XXXII The Berkeley
The pleasant, white-faced hotel, with its restaurant on the ground floor, which faces the Ritz across Piccadilly, stands on classic ground, for it was at the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street that Francatelli, the great cook and maître d’hôtel, pupil of the even greater Carême, was in command of the St James’s Restaurant and the hotel of that name which in the middle of the last century stood first, with no proxime accessit, amongst the restaurants of the capital.
Nowadays we take our great French cooks in London for granted; they are part of the life of London. But in the fifties Clubland was still a little astonished and flattered that the great chefs were willing to desert their own country to dwell amidst the fogs and rain of England, and restaurants were comparatively rare, and few of them were of a very high class. Hayward, who first published his “Art of Dining” in 1852, gives in his book little biographies of Ude and Francatelli, and alludes rather slightingly to Soyer, who was the third of the trio of very great cooks. Disraeli, who had enough of the artistic temperament in him to assign to gastronomy its proper place amongst the pleasures of life, recorded the dismissal of Ude from Crockford’s in the following words:—“There has been a row at Crockford’s, and Ude dismissed. He told the committee he was worth £4000 a year. Their new man is quite a failure, so I think the great artist may yet return from Elba.” The “new man” was Francatelli, and he was so far from being a failure that when it was thought that Buckingham Palace should possess the greatest cook in England the position of chief cook and maître d’hôtel to the Queen was offered to him. He did not find the position a comfortable one, and resigned at the end of two years. For a time he lived in retirement, but in the sixties he once more placed himself on the active list, and took charge of the St James’s.
In doing so he was following the example of Soyer, who, in the fifties, established a restaurant in Gore House, which had been the residence of Lady Blessington. Soyer expected that the Great Exhibition would send a crowd of rich people to his restaurant, and many great people patronised it, but in the end he lost £7000 by his venture. Hayward says concerning him that “he is more likely to earn immortality by his soup kitchen than by his soup,” alluding to the soup kitchens that Soyer as a Government Commissioner established at the Royal Barracks in Dublin during the great famine in Ireland.
In 1868, when “The Epicure’s Year Book,” an attempt to copy Grimod de la Reynière’s “Almanach des Gourmands,” was published by Bradbury and Evans, Francatelli was at the zenith of his fame at the St James’s, and the anonymous author, in that book, who wrote the chapter on “London Dinners,” after paying a compliment to British fare, saying that Wilton and Rule are not afraid of comparison with any oyster dealers in the world, and extolling the flounders and steaks of the Blue Posts in Cork Street, declares that cookery “such as Ude once served at Crockford’s and his successor Francatelli is now serving at the St James’s Hotel, Piccadilly, is not reached by any other hotel or tavern in London.” As it may interest my readers with a taste for antiquarian lore to know which were the restaurants recommended in the sixties for good plain food, I continue the quotation. “At the Ship and Turtle in Leadenhall Street, or at Birch’s (Ring and Brymer), on Cornhill, the turtle is cooked with perfect art; and the punch would satisfy the author of ‘Le veritable art de faire le Punch.’ The fish, at the fish dinner at Simpson’s in Cheapside, is admirable. Nay, you may have a chop broiled under your nose, at Joe’s, behind the Royal Exchange, that shall defy criticism. At Simpson’s in the Strand; at the Albion, by Drury Lane Theatre; at Blanchard’s (ask for his Cotherstone cheese), in Beak Street, Regent Street, the Earl Dudley’s neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus—the main elements of his dinner ‘fit for an emperor,’ are to be bought excellently well cooked. The Rainbow, in Fleet Street, is a well-known, good, plain house; and a grill well cooked and served, where Messrs Spiers and Pond have put up their silver gridiron, at Ludgate Hill, is a new illustration of London plain cookery. The London, in Fleet Street, is an admirable house; cheap, and yet where there are—a rare thing in the City—well-kept tables. This house publishes its menus in the evening papers. Our oyster shops have no rivals in the boastful capital of gastronomy. Take Pim’s, for example, in the Poultry, where there are perfect oysters, and the luncheon delicacies of our modern day. But when the ambitious diner glances along the line of entrées, even in the best of the houses I have cited, he is in danger. In the City, the Albion is the best kitchen for elaborate dishes, and the dinners given here are smaller than the crowds which meet over huddled, flat, and chilled dishes at our great public dinners. Yet nobody would for one moment think of comparing the most carefully prepared dinner for sixty with such a menu as Francatelli prepares for half-a-dozen in Piccadilly.” From this general damnation, however, the author exempts Willis’s, in King Street, St James’s, where, he says, the mutton pies of the Old Thatched House Tavern may still be eaten; Epitaux’, in Pall Mall; the Burlington, in Regent Street; Verrey’s and Kühn’s, in which places “very respectable French cookery is to be had.”
“The Epicure’s Year Book” gives amongst its menus of remarkable dinners of 1867 one of the “Epicure” dinner served at the St James’s. The dîner à la Russe was in those days ousting the dinner in the French style, in which the dishes were placed in three services or relays upon the table and carved by host and guests, and such an epicure as Captain Hans Busk, who was the gourmet par excellence of the sixties, gave his guests at the United University Club very much such a dinner as men eat to-day, though his dinners were of too many courses. But at the Mansion House the first and second and third services were still adhered to. Francatelli, though conforming to the new style, made concessions to the old school, as this menu shows. His French was a little shaky, for he did not know when “à la” should be used and when it should not be used:
Les Huîtres.
Potages.—La purée de gibier à la chasseur; à la Julienne.
Poisson.—Les epigrammes de rougets à la Bordelaise; le saumon à la Tartare.
Entrées.—Les mauviettes à la Troienza; les côtelettes à la Duchesse; les medaillons de perdreaux à la St James; le selle de mouton rôtie.
Legumes... Salade.
Second Service.—Le faisan truffé à la Périgueux; la mayonnaise de crevettes; les chouxfleurs au parmesan; la charlotte de pommes; le gâteau à la Cérito.
The St James’s was not by any means the first hostelry at the corner of Berkeley Street, for in the stage-coach days a coffee-house—the Gloucester, I think—occupied the site, and some of the coaches for the west used to start from it; but I have already given you a fill of the history of the forerunners of the Berkeley, and will come at once to recent years and the modern building.
M. Diette, who was one of the men who awakened London from its mid-Victorian gluttony and taught Londoners to dine lightly and dine well, was for a time at the Berkeley before he went to the Continent to make the Hotel du Palais at Biarritz a very splendid place of entertainment. He died recently at Le Touquet, where one of his many sons-in-law, M. Recoussine, is in command of two of the big hotels. In 1897 there were many alterations and additions made to the Berkeley, the restaurant was almost doubled in size, and when M. Jules was manager of the hotel and Emile was in charge of the restaurant, and M. Herpin was chef de cuisine, the Berkeley was, as it is now, one of the “best places” at which to dine in London. The restaurant in those days was panelled with light oak, and the ante-room, by the entrance, was all old gold. Jules was translated to the Savoy and now, as a proprietor, is comfortably settled at the Maison Jules in Jermyn Street. M. Kroell was another manager who stepped from the Berkeley to a larger hotel, having only to cross the road to reach the Ritz. Mr Raymond Slanz, the manager who controls the Berkeley in this year of grace, is as eminent as any of his predecessors. He is young, energetic, and has brains, which he has used unsparingly in keeping the Berkeley abreast of the times. He is the most cosmopolitan of managers, for he has gained his experience all over the Continent, in England, America and South Africa. He has been the architect of his own fortunes, for when he first came to London he started his upward career from the position of extra waiter at the Savoy. The restaurant to-day is all white; its walls have a deep white frieze, with on it in relief a wood through the trees of which a mediæval hunting party thread their way, half the animals that came out of the Ark being afoot in this wonderful preserve. There is some gold ornamentation just below the frieze and on the casings of the windows, and gilt electroliers are in the centre of the panels. Shields of semi-opaque glass and lamps hidden by the cornice throw light up on to the ceiling and there are gilt capitols to the fluted columns. The rose and grey of the carpet and the rose of the chair cushions form a pleasant contrast to the white. The ante-room in which a string band of musicians in gorgeous uniforms play has the same decoration as the restaurant. The Berkeley restaurant flourishes so satisfactorily that more tables are wanted, though it is comparatively lately that a new room was added, and the space occupied by the cashiers is to be thrown into the restaurant. M. Arturo Giordano, who is generally known as “Arthur” and who used to oscillate between the Palais at St Moritz and the Berkeley, is now permanently in charge of the restaurant, and M. J. Granjon, who came to London from the Grande Cercle Républicain, and who has been created a Chevalier of the Order of Mérite Agricole, is the chef de cuisine.
One warm July evening I found myself at eight o’clock dinnerless in Mayfair. I was to have dined with friends at their house, but on arriving there found that my hostess had been taken suddenly ill and that dinner was the last thing concerning which the household was troubling itself. My room under these circumstances was more welcome than my company. My favourite table in my favourite club would, I knew, be occupied by somebody else; the Berkeley was the nearest restaurant, and I accordingly walked there and found one of the small tables at the far end of the room unoccupied. At the Berkeley there is always a carte du jour with an abundant choice of dishes, those ready being marked with a cross. It is the custom of the house, and a very good one too, to allow the diners to choose their own dinner from the carte and to charge them half-a-guinea or twelve and six, according to whether the dinner is a long one or a short one. I was in the course of ordering a short dinner and had selected rossolnik, a Russian soup, some turbot, a wing of a chicken en cocotte, and was hesitating over the various entremets, when Arthur espied me, came to my table and took matters into his own hands. He asked to be allowed to alter my menu slightly in order that some of the specialities of the house might play a part in it. I was nothing loth, for my dinner under those circumstances became interesting, and I was prepared to consider critically any of M. Granjon’s creations that Arthur might put before me. This was the menu:
Melon Cantaloup.
Crème Raymonde.
Turbotin Beaumarchais.
Suprême de Volaille Bagatelle.
Velouté Châtelaine.
Pêches Glacés Hortense.
The soup was a cream of chicken, delightfully soft, a very gentle introduction to what was to follow. The turbotin Beaumarchais is a noble dish, a strong white wine sauce with the essence of the fish in it, and sliced truffles, and mushrooms and carrots being served therewith, parsley, and just a suspicion of onion. The suprême de volaille Bagatelle I recommend to anyone who, like myself, is occasionally warned off red meats by sundry twinges, as being a dish of fowl which is interesting and not in the least vapid. Asparagus and mushrooms and truffles go with it, and the principal ingredients of the sauce are port and cream reduced. The entremet consisted of peaches and grapes, raspberries, and a cream ice with, I fancy, more than one liqueur added, the whole forming a noble Coupe-Jacques, served in a silver bowl. My dinner being a short one, I had plenty of appetite left for this admirable fruit dish.
The Berkeley, both the hotel and the restaurant, always seem to be a stronghold of the country gentleman. If I heard that an M.F.H. of my acquaintance whom I wished to see was in town and I did not know his address, the hotel to which I should telephone first to ask whether he was staying there would be the Berkeley, and no doubt the wonderful frieze of the restaurant is a compliment to the mighty hunters who stay in the hotel. Many squarsons and the higher ranks of the clergy are amongst the patrons of the Berkeley, and whenever I dine at the restaurant it seems to me that it ought to be the week of the Oxford and Cambridge or Eton and Harrow cricket matches, for I always see amongst the guests at the dinner-parties pretty girls with complexions of cream and rose, the sisters of Varsity lads and public schoolboys, country maidens whom I always associate with “Lord’s,” light and dark blue ribbons, and wild enthusiasm.
I have never dined at the Berkeley without coming away a pleased man, and the dinner that M. Granjon cooked for me when I was dinnerless in the wilderness which borders the Green Park sent me away from the Berkeley rejoicing.