To complete their work of betterment, the board added to the restaurant and hotel the new palm court, a sumptuous lounge, upholstered in powdered blue and gold, which has eaten up more than a half of the great forecourt of the Cecil. This forecourt, which was almost of the size and shape of a Roman hippodrome, was a great comfort in past days to the cabdrivers of London, for there was unlimited room in it for them to wait to take up guests at the hotel; but it was a great waste of space. The new palm court is a very splendid place, and besides giving the restaurant a noble reception-room, it has shut away from the hotel all the noise of the street and all the bustle of the reception hall. It has, however, done away with the most American spot in London, the space of paving outside the front entrance of the Cecil which used to be known as "The Beach." Here used to be cane chairs and rocking-chairs and piles of luggage, and a newspaper stall, and in the summer-time pretty girls sunning themselves, and waiters hurrying to and fro with cold drinks and long straws in them; and the American guests of the hotel who loved the brightness and the bustle of the spot christened it "The Beach," and preferred it to any of the gilded parlours inside the hotel. The new palm court, however, in a stately manner, has taken the place of "The Beach" as a meeting-ground for the hotel guests. Mr Kaiser, the general manager of the Hotel Cecil, tells me that the building of this fine lounge has been of benefit to the restaurant as giving a finishing touch to its comforts, and I have no doubt that this is so, for dining in the restaurant, I found it comfortably filled by people staying in the hotel, and guests from outside, and "Sunny Jim" told me of the vast numbers whom on such special occasions as Christmas and New Year's Eve he manages to accommodate in the restaurant and balcony.
I ate the Cecilian dinner, a seven-and-sixpenny table d'hôte meal, which I found quite excellent. This is the menu:
Huîtres Natives on Hors d'Œuvre.
Consommé Princesse.
Crème Parisienne.
Filets de Sole Carême.
Quartier d'Agneau Arléquine.
Pommes Macaire.
Caille en Cocotte au Jus d'Ananas.
Salade.
Asperges, Sauce Hollandaise.
Glacé à l'Andalouse.
Friandises.
The delicate sauce with the sole, the neatness of the garnish of the vegetables with the quarter of lamb, the plumpness of the quail and their contrast of taste with the pine-apple, would have assured me that the kitchen is in first-class hands, even had I not known that M. Jean Alletru, a chef who stands very high in the estimation of his brother chefs, had succeeded M. Coste, when that great man retired.
I might have spent a shilling less and have eaten an alternative dinner without the oysters in it, or I might have taken advantage of an arrangement by which anyone dining at the Cecil can pay a fixed price for his or her dinner, and choose practically anything they like from the carte du jour, which is a very ample one, and which generally contains some of the spécialités created by M. Alletru. This is the list of these spécialités and a couple of very pretty little dinners can be arranged from amongst them, the only thing needed in addition being a soup. Tomate en surprise au caviar, turbotin Prince de Galles, filet de sole Clarence, timbale de truite froide Norvégienne, ris de veau St Cloud, caille à la Salvini, poitrine de volaille Providence, selle d'agneau Cecil, poularde à la Jacques, fraises Tetrazzini, bouteille de champagne en surprise.
I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that a maître-chef can receive is that which comes from his brothers in art, and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel Cecil and their chef de cuisine than that the Ligue des Gourmands, the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier, placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who, with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which there were three hundred guests present, in preference to that of any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the perfection of a dinner of ceremony. The Dodine and the Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt were the two sensational dishes of the feast, but it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting without being heavy:
Hors d'œuvre.
Petite Marmite Béarnaise.
Truite Saumonée aux Crevettes Roses.
Dodine de Canard au Chambertin.
Nouilles au Beurre Noisette.
Agneau de Pauillac à la Bordelaise.
Petits pois frais de Clamart.
Poularde de France.
Cœur de Romaine aux Pommes d'Amour.
Asperges d'Argenteuil Crème Mousseline.
Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt.
Dessert.
Café—Liqueurs.
Bénédictine.
Whether the Cecil was the first of the great banqueting houses to effect a reform in the service of public banquets I am not sure, but it was at the Cecil that I first found that such a reform had taken place. In old days it was the custom for the waiters to trail a dish along the whole length of a banqueting-table, and the salmon, which went up the room a noble-looking fish, came down five minutes later to starvation corner, a head, a tail and a skeleton. It was at the Cecil that I first noticed the breaking up of the tables into manageable sections of guests, with a waiter and his aids to each section, and the dinner served straight from the kitchen to that section. The restaurant and the banqueting halls and the private dining-rooms by no means exhaust the list of the accommodations of those who dine that the Cecil affords. There is below the Rose du Barri room another one, the Indian room, decorated in Oriental fashion with blue and yellow tiles, and in this a grill dinner and a table d'hôte dinner are both served, and when this room overflows another equally spacious room is opened and becomes the grill-room.
(As I correct the proofs of this chapter news comes to me that "Sunny Jim" will in 1914 become a joint partner in the management of the St James's Palace Hotel in Bury Street and will give special attention to its restaurant.)