LIX Ye Olde Gambrinus
The one thing in the world that the friends of Germany do not tell us poor Englishmen is to be obtained better in the Fatherland than on this side of the Channel is things to eat, though of course Munich beer has been held up to our brewers for generations as an example of what they should brew. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are fewer German restaurants in London in comparison with the size of the German colony than there are French and Italian restaurants in comparison with the colonies of those countries.
Yet good, simple German cookery is quite excellent of its kind. A German housewife knows how to make a goose into many delectable dishes which an English housewife knows nothing of, and the German tarts are excellent things amongst dishes of pastry.
There are one or two German restaurants in Soho, and Mr Appenrodt in his restaurants considers the tastes of his fellow-countrymen, but the best known London restaurant devoted entirely to German and Austrian cookery is the Olde Gambrinus, in Regent Street, and it was an Italian, little Oddenino, who appreciated the long-felt want of the Germans in London and who gave them a restaurant in which they can imagine that they are once again back in their own country, eating German foods and drinking German drinks.
The Gambrinus has entrances both in Glasshouse Street and in Regent Street. The Regent Street entrance echoes the decoration of that of its big brother, the Imperial Restaurant, a few paces farther along the street, and its marble pillars and revolving door do not suggest the entirely German surroundings we are in as soon as we have crossed the threshold. A comparatively narrow room, panelled half-way up its height with dark wood and with two rows of tables, is the first portion of the restaurant we see on entering from Regent Street, and it is here that those good Germans sit who do not want to eat a meal but wish to drink their “steins” of beer. Above the panelling on the walls are the heads of many deer and wild beasts from all parts of the world, and the first impression that this gives to anyone who does not know the Gambrinus is that it is a Valhalla for the denizens of some Wonder Zoo. In the midst of these heads of the wild things of the woods and the plains is that of a fine dog. No doubt he was the chosen companion of some mighty hunter, and one hopes that he was not like the rest, a spoil of the chase.
After this first narrow room there comes a wider one with an arched roof, glazed with bottle-glass, and then the main restaurant itself, which has the appearance of a baronial hall. Its floor is of wooden blocks; there are many little tables in it, and chairs with backs of dark leather, and it is panelled like the entrance, with dark wood. Any chair not occupied is at our disposal, and we have found seats, and a waiter has put in front of us the big sheet with the menu of the day on it and a picture in blue of a crowned gentleman with a long white beard astride on a beer cask and drinking from a foaming tankard. We will order our dinner first and then look at our surroundings.
For every day in the week there are special dishes: four soups, one of which is generally bouillon mit ei; three meat dishes and a fruit dish. There is a list of hors d’œuvre, amongst them Berliner rollmops and Brabant sardellen, Nürnberger ochsenmaul salat and Bismarck herring. There is a column in print of cold dishes in which various German sausages are given the place of honour, and then, written in violet ink, many ready dishes beyond those sacred to the day, and another list of dishes which can be had to order.
As the most typical German dishes amongst those of the day let us order goose soup with dumplings, roast veal and peas, and pear tart, and we cannot do better than wash this down with two large glasses of light-coloured Munich beer.
The waiter takes our orders, and from a pile of rounds of wadding put down by us two with some blue printing on them, which shows that we are going to drink Munich beer, whereas had we elected for the beer of Pilsen we should have been given rounds of wadding with red on them.
On all the seats at all the tables are Germans of all types. Dark-haired Germans from the south, looking almost like Italians, and the typical fair-haired Teutons of the north with fat necks and hair cropped to a stubble. Anyone who thinks that the German fraus and frauleins resemble at all the unkind caricatures the French make of them should see the pretty ladies who accompany the worthy Germans who eat their dinners at the Gambrinus. They are as fresh and charming, as well dressed and as daintily mannered as the ladies who go to any restaurant of any other nationality.
The windows that give on to Glasshouse Street are of the glass that looks as though the bottoms of wine bottles had been used, and in the centre of each window is an escutcheon with armorial bearings. At one side of the room is a gallery of dark wood, and on the front of this is also a wealth of heraldry. The heads of animals of all kinds, which seemed a little strange in the brasserie by the entrance, seem quite in place in the big hall which has all the appearance of the dining-room of some old baronial castle converted into a German inn. On the side opposite to the gallery is a long counter under two arches of dark wood. On this counter are many beer mugs, and fruit in baskets, and on a series of shelves all the delicatessen which are recorded on the spiese karte. On the wall at the back of the two arches hang the beer mugs which belong to the customers, rows upon rows of them forming a background of coloured earthenware and glass. By the side of this long counter is another, where a pretty girl sits and hands out to the waiters the liqueur bottles and keeps the necessary accounts.
If the trophies of the chase in the brasserie are various they are infinitely more various in the big hall, for the Herr Baron must have hunted on all the continents and did not disdain to add monsters of the deep to his trophies, for a spiky fish, looking like a marine hedgehog, dangles from the ceiling, and below it is one of those curious things which sailors call mermaids and the right name of which is, I believe, manati. He was a collector of curios also, this imaginary baron, for a curious lamp in the shape of an eight-pointed star hangs above the gallery, there is a carved owl immediately below it and various other wood carvings in different parts of the restaurant, and on the broad shelf above the panelling are a wonderful variety of earthenware and china and pewter mugs and dishes and jugs and candlesticks in quantities that would set up half-a-dozen antique shops.
The heads of animals on the wall would supply material for an exhaustive lesson in zoology. There is the skull of an elephant, the head of a rhino, a bear grins sardonically on one side, and opposite to him a zebra appears to have thrust his head and neck through the wall. There are several boars’ heads, an eagle with his wings spread dangles from the balcony, and a black cock appears to be rising from a forest of liqueur bottles. There are horns or heads of half-a-hundred varieties of deer, from the wapiti and elk to those tiny little fellows with horns a couple of inches long who run about like rabbits in the German forests. There are antlers of red deer and fallow deer, and heads of wildebeeste and hartebeeste, and black buck and buffalo, and of many more that are beyond my knowledge of horned beasts.
There are in the room glass screens to keep off all draughts; there are bent-wood stands on which to hang coats and hats, and a staircase with a luxurious carpet on it and a brass rail leads down into the grill-room of the Imperial Restaurant next door.
But the waiter, who had already put down by our places two long sloping glasses of the clear cold beer, now brings us the plates of smoking goose soup, and excellent soup it is, with the suet dumplings, as light as possible, in it, and pieces of the breast of the goose. Why we English neglect the goose as a soup-maker I do not know, as indeed I do not know why we neglect the goose at all and consign him to the kitchen as a meal for the servants while the turkey is being eaten upstairs. The veal, which, I should imagine, is imported from Germany, is excellent, and the huge chop of it that is given to each of us must, I think, be an extra attention on the part of the management, for M. Oddenino has just come in and has taken a seat at a table in a recess, where he dines frugally every night so as to be within call of his restaurant next door, and he has called the attention of the little manager to our presence. So perhaps we are being given what in Club life is known as the “Committee-man’s chop.”
Our third venture is just as satisfactory as the two previous ones, for the great angle of open pear tart is in every way excellent. The bill presented at the close of our meal is as moderate as the food was good. We have each in our meal consumed three shillings and three pence worth of well-cooked food and cold beer.
So again I ask, Why should the German cuisine in London be the Cinderella of the daughters of Gastronomy?