LVII The Italian Invasion
The plains of Lombardy, the pleasant mountain land of Emilia and the champaign that surrounds Turin, are studded with comfortable villas, the property of successful Italian restaurateurs who have made a comfortable little fortune in London and who go to their own much-loved country to spend the autumn of their days. Every young North Italian waiter who comes to England believes that in the folds of his napkin he holds one of these pleasant villas, just as every French conscript in Napoleonic days thought that he, amongst all his fellows, alone felt the extra weight of the field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack. No race in the world is more thrifty and more industrious than are these North Italians, and they rival the Swiss in their aptitude for making considerable sums of money by charging very small prices.
Spain and Great Britain are usually classed together as the two countries in which the natives know least of economy in housekeeping and cookery, and the Italians, spying the wastefulness of the land, have descended on England as a friendly invading force, whereas the Swiss have taken Spain in hand. There is no Spanish town in which there is not a café Suizio, and there are very few English towns in which an Italian name is not found over a restaurant, which is often a pastry-cook’s shop as well.
I have in preceding chapters written of some of the restaurants owned by Italians in London, but were I to deal at length with all the well-managed restaurants, large and small, controlled by Italians in London, I should have to extend the size of my book to very swollen proportions, so I propose to mention briefly those Italian restaurants at which at one time or another I have lunched or dined with satisfaction.
One of the largest Italian restaurants is the Florence, in Rupert Street, which the late M. Azario, a gentleman of much importance in the London Italian colony, made one of the most successful moderate-priced restaurants in London. He was decorated with an Italian order, and when he died, not long ago, he was much mourned by his countrymen. Madame Azario (who is now Madame Mainardi and who has appointed her husband, whom I remember at the Savoy, to the supreme command of the establishment), to whom he left the restaurant, has made some changes in it, bringing it up to date. It now has a lounge where hosts can wait for their guests, and it has fallen a victim to the prevailing craze for Tango dancing at supper-time. Its three-shilling dinner is a most satisfying one at the price. The Florence is not too whole-heartedly Italian to please diners of other nationalities, but when an Italian gives a lunch or a dinner to his fellow-countrymen or to those who love the cookery of Italy, it can be as patriotic in the matter of dishes as any restaurant in Italy. This is the menu of a lunch given to one of the most Italian of Englishmen. It is a capital example of an Italian meal, and there is a little joke tucked away in it, for the “Neapolitan Vanilla” is another way of writing garlic:
Antipasto Assortito.
Ravioli alla Fiorentina.
Trotta à l’Italiana.
Scalloppine di Vitello alla Milanese.
Asparagi alla Sant’Ambrogio.
Pollo alla Spiedo.
Insalata Rosa alla Vaniglia di Napoli.
Zabaglione al Marsala.
Formaggio.
Frutta.
* * * * *
Chianti.
Barolo vecchio.
Asti naturale.
Caffe.
Liquori.
One of the first established and one of the best of the Italian restaurants is Previtali’s, in Arundel Street, that little thoroughfare that runs up into a cul-de-sac square, off Coventry Street. It was said a while ago that this little square and its approach were to be eaten up by a new great variety theatre, but I see that the ground is now advertised as being for sale. Below the great board which announces this is a smaller one, which tells that Previtali’s is to remain where it is till September 1915, when it will find other quarters. Its table d’hôte luncheon costs half-a-crown, and its table d’hôte dinners are priced at three-and-six and five shillings, the latter giving such a choice of food that not even a starving man would ask for more when he had gone through the menu. Previtali’s has an excellent cellar of Italian wines.
Many of the restaurants owned by Italians in London have a clientele that suits the size of the house, and they do not cry aloud by bold advertisements for fresh guests. Such a quiet, unassuming restaurant is the Quadrant, in Regent Street, the windows of which keep their eyes half closed by pink blinds which shut off the view of the interior from passers-by. Messrs Formaggia and Galiardi cater there for very faithful customers, and I always look with interest as I pass at the menu of the half-crown dinner which is written in a bold hand and shown in a small frame by the window. It is always a well-chosen meal, and on the occasions that I have eaten at the Quadrant, I have been well satisfied with its fare. It was at the Quadrant that a gourmet with a taste for strange foods gave me a lunch of land-crabs which had been imported with much difficulty from either Barbadoes or the West Indies, and which Mr Formaggia’s chef had cooked strictly in accordance with the recipe that came with them. They had, I remember, rather a bitter taste, but perhaps land-crabs, like snails, are not to everybody’s taste.
In Soho, the Italian restaurants jostle the French restaurants in every street. Perhaps the best known of the Soho restaurants owned by Italians is the Ristorante d’Italia, whereof Signor Baglioni is the proprietor, which thrusts out an illuminated arum amidst the electric globes and glittering signs of Old Compton Street. My memories of the half-crown table d’hôte dinner there is of food excellently cooked under the superintendence of an erstwhile chef de cuisine of the Prince of Monaco, of the noise of much talking in vehement Italian, of rather close quarters at little tables laid for four, and of a menu of rather portentous provender.
The most Italian of any restaurant that I have discovered in my explorations in Soho is the Treviglio in Church Street, a little restaurant that might have been lifted bodily from a canal-side in Venice or a small street in Florence. It is whole-heartedly Italian, and puts to the forefront of its window a list of the specialities of Italian cookery on which it prides itself. It is a favoured haunt of the Italian journalists in London, and that, I think, can be taken as a certificate that its cookery is not only thoroughly Italian but is also good Italian. Signori Pozzi and Valdoni are its proprietors.
Pinoli’s is a restaurant in Lower Wardour Street that offers almost as much at its two-shilling table d’hôte dinner as some other restaurants do at twice or more that price.
A quiet, flourishing restaurant owned by an Italian, Signor Antonio Audagna, who began life as a waiter at Romano’s, is the Comedy Restaurant, in Panton Street, Haymarket. It is a comfortable restaurant, with cream walls and oval mirrors and pink-shaded lamps, and its back rooms are on a higher level than those of its Panton Street front. Its customers are very faithful to it, and, as its proprietor once told me, “when the fathers die the sons take their places as customers.” There was some time ago a proposal to extend it so as to give it a front to the Haymarket, but that plan came to naught, and the Comedy goes on just as before in its old premises. This is a menu of the Comedy table d’hôte dinner, and its proprietor apparently took a hint from Philippe of the Cavour for the menu bears the legend, “No beer served with this dinner”:
Hors d’œuvre Variés.
Queue de Bœuf Printanière
Crème Chasseur.
Sole à la Bourguignonne.
Noisette de Pré-Salé Volnay.
Spaghetti al Sugo.
Poulet en Casserole.
Salade.
Glacé Comedy.
Dessert.
Another quiet restaurant with a faithful clientele is Signor Pratti’s, the Ship, in Whitehall. His table d’hôte dinners are half-a-crown and three-and-six, and his eighteenpenny lunch, I fancy, brings to the restaurant many of the hard-worked gentlemen from Cox’s Bank, just across the way, and from the Admiralty, which is suitably just behind the Ship. Signor Pratti, if I remember rightly, fines teetotalers by charging them sixpence extra.
From Hampstead to Surbiton, from Richmond to Epping, the little Italian restaurants flourish. One gourmet whom I know, with a delicate taste in Italian wines, makes pilgrimages regularly to Reggiori’s, opposite King’s Cross Station, because he gets there a particular wine which this restaurateur imports; while I take an almost paternal interest in Canuto’s Restaurant in Baker Street. The rise of that restaurant from a very humble place, that put out two boards with great sheets of paper on them, giving the dishes ready and the dinner of the day, to a rather haughty little restaurant with a very beautiful window and the carte du jour and the menus of table d’hôte dinners behind the glass in frames of restrained gorgeousness, typifies the gradual advance in social splendour of the long street that leads to Regent’s Park.