XLI In Jermyn Street
Maison Jules. Bellomo’s. Les Lauriers
Jermyn Street used to be sacred to small private hotels, shops and bachelors’ chambers, but the restaurants have now invaded it and there are half-a-dozen places of good cheer which have their front doors in the street, while some of the Piccadilly restaurants have a back entrance there.
M. Jules had the happy idea of taking two houses, one of them at one time the home of Mrs Fitzherbert, as a medallion of the head of King George IV., found under the drawing-room floor proves, and converting them into a hotel and restaurant. It has proved so successful in Jules’ case that he is now adding on to his hotel and restaurant, building at the same time a nice little suite of rooms with bow-windows for himself and his wife. As you walk down Jermyn Street from St James’s Street towards Lower Regent Street, the Maison Jules is on the right-hand side. You cannot miss it, for an illuminated terrestrial globe and the name above the doorway catch your eye. A little ante-room is separated from the restaurant by a glazed screen to keep off draughts. The restaurant itself, a long room running the whole width of the house, is all white, with a little raised ornamentation on its walls, with gilt capitals to the white pillars, and on the marble mantelpiece a clock and candelabra of deep blue china and ormolu. At the end of the room a big window, which is almost a wall of glass, is cloaked by lace curtains. There is a second room running at right angles at the back, which either can be used as part of the restaurant or can be partitioned off.
Jules himself will welcome you as you come into the restaurant. I have known him for many years, having first made his acquaintance when he was manager at the Berkeley, when his hair was of lustrous brown, and I have always been one of his supporters at the hotel in Piccadilly and at the Savoy—when he became manager there, and now in Jermyn Street, where, with his wife and his daughter, who has married the chef de cuisine, and his son, who is following in his father’s footsteps, he controls the restaurant and the hotel. The girth of his waist may have increased a little, possibly to match the bow-windows of those new rooms, since I have known him, and his hair is now powdered with grey, but his good-natured, round, rosy face, and his eyes, which almost close when he smiles, remain the same. He is always so pleased to see me that I find that a dinner at the Maison Jules does me more good than most tonics do.
The people who dine at the Maison Jules are all pleasant and well-to-do, and all the men wear dress clothes. Some of the men are grey-haired people like myself who have followed Jules in all his migrations; but the restaurant is by no means a home of rest for the elderly, for on the last occasion that I dined there one of the prettiest of the younger generation of actresses was being entertained at the next table to mine; and young as well as elderly diners appreciate the bonhomie that seems to be in the atmosphere at the Maison Jules. The dinner of the house is an eight-shilling one. The dinner I ate when I last dined chez Jules is quite a fair specimen of the evening meal:
Hors d’œuvre.
Consommé aux Quenelles.
Crème Américaine.
Suprême de Sole Volga.
Riz de Veau Souvaroff.
Médaillon de Bœuf Algérienne.
Poularde à la Broche.
Salade.
Haricots Verts au Beurre.
Mousse aux Violettes.
Friandises.
The crème Américaine, a pink thick soup, was excellent, and so was the cold dish of sole, with jelly and a little vegetable salad. The mousse aux violettes was an ice with crystallised violets on the top; and the riz de veau and the poularde—for which Jules wished to substitute a partridge—were both excellent of their kind. When Jules, before I left, came to me and told me that some gentlemen a little farther down the room had told him that there was absolutely nothing to criticise in the dinner, I was not hard-hearted enough to tell him that the beans were stringy, which, to tell the truth, they were. Otherwise I agreed with the gentlemen farther down the room. The wine list is a well-chosen one, and there is in the cellar some 1820 Martell brandy, landed in England in 1870, which used to be the pride of the old St James’s Restaurant, and the whole of which Jules bought at the sale.
A little farther down the street on the same side is a restaurant and hotel controlled by another old acquaintance of mine in the restaurant world. The restaurant is Bellomo’s, and the hotel of which it forms a part is Morle’s Hotel. In the days when I thought it my duty to do my share of drinking, at the Café Royal, a particularly excellent cuvée of Cliquot Vin Rosé, the waiter who was in charge of the table at which I usually sat, and who attended to all my wants with admirable intuition, was not at all one of the lean kind, and to identify him from his fellows I always called him, and wrote of him as, “the fat waiter.” He prospered and ran up the tree of promotion, as good waiters do at the Café Royal, so that in his later development he became maître d’hôtel in charge of the grill-room, and wore a frock-coat and a black tie. But the anxieties of his new position in no way caused him to grow thin. A year or two ago a friend wrote to me saying that he and some others had found the money to set up Bellomo, whom, of course, I remembered at the Café Royal, in a restaurant of his own in Jermyn Street, and hoped that I would go and see how he prospered there. I went, not feeling quite sure who Bellomo was, and found my fat waiter of old, now a plump proprietor. His restaurant, which consists of two rooms thrown into one, has walls with a light shade of pink on them, and at night is lit by electroliers with pink shades. A few steps lead from the front to the back. The restaurant is a cosy little establishment, and the two dinners which are served there—one a three-and-six one and the other a five-shilling one—are invariably well cooked, for M. Bellomo has brought the good Café Royal traditions with him to his new home. This is a typical menu, a winter one, of Bellomo’s three-and-six dinner:
Hors d’œuvre.
Consommé Rothschild or Thick Mock Turtle.
Filet de Sole Chauchat.
Carré de Mouton Niçoise.
Oie rôti.
Salade.
Glacé Mont Blanc.
Gaufrettes.
Farther along the street and on the opposite side is Les Lauriers, which takes its name from the two little evergreen trees which stand in tubs at its door, and which is higher and more airy than most of the restaurants of its size, for at some time or another the entresol has been thrown into the rooms on the ground floor. Les Lauriers consists, like most of the Jermyn Street restaurants, of two rooms joined together with a space screened off by the door to form a tiny ante-room. Its walls are panelled and painted cream colour, and lamps with pink shades hang from the ceiling. The green carpet and the dark wooden chairs at the three rows of tables give a comfortable look to the place. The proprietor is M. Giolitto, who was a head waiter at the Savoy before he came to Jermyn Street to make his fortune. A very comfortable clientele patronises Les Lauriers, and there are two dinners provided for them, one a short dinner which is served until a quarter to eight, and the other a more elaborate one, priced 3s. 9d. and 5s. 6d. respectively. The last time I dined at Les Lauriers I, feeling rich, indulged in the longer dinner. This was the menu:
Melon Cantaloup or Driver’s Royal Natives.
Consommé Viveur or Crème Doria.
Homard froid, Sce. Mayonnaise or Aiguillettes de Turbot en Goujons.
Tournedos à la Florentine.
Perdreau rôti sur Canapé.
Petits Pois à la Française.
Salade.
Ananas Master Joe.
Mignardises.
It was a well-cooked dinner, and I do not wonder that M. Giolitto was able to tell me that his restaurant flourishes exceedingly.