recipes for all the dishes, a very useful little book which he used
to give away to his customers, but which he now sells to them for a
shilling, has in a preface set down some "Golden Rules for Cooks," and
the first of these is "Buy good materials only. The best cook in the
world cannot turn third-class materials into a first-class dish." This
rule M. Gallina has always observed himself.
The Rendezvous has constantly been increased in size. A house next door
to it fell vacant, and M. Gallina at once took it and converted it into
part of his restaurant. Then with larger dining-room came the necessity
for a larger kitchen, and this matter was put in hand. A wine licence
granted to the restaurant brought with it all the responsibilities of
a cellar, and M. Gallina has now an admirable kitchen and offices,
with walls of shining white tiles, and a cellar big enough to hold
all the wine that his customers require. A tea and cake shop, with
tea-rooms on the first floor, the Maison Gallina, next door but one to
the restaurant, was the next achievement of the enterprising little
man, and, finally, he rounded off his restaurant by building at the
back a new room, all dark oak and mirrors and Oriental carpets, with a
handsome oak gallery running round it.
The Rendezvous Restaurant is now one of the landmarks of Dean Street.
The wide windows of its ground floor are of little square panes, each
window set in a white wooden frame, above a facing of glazed red tiles,
and before them stands a line of Noah's Ark trees in green tubs. Over
these ground-floor windows the restaurant's name is written in Old
English characters on a white ground. A line of shrubs in winter and
flowers in summer is beneath the windows of the first floors of the two
old houses, and at night a row of globes blazes with electric light
above the name of the restaurant.
The interiors of the two front rooms on the ground floor of the
restaurant have been decorated to represent the parlours of an Old
English farmhouse. There are heavy black beams supporting the ceiling,
the walls are panelled with green cloth in wooden frames, the electric
lamps give their light in old lanterns, and there are silver wine
coolers with ferns in them on the broad window-sill. Upstairs, and
there are three staircases in the restaurant, one of the rooms on the
first floor is kept in its original Georgian panelled simplicity, while
the other is a Dutch room with plaques of Delft ware on the walls. The
new room at the back I have already described.
The clientele of the restaurant comprises every class of Londoner from
princes to art students. The late Prince Francis of Teck often dined
there. I have seen ladies in all their glory of tiaras of diamonds
and of pearl necklaces eating an early meal at the Rendezvous before
going to the opera; and the youngster who is one day going to obtain
Sargent's prices for his pictures, but is still in the chrysalis stage,
and the as yet undiscovered Melbas and Clara Butts receive just as
much attention when they eat the one dish which forms their lunch or
dinner as do the great people of the land who indulge in many courses.
The Royalty is but a score of steps away from the Rendezvous, and many
playgoers on their way to that theatre dine at the restaurant or sup
there after the performance. Messrs Vedrenne and Eadie quite appreciate
the advantage it is to have a flourishing restaurant just outside
their doors, and gave M. Gallina every encouragement when he first
established himself in Dean Street.
The Rendezvous has a _carte du jour_ which gives a great choice of
dishes. The long card is covered with items printed in red or written
in blue ink, and special delicacies are set down in scarlet. There
are various sole dishes and a score of those of other kinds of fish.
The entrées take up half the card, and birds and salads, vegetables,
savouries and dessert each have a thick little column of written
items under their respective headings. The prices, as I have already
written, are quite moderate for good material. The fish dishes
average eighteenpence, the entrées a little less. I have eaten at a
dinner-party given in the new room a very noble feast, and I have dined
by myself on soup, sole, a _navarin_ of lamb and an _entremet_, my
dinner, without wine, costing me five-and-threepence.
There are two specialities of the house--the _sole Rendezvous_ and the
_soufflé Gallina-_--which should be included in any typical dinner of
the establishment, and the last time that I dined at the restaurant and
entertained a lady I included both of these in the menu, which ran thus:
Melon Cantaloup.
Crème Fermeuse.
Soles Rendezvous.
Aile de Poularde en Casserole.
Aubergine à l'Espagnole.
Soufflé Gallina.
Café.
The _sole Rendezvous_ is an admirable method of cooking the fish with
a white wine sauce and most of the other good things that a cook can
use in a fish dish, all of which make it admirable to the taste but
exceedingly rich. The _soufflé Gallina_ is a _soufflé_ with brandied
cherries, and it is served in a little lagoon of fine champagne cognac
which is set alight. It is by no means a teetotal dish. This dinner for
two, with a pint of Vieux Pré, a champagne recommended by the house,
and a bottle of Mattoni, came very near a sovereign.
XL
THE PALL MALL RESTAURANT
Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door
above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained
window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows
with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few
playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or
His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall
Mall Restaurant. It is a restaurant which has prospered exceedingly,
and has done so because its two proprietors, MM. Pietro Degiuli and
Arnolfo Boriani--both ex-head waiters at the Savoy and the Carlton--see
to every detail concerning their restaurant and their kitchen and their
cellar with untiring diligence and with a complete knowledge. They are
both--Degiuli, small and neat and dapper, M. Boriani, broad, wearing a
curled-up moustache and looking like a _tenore robusto_--always in the
restaurant at meal-times doing the work of _maîtres d'hôtel_ and giving
personal attention to every member of their clientele.
In the ten years that have elapsed since they rechristened the
restaurant, which for a short period had been known as Epitaux's, they
have made many improvements. The restaurant itself, a high room with
a curved roof and two sliding skylights in the roof, which not only
let in the light but fresh air as well, is now a white restaurant,
with deep rose panels alternating with mirrors between the pilasters.
There is a little gilding in the decoration, but as carpet and chairs
and lamp-shades conform to the scheme of rose, the restaurant may be
described as all white and deep pink. There was originally a musicians'
gallery at one end of this dining-hall, a legacy from the Café de
l'Europe, as it was called in the fifties, and in the days of the café
the doorway was cased in to prevent draughts reaching the worthies who
used to sup there after the performance at the Haymarket Theatre. The
old wooden screen to the door has been swept away, and people lunch
and dine and sup in the gallery which has replaced the domain of the
musicians. A little lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, made
by absorbing part of the premises of the shop next door, is one of
the most recent additions to the Pall Mall, and the Fly-fishers' Club
having moved to larger premises, MM. Degiuli and Boriani have been able
to construct a banqueting-room on the first floor that, with a private
dining-room which can accommodate twenty diners, gives them now quite a
large establishment.
As I have written, the two proprietors give personal attention to every
matter connected with the restaurant, and they have not forgotten that
they are Italians, for in their _table d'hôte_ lunch, the price of
which is half-a-crown, one of the dishes is usually an Italian one,
and all the coffee made in the establishment is made after the Italian
fashion, no metal being allowed to come in contact with the fluid. For
their supper menu they always choose simple dishes, which can be cooked
directly an order has been given by those who sup. There is a _carte du
jour_, but the dinners that nineteen out of twenty diners order are one
or other of the _table d'hôte_ dinners of the day, a four-shilling and
a five-and-six one. This was the menu of the more expensive of these
two dinners on the last occasion that I dined at the Pall Mall:
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Consommé Madrilène Froid and Chaud or Germiny.
Saumon Hollandaise.
Cailles Richelieu à la Gelée.
Selle d'Agneau Soubise.
Fonds d'Artichauts Barigoule.
Pommes Château.
Volaille en Cocotte.
Salade.
Fraises Melba.
The soup was good, the quail especially attracted my notice, for its
jelly was flavoured with capsicum, giving it thus a special cachet.
The service at the Pall Mall is quick and silent, and, though there is
no unseemly hurry, the dinner is quickly served, for most of the people
who dine at the Pall Mall are going on to a theatre.
The Pall Mall has an exceedingly _comme il faut_ clientele, and any man
who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant
would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time,
and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall
very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and
the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre
to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment
for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants.
And perhaps because the Pall Mall stands where the stage of one of the
theatres in the Haymarket used to be, the restaurant numbers amongst
its clientele many of the great people of the opera and of the theatre,
as its book of autographs shows. This is a book full of scraps of
wisdom and wit, and the Stars of Song and Politics and the Stage have
not been afraid to cap each other's remarks. Thus when Madame Patti
leads off on the top of a page with a charming platitude, "A beautiful
voice is the gift of God," Madame Yvette Guilbert inscribes below a
reminder that "An ugly voice is also the gift of God"; Sir Herbert
Tree, taking a different view from that of either of the ladies, asks
whether a voice should not be considered "A visitation of Providence";
Miss Mary Anderson sides with her sex, for she opines that "All things
are the gift of God"; and Sir Rider Haggard rounds off the discussion
with "But the greatest gift of God is Silence." Lord Gladstone, about
to depart for South Africa, writes, "Faith in the Old Country" as his
contribution, and Mr Lloyd George puts immediately below it a sentence
in Welsh, which being translated means "Liberty will conquer"; Mr
Ben Davies, also a man of gallant little Wales, writes in his native
tongue, below Mr Lloyd George's sentence, "You are quite right, Lloyd
George, but your liberality has taken most of my money." Mr John Burns,
dining at the restaurant on "Insurance Day, 1911," was not stirred up
to any poetic flights by the occasion, "Health the only wealth" being
his rhymed contribution.
Amongst the signatures in the book is that of Signor Marconi, who
is not inclined to write his name more often than is necessary. His
contribution was coaxed from him by a flash of wit on the part of M.
Boriani. On the menu of the dinner eaten by the inventor of wireless
telegraphy appeared the item "_Haricots verts à la Marconi_." The great
electrician asked why they were so named. M. Boriani trusted that the
beans were not stringy, and the inventor having reassured him on this
point, he said that in this case they might rightly be described as
"_Sans fil_."
MM. Degiuli and Boriani have chosen as the motto of their restaurant,
"_Venez et vous reviendrez_," and this confident prediction has been
justified.
There is much history concerning the site on which the Pall Mall now
stands. In the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, when the lane which
led from Piccadilly down to the Mall gradually became a street of
houses, Charles II. gave permission to John Harvey and his partner to
sell cattle as well as fodder in the Haymarket. All along this market,
on both sides, inns sprang up, and one of them occupied the site where
the Pall Mall Restaurant now stands. The inn was pulled down early
in the eighteenth century, and on its site Mr Potter, a carpenter,
built a "summer" theatre; this theatre was converted by Samuel Foote
somewhere about 1760 into a winter theatre. Mr A. M. Broadley has
written for the proprietors of the Pall Mall an interesting booklet
which deals at length with this theatre and its managers, Foote and
the Colmans, and with the great actresses and actors and musicians
who appeared on its stage. Mozart played on the spinet there as an
infant prodigy; Margaret Woffington made her first bow to an English
audience in the part of Macheath in _The Beggars' Opera_, "after the
Irish manner"; and two actresses who married into the peerage--Lavinia
Fenton, who died Duchess of Bolton, and Elizabeth Farren, afterwards
Countess of Derby--played on its stage. But on 14th October 1820, the
Little Theatre, as it was called, closed its doors with the tragedy
of _King Lear_ and a farce. It was not at once pulled down, and was
still standing in a battered state when the present Haymarket Theatre,
built by John Nash, was opened in 1821, just a fortnight before the
coronation of George IV. When the Little Theatre was eventually pulled
down shops were erected on its site. Two of these were in the year of
the first Great Exhibition converted into the Café de l'Europe, the
great hall of which, somewhat altered, is the large room of the present
restaurant. Mr William John Wilde, who was Buckstone's treasurer at the
Haymarket Theatre, became the proprietor of the Café de l'Europe in the
late fifties, and as there was no early-closing law in those days the
café naturally enough became the favourite supping place for those who
had sat through a long evening at the theatre almost next door, and the
sturdy critics who congregated in the first row of the pit ate their
devilled bones and tripe and onions, Welsh rarebits, chops and potatoes
in their jackets, at the café after midnight and passed judgment on
the performances of Buckstone and Liston, Sothern and the other famous
comedians of the theatre as they supped. Mr D. Pentecost was the last
proprietor of the old café. He was, as "Dagonet" in _The Referee_ has
lately reminded us, a nephew of Pierce Egan, the author of "Tom and
Jerry," and he was, amongst other things, the refreshment contractor to
the Alhambra. He was also the proprietor of the Epitaux Restaurant in
the colonnade of the opera house in the Haymarket. When that building
was pulled down, in order that the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre
should be built on its site, Mr Pentecost transferred the name of
Epitaux to the Café de l'Europe. The building was redecorated and MM.
Costa and Rizzi became the lessees. Ten years ago, as I have previously
written, MM. Degiuli and Boriani became the proprietors and gave the
restaurant its present name and its present appearance.
XLI
IN JERMYN STREET
MAISON JULES. BELLOMO'S. LES LAURIERS
Jermyn Street used to be sacred to small private hotels, shops and
bachelors' chambers, but the restaurants have now invaded it and there
are half-a-dozen places of good cheer which have their front doors
in the street, while some of the Piccadilly restaurants have a back
entrance there.
M. Jules had the happy idea of taking two houses, one of them at one
time the home of Mrs Fitzherbert, as a medallion of the head of King
George IV., found under the drawing-room floor proves, and converting
them into a hotel and restaurant. It has proved so successful in Jules'
case that he is now adding on to his hotel and restaurant, building at
the same time a nice little suite of rooms with bow-windows for himself
and his wife. As you walk down Jermyn Street from St James's Street
towards Lower Regent Street, the Maison Jules is on the right-hand
side. You cannot miss it, for an illuminated terrestrial globe and the
name above the doorway catch your eye. A little ante-room is separated
from the restaurant by a glazed screen to keep off draughts. The
restaurant itself, a long room running the whole width of the house,
is all white, with a little raised ornamentation on its walls, with
gilt capitals to the white pillars, and on the marble mantelpiece a
clock and candelabra of deep blue china and ormolu. At the end of the
room a big window, which is almost a wall of glass, is cloaked by
lace curtains. There is a second room running at right angles at the
back, which either can be used as part of the restaurant or can be
partitioned off.
Jules himself will welcome you as you come into the restaurant. I have
known him for many years, having first made his acquaintance when he
was manager at the Berkeley, when his hair was of lustrous brown, and I
have always been one of his supporters at the hotel in Piccadilly and
at the Savoy--when he became manager there, and now in Jermyn Street,
where, with his wife and his daughter, who has married the _chef de
cuisine_, and his son, who is following in his father's footsteps, he
controls the restaurant and the hotel. The girth of his waist may have
increased a little, possibly to match the bow-windows of those new
rooms, since I have known him, and his hair is now powdered with grey,
but his good-natured, round, rosy face, and his eyes, which almost
close when he smiles, remain the same. He is always so pleased to see
me that I find that a dinner at the Maison Jules does me more good than
most tonics do.
The people who dine at the Maison Jules are all pleasant and
well-to-do, and all the men wear dress clothes. Some of the men are
grey-haired people like myself who have followed Jules in all his
migrations; but the restaurant is by no means a home of rest for
the elderly, for on the last occasion that I dined there one of the
prettiest of the younger generation of actresses was being entertained
at the next table to mine; and young as well as elderly diners
appreciate the bonhomie that seems to be in the atmosphere at the
Maison Jules. The dinner of the house is an eight-shilling one. The
dinner I ate when I last dined _chez_ Jules is quite a fair specimen of
the evening meal:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé aux Quenelles.
Crème Américaine.
Suprême de Sole Volga.
Riz de Veau Souvaroff.
Médaillon de Bœuf Algérienne.
Poularde à la Broche.
Salade.
Haricots Verts au Beurre.
Mousse aux Violettes.
Friandises.
The _crème Américaine_, a pink thick soup, was excellent, and so was
the cold dish of sole, with jelly and a little vegetable salad. The
_mousse aux violettes_ was an ice with crystallised violets on the top;
and the _riz de veau_ and the _poularde_--for which Jules wished to
substitute a partridge--were both excellent of their kind. When Jules,
before I left, came to me and told me that some gentlemen a little
farther down the room had told him that there was absolutely nothing to
criticise in the dinner, I was not hard-hearted enough to tell him that
the beans were stringy, which, to tell the truth, they were. Otherwise
I agreed with the gentlemen farther down the room. The wine list is a
well-chosen one, and there is in the cellar some 1820 Martell brandy,
landed in England in 1870, which used to be the pride of the old St
James's Restaurant, and the whole of which Jules bought at the sale.
* * * * *
A little farther down the street on the same side is a restaurant and
hotel controlled by another old acquaintance of mine in the restaurant
world. The restaurant is Bellomo's, and the hotel of which it forms a
part is Morle's Hotel. In the days when I thought it my duty to do my
share of drinking, at the Café Royal, a particularly excellent cuvée
of Cliquot Vin Rosé, the waiter who was in charge of the table at
which I usually sat, and who attended to all my wants with admirable
intuition, was not at all one of the lean kind, and to identify him
from his fellows I always called him, and wrote of him as, "the fat
waiter." He prospered and ran up the tree of promotion, as good waiters
do at the Café Royal, so that in his later development he became
_maître d'hôtel_ in charge of the grill-room, and wore a frock-coat and
a black tie. But the anxieties of his new position in no way caused
him to grow thin. A year or two ago a friend wrote to me saying that
he and some others had found the money to set up Bellomo, whom, of
course, I remembered at the Café Royal, in a restaurant of his own
in Jermyn Street, and hoped that I would go and see how he prospered
there. I went, not feeling quite sure who Bellomo was, and found my
fat waiter of old, now a plump proprietor. His restaurant, which
consists of two rooms thrown into one, has walls with a light shade of
pink on them, and at night is lit by electroliers with pink shades. A
few steps lead from the front to the back. The restaurant is a cosy
little establishment, and the two dinners which are served there--one
a three-and-six one and the other a five-shilling one--are invariably
well cooked, for M. Bellomo has brought the good Café Royal traditions
with him to his new home. This is a typical menu, a winter one, of
Bellomo's three-and-six dinner:
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Rothschild or Thick Mock Turtle.
Filet de Sole Chauchat.
Carré de Mouton Niçoise.
Oie rôti.
Salade.
Glacé Mont Blanc.
Gaufrettes.
* * * * *
Farther along the street and on the opposite side is Les Lauriers,
which takes its name from the two little evergreen trees which stand
in tubs at its door, and which is higher and more airy than most of
the restaurants of its size, for at some time or another the entresol
has been thrown into the rooms on the ground floor. Les Lauriers
consists, like most of the Jermyn Street restaurants, of two rooms
joined together with a space screened off by the door to form a tiny
ante-room. Its walls are panelled and painted cream colour, and lamps
with pink shades hang from the ceiling. The green carpet and the dark
wooden chairs at the three rows of tables give a comfortable look
to the place. The proprietor is M. Giolitto, who was a head waiter
at the Savoy before he came to Jermyn Street to make his fortune. A
very comfortable clientele patronises Les Lauriers, and there are two
dinners provided for them, one a short dinner which is served until a
quarter to eight, and the other a more elaborate one, priced 3s. 9d.
and 5s. 6d. respectively. The last time I dined at Les Lauriers I,
feeling rich, indulged in the longer dinner. This was the menu:
Melon Cantaloup or Driver's Royal Natives.
Consommé Viveur or Crème Doria.
Homard froid, Sce. Mayonnaise or Aiguillettes de Turbot en Goujons.
Tournedos à la Florentine.
Perdreau rôti sur Canapé.
Petits Pois à la Française.
Salade.
Ananas Master Joe.
Mignardises.
It was a well-cooked dinner, and I do not wonder that M. Giolitto was
able to tell me that his restaurant flourishes exceedingly.
XLII
THE MEN WHO MADE THE SAVOY