| Tea Balcony in the Hotel Cecil, London | Slater's, a Better-class Chain Shop, London |
Lyons have refreshment-houses of different grades. The Popular Café is a cut above the tea rooms, and so are the Corner Houses. Two years ago, the A.B.C. amalgamated with Buzard's, an old established confectioner's in Oxford Street—a famous cake-house.
The Monico and Gatti's appeal to a quite different class from that catered to by the tea shops, although perhaps not to what Mrs. Boffin would call "the highfliers of fashion" who frequent the lounges of the fashionable hotels. Gatti's original café was under the arches of Charing Cross station.
I may add about the Savoy that it was an outcome of the successful Gilbert and Sullivan operas of the seventies, D'Oyly Carte having expended some of his profits on building the hotel on a piece of waste ground by the Savoy Theatre. He brought over M. Ritz from Monte Carlo to manage the hotel and restaurant, and Escoffier, the greatest chef of the day, to preside over the cuisine. They made the Savoy famous for its dinners, and it has always maintained a high reputation, although Escoffier, who has now retired, ruled later at the Carlton; and Ritz, at the hotel in Piccadilly which bears his name.
Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, Arabian-Turkish methods of making coffee prevail. The accompanying illustration shows a group in a caravan of the faithful on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The venerable Moslem, who is ambitious of becoming a hadji, is attended by his guards, distinguished by their fantastic dress; their glittering golden-hafted hanjars, stuck in their shawl girdles; and their silver-mounted pistols; the grave turban replaced by a many-tasseled cap. Their accommodation is the stable of a khan, or serai, shared with their camel. Their refreshment is coffee, thick, black and bitter, served by the khanji in tiny egg-shaped cups.
St. James's Restaurant, Piccadilly, London
In Denmark and Finland coffee is made and served after the French and German fashion.
France. Were it not for the almost inevitable high roast and frequently the disconcerting chicory addition, coffee in France might be an unalloyed delight—at least this is how it appears to American eyes. One seldom, if ever, finds coffee improperly brewed in France—it is never boiled.