The Gourmet's Guide to London

by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis

The great white stone building of the Ritz, with its arcaded front and its entrance to the restaurant and ballrooms right in the middle of the arcade, is a comparative new-comer to London, in that it was opened in 1906. It is a building, inside and out, of the Louis XVI. period, with every modern luxury added. The Winter Garden, where one awaits one's guests, is a delightful place of creamy marble pillars and gilt trellis-work, casemented mirrors, carved amorini and a fountain with a gilt lead figure of "La Source" looking up at the golden cupids poised above her. The little orchestra of the hotel plays in this Winter Garden, and its music in no way interferes with the conversation in the restaurant.

The restaurant itself may be said to be dedicated to Marie Antoinette, for the gilt bronze garlands which hang from electrolier to electrolier, forming an oval below the painted sky, were designed to represent the flower decorations at one of Marie Antoinette's feasts, and though the garlands have been much lightened, for at first they were too heavy in design, they are still reminiscent of the poor little queen who lived such a merry life and met so sad an end. It is a restaurant of soft colours, of marbles, cream and rose and soft green, of tapestried recesses and of handsome consoles in the niches. Towards the Green Park long arched windows look on to one of the pleasantest prospects in London, and below these windows and between them and the Park is a little forecourt, in which a green tent is pitched when a great ball is to be held in the suite of rooms below the restaurant, and where on hot summer evenings dinner is served in the open air. At one end of the restaurant is a gilt group of Father Thames contemplating an exceedingly attractive lady who represents the Ocean. Everything in the restaurant is of the Louis XVI. period, and the Aubusson carpets and the chairs and all the silver and the china and the glass used in the restaurant and the banqueting rooms harmonise with that period.

The restaurant is not a very large one, and sometimes tables for its guests are set in the Marie Antoinette room with which it connects, and in that portion of the corridor which forms an ante-room. But though it is not of a very great size, the Ritz has a most aristocratic clientele. Royal personages often lunch and dine there, and diplomacy regards it as its own particular dining place, for tables are retained by the secretaries and attachés of two of the Embassies, the German and the Austrian, and, I fancy, by a third one also.

Lady Amalthea had very graciously said she would dine with me at the Ritz, so I went in the afternoon of a hot day to interview M. Kroell, the manager, who stepped across Piccadilly from the Berkeley to succeed M. Elles, who, for a time, managed both the Ritz in Paris and the Ritz in London. With M. Kroell was M. Charles, the manager in charge of the restaurant, and I asked that I might be given that evening a little dinner for two, not of necessity an expensive dinner, but one suitable for a warm evening, and I sent my compliments to M. Malley, the chef de cuisine, and said that I hoped that I should find some of the specialities of his kitchen amongst the dishes.

M. Malley came from the Ritz at Paris when the London Ritz was first opened, having acquired his art at the Grand Véfour and the Café Anglais. He presides over a very spacious range of white-tiled kitchens, in which all the rooms which should be hot are divided by a wide corridor from the rooms which should be cold, and he has a talent for the invention of new dishes, amongst these being a very splendid dish of salmon with a mousse of crayfish, which he has named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a reminiscence of his days at Vichy, and his pêches Belle Dijonnaise, of which more anon. Russian soups are one of the specialities of the Ritz kitchen, and there is a Viennese pastrycook amongst the members of M. Malley's brigade, who makes exquisite pastry. The late King Edward had a special fancy for the cakes made at the Ritz, and a supply used to be sent to Buckingham Palace, but M. Elles told me that this was a State secret, for M. Ménager, the King's chef, might not have liked it to be known that anything from another kitchen entered Buckingham Palace.

As I had left my dinner in the safe hands of the experts, so I also left the question of the champagne we should drink, only asking that it should be one recommended by the house.

Before going on my way I reminded M. Kroell that on the last occasion that I had word with him he was presented with a miniature in brilliants of the order bestowed on him by the King of Spain, and I asked him if he had been awarded any other decorations. M. Kroell laughed, and then modestly owned to the German military medal, and as he told me this he involuntarily squared his shoulders as an old soldier.

Lady Amalthea arrived with military punctuality (she is a soldier's wife) in the best of spirits, wearing a dream of a dress, and her diamonds and turquoises. A table had been kept for us at the upper end of the room, where Lady Amalthea could both see all the guests and be seen by them. She ran through a little selection from Debrett as she took her seat, having scanned most of the diners as she came in, and I was enabled to add to this by identifying a group at one of the tables as some of the Peace Delegates from the Balkans.

Then we settled down to the infinitely important matter of seeing what the dinner was that M. Malley and M. Charles in counsel had arranged for us.