LIII Verrey’s
If I compare Verrey’s in Regent Street to Borchardt’s in the Französischerstrasse of Berlin, I am paying Verrey’s a high compliment, for Borchardt’s is the classic restaurant of the German capital, run on good French lines by a German proprietor.
Mr George Krehl the First, founder of Verrey’s as a restaurant, was born near Stuttgart, and came over from Germany in 1850; and the recent manager of the restaurant, Mr Stadelmaier, is also German born, for he, like Mr Krehl, came from near Stuttgart, and he, before he went to Egypt, to Paris, to Düsseldorf and elsewhere, to become a cosmopolitan, served his apprenticeship in gastronomy under old Mr George Krehl at Verrey’s.
But French—French of the second empire—Verrey’s is, particularly at dinner-time. At lunch-time the restaurant is always quite full of ladies who shop in Regent Street, and of their escorts, and the rooms on the first floor are also given over to lunchers—and even then, sometimes, would-be customers have to wait a little while to obtain tables. Therefore the luncheon menu is adapted to the wants of ladies who are probably in a hurry, for though there is a very full list at lunch-time of delicacies that can be ordered, there are also several entrées and several joints always ready.
It is, however, at dinner-time that Verrey’s enjoys the peaceful, unhurrying atmosphere that always should surround a classic restaurant, and which is so thoroughly in keeping with the old bow-windows with small panes of the café, which look out on to Regent Street. A little corridor leads from the street to a tiny waiting-room—a comparatively recent addition, for it used to be the old still-room, a room which is so small that the round table of ormolu with a china plaque in its centre, on which is a portrait of Louis XV., and smaller oval plaques all about it, almost fills all the available space.
The restaurant, lighted from above, used in old Mr Krehl’s days to be known as the Cameo Room, for on the centre of each of its panels was a medallion in the style of Wedgwood. I rather wish that this old decoration had been retained, but I remember the pride with which Mr George Krehl the Second showed me the new Oriental decorations—decorations which still remain—the silvered roof with mirrors reflecting it, the electric lights on the cornice with great shells to act as reflectors, an electric clock shaped like a star, and the panels of old gold Oriental silk. Time has mellowed the gorgeousness of this Eastern setting, which in its first bloom I thought a little too voyant, and the dark carpet and the dark wood and upholstery of the chairs, all keep the scheme of colouring a restful one. The napery at Verrey’s is the good thick napery of the classic restaurant. Its glass is thin; its silver is heavy—all trifles which are important as adding to the delight of a good dinner. The lights at the tables are wax candles, with pink shades, in old silver candlesticks, and there is a Japanese simplicity in the two great bunches of flowers in glass vases, one of which is on a dark wooden stand in the centre of the room, and the other on the sideboard. There are flowers also, in glasses, on all the tables.
It adds to the pleasure of dining at Verrey’s to be known and to be recognised by the old servants who have been in the restaurant as long as I can remember it. There is an old head waiter, a fine specimen of a Briton—portly, with little side whiskers, dignified and unhurrying, who might have stood as a model for that Robert whose wit and wisdom used to enliven the pages of Punch, who always remembers my name and all my gastronomic history. And the head waiter in the café, who now has a full head of grey hair, I remember when he first came to Verrey’s a youth with the blackest of black hair. Mr Stadelmaier, though he looks on the right side of forty, remembers how young Mr George Krehl, in the days of his father’s rule, one day took me out into the yard at the back of the house to show me his dogs and the kitchen which looks out on to this open space, and the last time I dined at Verrey’s brought me in from the yard, to look at a delightful little Samoyede puppy, looking like one of the woolly toy dogs in the shops, for he too, like Mr George Krehl the younger, is a breeder of prize dogs, and has established a club for the owners of sleigh dogs.
Mr Stadelmaier has now left Verrey’s and is manager of Kettner’s.
The patrons of Verrey’s at dinner-time are some of them grey-headed, for I am sure that all its old patrons always return to their first love; but there are young couples as well, and the restaurant, though it is quiet, is by no means dull. It has this distinction, rare amongst modern restaurants, that it has never surrendered to the modern craze for music during meals, and it is possible to talk to a neighbour at the dinner-table without raising one’s voice to a shout. I fancy that Mr Albert Krehl, the survivor of the two sons of old Mr George Krehl, would as soon think of introducing gipsy music into the restaurant as they would of engaging Tango dancers to do “the Scissors” in and out of the tables.
Verrey’s has so far acknowledged the tendencies of to-day towards a table d’hôte dinner that it offers its patrons, if they wish it, a dinner at seven-and-six. But it is true to its old traditions in that although it offers this dinner, no dish of the dinner is cooked until the order has been given, and it is practically a dinner à la carte selected for the diner at a settled price. This is the menu of one of these dinners:
Hors d’œuvre Variés.
Consommé Duchesse.
Crème de Volaille.
Suprême de Sole Regina.
Filet de Bœuf Jussieuse.
Pommes Château.
Faisan rôti.
Salade d’Endive.
Celeri braisé au jus.
Parfait de Vanille.
Friandises.
Croûte Baron.
But to eat a dinner ordered by somebody else, because I am too lazy to order it myself, is to me just as unsporting as it is to land a fish that somebody else has hooked, so that when I dine at Verrey’s I pay M. Schellenberg, the chef de cuisine, who is an Alsatian, the compliment of giving careful consideration as to which of his plats I shall order, and I generally like to include in my dinner some of Verrey’s specialities, of which there are quite a number. The last time I dined there I was given an excellent bortsch soup, one-and-three—it is the custom at Verrey’s to charge for a half-portion, which is ample for one person, a little more than half what is charged for a whole portion, which suffices for two; sole à la Verrey, a filleted sole with an admirable sauce, which is one of the secrets of the house, but in which the taste of ketchup is discernible, two shillings; and a soufflé Palmyre, two shillings. This with a pint of good claret was a dinner not to be despised.
I asked Mr Stadelmaier whether the Queen’s Hall and the Palladium, two neighbouring places of music and entertainment, had brought the restaurant many customers. The concerts at the Queen’s Hall, he told me, had done so, and he said that people going to the Palladium, when it gave a one-house variety entertainment, used often to dine at Verrey’s, but that its present “two houses a night” policy did not send diners to the restaurant.
There is an abundance of history behind Verrey’s, and if a careful record had been kept of the great dinners given in the rooms on the first floor, such a record as the Café Anglais in Paris kept, it would make very interesting reading. One of the merriest dinners probably ever given in those upper rooms was the one at the time of the late Victorian revival of road coaching, at which most of the guests were well-known whips. Every man at this dinner was presented with a pink waistcoat, and as after dinner most of the men went on either to music halls or theatres, the appearance in the boxes of the young bloods wearing pink waistcoats astonished the audiences, who thought that a new fashion was being set. A quieter dinner, but an even more distinguished one, was that at which King Edward, when he was Prince of Wales, was present. This was its menu:
Œufs à la Ravigote.
(Vodkhi.)
Bisque d’écrevisses. Consommé Okra.
Rougets à la Muscovite.
Selle de mouton de Galles.
Haricots panachés. Tomates au gratin.
Pommes soufflées.
Timbale Lucullus.
Fonds d’artichauts. Crème pistache.
Grouse.
Salad Rachel.
Biscuit glacé à la Verrey.
Soufflé de laitances.
Dessert.
Many distinguished men have dined in the Cameo Room—Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, was a great crony of Mr George Krehl the elder, and he kept all kinds of mementoes of the poet. Mr Gladstone was another frequenter of the Cameo Room, and he liked to talk to Mr Krehl of the revolutionary days of ’48 in Germany.
The tragedy which is associated with the name of the house was the fate of the beautiful Miss Fanny Verrey. Verrey, from whom the restaurant takes its name, was a Swiss confectioner, who came over from Lausanne in the second decade of the last century and established his shop in Regent Street. To add to the attractions of his establishment he brought over from Lausanne his pretty young daughter, who was engaged to a Swiss pastor. She was young and lively and beautiful; she chatted with her father’s customers, and learnt English by talking with them; the bucks of those days made her a toast; and Lord Petersham wrote some verses in honour of “The Pretty Confectioner,” in which he dubbed her “Wild Switzerland’s Queen,” and ended one of the verses with these lines:
“Thy mind—brightest gem—is the Temple of Love;
But bright as thou’rt fair—thou’rt pure as a dove”;
which shows that his lordship, though his sentiments were praiseworthy, was not a great poet. The fame of Miss Verrey’s beauty drew crowds not only into the shop, but outside it, and spiteful and jealous rivals spread rumours concerning Miss Verrey’s lightness of behaviour, which were entirely untrue. The crowds outside the shop became such a nuisance that the authorities interfered in the matter. Mr Verrey removed his daughter from the shop, and she kept to her room to avoid public notice. The turmoil, the unmerited scandal, and the lampoons in the papers so affected the girl’s health that she pined away and died. But even then her memory was not respected, and as a good example of the want of taste of the time—the year was 1828—this riddle was published in one of the papers: “Why was Miss Verrey’s death like a window front?” Answer: “Because it is a paneful case.”
At one period Verrey’s was known as the Café François; but I can find no particulars concerning it under this title. I also think that Verrey must at some time or another have occupied another shop in Regent Street, for some of his advertisements, notably one of Howqua’s teas, “as patronised by their Majesties,” were issued from 218 Regent Street, whereas Verrey’s to-day occupies 229 Regent Street.