Of this group of restaurants two at least that I know deserve special mention, one as having been the pioneer of clean restaurant kitchens and the other, a very cheap restaurant, as having made the fortune of one restaurateur and of being in the course of making the fortune of his successor. Kettner's, in Church Street, was the first small restaurant that dared to show its kitchen to all comers at a time when the kitchens of most little foreign restaurants were places of horror. M. Auguste Kettner was a chef who had learned his art in his native country, and who, as an investment of his savings, started a small restaurant, in 1867, in Church Street, Soho. Those were the days before Shaftesbury Avenue was driven through the slums, before Cambridge Circus was made, before the Palace Theatre was built, and when Soho was a maze of little streets. So puzzling to a stranger was its geography that the district inspired W. S. Gilbert to write a "Bab" ballad concerning Peter the Wag, the policeman with a taste for practical jokes who always sent the people who asked the way of him in the wrong direction. Retribution came to Peter when he lost his way near Poland Street, Soho.
"For weeks he trod his self-made beat,
Through Newport—Gerrard—Bear—Greek—Rupert—Frith—Dean—Poland Streets,
And into Golden Square."
Kettner's was discovered by a correspondent of The Times, and the readers of the Thunderer, which in those days took very meagre notice of the amusements and enjoyments of life, were surprised to be told of a little restaurant in the centre of Soho where the kitchen was as clean as a new pin and where excellent food was to be obtained at surprisingly cheap prices. That article made the fortune of Kettner's just as other articles in less august papers have made since then the fortunes of other restaurants. Journalists, artists and actors, the swallows who herald prosperity, came to the restaurant, and George Augustus Sala, the author, who was a fin gourmet, with a knowledge of the practical side of cookery as well, became the great patron of the restaurant.
In the early seventies, as a young subaltern with a microscopic income and a desire to make it stretch as far as possible, I used often to dine at Kettner's. It was a real chef's restaurant in those days, an à la carte establishment where one ate one or two dishes quite admirably cooked, and where a walk through the kitchen and an inspection of the larder always preceded or followed a dinner. I never hurried over a meal to be in time for the rising of the curtain at a neighbouring theatre, for there were no neighbouring theatres then, but enjoyed my dinner to the uttermost. M. Kettner then was so successful in business that he was gradually absorbing house after house, and his restaurant, instead of being in one little house, occupied the ground floor of several houses, doors being driven through the party walls. The private rooms on the first floor were favourite dining places of couples who wished to be tête-à-tête, and I fancy that when the popularity of such little dinners at restaurants was dimmed it was a blow to the restaurant in Church Street. I have always thought myself that the almost entire disappearance of the small private dining-room from restaurants coincided with the building of innumerable houses of flats, and that the dinners which used to be given in the cabinets particuliers are now eaten in flats.
In 1877 two events of great importance to M. Kettner happened: he wrote his "Book of the Table" and he died. His table book, of which a second edition has recently been published, is a curious mixture of very useful recipes and scraps of information concerning all matters under the sun that can in any way be connected with cookery. Achilles, for instance, is brought into the book that reference may be made to the Achilles statue in Hyde Park, and then to the great Duke of Wellington, of whom the story is told that his cook, Felix, left his service in despair because the Duke could not distinguish between a dinner cooked by an artist and one horribly mauled by a kitchenmaid.
When at the height of his fame and prosperity M. Kettner died and left a widow, and Madame Kettner, when her days of mourning had passed, married M. Giovanni Sangiorgi, who also became her partner in the business, a kindly man who keeps a watchful eye on the restaurant which is now controlled by a company. The restaurant was in comparatively late years rebuilt and an entrance hall given to it, and the two rooms to the right of the hall were in 1913 very tastefully redecorated, but it still retains its characteristic of being several small houses joined together. The first sight that greets one's eyes on entering the hall is a view of the kitchen, generally with a cook in white clothing busy about his work as the centre of the picture, and those who lunch and dine are, as of yore, asked to walk through the white-tiled, beautifully clean domain of the chef. A grill-room now forms part of the establishment, and the character of the meals is changed in that table d'hôte dinners at various prices are the trump cards of the establishment. I fancy that the propinquity of the Palace, of the Shaftesbury Theatre, and now of the Ambassadors' may have had a great deal to say to this change, for when I dine at Kettner's before going to the Palace or the Shaftesbury I can see that most of my fellow-guests are theatre-goers. A three-and-six table d'hôte dinner in the grill-room and five-shilling and seven-and-six ones in the restaurant are the early evening meals of the establishment, and below is quite a fair specimen of the menu of the five-shilling dinner. It is the one I ate on the last occasion that I made a pilgrimage to see Madame Pavlova dance. The quail was fat and tender, and the crème Victoria a good soup:
Menu
Hors d'œuvre.
Consommé Bortsch.
Crème Victoria.
Turbotin Bercy ou Blanchaille.
Poulet Poëlé Derby.
Côtelette de Mouton Maréchale.
Pommes Nouvelles.
Caille Rôtie.
Salade.
Glacé de Moka.
But Kettner's now has to encounter many rivals, for young men such as Kettner himself was when he made the fame of his restaurant are following his example, and all the Soho district bristles with little restaurants which give wonderfully good food for the small prices they charge. Kettner's will always, however, be famous for showing its clients a spotlessly clean kitchen when such kitchens were the exception, and this excellent custom and example it maintains to-day.
The other noticeable restaurant of this group is one founded by M. Roche, which bears in large letters on its front "Le Dîner Français," and which occupies the ground floor of No. 16 Old Compton Street. A story I have been told of the origin of the restaurant is rather picturesque. M. Roche was a baker and pâtissier, and one day two Frenchmen came into his shop and asked where they could get a good French meal. M. Roche replied that he and his family were about to eat their midday meal, and that if the strangers from his native land cared to join them he would be delighted. The two Frenchmen enjoyed their midday meal so thoroughly that they asked to be allowed, during their stay in London, to take all their meals at the bakery, paying their share, and M. Roche's establishment gradually changed its character, becoming a full-blown restaurant. That M. Roche served his apprenticeship under Frederic at the Tour d'Argent in Paris does not militate against the probability of this story. M. Roche, having made a fortune in Old Compton Street, returned to France and bought an hotel near Granville. Le Dîner Français, from which the establishment takes its name, was always an eighteen-penny meal, and continued to be so under the present proprietor, M. Béguinot, until the epidemic of "lightning strikes" came in the spring of 1913, when, to cover the extra expense entailed by giving cooks and waiters their weekly holiday, the price was raised to one-and-nine. M. Roche always had the reputation of buying the best material in the market, and M. Béguinot has maintained this reputation. The restaurant at dinner-time is generally filled to its holding capacity, and as many as four hundred dinners are sometimes served on one evening. The restaurant is narrow, but it runs far back, three rooms being thrown into one. The walls are of cream colour, with a skirting of deep orange; the floor is covered with oilcloth; the knives are black-handled, but cheapness in M. Béguinot's establishment does not mean dirt, for everything is as clean as clean can be, and the waiters, who all talk excellent English, wear shirts and aprons as clean as the walls. Near the door in the first of the rooms are two long tables, and at these any man who is by himself takes a seat.