Romano's as it now is is very different in its arrangements from the restaurant that the company took over from the Court of Chancery. What was the linen room is now a gallery, which is nicknamed the "Bird Cage," looking down on to the restaurant. The kitchen has been taken away from below the restaurant and put behind it, and where the kitchen was is now a grill-room with lattice-work arbours decked with vines and a vista leading up to a little fountain. The whole scheme of decoration of the restaurant is now of the lightest of light Moorish design, the details being copied from the Alhambra at Granada. The most important change of all is the disappearance of the old bar, a bar which in its day made history, its place being taken by a little waiting-room, which is a reproduction in most of its details of the Henri IV. room in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A good deal of loving care has been bestowed on all the details of the decoration and equipment of the restaurant. Look at the brass handles on the doors leading into the hall, and you will see that they are admirable works of art. In the same way the napery put on the table at dinner-time before coffee is served is well worth a glance. Some of the china is quite beautiful in pattern, and the gilt finger-bowl brought you at dessert is very probably a copy of some of the loot taken by Attila and now preserved in the Budapest museum.
Banquets are sometimes given at Romano's in the private room looking down on the Strand, which has been shut off from the balcony, and no better indication of the type of these could be given than by setting down the menu of the latest dinner of the Wine Connoisseurs' Club, at which there were forty guests:
Cantaloup Glacé.
Tortue Claire.
Velouté de Volaille Duchesse.
Truite George V.
Ris de Veau aux Perles Noires.
Selle de Béhague aux Primeurs.
Pommes Ideal.
Granite au Clicquot.
Poularde Flanquée D'Ortolans.
Salade Romaine.
Asperges Vertes, Sauce Divine.
Pêches Orientales.
Mignardises.
Paillettes au Parmesan.
Dessert.
The Truite George V. which has a place in this menu is one of the specialities of the house. It is a salmon trout, braized in port, served cold on ice with sliced oranges and a luscious jelly.
Little Romano used to allude to his cellars, as I have written, as "best in London," and the restaurant has always had a celebrity for the great choice of champagnes of the great brands and great years it offers its patrons. Most of the profits made during the last few years have been expended on champagnes, and no restaurant in London is better prepared to face that champagne famine which will so soon be upon us.
[XVIII]
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
One of our legislators had very kindly asked me to dine with him at the House of Commons, at eight-fifteen p.m., and had told me that he would meet me at the public entrance. When I mentioned his name to the civil young policeman at the outer door he touched his helmet and said that my host had just gone through, so I followed on his tracks. I went past Westminster Hall, which was in splints, for the ceiling was under repair, and along that other great hall where statesmen of the past stand looking their very best in marble. There were two lines of the public sitting on the benches in between the marble statues, no doubt hoping eventually to obtain admission to the Strangers' Gallery, for it was the winding-up night of the Marconi debate. I mentioned my host's name to every policeman I came across, because I found that when I did so they touched their helmets and looked pleased, and I am always delighted to give inexpensive pleasure to any policeman.