[XXXII]
THE BERKELEY
The pleasant, white-faced hotel, with its restaurant on the ground floor, which faces the Ritz across Piccadilly, stands on classic ground, for it was at the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street that Francatelli, the great cook and maître d'hôtel, pupil of the even greater Carême, was in command of the St James's Restaurant and the hotel of that name which in the middle of the last century stood first, with no proxime accessit, amongst the restaurants of the capital.
Nowadays we take our great French cooks in London for granted; they are part of the life of London. But in the fifties Clubland was still a little astonished and flattered that the great chefs were willing to desert their own country to dwell amidst the fogs and rain of England, and restaurants were comparatively rare, and few of them were of a very high class. Hayward, who first published his "Art of Dining" in 1852, gives in his book little biographies of Ude and Francatelli, and alludes rather slightingly to Soyer, who was the third of the trio of very great cooks. Disraeli, who had enough of the artistic temperament in him to assign to gastronomy its proper place amongst the pleasures of life, recorded the dismissal of Ude from Crockford's in the following words:—"There has been a row at Crockford's, and Ude dismissed. He told the committee he was worth £4000 a year. Their new man is quite a failure, so I think the great artist may yet return from Elba." The "new man" was Francatelli, and he was so far from being a failure that when it was thought that Buckingham Palace should possess the greatest cook in England the position of chief cook and maître d'hôtel to the Queen was offered to him. He did not find the position a comfortable one, and resigned at the end of two years. For a time he lived in retirement, but in the sixties he once more placed himself on the active list, and took charge of the St James's.
In doing so he was following the example of Soyer, who, in the fifties, established a restaurant in Gore House, which had been the residence of Lady Blessington. Soyer expected that the Great Exhibition would send a crowd of rich people to his restaurant, and many great people patronised it, but in the end he lost £7000 by his venture. Hayward says concerning him that "he is more likely to earn immortality by his soup kitchen than by his soup," alluding to the soup kitchens that Soyer as a Government Commissioner established at the Royal Barracks in Dublin during the great famine in Ireland.
In 1868, when "The Epicure's Year Book," an attempt to copy Grimod de la Reynière's "Almanach des Gourmands," was published by Bradbury and Evans, Francatelli was at the zenith of his fame at the St James's, and the anonymous author, in that book, who wrote the chapter on "London Dinners," after paying a compliment to British fare, saying that Wilton and Rule are not afraid of comparison with any oyster dealers in the world, and extolling the flounders and steaks of the Blue Posts in Cork Street, declares that cookery "such as Ude once served at Crockford's and his successor Francatelli is now serving at the St James's Hotel, Piccadilly, is not reached by any other hotel or tavern in London." As it may interest my readers with a taste for antiquarian lore to know which were the restaurants recommended in the sixties for good plain food, I continue the quotation. "At the Ship and Turtle in Leadenhall Street, or at Birch's (Ring and Brymer), on Cornhill, the turtle is cooked with perfect art; and the punch would satisfy the author of 'Le veritable art de faire le Punch.' The fish, at the fish dinner at Simpson's in Cheapside, is admirable. Nay, you may have a chop broiled under your nose, at Joe's, behind the Royal Exchange, that shall defy criticism. At Simpson's in the Strand; at the Albion, by Drury Lane Theatre; at Blanchard's (ask for his Cotherstone cheese), in Beak Street, Regent Street, the Earl Dudley's neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus—the main elements of his dinner 'fit for an emperor,' are to be bought excellently well cooked. The Rainbow, in Fleet Street, is a well-known, good, plain house; and a grill well cooked and served, where Messrs Spiers and Pond have put up their silver gridiron, at Ludgate Hill, is a new illustration of London plain cookery. The London, in Fleet Street, is an admirable house; cheap, and yet where there are—a rare thing in the City—well-kept tables. This house publishes its menus in the evening papers. Our oyster shops have no rivals in the boastful capital of gastronomy. Take Pim's, for example, in the Poultry, where there are perfect oysters, and the luncheon delicacies of our modern day. But when the ambitious diner glances along the line of entrées, even in the best of the houses I have cited, he is in danger. In the City, the Albion is the best kitchen for elaborate dishes, and the dinners given here are smaller than the crowds which meet over huddled, flat, and chilled dishes at our great public dinners. Yet nobody would for one moment think of comparing the most carefully prepared dinner for sixty with such a menu as Francatelli prepares for half-a-dozen in Piccadilly." From this general damnation, however, the author exempts Willis's, in King Street, St James's, where, he says, the mutton pies of the Old Thatched House Tavern may still be eaten; Epitaux', in Pall Mall; the Burlington, in Regent Street; Verrey's and Kühn's, in which places "very respectable French cookery is to be had."
"The Epicure's Year Book" gives amongst its menus of remarkable dinners of 1867 one of the "Epicure" dinner served at the St James's. The dîner à la Russe was in those days ousting the dinner in the French style, in which the dishes were placed in three services or relays upon the table and carved by host and guests, and such an epicure as Captain Hans Busk, who was the gourmet par excellence of the sixties, gave his guests at the United University Club very much such a dinner as men eat to-day, though his dinners were of too many courses. But at the Mansion House the first and second and third services were still adhered to. Francatelli, though conforming to the new style, made concessions to the old school, as this menu shows. His French was a little shaky, for he did not know when "à la" should be used and when it should not be used:
Les Huîtres.
Potages.—La purée de gibier à la chasseur; à la Julienne.
Poisson.—Les epigrammes de rougets à la Bordelaise; le saumon à la Tartare.
Entrées.—Les mauviettes à la Troienza; les côtelettes à la Duchesse; les medaillons de perdreaux à la St James; le selle de mouton rôtie.
Legumes ... Salade.
Second Service.—Le faisan truffé à la Périgueux; la mayonnaise de crevettes; les chouxfleurs au parmesan; la charlotte de pommes; le gâteau à la Cérito.