs taken by Sir Benjamin Stone hang, and going down it
had glimpses through open doors of dinner-parties in which ladies
predominated, all mighty merry, and twittering like the birds in an
aviary. From the chairman's own room, which he occasionally lends to
his brother members, sallied forth a Ministerial Whip, who seized my
host by the arm, held an open wine list before him as though they
were going to sing hymns out of the same book, and asked him what
champagne he ought to order for his guests. That knotty point being
settled I gave up my hat and coat to an attendant, and followed my
host, who threaded his way through the tables in the largest Strangers'
dining-room to his own particular dining spot in a recess which
commands a view of the whole of the room.
It is an exceedingly pleasant dining-room. The walls are of panels of
grey and white, framed in light wood, with on them good prints in black
frames, the gifts of M.P.'s who love their House just as ordinary men
love their pet clubs. The four-square pillars which support the roof
are painted cream colour; light is thrown up on to the ceiling from
glass electroliers, shaped like round shields, and here and there a
palm and some green screens give a restful note of cool colour. At
one end of the room a clock on the wall reminds M.P.'s of the passing
time, and at the other end, on a roll of paper, which passes through a
wooden frame, is printed the name of the member who at the moment is
addressing the House. The windows of this pleasant dining-room look
out on to the terrace and across the river to the great hospital,
behind which the sky still held some of the rose of sunset. There were
dinner-parties innumerable being held in the room, and the manager
informed us later that he had been obliged to tell many would-be hosts
that he could not find room for their parties.
A great debate means a gala night in the dining-rooms of the House, and
had I not known where I was, looking at the pretty and smartly dressed
ladies and their smiling hosts, I should have thought that I was in one
of the smaller dining-rooms of one of our great restaurants. Here and
there amongst the guests and the dinner-givers were faces I recognised,
and the legislator told me during the course of our dinner who were the
other hosts at the different tables, for he probably knows personally
more men of all the different parties than does any other member of the
House.
"I have ordered a very small dinner," said my host, as a waiter brought
us a pot of caviare ensconced in a basin of crushed ice, and this was
the menu of the said small dinner:
Caviare.
Consommé d'Aremberg.
Homard Sauté Paillard.
Noisettes d'Agneau aux Primeurs.
Pommes Suzon.
Cailles de Vigne sur Canapés.
Salad Cœur de Laitues au Citron.
Asperges Anglo et Française.
Sauce Mousseline.
Pêches Flambées.
Dessert.