Part 19

Dieudonné's has flourished exceedingly, and M. Guffanti, his hair a little thinner on the top of his head than when first I made his acquaintance, but with the same majestic curve to his moustache ends, and possessing the same invincible energy, has increased the size of his hotel by taking in several other houses.

The Dieudonné's of the present day is a large building of white stone and red brick, always very spick and span, and decked out with flower boxes. The restaurant on the ground floor is a fine room in the Adams style, a very light grey in colour, with some of the ornamentation just touched with gold. At one end are three large bow-windows, and at the other end there is a musicians' gallery for the orchestra. On the side walls the ornamentation suggests doorways with mirrored panels, pink shades on the electroliers have subdued the light, which, when the room was first built, I found too white and too brilliant, and the lamps on the tables are also pink-shaded. The carpet is of a deep rose, and the white chairs are also upholstered in that colour. It is a very pleasant dining-room, and the people who dine there are all pleasant to look at, and do good food the compliment of going dressed in becoming garments. I very rarely dine at Dieudonné's without seeing a ladies' dinner-party in progress, for Dieudonné's has always been a favourite dining place of the gentler sex since the early days when Giovanini, the old _maître d'hôtel_, with bushy eyebrows and Piccadilly weepers, used to consider any ladies without an escort as being put under his special and fatherly protection.

Dieudonné's chiefly relies on two _table d'hôte_ dinners, one the opera dinner, at six-and-six, and the other the Dieudonné dinner, at eight shillings. On the last occasion that I dined at Dieudonné's before going on to the Russian Opera at Drury Lane I ate the opera dinner, the menu of which I give below. It was the day of President Poincaré's state entry into London, and that event is celebrated by two of the dishes in the dinner:

MENU. Hors d'œuvre Variés. Consommé à la Française. Crème de Laitues aux Perles. Saumon d'Ecosse Poché. Sauce Mousseline. Pommes Nature Concombres. Côtes de Pré-Salé Poincaré. Canetons d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise. Petits Pois Nouveaux. Coupe Entente Cordiale. Friandises.

The Dieudonné dinner on this day only differed from the shorter one by the inclusion in it of _escaloppes de ris de veau George V._

The other restaurant which created and retains an artists' room is Pagani's, in Great Portland Street, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Queen's Hall and St George's Hall. When, in 1871, Mario Pagani opened a little shop, which became a restaurant, in a house in Great Portland Street, the German Reeds were in possession of St George's Hall, with, I think, Corney Grain, as a newly risen star, in their company. The Queen's Hall had not been built and St James's Hall, the site of which is now occupied by the Piccadilly Hotel, was the musical centre of London. M. Pagani, being an Italian, gave his customers Italian cookery, and very good Italian cookery too, and the journalists and the painters and the singers soon heard of the new little restaurant where there were always Italian dishes on the bill of fare. Pellegrini, the _Vanity Fair_ cartoonist, and Signor Tosti were two of the first patrons of the restaurant. Mr George R. Sims, doyen to-day of literary gourmets, loved the restaurant as it was in its early state, and wrote of the good Italian food to be obtained there, and his portrait, on a china plaque, occupies, rightly enough, the centre of one of the walls up in the artists' room. In 1887 M. Mario Pagani retired, and for a time his brother and his cousin carried on the restaurant; the latter, M. Giuseppe Pagani--left, in 1895, in sole control--taking as partner M. Meschini, the latter of whom eventually became the sole proprietor, bequeathing, when he died, the restaurant to his widow and to his son.

Pagani's in the forty odd years of its existence, has increased in size to an extraordinary extent, and the building, with its elaborately ornamented front of glazed tiles with complicated figures in the pattern and ornaments of Della Robbia ware, its squat pillars of blue and its arches, luminous at night with electric light, differs immensely from the little, stuffy Italian restaurant that it originally was. It has a second entrance now in a side street, and a Masonic banqueting-room, and a lift, and its restaurant on the ground floor is a very large one and always reminds me of those great establishments that I see in the German cities. It is a very comfortable restaurant, and its brown walls, its mirrors with trellis-work and creepers painted on them set in brown wooden frames, and its ceiling painted in quiet colours, all give a sense of cosiness. There is in this downstairs restaurant a dispense bar, which looks very picturesque seen through a glazed screen, and just by this screen is the entrance from which the waiters stream out from the kitchen carrying the dishes ordered by the patrons of the restaurant, which they show as they pass to a clerk. To dine habitually at Pagani's at a table facing the kitchen entrance is to obtain a complete knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the Italian waiter. He is not run into a mould as a French waiter is, but retains many individualities. He always wears a moustache, and is pleasantly conversational with his fellows and with the customers.

In its early days, the cookery at Pagani's was Italian and nothing but Italian, but with ever-increasing prosperity the scope of the kitchen has broadened, and now most of the dishes on the _carte du jour_ have French names. The head cook, however, is a good Italian, M. Faustin Notari, who has climbed the ladder of promotion to the top during the twenty years he has been in the kitchens of Pagani's, and there are always some Italian dishes on the bill of fare. The following are the dishes that I most frequently see on the card:--_Minestrone, minestrone alla Genovese, zuppa alla Pavese, filetti di sole alla Livornesse, spaghetti,_ and Macaroni done in every way possible, _ravioli al sugo_ or _alla Bolognese, gnocchi alla Romana, fritto misto alla Tosti, ossi buchi, arrostino annegato,_ and I generally finish my dinner at Pagani's with a _zambaglione_. Pagani's has its specialities of the house apart from Italian dishes, and when I have dined, as I often do, as one of the committee of an amateur dramatic club, in the Artists' Room, I generally find _poulet à la Pagani_--a very toothsome way of cooking the domestic fowl--on the menu of our little feasts. _Filet de sole Pagani_ is another excellent dish, an invention of the house. _Poule au pot_ and _cassôlet à la Provençale_ and the _bisque_, and the _bortsch_ at Pagani's are always excellent. The diners whom I see at the other tables downstairs at Pagani's all seem to me to belong to that very pleasant world, artistic Bohemia. The great singers of the opera and the great musicians who play at the Queen's Hall go there to lunch and dine and sup, and their artistic perception is not confined entirely to music, for I notice that they generally bring very pretty ladies with them to eat the good dishes of the restaurant. A little touch of Bohemia that always pleases me at Pagani's is the boy who comes round with a tray selling cigars and cigarettes. The restaurant-rooms on the first floor used, in the early days when Pagani's was quite a small place, to be the rooms to which the sterner sex used to take ladies to dine, and there was a particular corner by a window with a tiny conservatory in it which was the favourite spot in the room. The gentler sex now dines everywhere in the restaurant, but in the first-floor rooms, with pleasant red walls, glazed screens put between the tables give a sense of privacy.

The Artists' Room is on the second floor, just on the top of the staircase. There is not room for many people in it, and the dinner-parties held there must of necessity be small ones. But there is no room in any restaurant in London which is in itself so interesting as this one. The walls are almost entirely covered with signatures and sketches and caricatures; there is a large photograph, framed and autographed, of Sir Henry Irving as Becket; there are drawings by Dudley Hardy and three or four caricatures, including one of himself, drawn by Caruso. There is a photo of poor Phil May in riding kit on a horse; there is the menu of the dinner given by the artists of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden to Mr Thomas Beecham. On the mantelpiece stand some good bronzes of English and French Volunteers, and the menu of a banquet given by Pélissier, the head of the Follies, to his friends, and his invitation to this feast, which commences in royal style: "I, Gabriel," etc., and ends with the earnest request, "Please _arrive_ sober," have been honoured with frames. Mademoiselle Felice Lyne's autograph records one of the latest successes in opera. There are two smoked plates with landscapes drawn on them with a needle, and there is the medallion in red of Dagonet I have already mentioned. The name of Julia Neilson, written in bold characters, catches the eye as soon as any other inscription on one of the sections of the wall covered with glass; but it is well worth while to take the panels one by one, and to go over these sections of brown plaster inch by inch. Mascagni has written the first bars of one of the airs from _Cavalleria Rusticana_, Denza has scribbled the opening bars of "Funiculi, Funicula," Lamoureux has written a tiny hymn of praise to the cook, Ysaye has lamented that he is always tied to "notes," which, with a waiter and a bill at his elbow, might have a double meaning. Phil May has dashed some caricatures upon the wall, a well-meant attempt on the part of a German waiter to wash one of these out having resulted in the sacking of the said waiter and the glazing of the wall, Mario has drawn a picture of a fashionable lady, and Val Prinsep and a dozen artists of like calibre have, in pencil, or sepia or pastel noted brilliant trifles on the wall. Paderewski, Puccini, Chaminade, Calvé, Piatti, Plançon, De Lucia, Melba, Mempes, Tosti, Kubelik, Tschaikovsky, are some of the signatures.

XXXVIII

THE PICCADILLY RESTAURANT

It was a chance remark made by "The Princess," as three of us sat at lunch one Saturday in the open air at the Ranelagh Club, that nowhere in Central London was there an open-air dining place, that led me to ask her and "Daddy," her husband, both of them my very great friends (which is the reason that I permit myself to call them, as the Irish would say, "out of their names"), to dine with me one night in July, weather always permitting, in the open air within fifty yards of Piccadilly Circus.

Walking down Piccadilly, and looking up at the façade of the great Piccadilly Hotel, a building which has something of the nobility of a Grecian temple, and something of the heaviness of a county jail, I had noticed that a grey tent had been put up on the terrace, half-way up to the heavens, behind the great pillars and the gilded tripods, and I knew that this meant that as soon as the evenings were warm the restaurant would cater on the terrace for those who like to dine in the freshest air obtainable in muggy London.

Some form of covering is a necessity for any roof garden in Central London, not as a protection from rain or cold, but to deliver diners from the plague of smuts. Some day, when electricity and gas have between them driven coal far outside the boundaries of the capital, it will be possible for Londoners to breakfast under the plane-trees planted on their roofs, and to look, while they eat, at the roses climbing on the trellis-work which hides their little pleasance from the neighbours on the next roof; but in this present year of grace an open-air meal within the three-mile radius necessitates the blowing of smuts off each plate as soon as it is put on the cloth, and a great portion of the conversation of the table talk centres round the black smudges to be wiped off the diners' noses. The Piccadilly, by pitching its tent on its terrace, has gone as near to open-air dining as is possible in our London atmosphere.

It was well that I had added the provision "weather permitting" to my invitation, for on the evening that my two guests motored up from their old manor-house near Richmond the sky had clouded over, a misty rain was falling, and the temperature had dropped to November level. The dinner-table that would have been reserved for me on the terrace was cancelled, and a table for three laid in the restaurant of the big hotel--that very handsome saloon panelled with light wood, with gilded carving in high relief on the panels, with a blue-and-gold frieze, and elaborately decorated ceiling and casemented mirrors--a saloon which is a noble example of Louis XIV. decoration. I had ordered my dinner beforehand, taking care to include in it some of the specialities of the kitchen of the Piccadilly, and had interested in the designing of the little feast M. Berti, the restaurant manager, and the _chef de cuisine_, M. Victor Schreyeck; while M. Pallanti, one of the _maîtres d'hôtel_, who is an old acquaintance, had put me in that portion of the room which is under his special charge. The dishes on which the kitchen of the Piccadilly especially prides itself are its _délices de sole_ and its _filets de sole_, both named after the establishment, its _poularde à l'étuvée au Porto_, its _poularde Reine Mephisto_, its _cailles Singapore_, and its _vasques_ of peaches, or of raspberries, or of strawberries, all titled Louis XIV. in sympathy with the decoration of the room.

This was the dinner that I ordered, a summer dinner for a hot evening, for I had hoped that the weather would be kind, and that we should be able to eat on the terrace:

Melon de Cantaloup Frappé. Kroupnick. Sole à la Piccadilly. Suprême de Volaille Jeannette. Caille Royale Singapore. Cœur de Romaine. Asperges Vertes. Sauce Divine. Vasque de Fraises Louis XIV. Corbeille d'Excellences.

I waited for my guests in the lounge where the orchestra plays, a lounge panelled, as the restaurant is, and with paintings of fruit in the circular wreaths above the doors, with cane easy-chairs and cane tables with glass tops scattered about, with palms in great china vases, with gilt Ionic capitals to the pilasters on either side of the great supports to the roof, and with a great painted ceiling. A glazed screen with windows and doors in it separates the lounge from the restaurant.

"The Princess," when my guests arrived, was wearing a most becoming gown, and had brought her furs with her, in case I, as a mad Englishman, might insist on dining on the terrace in spite of the rain. "Daddy," who is, like myself, an old soldier _en retraite_, had put on one of his Paris unstarched shirts with many pleats, and was wearing his fusilier studs. M. Berti, his beard pointed like that of a Spaniard, bowed to us at the entrance of the restaurant, and directed us to our table, by which was a second little table with on it all the apparatus for the elaborating of the fish dish before our eyes. Near it stood the _maître d'hôtel_, pale and determined, feeling, I think, that the reputation of the house was in his hands, and a waiter and a _commis_ under his immediate orders. "The Princess," as I have written, wore a most becoming gown, and it pleased me that she should have so framed her native beauty, and I am sure it also pleased her, for at the other tables all the other guests were exceedingly well groomed and well frocked--a most good-looking company.

The soup, a white Russian soup with barley as its dominating ingredient, is one of those peasant soups the French have borrowed from the Russians, and have refined in promoting it to the _haute cuisine_. The _sole à la Piccadilly_ is a fish dish which grows to perfection as it is manipulated before the eyes of the expectant diners. A wide bath of mixed whisky and brandy boils up over the spirit lamp, and into this the boiled soles make a plunge before they are carried away to be filleted; then into the almost exhausted mixture of spirits is poured the sauce, which is a "secret of the house," and as this boils up first cream and then butter is added to it. The _filets de sole_ come hot to table, and over each portion of the fish is poured the precious sauce, sharp tasting, with a suggestion of anchovy amidst its many flavours. While this sole was being prepared, "Daddy" at first talked on of polo matches at Ranelagh and golf at Richmond, and did not notice that both "The Princess" and myself had become silent, as gourmets should be when watching a delicate culinary operation, but he, too, after a while felt the solemnity of the moment, and became dumb until the fish was before him, and he could pronounce it to be "very good indeed," an emphatic expression of opinion on the part of all three of us which, I trust, was conveyed to M. Schreyeck in his domains. The _suprême de volaille_ was a noble _chaudfroid_ of chicken with a rich stuffing or farce, I am not sure which is the correct description, in which _foie gras_ was the dominating note. The quails were named after the island of Singapore, because with them in the china dish came a most savoury accompaniment of pine-apple pulp and juice--and there are thousands of acres of pine-apples in Singapore--an admirable contrast to the flesh of the plump birds. To this dish also our council of three gave high praise. The bowl of strawberries and ice and fruit flavouring, another of the dishes of the house, made an admirable ending to a very good dinner, and with this dinner we drank a champagne strongly recommended by the house, Irroy 1904. I paid my bill, the total of which came to £3, 13s. 6d., the charge being 12s. 6d. a head for the dinner, which was a small sum for such delicate fare, and then we went into the lounge, where the band was still playing, to drink coffee and liqueurs, and to allow "Daddy" to smoke one of the very long cigars of which he always carries a supply.

It was still raining when my two guests started in their motor car back to Richmond, but they declared that they were fortified for their journey down into the country by a most satisfactory dinner.

The Piccadilly Hotel of to-day stands partly on the site of the agglomeration of halls and bar and restaurant which all came under the name of St James's Hall, the bar and restaurant being, in the mouths of the frequenters thereof, "Jemmy's." The great hall was in its day the centre of the musical world, and its Monday Pops and its classical concerts were celebrated. In a smaller hall the Moore and Burgess Minstrels flourished for many years until fickle London for a while grew tired of burnt-cork minstrelsy. The big bar of the St James's declined, as did most other restaurant bars, when gentlemen no longer cared to be seen taking their liquid refreshment standing, and the clientele of the restaurant was decidedly Bohemian. When "Jemmy's" was wiped off the map of London there were not many tears shed at its disappearance. The Piccadilly Hotel and its restaurant, when they were first opened, went through their teething troubles, as do most new establishments. The restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, most of its personnel coming straight from Monte Carlo to London, but though the _maîtres d'hôtel_ knew who was who in the principality of Monaco they were not so well acquainted with the personalities of London life. All these matters invariably straighten themselves out. I read in the columns of City intelligence that the hotel, under the management of Mr F. Heim, who is now managing director, is a financial success, and is paying good dividends. The restaurant has gathered to itself a clientele that is smart and well-dressed, and it treats its guests excellently.

To the great grill-room, which lies down in the basement below the restaurant, and which is one of the largest and one of the busiest places of good cheer in London, I allude in my chapter concerning some of the grill-rooms.

XXXIX

THE RENDEZVOUS

Behind every successful restaurant there is some personality--a clever proprietor, a great cook, a managing director with a talent for organisation, or a popular _maître d'hôtel_. The Rendezvous, in Dean Street, has been brought to prosperity and popularity by the work of one man, its proprietor, M. Peter Gallina. He is a dapper little Italian, with a small moustache, a man of good family who ran away from home as a boy and has made his way by his native cleverness and perseverance, and by the possession of an exceptionally keen palate. He grounded himself well in all that concerns a restaurant in a small Parisian establishment not far from the Avenue d'Iéna. When he had learned there enough of the trade to qualify him to be a manager of any restaurant he came to England with his savings in his pocket and took the position of manager in a small Strand restaurant, while he looked about for an opportunity to become a proprietor and to possess a restaurant of his own. He had the name of his restaurant ready before he found a suitable house, for one day after a meal he sat thinking of various matters and idly scribbled on the tablecloth a series of capital "R's." Then, with no special intention, he fitted on names to the "R's"--Rome, Renaissance, Renommé, Rendezvous, and suddenly found that the title he wanted had come to him. And in the same chance way he found the position he wanted for his restaurant. During the period that he was at the restaurant in the Strand he used to go to Dean Street to buy coffee for his little household, and he noticed one day that a house there was to let. It had been used by one of those mushroom clubs which spring up almost in a night in Soho, and the police had terminated its short existence by making a raid on the premises as a gaming-house. M. Gallina saw his opportunity, took it, spent some money in brightening it up, and gave it an old-English window on its ground floor, and that was the beginning of the Rendezvous.