LX My Sins of Omission
No one can be more aware than I am of the things I have left undone in writing of the restaurants of London, of the many interesting dining-places of which I have made no mention, of the eating-houses with historical associations that I have overlooked.
I have done no more than touch the hem of the garment of the City. As I write I recall that the Ship and Turtle, the Palmerston and other notable restaurants I have passed by without even a word, and that I have given only a line to Pim’s and Simpson’s, and the George and Vulture, each of which is worthy of a chapter.
The Liverpool Street Hotel, which I have singled out, is not by any means the only great railway hotel in London where the catering is excellent. I used at one time to dine every Derby night with the late Mr George Dobell at the St Pancras Hotel, and a better cooked dinner no one could have given me. The Euston Hotel had, and I have no doubt has, an admirable cellar of wines.
There is a chapter waiting to be written concerning the changes that have taken place in railway refreshment-room catering, with, as examples, the dining-rooms at the two Victoria stations and the table d’hôte dinner that is provided for playgoers at Waterloo.
The luncheons provided for golfers in the club-houses of the golf courses near London was another subject to which I intended to devote a chapter, and yet another to the excellent luncheons that the racing clubs, following Sandown’s example, provide for their members.
There are roadside and riverside inns that deserve mention besides those of which I have written.
Many of the large hotels that I have not mentioned deserve attention, but there is a certain similarity in the table d’hôte meals at all big hotels nowadays and the difference between the rank and file of them lies more in their situation and decoration than in their cuisine.
My excuse for paying a vague compliment to the big hotels in bulk will not hold good with respect to the many small hotels that I have not mentioned where the cookery is excellent. They at least have, each one, its distinct individuality. I can only plead that I have been frightened by their number. Almond’s in Clifford Street, Brown’s in Albemarle Street, where M. Peròs is the chef, are two which occur to me as I write in which I have dined admirably, and I have no doubt that “Sunny Jim” will make the restaurant of the St James’s Palace Hotel a favourite dining-place.
I feel that I have slighted Oxford Street and Holborn in having merely nodded as I passed by to some of the many restaurants, some of them important ones, that are to be found on the road from Prince Albert’s Statue to the Marble Arch. My hope of making amends to them for this neglect lies in a hope that my book may run into more than one edition.
In the streets that branch off from Shaftesbury Avenue there are several restaurants for which I should have found room in this book. The Coventry is one, and the by-ways of Soho teem with little eating-houses waiting to be discovered and to become prosperous and to possess globes of electric light and rows of Noah’s ark trees in green tubs. I am not such a hardy explorer as I used to be, but I have gone through some terrible times in experimenting on some of the little restaurants in Soho—the ones that had better remain undiscovered.
Some of my correspondents have asked me why I only write of places that I can conscientiously praise, and why I do not describe my failures. My answer to this is that it is not fair to condemn any restaurant, however humble it may be, on one trial, and that, when I have been given an indifferent meal anywhere, I never go back again to see whether I shall be as badly treated on a second occasion. I prefer to consign to oblivion the stories I could tell of bad eggs and rank butter and cold potatoes, stringy meat and skeleton fowls.
It is so much better for one’s digestion to think of pleasant things than to brood over horrors.
Adieu, or rather, I trust, au revoir.
P. S.—That changes have taken place in the personnel of the restaurants even in the space of time that it takes to pass the proofs of this book shows how difficult it is to keep such a publication right up to date. Most of the changes I have been able to note in their proper position, but the sale of Rule’s by Mr and Mrs O’Brien to one of their old servants and the appointment of M. Mambrino to the managership of the Berkeley Hotel I must record here.