Street, which the late M. Azario, a gentleman of much importance in the
London Italian colony, made one of the most successful moderate-priced
restaurants in London. He was decorated with an Italian order, and
when he died, not long ago, he was much mourned by his countrymen.
Madame Azario (who is now Madame Mainardi and who has appointed her
husband, whom I remember at the Savoy, to the supreme command of the
establishment), to whom he left the restaurant, has made some changes
in it, bringing it up to date. It now has a lounge where hosts can wait
for their guests, and it has fallen a victim to the prevailing craze
for Tango dancing at supper-time. Its three-shilling dinner is a most
satisfying one at the price. The Florence is not too whole-heartedly
Italian to please diners of other nationalities, but when an Italian
gives a lunch or a dinner to his fellow-countrymen or to those who love
the cookery of Italy, it can be as patriotic in the matter of dishes as
any restaurant in Italy. This is the menu of a lunch given to one of
the most Italian of Englishmen. It is a capital example of an Italian
meal, and there is a little joke tucked away in it, for the "Neapolitan
Vanilla" is another way of writing garlic:
Antipasto Assortito.
Ravioli alla Fiorentina.
Trotta à l'Italiana.
Scalloppine di Vitello alla Milanese.
Asparagi alla Sant'Ambrogio.
Pollo alla Spiedo.
Insalata Rosa alla Vaniglia di Napoli.
Zabaglione al Marsala.
Formaggio.
Frutta.
* * * * *
Chianti.
Barolo vecchio.
Asti naturale.
Caffe.
Liquori.
One of the first established and one of the best of the Italian
restaurants is Previtali's, in Arundel Street, that little thoroughfare
that runs up into a cul-de-sac square, off Coventry Street. It was said
a while ago that this little square and its approach were to be eaten
up by a new great variety theatre, but I see that the ground is now
advertised as being for sale. Below the great board which announces
this is a smaller one, which tells that Previtali's is to remain where
it is till September 1915, when it will find other quarters. Its _table
d'hôte_ luncheon costs half-a-crown, and its _table d'hôte_ dinners
are priced at three-and-six and five shillings, the latter giving such
a choice of food that not even a starving man would ask for more when
he had gone through the menu. Previtali's has an excellent cellar of
Italian wines.
Many of the restaurants owned by Italians in London have a clientele
that suits the size of the house, and they do not cry aloud by bold
advertisements for fresh guests. Such a quiet, unassuming restaurant is
the Quadrant, in Regent Street, the windows of which keep their eyes
half closed by pink blinds which shut off the view of the interior
from passers-by. Messrs Formaggia and Galiardi cater there for very
faithful customers, and I always look with interest as I pass at the
menu of the half-crown dinner which is written in a bold hand and shown
in a small frame by the window. It is always a well-chosen meal, and
on the occasions that I have eaten at the Quadrant, I have been well
satisfied with its fare. It was at the Quadrant that a gourmet with a
taste for strange foods gave me a lunch of land-crabs which had been
imported with much difficulty from either Barbadoes or the West Indies,
and which Mr Formaggia's chef had cooked strictly in accordance with
the recipe that came with them. They had, I remember, rather a bitter
taste, but perhaps land-crabs, like snails, are not to everybody's
taste.
In Soho, the Italian restaurants jostle the French restaurants in
every street. Perhaps the best known of the Soho restaurants owned by
Italians is the Ristorante d'Italia, whereof Signor Baglioni is the
proprietor, which thrusts out an illuminated arum amidst the electric
globes and glittering signs of Old Compton Street. My memories of the
half-crown _table d'hôte_ dinner there is of food excellently cooked
under the superintendence of an erstwhile _chef de cuisine_ of the
Prince of Monaco, of the noise of much talking in vehement Italian, of
rather close quarters at little tables laid for four, and of a menu of
rather portentous provender.
The most Italian of any restaurant that I have discovered in my
explorations in Soho is the Treviglio in Church Street, a little
restaurant that might have been lifted bodily from a canal-side in
Venice or a small street in Florence. It is whole-heartedly Italian,
and puts to the forefront of its window a list of the specialities of
Italian cookery on which it prides itself. It is a favoured haunt of
the Italian journalists in London, and that, I think, can be taken as a
certificate that its cookery is not only thoroughly Italian but is also
good Italian. Signori Pozzi and Valdoni are its proprietors.
Pinoli's is a restaurant in Lower Wardour Street that offers almost
as much at its two-shilling _table d'hôte_ dinner as some other
restaurants do at twice or more that price.
A quiet, flourishing restaurant owned by an Italian, Signor Antonio
Audagna, who began life as a waiter at Romano's, is the Comedy
Restaurant, in Panton Street, Haymarket. It is a comfortable
restaurant, with cream walls and oval mirrors and pink-shaded lamps,
and its back rooms are on a higher level than those of its Panton
Street front. Its customers are very faithful to it, and, as its
proprietor once told me, "when the fathers die the sons take their
places as customers." There was some time ago a proposal to extend
it so as to give it a front to the Haymarket, but that plan came to
naught, and the Comedy goes on just as before in its old premises.
This is a menu of the Comedy _table d'hôte_ dinner, and its proprietor
apparently took a hint from Philippe of the Cavour for the menu bears
the legend, "No beer served with this dinner":
Hors d'œuvre Variés.
Queue de Bœuf Printanière
Crème Chasseur.
Sole à la Bourguignonne.
Noisette de Pré-Salé Volnay.
Spaghetti al Sugo.
Poulet en Casserole.
Salade.
Glacé Comedy.
Dessert.
Another quiet restaurant with a faithful clientele is Signor Pratti's,
the Ship, in Whitehall. His _table d'hôte_ dinners are half-a-crown
and three-and-six, and his eighteenpenny lunch, I fancy, brings to the
restaurant many of the hard-worked gentlemen from Cox's Bank, just
across the way, and from the Admiralty, which is suitably just behind
the Ship. Signor Pratti, if I remember rightly, fines teetotalers by
charging them sixpence extra.
From Hampstead to Surbiton, from Richmond to Epping, the little Italian
restaurants flourish. One gourmet whom I know, with a delicate taste
in Italian wines, makes pilgrimages regularly to Reggiori's, opposite
King's Cross Station, because he gets there a particular wine which
this restaurateur imports; while I take an almost paternal interest in
Canuto's Restaurant in Baker Street. The rise of that restaurant from a
very humble place, that put out two boards with great sheets of paper
on them, giving the dishes ready and the dinner of the day, to a rather
haughty little restaurant with a very beautiful window and the _carte
du jour_ and the menus of _table d'hôte_ dinners behind the glass in
frames of restrained gorgeousness, typifies the gradual advance in
social splendour of the long street that leads to Regent's Park.
LVIII
THE HYDE PARK HOTEL
Newly engaged couples are rather kittle cattle to entertain at any
meal. There was once a pretty young widow who was about to marry a
charming young man, and I asked the pair to lunch with me one day at
the Savoy and was very particular to secure a table in the balcony, for
I thought that the view over the Gardens and up the Thames to the House
of Lords and Westminster Abbey would harmonise very well with love's
young dream. And it did harmonise only too well with it, for the pretty
widow sat with her face in her two hands gazing up the river with
far-away eyes while the grilled lamb cutlets grew cold and the _bomb
praliné_ grew warm, and the charming young man, sat opposite to her
with hands tightly clasped, gazing into her face and thinking poetry
hard the while. Conversation there was none on that occasion. I do not
believe that the couple knew in the least whether they were eating sole
or cream cheese, and I still have such remnants of good manners that
were instilled into me in the days of the nursery that I felt that
I was doing an impolite thing to eat heartily while my guests were
neglecting their food. I often subsequently wondered whether in the
days when I fell desperately in love at least once in every six months,
I behaved in public as much like a patient suffering from softening of
the brain as did that nice young man on the day he lunched with me at
the Savoy.
One of my nephews, a young soldier doctor, is going to do a very
sensible thing in marrying an exceedingly nice girl early in his
career, and as he is on leave in London it seemed to me that it would
be a pleasant thing to ask him and the young lady to lunch or dine with
me. Though I did not for a moment believe that the presence of his
intended would cause him to neglect his food, I was not prepared, after
my previous experience, to put the young lady to the tremendous trial
of the view of the Thames from the Savoy balcony, and I decided that
dinner, not lunch, should be the meal.
As I was curious to see whether a little dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel
was as well cooked as the great banquets are in that flourishing
establishment, I asked them to dine there with me one Sunday evening,
and gave Mr Kerpen, the manager of the hotel, warning of our coming,
asking him to suggest to M. Müller, the _chef de cuisine_, that I
should like one or two specialities of his kitchen included in a very
short menu.
If lunch had been the meal to which I invited the young couple the Hyde
Park Hotel dining-room would have been a spot as inducive to day dreams
as are the balconies at the Savoy and the Cecil, for the view the Hyde
Park Hotel commands over the Park is one of the most beautiful and most
varied in London. A strip of garden lies between the Hotel and the
Ladies' Mile, and beyond that is the branch of Rotten Row that runs up
past the Knightsbridge Barracks. Beyond that again are green lawns and
clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, and the grassy rise
up to the banks of the Serpentine, the glitter of the water of which
and the big trees about it closing in the landscape. The carriages go
rumbling past; there are generally some riders in the Row and there is
always movement on the footpath, and it seems to be one of the duties
of the regiment of Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge to supply as a
figure in the immediate foreground either a young orderly officer in
his blue frock-coat setting out or returning from his rounds on a big
black charger, or a rough-riding corporal in scarlet jacket teaching
a young horse manners. The view up the river to Westminster may have
a dreamy beauty on a sunshiny day, the vista of the long walk in the
Green Park, down which the windows of the Ritz dining-room look, may
have more sylvan beauty, but the outlook of the Hyde Park Hotel has
more colour and more variety than those of the other big hotels I have
mentioned.
The Hyde Park Hotel was one of Jabez Balfour's speculations, and for
a time it was a great pile of flats before it became technically an
hotel. It had a fire, and I fancy that it was after the fire that M.
Ritz was consulted as to its redecoration--for he had a great talent
and indisputable taste in suggesting the ornamentation of large
rooms--and that the Hyde Park Hotel became the exceedingly comfortable,
quiet, luxurious house it is to-day.
In the big hall, with its dark-coloured marbles and handsome fireplace,
I found the young couple waiting for me. They were before their time
and were in holiday spirits, which reassured me, for no laughing girl
is likely to slip suddenly into day dreams. After I had given my hat
and coat to the dark-complexioned servitor in blue and gold Oriental
dress, who looks like a very good-natured Othello, we waited for a
while in the big cream and green drawing-room--a room so fresh in
colour that it does not suggest an environment of London atmosphere,
though it looks out on to Knightsbridge. At the quarter past eight we
went into the big dining-room, and M. Binder, the _maître d'hôtel_,
showed us to the table in a corner by a window which had been set for
us.
The Hyde Park Hotel dining-room is an exceedingly handsome hall of
mahogany, with panels of gold and deep crimson brocade; its pillars
are of deep red wood with gilt Corinthian capitals; a band plays in a
gallery above the crystal service doors and the colours of the panels
are echoed in carpet and curtains and upholstery. In its comfortable
colouring the Hyde Park Hotel dining-room reminds me very much of
what the Savoy dining-room used to be before its beautiful mahogany
panelling was taken down and the colour of the walls and ceiling
changed to cream.
I soon found that I was not either to be silent or to have the
conversation all to myself, for the young people laughed and chatted
away, and I found myself comparing descriptions of the Curragh as it
was in the seventies, when we used to lie in bed in the huts and watch
the marking at the butts through the cracks in the walls, with the
Curragh of to-day when the last of the Crimean wooden huts are about to
disappear. The reading of the menu, however, was gone through with due
solemnity, and the young lady knew that an important moment in her life
was about to approach, for she was going to taste caviare for the first
time. This was the menu of our dinner:
Caviar Blinis.
Crème d'Asperges.
Sole à la H.P.H.
Selle d'Agneau de lait poëlée.
Haricots verts aux fines herbes.
Bécassines Chasseur.
Salade.
Pêches Petit Duc.
Comtesse Marie.
Friandises.
Dessert.
The young soldier doctor watched his bride-that-is-to-be eat her first
mouthful of caviare and little angle of the Russian pancake with
interest and some curiosity. If she did not like the delicacy there
would be no caviare for him in the days of their honeymoon, while if
she took a violent fancy to them it might strain the resources of a
very young establishment to provide caviare at two meals a day. She
took her first mouthful, considered, and said that she liked it; but
did not express any overwhelming attachment to it, so I think that so
far as caviare is concerned it will be eaten with appreciation in the
household-that-is-to-be but will not appear every day at table. The
soup was an excellent thick cream; the sole was one of the specialities
of the kitchen put by the _chef de cuisine_ into the menu, and a most
admirable sole it is. It is a _mousse_ of chicken sandwiched between
fillets of sole, and lobster and oysters and, I fancy, mushrooms also,
have their part in this very noble dish. The tiny saddle of lamb was
the plain dish of the dinner; the snipe were given a baptism of fire
before they were brought to table. The peaches were another dish that
is a speciality of the house. With the _Bar-le-Duc_ currant jelly about
the peaches there was mingled some old Fine Champagne, while the ice
and the vanilla cream that went with it were served separately, as is
the modern fashion, which is a great improvement on sending up the ice
in a messy state with the fruit. The wine we drank was Clicquot 1904.
I was charged half-a-guinea a head for our dinner, which was excellent
value for the money: altogether an admirable dinner, admirably cooked,
and I sent my compliments to the chef.
The other people who had dined had gradually melted away; the band
had left its gallery and we could hear its strains coming from some
distant room. The young people chattered away about theatres and
dances and we might have sat at table until midnight had not the
_maître d'hôtel_ suggested that we might like to look at the other
rooms on the ground floor before going into the smoking lounge, where
the band was playing and where a lady was presently to sing. We walked
through a charming little ante-room with golden furniture, into the
great pink banqueting-room which is used for dances and balls as well
as for great feasts. It is the part of the Hyde Park Hotel with which
I am most familiar, and I told the young people, who were more anxious
to know which way the boards ran and whether it was a good floor for
dancing than they were for descriptions of banquets, how at one of the
dinners of the Gastronomes in this fine room the table decorations were
so arranged as to be high above the diners' heads and that the air
seemed full of flowers and how M. Müller had invented for that feast
the beau-ideal of a vegetable _sorbet--tomates givrées_. I had thoughts
of giving them details of a wonderful banquet given at the hotel by the
Society of Merchants, but I am sure they would not have had patience
to listen, so what I abstained from telling them then, lest they might
think me a gluttonous old bore, I here set down for your consideration,
for you can skip it if you will, whereas the two young people would, I
am sure, have been kind enough to listen and to pretend to appreciate
its beauties:
Cantaloup Grande Fine Champagne.
Caviar.
Consommé Florentine.
Crème de Pois frais.
Filets de Truite Saumonée au Coulis d'Ecrevisses.
Volaille de la Bresse Châtelaine.
Selle de Béhague à la Provençale.
Aubergines au Beurre Noisette.
Cailles Royales à l'Ananas.
Pommes Colerette.
Dodines de Canard à la Gelée.
Cœurs de Laitues aux œufs.
Pêches Framboisées.
Friandises.
Dessert.
VINS.
Sandringham Sherry.
Schloss Volkrads, 1904.
Pommery and Greno, 1900.
Château Brane Cantenac, 1899.
Sandeman's, 1884.
Marett Gautier, 1830.
Liqueurs.
Then we went into the big room, a room of mahogany, and views of lake
and river and sea painted on the panels, which is the room most used by
the people who live in the hotel, where the papers and great arm-chairs
are and where a man can smoke comfortably, and we listened to the
little orchestra and to a young lady who sang us songs sentimental and
songs cheerful until it was time for my nephew to do escort duty in
taking the young lady back to the northern heights where she lives.
LIX
YE OLDE GAMBRINUS
The one thing in the world that the friends of Germany do not tell us
poor Englishmen is to be obtained better in the Fatherland than on this
side of the Channel is things to eat, though of course Munich beer has
been held up to our brewers for generations as an example of what they
should brew. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are fewer German
restaurants in London in comparison with the size of the German colony
than there are French and Italian restaurants in comparison with the
colonies of those countries.
Yet good, simple German cookery is quite excellent of its kind. A
German housewife knows how to make a goose into many delectable dishes
which an English housewife knows nothing of, and the German tarts are
excellent things amongst dishes of pastry.
There are one or two German restaurants in Soho, and Mr Appenrodt in
his restaurants considers the tastes of his fellow-countrymen, but the
best known London restaurant devoted entirely to German and Austrian
cookery is the Olde Gambrinus, in Regent Street, and it was an Italian,
little Oddenino, who appreciated the long-felt want of the Germans in
London and who gave them a restaurant in which they can imagine that
they are once again back in their own country, eating German foods and
drinking German drinks.
The Gambrinus has entrances both in Glasshouse Street and in Regent
Street. The Regent Street entrance echoes the decoration of that of
its big brother, the Imperial Restaurant, a few paces farther along the
street, and its marble pillars and revolving door do not suggest the
entirely German surroundings we are in as soon as we have crossed the
threshold. A comparatively narrow room, panelled half-way up its height
with dark wood and with two rows of tables, is the first portion of the
restaurant we see on entering from Regent Street, and it is here that
those good Germans sit who do not want to eat a meal but wish to drink
their "steins" of beer. Above the panelling on the walls are the heads
of many deer and wild beasts from all parts of the world, and the first
impression that this gives to anyone who does not know the Gambrinus
is that it is a Valhalla for the denizens of some Wonder Zoo. In the
midst of these heads of the wild things of the woods and the plains is
that of a fine dog. No doubt he was the chosen companion of some mighty
hunter, and one hopes that he was not like the rest, a spoil of the
chase.
After this first narrow room there comes a wider one with an arched
roof, glazed with bottle-glass, and then the main restaurant itself,
which has the appearance of a baronial hall. Its floor is of wooden
blocks; there are many little tables in it, and chairs with backs of
dark leather, and it is panelled like the entrance, with dark wood. Any
chair not occupied is at our disposal, and we have found seats, and a
waiter has put in front of us the big sheet with the menu of the day on
it and a picture in blue of a crowned gentleman with a long white beard
astride on a beer cask and drinking from a foaming tankard. We will
order our dinner first and then look at our surroundings.
For every day in the week there are special dishes: four soups, one
of which is generally _bouillon mit ei_; three meat dishes and a
fruit dish. There is a list of _hors d'œuvre_, amongst them _Berliner
rollmops_ and _Brabant sardellen, Nürnberger ochsenmaul salat_ and
Bismarck herring. There is a column in print of cold dishes in which
various German sausages are given the place of honour, and then,
written in violet ink, many ready dishes beyond those sacred to the
day, and another list of dishes which can be had to order.
As the most typical German dishes amongst those of the day let us
order goose soup with dumplings, roast veal and peas, and pear tart,
and we cannot do better than wash this down with two large glasses of
light-coloured Munich beer.
The waiter takes our orders, and from a pile of rounds of wadding put
down by us two with some blue printing on them, which shows that we
are going to drink Munich beer, whereas had we elected for the beer of
Pilsen we should have been given rounds of wadding with red on them.
On all the seats at all the tables are Germans of all types.
Dark-haired Germans from the south, looking almost like Italians, and
the typical fair-haired Teutons of the north with fat necks and hair
cropped to a stubble. Anyone who thinks that the German fraus and
frauleins resemble at all the unkind caricatures the French make of
them should see the pretty ladies who accompany the worthy Germans who
eat their dinners at the Gambrinus. They are as fresh and charming,
as well dressed and as daintily mannered as the ladies who go to any
restaurant of any other nationality.
The windows that give on to Glasshouse Street are of the glass that
looks as though the bottoms of wine bottles had been used, and in the
centre of each window is an escutcheon with armorial bearings. At
one side of the room is a gallery of dark wood, and on the front of
this is also a wealth of heraldry. The heads of animals of all kinds,
which seemed a little strange in the _brasserie_ by the entrance, seem
quite in place in the big hall which has all the appearance of the
dining-room of some old baronial castle converted into a German inn. On
the side opposite to the gallery is a long counter under two arches of
dark wood. On this counter are many beer mugs, and fruit in baskets,
and on a series of shelves all the _delicatessen_ which are recorded on
the _spiese karte_. On the wall at the back of the two arches hang the
beer mugs which belong to the customers, rows upon rows of them forming
a background of coloured earthenware and glass. By the side of this
long counter is another, where a pretty girl sits and hands out to the
waiters the liqueur bottles and keeps the necessary accounts.
If the trophies of the chase in the _brasserie_ are various they are
infinitely more various in the big hall, for the Herr Baron must have
hunted on all the continents and did not disdain to add monsters of the
deep to his trophies, for a spiky fish, looking like a marine hedgehog,
dangles from the ceiling, and below it is one of those curious things
which sailors call mermaids and the right name of which is, I believe,
manati. He was a collector of curios also, this imaginary baron, for
a curious lamp in the shape of an eight-pointed star hangs above the
gallery, there is a carved owl immediately below it and various other
wood carvings in different parts of the restaurant, and on the broad
shelf above the panelling are a wonderful variety of earthenware
and china and pewter mugs and dishes and jugs and candlesticks in
quantities that would set up half-a-dozen antique shops.