The Gourmet's Guide to London

by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis

[X]

THE CECIL

I wonder whether Jabez Balfour, the genius who jumped at Park Lane and landed on Broadmoor, ever comes to London from his country retreat, where, under another name, he earns his daily bread, and looks at the great palaces which were one of his money-spinning schemes and notes the changes that are made in them. He certainly would scarcely recognise to-day in the modern Hotel Cecil the great red-brick and stone block of chambers and flats which first grew up, some seventeen or eighteen years ago, next to the Adelphi Terrace overlooking the Embankment Gardens. A company with some very distinguished gentlemen on the list of the directors was formed to buy the great building, and they have worked with indomitable perseverance to make a house that was not intended to be an hotel into one of the most comfortable hotels in London, and to popularise a restaurant which at first refused to respond to their efforts.

The Cecil Restaurant opened with a great flourish of trumpets, with M. Bertini, a clever, quick-eyed, bearded Italian as manager, and M. Coste, who was one of the greatest of the great chefs of the close of the Victorian era, in command of the kitchens. But the company had been in too great a hurry to begin to earn money, and the arrangements were not yet working quite smoothly when London that dines and thinks about its dinners was first asked to sit in judgment on the new dining-place.

The first roughnesses soon wore off; M. Bertini was an admirable maître d'hôtel—I have lost sight of him of late years, but I think he went for a time to South Africa, and he made a short appearance as proprietor of a small restaurant in the Haymarket—and M. Coste, "the old man," as the rest of the staff affectionately called him behind his back, sent out through the doors that separate the kitchen from the restaurant little dinners that delighted the palates of connoisseurs. This propinquity of kitchen to restaurant is a great advantage. As you sit at your table in the Cecil Restaurant you can, if you listen for it, hear the voices of the men who call out the orders to the cooks—an unceasing chant, a hymn to Gastronomy, and as a result no dish ever comes cold to table at the Cecil Restaurant.

What, however, was radically wrong at first with the Cecil Restaurant was its decoration. It is a very large, very high pillared hall, with a glazed balcony overlooking the Victoria Gardens, and big windows on the west giving a glorious view of Westminster; but its decorations were at first too sombre in colour. The panelling was of walnut wood, a large square of deep crimson velvet was embroidered with the Cecil arms, the great mantelpieces of purple-grey Sicilian marble conformed to the quiet scheme of colour, and the pillars and great window casings all harmonised in the minor key. The mantelpieces are all that remain to-day of the original scheme of colouring, and they are scarcely noticeable amidst the shimmer of pink and white and gold. A minor drawback was that the restaurant had no ante-room, and that a dinner-giver had to await his guests in the bustling hall of the hotel. People who dined at the Cecil Restaurant in those days praised the cooking, and had nothing except good words for the attendance and wine, but they said it was not "cheery." Nine out of ten ladies or men did not trouble to analyse their feelings, but it was the coldness of their surroundings that affected them.

To tear down all the decorations of a newly built hall is an heroic remedy which no board of directors would willingly face, and before this was done other less expensive remedies were tried. A separate entrance for the restaurant was made in the courtyard, and a lounge built and quite charmingly decorated. M. Paillard, the great Parisian restaurateur, crossed the Channel and became for a time manager of the restaurant, making with M. Coste in the kitchen a remarkable combination of talent. A Roumanian band, fierce-looking gentlemen in embroidered garments, who had been sensationally successful at one of the great exhibitions in Paris, were imported, were perched up on a rostrum and made the roof reverberate with their czardas. The services of "Smiler," a curry-cook of great renown, were exclusively retained for the Cecil. (Sherry's in New York offered "Smiler" large sums of money to transfer his services, and he crossed the Atlantic with a little band of underlings of his own nationality. "Smiler" travelled first class, and the reporters on the other side not unnaturally took him to be an Indian Prince on his travels. "Smiler" did not undeceive them, and enjoyed for some days all the privileges given to royalty in a republic. Then he reported at Sherry's.) Mr Hector Tenant, the managing director of the Empire, joined the Cecil board, and a series of variety performances after dinner on Sundays filled the big restaurant to its holding capacity on those evenings. Harry Lauder, concerning whose talent and fine voice everybody was talking at that time, sang, I remember, on one of those occasions. But there must have been some excellent reasons for not continuing these variety performances, for after a time they ceased.

At last the board took its courage in both hands and redecorated the restaurant from floor to ceiling. It is now a hall of white and gold and pink. The panels are of Rose du Barri silk, the pillars are gleaming white, while the frieze is of the lightest blue. A dark rose carpet gives relief to this shimmering, shining restaurant, and in its centre is a handsome table of many tiers for fruit and sweet things, a table of gilt sphinx heads and many electric lamps. The waiters wear knee-breeches; the band plays in an ante-room. The redecorated restaurant at once jumped into the affections of the world that dines, and further to add to the good temper of this place of butterfly colouring, the directors engaged as the maître d'hôtel in charge of the restaurant, M. Califano, who is known to the patrons of the Cecil as "Sunny Jim." One of the advantages with which M. Califano has been endowed by Nature is a smiling face, and some wit at the time that "Sunny Jim" was a favourite figure on all the hoardings, gave M. Califano his nickname.