exhaustive lesson in zoology. There is the skull of an elephant, the
head of a rhino, a bear grins sardonically on one side, and opposite
to him a zebra appears to have thrust his head and neck through the
wall. There are several boars' heads, an eagle with his wings spread
dangles from the balcony, and a black cock appears to be rising from a
forest of liqueur bottles. There are horns or heads of half-a-hundred
varieties of deer, from the wapiti and elk to those tiny little fellows
with horns a couple of inches long who run about like rabbits in the
German forests. There are antlers of red deer and fallow deer, and
heads of wildebesste and hartebesste, and black buck and buffalo, and
of many more that are beyond my knowledge of horned beasts.
There are in the room glass screens to keep off all draughts; there
are bent-wood stands on which to hang coats and hats, and a staircase
with a luxurious carpet on it and a brass rail leads down into the
grill-room of the Imperial Restaurant next door.
But the waiter, who had already put down by our places two long sloping
glasses of the clear cold beer, now brings us the plates of smoking
goose soup, and excellent soup it is, with the suet dumplings, as
light as possible, in it, and pieces of the breast of the goose. Why
we English neglect the goose as a soup-maker I do not know, as indeed
I do not know why we neglect the goose at all and consign him to the
kitchen as a meal for the servants while the turkey is being eaten
upstairs. The veal, which, I should imagine, is imported from Germany,
is excellent, and the huge chop of it that is given to each of us must,
I think, be an extra attention on the part of the management, for M.
Oddenino has just come in and has taken a seat at a table in a recess,
where he dines frugally every night so as to be within call of his
restaurant next door, and he has called the attention of the little
manager to our presence. So perhaps we are being given what in Club
life is known as the "Committee-man's chop."
Our third venture is just as satisfactory as the two previous ones,
for the great angle of open pear tart is in every way excellent. The
bill presented at the close of our meal is as moderate as the food was
good. We have each in our meal consumed three shillings and three pence
worth of well-cooked food and cold beer.
So again I ask, Why should the German _cuisine_ in London be the
Cinderella of the daughters of Gastronomy?
LX
MY SINS OF OMISSION
No one can be more aware than I am of the things I have left undone
in writing of the restaurants of London, of the many interesting
dining-places of which I have made no mention, of the eating-houses
with historical associations that I have overlooked.
I have done no more than touch the hem of the garment of the City. As
I write I recall that the Ship and Turtle, the Palmerston and other
notable restaurants I have passed by without even a word, and that
I have given only a line to Pim's and Simpson's, and the George and
Vulture, each of which is worthy of a chapter.
The Liverpool Street Hotel, which I have singled out, is not by any
means the only great railway hotel in London where the catering is
excellent. I used at one time to dine every Derby night with the late
Mr George Dobell at the St Pancras Hotel, and a better cooked dinner no
one could have given me. The Euston Hotel had, and I have no doubt has,
an admirable cellar of wines.
There is a chapter waiting to be written concerning the changes that
have taken place in railway refreshment-room catering, with, as
examples, the dining-rooms at the two Victoria stations and the _table
d'hôte_ dinner that is provided for playgoers at Waterloo.
The luncheons provided for golfers in the club-houses of the golf
courses near London was another subject to which I intended to devote
a chapter, and yet another to the excellent luncheons that the racing
clubs, following Sandown's example, provide for their members.
There are roadside and riverside inns that deserve mention besides
those of which I have written.
Many of the large hotels that I have not mentioned deserve attention,
but there is a certain similarity in the _table d'hôte_ meals at all
big hotels nowadays and the difference between the rank and file
of them lies more in their situation and decoration than in their
_cuisine_.
My excuse for paying a vague compliment to the big hotels in bulk will
not hold good with respect to the many small hotels that I have not
mentioned where the cookery is excellent. They at least have, each
one, its distinct individuality. I can only plead that I have been
frightened by their number. Almond's in Clifford Street, Brown's in
Albemarle Street, where M. Peròs is the chef, are two which occur to me
as I write in which I have dined admirably, and I have no doubt that
"Sunny Jim" will make the restaurant of the St James's Palace Hotel a
favourite dining-place.
I feel that I have slighted Oxford Street and Holborn in having merely
nodded as I passed by to some of the many restaurants, some of them
important ones, that are to be found on the road from Prince Albert's
Statue to the Marble Arch. My hope of making amends to them for this
neglect lies in a hope that my book may run into more than one edition.
In the streets that branch off from Shaftesbury Avenue there are
several restaurants for which I should have found room in this
book. The Coventry is one, and the by-ways of Soho teem with little
eating-houses waiting to be discovered and to become prosperous and
to possess globes of electric light and rows of Noah's ark trees in
green tubs. I am not such a hardy explorer as I used to be, but I have
gone through some terrible times in experimenting on some of the little
restaurants in Soho--the ones that had better remain undiscovered.
Some of my correspondents have asked me why I only write of places that
I can conscientiously praise, and why I do not describe my failures.
My answer to this is that it is not fair to condemn any restaurant,
however humble it may be, on one trial, and that, when I have been
given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see
whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion. I prefer
to consign to oblivion the stories I could tell of bad eggs and rank
butter and cold potatoes, stringy meat and skeleton fowls.
It is so much better for one's digestion to think of pleasant things
than to brood over horrors.
Adieu, or rather, I trust, au revoir.
* * * * *
_P. S._--That changes have taken place in the personnel of the
restaurants even in the space of time that it takes to pass the proofs
of this book shows how difficult it is to keep such a publication
right up to date. Most of the changes I have been able to note in
their proper position, but the sale of Rule's by Mr and Mrs O'Brien to
one of their old servants and the appointment of M. Mambrino to the
managership of the Berkeley Hotel I must record here.