XVII Romano’s
Alfonso Nicolino Romano, a head waiter at the Café Royal, in 1874 bought with his savings a small fried fish shop in the Strand, converted it into a bar and restaurant, and in addition to his own name on its front added Café Vaudeville, for it was, and is, almost next door to the Vaudeville Theatre. Romano’s in those days possessed a central window flanked by two doors, one leading into the bar and the other to the rooms above. In the window as an ornament was a small aquarium which contained goldfish, and those fish must have lived exciting, if short, lives, for the patrons of the bar tried to feed them with cigar ash, lemon rind, burnt almonds, and torn-up notepaper, and it is even said that “Hughie” Drummond, one of the most amusing and most reckless of the clean-shirted Bohemians who made “the Roman’s” known all the world over, tried to take a swim with them.
Romano was a curly-haired, humorous, quick-witted little Italian who talked a strange Anglo-Italian jargon—“Pore ole Romano e got badda addick this morning” his usual morning greeting, was an example of it—and who was on the easiest terms of familiarity with most of his clients without ever overstepping the line. He had not very many rules as to the conduct of his business, but one from which he never departed was that he would under no circumstances make a reduction in the total of a bill. He would give an aggrieved customer some of the very best “cognac” of the house or split a bottle of the most expensive champagne with him or ask him to dinner next day, but what he would not do was to reduce any item in the account. One of the most frequent forms of verbal invitation given by “The Roman” was to a Sunday midday inspection of his cellars in the Adelphi arches. “You coma see my cellars, Mister So-and-So Eskwire, best in London” was the actual wording. Romano had come from a good school, and he laid down an excellent cellar. The food in the restaurant was also beyond reproach.
Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists, coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town—for those were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be seen standing up in a place of refreshment—was the restaurant. It was little more than a corridor, a long, narrow room with space for one line of tables only; but at those tables used habitually to sit the merriest gathering of good fellows, and I include the ladies in that term, that ever came together in a London restaurant. There were witty journalists such as Shirley Brooks, “Pot” Stephens, “Jimmy” Davis, and “Shifter,” and there were men of the theatre—Cecil Raleigh, for instance, and “Charlie” Harris, who when the waiter called the order for his dinner down the speaking-tube always added himself “pour le patron,” for Romano, who lunched and dined at the table nearest the bar door, was not likely to get a tough steak or a thin quail. There were Guardsmen, such at “The Windsor Warrior,” “Billie FitzDitto,” “Haddocks,” and “The Bonetwister,” and men about town, of whom Hughie Drummond and Fred Russell were perhaps the best known, and coaching men, “Dickie the Driver” and “Swish” and “Partner,” who used to delight in bringing jolly old Jim Selby to dine; and Arthur Roberts, then at the very top of his form, and “Mons” Marius, as representatives of the actor fraternity. And around this kernel of good-fellowship formed a fringe of other good fellows who came and went, men from the country, men from the far parts of the world, soldiers, sailors, planters, explorers, country squires. It was rather a clannish gathering, for everybody seemed to know everybody else at the line of tables, and people who were not taken into companionship, no difficult matter if they were kindred souls, felt “out of it,” and went elsewhere.
Between the Gaiety Theatre and Romano’s there grew up an indefinite alliance, and golden-hearted Nellie Farren would lunch there when a new burlesque was in rehearsal, and “the Child” and dear “Jack” St John and others of the principals looked with favour on the restaurant, and on Lord Mayors’ days made a brave show of beauty at the windows of the first floor. The Gaiety Girls of those days, splendid women and jolly good fellows, who enjoyed life, and by their beauty and sociability helped other people to enjoy life, lunched and supped at the Roman’s. I have a dozen names at the tip of my pen, but if I wrote them down I should stray into a gossip over the ladies of the burlesque and light opera stages in the seventies and eighties, and should require columns and columns of space to deal adequately with such a subject. Most of them married, and, as the fairy tales have it, “lived happy ever after.” And the “halls,” we didn’t call them variety theatres then, were also represented at the Roman’s. Jolly, humorous Bessie Bellwood lunched there five days out of six, though she kept the Roman humble by asserting that she preferred the tripe and onions at Chick’s to anything his kitchen could produce, and when she was in good anecdotal form kept everybody near her tremulous with laughter. And the sisters Leamar, who used to sing a duet as to Romano’s being “a paradise, sure, in the Strand” and added the information that “the wines and the women are grand,” naturally paid frequent visits to the restaurant to assure themselves that the description was a correct one.
The Roman gathered about him a staff which exactly suited the tone of the restaurant, proof thereof being that so many of them remain in its service to this day. M. Luigi Naintre, the manager of Romano’s, has climbed the ladder of promotion steadily through all the grades at the restaurant, and though for a while after Romano’s death he wandered into other folds, one of the first acts of the company which now controls the restaurant was to ask him to come back to it. Long experience has taught him the art of making each frequenter of the restaurant believe that the establishment is maintained entirely to meet his or her taste and whims, and he is essentially the right man in the right place. M. Minola, his second in command, also graduated in the “Roman” school. The cellarman, L. Bendi, and the wine-butler, L. Villa, have been in the restaurant as far back as I can remember.
I must pass quickly over the fire which burned down the old Romano’s and its rebuilding on the site of the old restaurant and on that of another house next door. The panelled hall and, in the restaurant, the Moorish arches with the pictures of the Bosphorus seen through them were features of the new building, and remain to-day as they then were. In the nineties Romano died of pneumonia, contracted by standing one cold winter day outside the restaurant door with no great-coat on, and the restaurant came under the Court of Chancery.
The Court of Chancery was not at all sorry to hand over its duties to a company, with Mr Walter Pallant, the then chairman of the Gaiety Company, as its chairman, which was formed to purchase the restaurant. Mr “Teddy” Bayly, who as a patron of the restaurant had helped materially in making the fortune of the Roman, became manager, and Luigi was appointed as second in command. When Mr Bayly left Romano’s for a restaurant of his very own M. Luigi mounted one rung more of the ladder of promotion and was appointed manager.
The first business of the company, after giving the building “a wash and brush up,” was to find a chef of celebrity and experience to take charge of the kitchens. They found in M. Ferrario exactly the man for whom they were looking. M. Ferrario had learned his art under M. Coste in the kitchens of the Cecil, and when he himself became the commander of the kitchens of a restaurant of the first class he showed that he had used his powers of observation, that not only did he know all that there was to be learned concerning the haute cuisine française, but that he had an open mind with regard to the cookery of all other nations. The mouzakkas that M. Ferrario sends from his kitchen are the best I have eaten outside Bucharest. He makes a ground-nut soup, the one delicacy that Nigeria has added to the cookery book, quite admirably, and Romano’s is the only restaurant that I know of in Europe where one can eat a Malay curry cooked as it is cooked in Malaya and served in the Malay fashion, with sambals and with shining Malayan shell spoons for the rice. What substitute M. Ferrario has found for the fresh cocoa-nut pulp which is the foundation of all Malay curries I do not know, but he has found something which replaces it admirably. In the winter at lunch-time north countrymen say that Romano’s Lancashire hot-pot is the real thing, and there is another British luncheon dish, gipsy-pot, which I eat at Romano’s, a savoury stew of chicken and cabbage and other vegetables and other meats, which I find exceptionally good.
But perhaps I had better give you in detail what are the specialities of Romano’s kitchen. They are, for lunch: Malay curry of chicken, Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy-pot. For dinner: poule au pot, bortch à la Russe, potage Normande, potage Nigérienne, filets de sole Romano, filets de sole Sportive, sole au plat aux courgettes, sole à la crème, truite George V., poulet nouveau Valencienne, perdreau Romano, mousse de volaille au curry, the last being an admirable mousse with just a far-away reminiscence of India, a sort of dream of all the good curries of the East, in it.
If I gave you the menus of all the nice little dinners for two of which I have been one of the participators at Romano’s I should fill a fat volume. But here is a little spring dinner which will serve my purpose very well:
Crevettes Roses.
Fumet de Volaille aux œufs Filés.
Filets de Sole Sportive.
Epaule de Pauillac Bergère.
Petits Pois Nouveaux à la Crème.
Asperges d’Argenteuil.
Sauce Divine.
Fraises Diva.
And the wine I drank with this was a bottle of 1900 St Marceaux, which was the choice of the lady who honoured me with her company. The filets de sole Sportive are soles which bring to table with them just a dream of Chablis, and which are nobly backed up by crayfish.
The old Romano’s in its first period was very clannish. The new Romano’s, though it is a comparatively small restaurant, finds room for all men and all ladies who love good food and who like the slightly Bohemian, pleasantly Parisian, atmosphere of the “Paradise in the Strand.” I have seen a duchess dining at one of the corner tables, and I do not suppose that there is a man about town, from dukes to the latest emancipated Oxonian, who does not know Romano’s and its ways. The clientele varies with the different meals. At lunch-time, particularly, if there are rehearsals in progress at the Adelphi or the Gaiety or any of the other light opera or revue theatres, a host of pretty little ladies go to Romano’s and very probably the “Governor” and the librettists and composers, and a stage director or two, will be lunching at a corner table. Half-a-dozen other managers are sure to be somewhere in the restaurant, and there will be ladies not of the stage, and solicitors, and barristers from the Law Courts and a plaintiff or two, and a journalist or two, a very interesting salmis of the stage world and the business world and the world of Law, with a good seasoning of men from the far parts of the world, and men about town and soldiers and sailors. At dinner little parties going on to the theatre finish their feasts about the time that the habitués of the restaurant, who are going on nowhere or to a variety theatre, make their appearance. At supper-time the stage is once again the most strongly represented element, and there is no restaurant in Paris which can show at this hour prettier faces or more unforced gaiety. The bright young spirits from the ‘varsities all love Romano’s, but Luigi has a wholesome fear of the “Twenty-firsters,” as the boys call their coming-of-age feasts, and the numbers at these gatherings at Romano’s are kept within very strict limits.
There is one happy young Oxonian who absolutely defeated Luigi at a birthday feast. He had been solemnly warned that the spirits of his party must not rise too high, and he and they had all behaved with quite suspicious decorum during supper. The band had finished playing, and the bandmaster, on departing, had locked the door of the pulpit-like Moorish bandstand that projects high up into the room. When closing hour came and all the guests were moving out except the party of young Oxonians Luigi told them that they also must take their departure. But their leader begged to be allowed to sit on for a few seconds longer, even though the lights were turned out. Out went the lights, and then here and there a single light was put up again that the waiters might see to pile the chairs on the tables and put the restaurant into its night attire. Luigi, looking at the supper-party, thought that their numbers had diminished, and from the bandstand came the sound of someone playing the piano. In the two seconds of darkness the giver of the feast had performed a really wonderful gymnastic feat. Jumping off from the back of one of his guests, he had climbed up into the bandstand and had taken his seat at the piano. The door was locked and the key gone home with the bandmaster; his fortress was unstormable, and he was in complete possession. For a quarter of an hour or so he played little selections at the piano, inquiring of Luigi, who stood below, what were his favourite airs, and it was only when his musical repertoire ran out that he climbed out of his aerie and dropped to the floor.
On occasions, generally on the evening of first nights at the theatres, when an extension has been obtained, suppers at Romano’s sometimes end in little dances. But the great dance of the year at Romano’s is the “Twelfth Night,” one which is not so much a party given by the restaurant as a party given to themselves by the habitués of the restaurant. All the tables for this night are secured weeks in advance, each host pays for his own party, but Romano’s supplies all the toys and the presents, the masks and tambourines, and anything new in trifles that is to be bought in any city of the world. The shops of Paris and Vienna are ransacked to provide novelties for this evening. The spirit of Paris always hovers above Romano’s, but this particular night in its fun without rowdiness is the most Parisian night of the year.
Romano’s as it now is is very different in its arrangements from the restaurant that the company took over from the Court of Chancery. What was the linen room is now a gallery, which is nicknamed the “Bird Cage,” looking down on to the restaurant. The kitchen has been taken away from below the restaurant and put behind it, and where the kitchen was is now a grill-room with lattice-work arbours decked with vines and a vista leading up to a little fountain. The whole scheme of decoration of the restaurant is now of the lightest of light Moorish design, the details being copied from the Alhambra at Granada. The most important change of all is the disappearance of the old bar, a bar which in its day made history, its place being taken by a little waiting-room, which is a reproduction in most of its details of the Henri IV. room in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A good deal of loving care has been bestowed on all the details of the decoration and equipment of the restaurant. Look at the brass handles on the doors leading into the hall, and you will see that they are admirable works of art. In the same way the napery put on the table at dinner-time before coffee is served is well worth a glance. Some of the china is quite beautiful in pattern, and the gilt finger-bowl brought you at dessert is very probably a copy of some of the loot taken by Attila and now preserved in the Budapest museum.
Banquets are sometimes given at Romano’s in the private room looking down on the Strand, which has been shut off from the balcony, and no better indication of the type of these could be given than by setting down the menu of the latest dinner of the Wine Connoisseurs’ Club, at which there were forty guests:
Cantaloup Glacé.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté de Volaille Duchesse.
Truite George V.
Ris de Veau aux Perles Noires.
Selle de Béhague aux Primeurs.
Pommes Ideal.
Granite au Clicquot.
Poularde Flanquée D’Ortolans.
Salade Romaine.
Asperges Vertes, Sauce Divine.
Pêches Orientales.
Mignardises.
Paillettes au Parmesan.
Dessert.
The Truite George V. which has a place in this menu is one of the specialities of the house. It is a salmon trout, braized in port, served cold on ice with sliced oranges and a luscious jelly.
Little Romano used to allude to his cellars, as I have written, as “best in London,” and the restaurant has always had a celebrity for the great choice of champagnes of the great brands and great years it offers its patrons. Most of the profits made during the last few years have been expended on champagnes, and no restaurant in London is better prepared to face that champagne famine which will so soon be upon us.