rooms, and when I was loud in praise of the perfect taste and the happy
combination she has achieved of keeping all the charm of the fine
old chambers and yet adding to them all the modern conveniences, she
laughed, told me that she had been her own architect, added that it was
not an expensive education that had enabled her to do all this, and
likened herself in her apprentice years to the little girl of fourteen
whom we had seen down in the kitchen.
L
THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES
Of clubs formed for the noble purpose of eating good dinners--clubs
that have no club-houses--there are very many. Sometimes there is a
literary tinge as an excuse for the dinners, sometimes a Bohemian,
sometimes a Masonic. But there are two dining clubs that deserve
especial recognition in a Gourmet's Guide, for they are clubs of
professional gourmets whose business concerns the organisation of good
feeding. One of these clubs, which held its annual dinner this year
in the new banqueting-room of the Piccadilly Hotel, is the Réunion
des Gastronomes. This association consists of proprietors, managing
directors and managers of hotels, restaurants and clubs. It holds
meetings to discuss and take action in all matters which concern the
prosperity and welfare of the gastronomic art, and once a year its
members and their guests banquet at one of the hotels or restaurants
which are represented by members of the Réunion. I have been fortunate
enough to be a guest of late years at many of these banquets, and look
back with pleasure to the feasts held at the Hyde Park Hotel, at the
Café Royal, at Prince's Restaurant, and other temples of gastronomy.
Two lifts take banqueters down from the entrance hall of the Piccadilly
Hotel to the ante-chamber of the new banqueting-room somewhere down
in the bowels of the earth. The new rooms are below the grill-room,
and the Piccadilly must have almost as much depth below the street
level as it has height above it. The ante-room is classic in its
ornamentation, is white, or a very light grey, in colour, and its
decoration is elaborate. Here, between eight o'clock and half-past
eight, some three hundred Gastronomes and their guests assembled, and I
received a warm welcome from Mr Louis Mantell, of the National Liberal
Club, the hon. secretary of the society, and from Mr J. L. Kerpen, of
the Hyde Park Hotel, the president of the society, who was wearing
his jewel of office, hung by a gold chain round his neck. Colonel Sir
William Carington, the hon. president of the society, was to have
taken the chair at the dinner, but a bereavement prevented him from
being present, and the president of the year presided in his place. I
found pleasant familiar faces all about me. There were, amongst many
others, Mr Judah of the Café Royal, M. Soi of the Savoy, M. Kramer of
the Carlton, M. Jules from Jermyn Street, M. Gustave from the Lotus
Club, Mr George Harvey from the Connaught Rooms, M. Luigi of Romano's,
Mr Edwardes, M. Pruger from the Automobile Club, M. Boriani from the
Pall Mall, Messrs Harry and Dick Preston up from Brighton, and scores
of other pleasant acquaintances. At the half-hour punctually, a young
toast-master with a most majestic voice announced that dinner was
served, and the three hundred of us made our way next door into the new
great banqueting-room that was receiving its gastronomic baptism.
It is a fine spacious room, though its construction is rather curious,
for, no doubt owing to exigency of space, the roof of a portion of
it is comparatively low, though the major part is quite lofty. It
must, however, have admirable ventilation, for at no period during
the evening did the room become uncomfortably warm or the atmosphere
uncomfortably smoky. The colouring of the walls is of stone with a
slight tinge of chrome. Round a portion of the hall runs a gallery with
a handsome railing of black and gold, and a double staircase at the end
of the room leads up to this gallery. The ceiling is ornamented with
fine paintings of gods and goddesses in the clouds; there are large
mirrors on one side of the room and, in spite of the different heights
of portions of the ceiling, the acoustic properties of the great
hall are excellent. An admirable band, the leader of which I think I
remember as a solo violinist on the stage, played us in to dinner and
made music during dinner, there being loud calls for M. Boriani, the
Caruso of the gastronomic world, when a selection from _La Bohème_ was
played.
A long table ran the whole length of the room, and smaller ones
branched off from it like the prongs of a rake. The tables were
decorated with flowers of all shades of crimson and flame colour,
and the effect was quite beautiful. This was the menu of the dinner,
and the manager of the Piccadilly and the chef were both warmly
congratulated on a most admirable feast. Following the menu are the
wines which accompanied it:
Caviar Frais d'Astrakan.
Blinis.
Tortue Claire.
Délices de Sole au Coulis d'Ecrevisses.
Selle de Chevreuil Grand Veneur.
Purée de Marrons.
Suprême de Volaille Princesse.
Neige au Champagne.
Reine des Prés en Cocotte.
Salade Trianon.
Rocher de Foie Gras à la Gelée au Porto.
Vasque de Pêches aux Perles de Lorraine.
Corbeille d'Excellence.
Croûte Piccadilly.
Fruits.
Moka.
* * * * *
Zeltinger Auslese, 1906.
Niersteiner Rollaender, 1911.
Volnay, 1903.
Ernest Irroy and Co., 1906.
Giessler and Co., 1906.
Bouget Fils, 1906.
Château Pontet Clanet, 1895.
La Grande Marque
(60 years old)
Specially selected for the Gastronomes' Dinner.
Liqueurs.
The crawfish sauce with the filleted sole was of a most delicate taste;
the venison admirable; the _volaille princesse_ a most dainty dish of
fowl, and the quail, the "Queen of the Fields," admirably plump little
fellows. The _foie gras_, served in the shape of a circular fort, I did
not taste, for I had already dined very well. The _vasque de pêches_
was one of those combinations of fruit and _confitures_ and ice that
are now so popular.
With the coffee came the Royal toasts, and then the cigars, and as
the smoke curled up and the liqueurs were brought round the musical
programme which had been arranged commenced. A gentleman in Highland
costume assured us that the joys of lying in bed were greater than the
joys of getting up in the morning, and a young lady with a fascinating
dimple sang "You Made Me Love You," to the three hundred of us.
"The Guests" was the next toast, to which Dr O'Neill responded,
thanking the professors of gastronomy for the patients who so often
came by means of _gourmandise_ into the hands of his profession. Then
after "Snooky Ookums," by another fascinating lady, who wore a large
red feather in her hair, there was a little ceremony which delighted
the Gastronomes and their guests very much. It was a presentation of a
handsome silver-gilt cup on behalf of the Réunion des Gastronomes to
their hon. secretary, Mr Louis Mantell, to whose cheery management of
the feasts so much of their success is due. The whole company united in
singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," so as to give Mr Mantell time
to collect his thoughts before acknowledging his Christmas box in the
shape of a cup.
Some good stories from Mr Cooper Mitchell, a little more oratory,
though speeches at the Gastronomes' banquet are always kept within the
shortest space, and with more songs, a very merry evening ended. If
future banquets in the Piccadilly banqueting-hall are all nearly as
successful as the first one held there it will become a hall of good
will and good fellowship as well as a hall of good cheer.
LI
THE LIGUE DES GOURMANDS
Saint Fortunat has deposed Saint Laurent from his position as Patron
Saint of Cooks. Saint Laurent was an impostor in the matter of
_gourmandise_ for he owed the proud position he occupied for so many
centuries as the Patron of the Chefs to the exceedingly uncomfortable
position in which he met his martyrdom. He was broiled on a gridiron.
Saint Fortunat not only thoroughly enjoyed good things to eat and
drink, but wrote excellent Latin verses in praise of gastronomy, some
of which M. Th. Gringoire, the secretary of the Ligue des Gourmands and
the editor of the _Carnet d'Epicure_, a clever Parisian journalist who
has settled in London, has translated into flowing French verses. Saint
Fortunat was the father-confessor to the Queen-Saint Radegonde and to
Saint Agnes, and these two ladies, the first of the _cordons-bleus_,
prepared _ragoûts_ and _friandises_ for the holy man, who thanked them
in poetry. He died in the odour of sanctity as Bishop of Poitiers.
The Ligue des Gourmands, which is the association of the great French
chefs in London, and whose president is Maître Escoffier, the eminent
chef of the Carlton, celebrates the feast day of the Saint, in
December, by a banquet in his honour. The dinner in 1913 was the second
of the St Fortunat banquets and the fourteenth feast held by the Ligue.
The Ligue has branches pretty well all over the world wherever there
are French cooks. If London, under the presidency of M. Escoffier,
takes the lead with sixty members, Paris comes a good second with
forty-three members, and Marseilles, New York and Montreal tie for
third place, with twelve members each. Brussels has a group of six
members, and there is a forlorn hope of five devoted French chefs in
the heart of the enemy at Berlin. Delhi and Dakar, Constantinople and
Ajaccio, Bombay and Gumpoldskirschen, Lowestoft and Lahore, Shanghai
and Syracuse, Yokohama and Zurich, and a hundred other towns are
advance posts of the Ligue, and wherever there is a group of the
leaguers they and their guests eat the St Fortunat dinner, the menu of
which is composed by M. Escoffier, and the _recettes_ of the especial
dishes in which are sent in advance to the members before the Saint's
day. In 1913 the most important dinner of the Ligue next to that held
at Gatti's was the one at Paris, where the leaguers dined together at
Paillard's and sent congratulations to their brethren in London.
M. Jean Richepin, the great French poet, is bracketed with M. Escoffier
in the presidency of the Ligue, and many of the dishes that M.
Escoffier has invented for the feasts of the Gourmands are named after
celebrities in art and letters. The _fraises Sarah Bernhardt_, which
was the surprise dish of the first dinner of the Ligue, has become a
household word in all the restaurants of all the nations. M. Escoffier
is no believer in keeping his inventions as _secrets de la maison_,
and his _recettes_ for the dinners of the Ligue are always published
both in French and English, in the _Carnet d'Epicure_, which is the
mouthpiece of the Ligue.
In this open-handedness and open-mindedness, M. Escoffier is very
wise. I always assure ladies who ask me to obtain for them recipes of
various dishes, and remind great chefs when I beg _recettes_ from
them, that it is not so much the ingredients of a dish as the hand of
the cook that makes a masterpiece. No painstaking amateur, following
exactly the directions given by a master of the art, ever reproduces a
_chef-d'œuvre_, any more than an amateur painter, copying the work of
some great master of the brush is able to obtain that master's effects.
The dish that M. Escoffier had invented for the Dîner St Fortunat in
1913 was the _cochon de lait St Fortunat_, with _pommes Aigrelettes_
and _sauce groseille au Raifort_.
We, the hosts and the guests, began to assemble at eight o'clock in the
ante-room half-way up the great staircase on the King William Street
side of the Adelaide Gallery. The great cooks are not so selfish as
many other banqueters are, for they welcome ladies to their feasts,
and very pretty indeed are most of the chefs' wives and daughters,
and cousins and aunts, who grace these feasts. No one, unless he knew
who the members of the Ligue are, would tell by seeing them as they
gathered for their banquet what their profession is. M. Escoffier,
the president, with thoughtful eyes and gentle expression, looks, as
I have, I know, before said, like an ambassador or some great painter
or sculptor. M. Cedard, the King's chef, who is usually at these
feasts, but who was absent from this one, looks like an attaché of an
embassy; M. Malley, of the Ritz, has the appearance and the aplomb of
an officer of Chasseurs à cheval, and so on through the whole list.
Some of them, of course, are the plump and rosy gentlemen that artists
love to draw presiding over pots and pans, but great cooks are not all
run into one mould, either in figure or in intellect. And the guests of
the Liguers vary in type, as the Liguers themselves do. I shook hands
on Saturday night with distinguished soldiers and their wives, with
_bon-vivants_, with proprietors of restaurants, with representatives of
the great champagne firms of Rheims, with journalists and authors who
are epicures, with doctors who do not practise themselves in the matter
of diet all that they preach to their patients.
The banqueting-room at the Adelaide Gallery holds comfortably one
hundred and fifty diners, and we must have been quite that number, for
more gourmets wished to make trial of the sucking-pig of the Saint than
it was possible to find room for, and though as many tables as possible
had been put into the space M. Gringoire had to refuse tickets to
would-be diners who had postponed the request until the eleventh hour.
Soon after half-past eight, which is the dinner-hour of the Ligue--for
the great chefs like to see the dinners from their kitchens well under
way before they change from their professional white clothing into
dress clothes--we streamed up the stairs from the ante-room into the
banqueting hall--a fine room, with a musicians' gallery occupied for
the occasion by an Hungarian orchestra in hussar uniform, and with,
for this especial occasion, the French and the English flags draped
together at each end of the room. A long table ran the full length of
the room, and from it jutted out smaller tables, each presided over by
an officer of the Ligue.
When we were seated I could see some faces of well-known chefs whom I
had missed in the press downstairs. There were there, besides the names
I have already mentioned, M. Aubin, of the Russell Hotel; M. Espezel,
of the Union Club; M. Briais, of the Midland Hotel; M. Grunenfelder,
of the Grand Hotel; M. Vicario, of the Carlton; M. Müller, of the Hyde
Park Hotel; M. Görog, who was one of the four founders of the Ligue; M.
Génie, of Prince's Restaurant; M. Ferrario, of Romano's; M. Vinet, who
was for many years chef at "The Rag"; Mr Coumeig, chef to the Duchess
of Marlborough; and M. Saulnier, _sous-chef_ of the Piccadilly, a
rising star. If all these names are not French names, those amongst the
chefs of the Ligue who were not born in France have, by adopting the
cult of the Haute Cuisine Française, become naturalised Frenchmen in
gastronomy.
There are various little ceremonies observed at the dinners of the
Gourmands, one of them being that at the commencement of dinner a
member of the Ligue rises and reminds his fellow-members that only
French wine should be drunk at these banquets. Another little ceremony
is that each dish in turn is announced by the toast-master--of course,
for this occasion a Frenchman--who rolls his "r's" with fine resonance
as in a thunderous voice he tells us what we are going to eat.
This was the menu with Escoffier's signature appended to it:
Crêpes au Caviar frais.
Huîtres pimentées.
Croûte au Pot à l'Ancienne.
Turban de Filets de Sole au gratin.
Chapon fin à la Toulousaine.
Cochon de Lait Saint-Fortunat.
Pommes Aigrelettes.
Sauce Groseille au Raifort.
Bécassines Rosées.
Salade Lorette.
Pâté de foie gras.
Biscuit glacé Caprice.
Mignardises.
The caviar and the little pancakes are always delightful, and the
_croûte au pot à l'Ancienne_, in its delicate plainness, always makes
an excellent beginning to a dinner. The _gratin_ with the sole made
it a rather drier dish than fish dishes usually are, and I know that
this was the criticism passed on it by the president of the Ligue, but
it was very excellent to the taste. The _chapon_, with its rich sauce,
was admirably cooked, and served in dishes with at either end heads of
fowls admirably reproduced by the sculptors in the kitchen, and then
to a triumphal march from the band a little sucking-pig, its crackling
golden from the fire, was brought in processionally and shown to the
chairman of the feast and the guests in general before it was carried
out to be carved. And very admirable the flesh of this piglet and his
companions was when brought to table, with round each dish apples in
their skins, the top of each apple being cut off to serve as a little
lid. A sharp-tasting sauce, in which the flavours of red currant and
horse radish mingled, formed an agreeable bitter-sweet. What the
various ingredients were that formed the admirable stuffing of the
little pigs I do not exactly know, but there were barley and chestnuts
amongst them, but, like all good stuffing, one flavour after another
chased each other over the palate. M. Escoffier's own criticism on his
own creation was that a sucking-pig is more suited for a _petit comité_
than for a large gathering; but, though I quite agreed with him that
the right party in numbers to eat a sucking-pig is just that number
that one sucking-pig will satisfy, I think it very hard luck if greater
numbers were to be prevented by this very fine distinction between a
dish for a dinner-table and a dish for a banqueting-table from eating
a very great delicacy. The snipe and salad, the _pâté de foie gras_,
served on a great bed of crust, and an admirable ice, finished the
banquet. Then came the after-dinner ceremonies and songs, which at
these feasts are varied and lively. The toast of "The King" and "The
President," with the two National Anthems, was followed by a little
discourse in honour of the Patron Saint by the chairman, who coupled
the name of the saintly patron of gastronomy with those of his two
_continuateurs_, the great poet and the great chef, and to this speech
M. Escoffier replied with great modesty. The toast of "The Ladies" next
brought all the male guests to their feet, and then followed the hymn
to St Fortunat, sung by a gentleman from the musicians' gallery, with
orchestral accompaniment, the guests taking up the refrain:
"Saint Fortunat, honneur à toi,
O notre chef! O notre roi!
Saint Fortunat!"
If the leaguers were a little slow in picking up the air and paid very
little attention to the time, the heartiness with which they chorused
the Saint's name made amends for any other shortcomings. "The Ligue,"
"The Visitors," "The Press"--for whom Mr John Lane, of _The Standard_,
returned thanks--and "The Cuisine and Wines of France" were toasted
by various orators, some of whom spoke in English, some in French.
And then M. T. Fourie, the chef of the Adelaide Gallery, bearded, and
blushing in his white uniform of the kitchen, was called up to the high
table that the president of the Ligue and the chairman of the dinner
might shake him by the hand and congratulate him on the admirable feast
which he had prepared. This is a very pretty little ceremony always
observed at these feasts, and a very right one, for at most banquets
the chef who has been the cause of so much pleasure to the guests
is not asked to come in person to receive the thanks which are so
legitimately due to him.
After this ceremony the concert, an Anglo-French one, commenced.
Mademoiselle Suzanne Ollier, Miss Marianne Green and Miss Winifred
Green, of the Gaiety, Mademoiselle Bianca Briana, and Miss Mabel
Martin all sang charmingly, and were presented with bouquets on behalf
of the Ligue, and M. Siffre, the president of the Club Gaulois, sang
"Margot" quite excellently, without an accompaniment. He was presented
with a cabbage stuck on a fork, for the leaguers dearly love their
little jokes at their banquets. At last the band played the _Père la
Victoire_ march and the National Anthem, and the dinner came to an end.
In gratitude to M. Escoffier, the president, to M. Th. Gringoire, the
secretary, and to all the members of the Ligue for being permitted
in their company to taste for the first time the sucking-pig of St
Fortunat--a dish that will go the round of the globe--let me quote a
few words appropriate to the occasion from Charles Lamb's prose Hymn of
Praise in honour of roast pig:
"Pig--let me speak his praise--is no less provocative of the appetite
than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate.
The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his
mild juices."
LII
THE CAVOUR RESTAURANT
FOR AULD LANG SYNE
I head this chapter "For Auld Lang Syne," for the future of the Cavour
Restaurant has been, since the death of Philippe, who brought the
restaurant into celebrity, uncertain. The Cavour has been put up of
late years once to public auction and bought in, and there have been
rumours without number that this, that and the other actor-manager was
going to purchase the building.
In spite of all these rumours, the Cavour still continues in the hands
of Mrs Dale, who was manageress under Philippe in old days, and to whom
he left the property, just as it used to be in Philippe's time, which
is to say that it is one of the best bourgeois French restaurants to be
found in London.
Every Londoner knows the white-faced restaurant almost next door to the
Alhambra in Leicester Square. It is one of the few restaurants that
still retains a bar, though it is nowadays called a buffet, and the
three-and-six dinner which is served in the restaurant is still as it
used to be, a most excellent meal, unstinted, well cooked, and all its
material of excellent quality.
The bar of the buffet has always been a favourite resort of actors, and
it was there that I first heard Arthur Roberts tell the story of "The
Old Iron Pot," a tale the success of which led to the invention of the
game of "Spoof," that masterly feat of bamboozling the guileless which
gave amusement in the eighties to all Bohemia and added a new word to
the English language. The Old Iron Pot figured largely in a tale which
Arthur Roberts never wearied of telling to "Long Jack" Jarvis, another
actor. No one ever heard the beginning of the tale, for it was always
well in progress when the victim of the harmless pleasantry came on
the scene. Arthur was so intent on the story, the other conspirator
so immensely interested, that the new-comer was at once interested
also, dispensed with all greetings, and tried vainly to understand
all the ramifications of the story into which new characters seemed
constantly to come, and which all revolved round an old iron pot.
Jack Jarvis apparently thoroughly understood the story, occasionally
asked questions, and now and then corrected Arthur Roberts as to the
relationship of the various characters, and the other listener very
soon found himself pretending that he too comprehended all the twists
and turns.
Somehow or another, in those days the spirit of harmless practical
joking seemed to be in the atmosphere of the Cavour bar. Perhaps it
was, because in the days when Leicester Square was a waste ground with
the damaged equestrian statue of George the Third in its midst some
practical jokers sallied out one night from the little restaurant which
occupied the site of the bar, to play the best practical joke of the
last century. They painted the statue's horse with red spots, put a
fool's cap on the statue's head, and a long birch broom in the hand
which should have held a field-marshal's baton.
Philippe was the one and only waiter in those days at the little
restaurant which was kept by a Frenchman and his wife. Next door, and
extending behind the restaurant, was a tin shanty, where judge and
jury entertainment was held and _poses plastiques_ were exhibited. It
was a disreputable place, for Brookes, who was its proprietor, and who
had been associated with "Baron" Nicholson at the Coal Hole, had not
the Baron's wit, though he had the same flow of doubtful oratory.