was opened M. Ritz was manager of the Hotel National at Lucerne and of
the Grand Hotel at Monte Carlo: Mr D'Oyly Carte found him at the Grand
Hotel, and asked him if he would come to the Savoy for six months to
put the restaurant in order. He came, bringing with him M. Escoffier,
who had been chef at the Grand. Ritz at the Savoy made the supper
after the theatre the popular meal it still continues to be, though it
is, thanks to the Early Closing Act, a scramble to eat five-shillings'
worth of food in half-an-hour, and he also discovered, while at the
Savoy, that if a restaurant wishes a large number of its guests to
be of the softer sex a band is a necessity. He saw that an Austrian
band, engaged at the suggestion of Mr Hwfa Williams, kept the diners
half-an-hour longer at their tables over their cigars and coffee, and
that ladies soon came to consider a dinner unaccompanied by music
a tame feast. For the music, often over-loud, to the accompaniment
of which I eat my meals in most restaurants, I am not in the least
thankful to M. Ritz; but the majority of diners, especially those in
petticoats, if such things exist nowadays, think differently.
The fight to obtain music at restaurants on Sundays was one of M.
Ritz's great battles. I remember the days, not so very long ago, when
a band could not play on Sunday in a restaurant unless some individual
dinner-giver engaged it to play for his guests, and had no objection
to the other diners listening to it. Another advance made by Ritz was
the obtaining of newly baked bread for those who lunched and dined
at the Savoy restaurant on a Sunday. The baker who at first supplied
this bread broke some law or some regulation in doing this, and was
summoned; but M. Ritz, not to be beaten, established a bakery in the
hotel to supply the bread. Other restaurants followed suit. He had
an enormous facility for quick work, no detail was too small for
him, and when he had made up his mind that a thing should be done he
took unlimited trouble to have it carried out. At one time, when he
managed the Carlton, he could not understand why the coffee made there
should not be quite up to the level of the coffee at his hotels on
the Continent. He tried every experiment possible, brought water from
all parts of England, took every precaution against the dampness of
our climate, and finally asked one of the Rümpelmayers, the great
pastrycook family of the south of France, to come to London to advise
him in this matter.
I used to see M. Ritz at this period of his life very often, and used
to chat with him on matters of _gourmandise_. Very slim, very quiet,
with nervous hands clasped tightly together, he would move through the
big restaurant seeing everything, saying a word under his breath to a
head waiter, bowing to some of the diners, staying by a table to speak
to others, possessing a marvellous knowledge of faces and of what the
interests were of all the important people of his clientele. There was
a maxim, he said, which should be carved in golden letters above the
door of every _maître d'hôtel_, and that maxim was, in English, "A
customer is always right," and he always bore this in mind. Whenever
at that period M. Escoffier invented a new dish a little jury of
three, M. Escoffier, Madame Ritz and M. Ritz, used to sit in judgment
on it in solemn conclave before it was allowed to appear on a menu
in the restaurant. I once asked Madame Ritz, who has been M. Ritz's
real helpmate and counsellor throughout his married life, to what
quality she attributed her husband's success in life, and she answered,
"sensibility," giving the word its French meaning.
M. Ritz had a talent for doing the right thing at the right time in
the right way. I once saw him in the early morning on the platform
of the station in Rome. He looked, as he always looked, as though he
had come out of a band-box, well-shaved and well-brushed, the ends of
his moustache pointed upwards, his whiskers brought down to the level
of his mouth, wearing those dark garments of extreme neatness which
one always associates with the manager of hotels. He was the one male
person on the platform that morning who was not dishevelled, nor tired,
nor unshaven; but he had raced across the Continent as fast as trains
could carry him to be there to receive a duke and duchess who were
going to stay at the hotel in which he had an interest.
A _coup du maître d'hôtel_, of which he told me afterwards with a
smile, was the method by which he put a large luncheon-party of ladies
on easy terms with each other. It was a luncheon given at the Carlton
and attended by the ladies who were sending the hospital-ship out to
South Africa during the Boer War. Many of the ladies did not know each
other well, and M. Ritz, exceedingly anxious that the luncheon should
be a success, feared that they might not be easily conversational, so
at the commencement of the feast he took round a bottle of Château
Yquem and suggested to each lady that a little glass of white wine made
a good beginning to lunch. In two minutes every lady was chatting most
pleasantly to her neighbours whether she had ever seen them before
or not. Of the determination of M. Ritz in his early days to learn
everything that was to be learned in the restaurant world, I remember
one instance, told me by his wife. He held a well-paid post in one of
the smart Parisian restaurants, but left it to go to Voisin's at a
smaller salary, because he thought there was more to be learned in the
good old restaurant in the Rue St Honoré than in the other place of
good cheer.
[Illustration: M. RITZ]
But it is of the Ritz Restaurant, not of Ritz himself, that I am
writing in this chapter. I have read that the Ritz has swallowed up
the site of the old "White Horse" cellars, from which so many of the
coaches used to start, but the White Horse cellars had crossed the road
a century and a half before I began to know my London. The Isthmian
Club-house at one time occupied the portion of the site overlooking the
Green Park, and when the Club moved on to other quarters it became the
Walsingham, part chambers, part restaurant, one of the group of houses
and hotels which stretched from the Green Park to Arlington Street.
When M. Gehlardi managed the Walsingham, and M. Dutru was its chef,
there was no better dining place in London.
The great white stone building of the Ritz, with its arcaded front and
its entrance to the restaurant and ballrooms right in the middle of the
arcade, is a comparative new-comer to London, in that it was opened
in 1906. It is a building, inside and out, of the Louis XVI. period,
with every modern luxury added. The Winter Garden, where one awaits
one's guests, is a delightful place of creamy marble pillars and gilt
trellis-work, casemented mirrors, carved amorini and a fountain with a
gilt lead figure of "La Source" looking up at the golden cupids poised
above her. The little orchestra of the hotel plays in this Winter
Garden, and its music in no way interferes with the conversation in the
restaurant.
The restaurant itself may be said to be dedicated to Marie Antoinette,
for the gilt bronze garlands which hang from electrolier to
electrolier, forming an oval below the painted sky, were designed to
represent the flower decorations at one of Marie Antoinette's feasts,
and though the garlands have been much lightened, for at first they
were too heavy in design, they are still reminiscent of the poor
little queen who lived such a merry life and met so sad an end. It
is a restaurant of soft colours, of marbles, cream and rose and soft
green, of tapestried recesses and of handsome consoles in the niches.
Towards the Green Park long arched windows look on to one of the
pleasantest prospects in London, and below these windows and between
them and the Park is a little forecourt, in which a green tent is
pitched when a great ball is to be held in the suite of rooms below
the restaurant, and where on hot summer evenings dinner is served in
the open air. At one end of the restaurant is a gilt group of Father
Thames contemplating an exceedingly attractive lady who represents the
Ocean. Everything in the restaurant is of the Louis XVI. period, and
the Aubusson carpets and the chairs and all the silver and the china
and the glass used in the restaurant and the banqueting rooms harmonise
with that period.
The restaurant is not a very large one, and sometimes tables for its
guests are set in the Marie Antoinette room with which it connects,
and in that portion of the corridor which forms an ante-room. But
though it is not of a very great size, the Ritz has a most aristocratic
clientele. Royal personages often lunch and dine there, and diplomacy
regards it as its own particular dining place, for tables are retained
by the secretaries and attachés of two of the Embassies, the German and
the Austrian, and, I fancy, by a third one also.
Lady Amalthea had very graciously said she would dine with me at the
Ritz, so I went in the afternoon of a hot day to interview M. Kroell,
the manager, who stepped across Piccadilly from the Berkeley to succeed
M. Elles, who, for a time, managed both the Ritz in Paris and the Ritz
in London. With M. Kroell was M. Charles, the manager in charge of the
restaurant, and I asked that I might be given that evening a little
dinner for two, not of necessity an expensive dinner, but one suitable
for a warm evening, and I sent my compliments to M. Malley, the _chef
de cuisine_, and said that I hoped that I should find some of the
specialities of his kitchen amongst the dishes.
M. Malley came from the Ritz at Paris when the London Ritz was
first opened, having acquired his art at the Grand Véfour and the
Café Anglais. He presides over a very spacious range of white-tiled
kitchens, in which all the rooms which should be hot are divided by
a wide corridor from the rooms which should be cold, and he has a
talent for the invention of new dishes, amongst these being a very
splendid dish of salmon with a _mousse_ of crayfish, which he has
named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a reminiscence of his days at
Vichy, and his _pêches Belle Dijonnaise_, of which more anon. Russian
soups are one of the specialities of the Ritz kitchen, and there is a
Viennese pastrycook amongst the members of M. Malley's brigade, who
makes exquisite pastry. The late King Edward had a special fancy for
the cakes made at the Ritz, and a supply used to be sent to Buckingham
Palace, but M. Elles told me that this was a State secret, for M.
Ménager, the King's chef, might not have liked it to be known that
anything from another kitchen entered Buckingham Palace.
As I had left my dinner in the safe hands of the experts, so I also
left the question of the champagne we should drink, only asking that it
should be one recommended by the house.
Before going on my way I reminded M. Kroell that on the last occasion
that I had word with him he was presented with a miniature in
brilliants of the order bestowed on him by the King of Spain, and I
asked him if he had been awarded any other decorations. M. Kroell
laughed, and then modestly owned to the German military medal, and
as he told me this he involuntarily squared his shoulders as an old
soldier.
Lady Amalthea arrived with military punctuality (she is a soldier's
wife) in the best of spirits, wearing a dream of a dress, and her
diamonds and turquoises. A table had been kept for us at the upper end
of the room, where Lady Amalthea could both see all the guests and be
seen by them. She ran through a little selection from Debrett as she
took her seat, having scanned most of the diners as she came in, and I
was enabled to add to this by identifying a group at one of the tables
as some of the Peace Delegates from the Balkans.
Then we settled down to the infinitely important matter of seeing what
the dinner was that M. Malley and M. Charles in counsel had arranged
for us.
This is the menu, and though at first sight it seems a long one for two
people it is an exceedingly light dinner, and we neither of us ate the
tiny cutlets which were the _gros pièce_ of the feast. The wine to go
with it was a bottle of Roederer 1906:
Melon.
Consommé Glacé Madrilène.
Filet de Sole Romanoff.
Cailles des Gourmets.
Côtes de Pauillac Montpensir.
Petits Pois.
Velouté Palestine.
Poulet en Chaudfroid.
Salade à la Ritz.
Pêche Belle Dijonnaise.
The melon, delightfully cold, struck the right note in a dinner for a
hot evening; the Madrilène soup, beautiful in colour and flavoured with
tomato and capsicum, carried on the summer symphony; the Romanoff sole
was quite admirable, served with small slices of apple and artichokes
and with mussels, the apple giving a suspicion of bitter sweetness as
a contrast to the flesh of the fish. M. Charles happened to be near
our table at this period, not, I think, quite by chance. I assured
him that if there was such a thing as a gastronomic nerve M. Malley's
creation had found it. The quails formed part of a little pie brought
to table in a pie-dish of old blue willow pattern, and with them were
coxcombs and truffles and other good things. The _poulet en chaudfroid_
was a noble bird, all white, and in it and with it was a pink _mousse_
delicately perfumed with curry powder, a quite admirable combination.
The Ritz salad is of _cœurs de romaine_, with almonds and portions of
tiny oranges with it. Last of the dishes in the dinner came the _pêche
Belle Dijonnaise_, which is one of the creations which have made the
fame of M. Malley, and which will become historical. It is a delightful
combination of peaches and black currant ice with some cassis, a
liqueur of black currants, added to it, and it is called _Belle
Dijonnaise_ because of the old Burgundian proverb: _A Dijon, il y a du
bon vin et des jolies filles_.
I do not doubt that many people dined well in London on that hot June
evening, but this I will warrant, that no two people, however important
they might be, or whatever they paid for their dinner (my bill came to
£2, 10s.), dined better than did Lady Amalthea and I at the Ritz, and I
make all my compliments to M. Malley.
I should not do the Ritz full justice if I did not refer to the
banquets which are served in the Marie Antoinette room and in the great
white suite below the restaurant. As typical of the Ritz banquets I
give you the menu of one that Lord Haldane gave to the foreign officers
visiting London in June 1912, and I also give the accompanying wines:
Caviar d'Esturgeon.
Kroupnick Polonaise.
Consommé Viveur Glacé en Tasse.
Timbale de Homards à l'Américaine.
Suprême de Truite Saumonée à la Gelée de Chambertin.
Aiguillette de Jeune Caneton à l'Ambassade.
Courgettes à la Serbe.
Selle de Veau Braisée à l'Orloff.
Petits Pois. Carottes à la Crème.
Pommes Mignonette Persillées.
Soufflé de Jambon Norvégienne.
Ortolans Doubles au Bacon.
Cœurs de Laitues.
Asperges Géantes de Paris, Sauce Hollandaise.
Pêches des Gourmets.
Friandises.
Mousse Romaine.
Tartelettes Florentine.
Corbeille de Fruits.
VINS.
Gonzalez Coronation Sherry.
Berncastler Doctor, 1893.
Château Duhart Milon, 1875.
Heidsieck Dry Monopole, 1898.
G. H. Mumm, 1899.
Croft's Port, 1890.
La Grande Marque Fine, 1848.
The dinner looks at first glance to be an exceedingly long one, but it
is also an exceedingly light one, the saddle of veal being the only
substantial dish of the feast. The _aiguillettes_ of duckling from one
of the special dishes at the Ritz, and the _soufflés_ and the _mousses_
that come from the Ritz kitchens are always ethereal. This banquet is
an excellent example of a feast which is important without being heavy.
XXIX
SOME OUTLYING RESTAURANTS
In calling the restaurants about which I write in this chapter
"outlying" ones, I do not mean that they are in the far suburbs, but
only that they are some little distance from Nelson's Column, which I
take to be the centre of restaurant land, and that each of them is in a
part of London having its own entity--Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Sloane
Square and Bloomsbury.
* * * * *
Rinaldo, in the days when he was at the Savoy, used to stand at the
desk by the door and tell us all as we came in what tables had been
reserved for us. Of course, as _maître d'hôtel_, he had other duties,
but as he knew my whims concerning the position of my table, and as
he always sent me just where I wanted to be, I have him in grateful
remembrance for doing this. When he left the Savoy he set up on his own
account at No. 15 Wilton Road, which is just opposite Victoria Station,
and there, I am glad to say, he still flourishes. He is no longer quite
the slim Spanish don with a peaked black beard that he used to be, but
proprietorship has a waistcoat-filling effect on restaurateurs, and
time softens black hair with streaks of grey.
Rinaldo's restaurant is quite spacious, a high and airy room with
plenty of light. Its walls are of pleasant grey with decorations
in high relief in the upper part, and on the stained glass of the
sky-light are paintings of game and fruit. Baskets of ferns in the
shape of boats hang from the roof, and there are always bunches of
roses on the tables. Behind a screen at the far end is the service
bar where the wines are served out, and in the centre of the room is
a very appetising table of cold meats and fruit; the melons and other
things that should be kept cold being on a long box of broken ice;
the mushrooms reposing in big wooden baskets; the crayfish and the
egg-fruit and the other delicacies, according to seasons, all being set
out with exceptional taste and looking very tempting.
Quite an aristocratic clientele lunches and dines at Rinaldo's
restaurant. Many of the great people of Belgravia like to lunch in a
restaurant which is no great distance from their homes; the Monsignori
from the neighbouring Roman Catholic Cathedral often go there, and
quite a number of gourmets who like the Italian dishes--for Rinaldo,
though he looks like a Spaniard, is an Italian--of which there are
always some on the bill of fare, are very constant patrons.
The restaurant has an extensive _carte du jour_, and most people who
lunch there prefer to order that meal from the card, though there is a
two-shilling lunch for those who are in a hurry. On the _carte du jour_
which I took away with me on the last occasion I lunched in Wilton Road
I found amongst the entrées _ris de veau financière, Vienna schnitzel,
côte de veau Napolitaine, bitock à la Russe, entrecôte Tyrolienne_ and
_fritto misto à la Romaine_, which shows that the restaurant caters for
many nationalities and many tastes. My lunch on this occasion--it was a
warm summer day--consisted of a slice of cantaloup melon, 9d.; _fritto
misto_, 1s. 6d.; a cut of cheese; an iced _zabajone Milanaise_, 1s.,
and a cup of coffee, which is always excellent at Rinaldo's, and which,
disregarding his early bringing-up--for Italians never allow metals to
touch coffee--Rinaldo pours out of a fascinating little metal pot. A
three-and-six dinner is the dinner of the house, and Rinaldo explained
to me that this rarely contains Italian dishes; for Englishmen in the
evening find them rather difficult to digest. This is a menu, taken by
chance in the autumn, of the dinner of the restaurant:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Tosca.
Crème Portugaise.
Turbot Bouilli. Sce. Homard.
Filet d'Hareng Meunière.
Mignonette d'Agneau Marigny.
Grenadine de Veau Clamart.
Grouse rôti.
Salade.
Choufleur au Gratin.
Glacé Napolitaine.
Mignardises.
* * * * *
Gretener, who is the proprietor of the New Albert Restaurant, 77
Knightsbridge, also, in the past, scored good marks in my memory, for
he was manager of that very difficult proposition, the restaurant
of the Gare Maritime at Boulogne, and during his reign there it was
always possible, by giving him warning beforehand, to get an excellent
luncheon excellently served. As most of the business of that restaurant
is to put the greatest amount of food in the shortest possible time
into travellers who keep one anxious eye on the train outside, or to
cater for big parties of excursionists at the cheapest possible rate, a
manager must have a soul for the gastronomic art to keep his restaurant
under these conditions a place of delicate cookery. When M. Gretener
and his pretty wife came to England they established themselves at a
restaurant in Knightsbridge, which has a tessellated pavement and walls
of ornamented glazed tiles with mirrors at intervals, and a ceiling on
which cupids in high relief gambol on medallions with a blue ground.
A stained glass window is at the far end of the restaurant, a wide
staircase leads to the first floor, and under the staircase is a little
glassed-in serving-room. M. Gretener has collected a very faithful
clientele, and he also sends out meals to the dwellers in the houses
of flats which abound in Knightsbridge. In the summer-time many people
who go out of a morning to Hyde Park, strangers in the land, French,
Germans, and Italians amongst them, see Gretener's as they go through
the Albert Gate and make it their lunching place. A three-shilling
dinner is the dinner of the house, but whenever I have been there I
have ordered my meal _à la carte_ from the very moderately priced card
of the day, and this is a typical bill. _Crème Lentils_, 8d. Mayonnaise
of Salmon, 2s. _Noisette d'agneau Doria_, 1s. 6d. _Haricots verts
sautés_, 6d., and _Bavarois chocolat_, 4d.
* * * * *
The Queen's Restaurant, No. 4 Sloane Square, is one to which I often
go when there is a first night at the Court Theatre, for it is only
just across the road from that house. Its proprietor, M. Coppo, who
learned his business at the Café Royal, bustles about his restaurant
with a napkin under his arm doing the work of _maître d'hôtel_. The
restaurant, with cream-coloured walls and mirrors in white frames,
consists of several rooms thrown into one, the part by the entrance
door being narrow and just holding two rows of tables, while at
the back there is plenty of space. The clientele, on the occasions
that I have been there, has been a mixture of all the comfortable
classes--Guards' officers from the neighbouring barracks, fashionable
people of both sexes from Sloane Street and its neighbourhood, dramatic
critics making a hurried meal before going to the theatre, business
men, and an artist or two from the Chelsea studios. M. Coppo gives his
patrons a set dinner, the price of which, I fancy, is 3s. 6d.; but
I have always ordered my dinner from the _carte du jour_, and I have
found the food to be quite reasonably cheap and good.
* * * * *
I wonder how many people of the tens of hundreds who take their books
to Mudie's to be exchanged know that the Vienna Café just across the
road is an excellent place at which to lunch. In the upstairs rooms
I have eaten, in the middle of the day, Austrian and German dishes
excellently cooked, and there is a Viennese cheese cake which is a
speciality of the house for which I have a liking, and with a slice
of which I have always ended my meal. The coffee of the house is the
excellent coffee made in the Austrian manner, and at tea-time the Café
down below is always crowded with people, especially ladies, who like
the Viennese cakes and pastries that they obtain there.
XXX
THE KING'S GUARD
ST JAMES'S PALACE
"The best dinner in London, sir!" was what our fathers always added
when, with a touch of gratification, they used to tell of having been
asked to dine on the Guard at St James's; and nowadays, when the art
of dinner-giving has come to be very generally understood, the man who
likes good cooking and good company still feels very pleased to be
asked to dinner by one of the officers of the guard, for the old renown
is still justified, and there is a fascination in the surroundings that
is not to be obtained by unlimited money spent in any restaurant.
Past the illuminated clock of the Palace, the hands of which mark
five minutes to eight, in through an arched gate, across one of the
courts, and in a narrow passage where a window gives a glimpse of
long rows of burnished pots and pans, is a black-painted door with,
on the door-jamb, a legend of black on white telling that this is the
officers' guard.
Up some wooden stairs with leaden edges to them, stairs built for
use and not for ornament: and, the guests' coats being taken by a
clean-shaved butler in evening clothes, we are at once in the officers'
room.