16th August.
[CHAPTER XXIX]
THE CAFÉ ROYAL (REGENT STREET)
My sister-in-law is the daughter of a dean. I do not make this statement through family pride, but because it is pertinent to what follows.
Man and boy, these six years or so, I have known little Oddenino, who now rules the destinies of the Café Royal. The little man, with his quiet, rather nervous manner and big serious eyes, went from the management of the East Room at the Criterion to the Washington in Oxford Street, then to the big hotel at Cimiez, and has now put the Café Royal into shape.
During the summer of 1897, I was one day, towards lunch-time, pacing up and down the passage which leads from the pillared door in Regent Street to the café and grill-room portion of the big establishment, a passage which has on one side the bookstall where the French papers are on sale, and on the other the manager's offices, when a door opened and Oddenino appeared. I asked him what he was doing in the Café Royal, and he told me that he had come as manager. Then he put his head on one side and considered me. With the utmost politeness he suggested that I was waiting for a lady, a soft impeachment which I admitted, and that I was not in the best of tempers, which was also true. He was deeply grieved, but tried to console me by saying that when I came back to town in the autumn I should find a comfortable room upstairs to wait in, and went on to tell me of the other improvements he intended to make. One great grief he had, and that was that some people thought that the company that frequented the restaurant was rather Bohemian. How anybody could think so, I told him, I could not understand, and as a triumphant proof of this I told Oddenino that the first lady whom I would bring to dine in the redecorated restaurant should be my sister-in-law, the daughter of a dean.
In the autumn the opportunity arrived for carrying out my promise. My brother was away slaughtering many driven partridges in Wiltshire, and my sister-in-law—did I mention that she is the daughter of a dean?—was left in solitary dignity in town. I went in the afternoon of the day we were going to dine to apprise Oddenino of our impending visitation—that word has a comforting clerical sound—and to order dinner.
My sister-in-law is not partial to shellfish, so the oysters with which I should have begun the feast were not to be thought of, nor were most of the most delicate ways of cooking a sole to be considered. My sister-in-law has always said that my idea of a perfect dinner is semi-starvation, so I included two entrées instead of one in the menu. This was the dinner which I, in consultation with Oddenino, settled upon:—