Go inside, and you find yourself in a little room—a French gentleman who went on my recommendation to Gustave's described it to me afterwards as a boîte—with cream-coloured walls and a chocolate skirting. A counter, to which the waiters go to fetch the dishes, with a girl behind it very busily engaged, is at one side of the room. Oilcloth is on the floor, and a little staircase leads to the first floor. Eleven tables are in this room, all of them generally occupied, mostly by French people; but there is a second smaller room on beyond, which holds four tables, and on the two occasions lately that I have dined at Gustave's I have found one of these tables vacant.
Everything is very clean at Gustave's, and if the napery is thin and the glass is thick, that is quite in keeping with the travel story. The people at the other tables are probably French. They belong to the respectable classes, and they behave just as well as though they carried innumerable quarterings on their escutcheons. A young waiter puts the carte du jour, with an ornamental blue border, on the table in front of you, and Monsieur Gustave, who, napkin on arm, bustles about his little restaurant, comes to give advice, if needed, as to a choice of dishes.
Gustave—who must not, of course, be confused with that other Gustave who was manager of the Savoy, and who is now at the Lotus Club—is a little Frenchman, with a moustache, who is very wide awake. He has a sense of humour, and he talks excellent English. He was for a time at an hotel in Hatton Garden, and at the Restaurant des Gourmets before he came to Greek Street.
The first item on a bill of fare that I took away, with me reads: "½ doz. Escargots, 8d.," but long ago, at Prunier's in Paris, I tried to attune my palate to snails, and failed, so on this particular night I did not even consider their inclusion in my dinner. Nor did I dally with hors d'œuvre, though I might have had sardines, or filets de hareng, or anchois, or salmis for twopence. But I ordered soup, and I think I went up in Gustave's opinion when I preferred three-pennyworth of soupe à l'oignon to pot au feu at the same price. There were three fish dishes on the card, moules Marinières, 6d.; merlan frit, 6d.; sole frit, 10d.; and Gustave recommended the moules as being a dish of the house, and having come in that morning.
Looking down the list of entrées to find something sufficiently bizarre in taste to match the commencement of my dinner, I hesitated over a pilaff, which would have cost me 8d., almost plumped for a râble de lièvre, which meant an outlay of 1s., and then, remembering that it was Christmas-time, as near as possible ordered a boudin, which is the sausage that all good Frenchmen eat once a year at the réveillon suppers on Christmas Eve. But I remembered the nightmare that followed the last réveillon supper to which I went in Paris, and, passing over all the entrées, ordered nothing more exciting than a wing of chicken, 1s., and a salade chicorée. A crème chocolat, 4d., was my entremet.
The onion soup proved to be excellent—quite strong and quite oniony, which, as I was not going into polite society that evening, could offend no one. The mussels quite justified M. Gustave's eulogium, but as I did not eat the whole bowlful, and left some of the savoury liquid, M. Gustave, with an expression of concern on his face, came to my table to ask whether I had found any fault with the dish. I assured him that my appetite, not the mussels or the cook, was alone to blame. The wing of the chicken was plump and tender, and had I paid half-a-crown it could not have been better. The crème chocolat certainly tasted of chocolate, if the cream was not a very pronounced feature in it.
It was a very excellent meal—at the price—and had I carried out the starvation and strong exercise and vivid imagination preparation that I have so strongly recommended to you, instead of lounging out to tea in the afternoon with a pretty lady and eating tea cake and sugary things at five o'clock, I should have recorded all the beautiful things about the little restaurant that I hear in the travel stories.