The restaurant is all white and gold, and has a low ceiling, but as it has a row of windows on two sides I have no doubt it will be quite cool in summer. The curtains to the windows are of some pleasant straw-coloured material, with pink spots on it; the carpet is dark. A glass screen is in front of the lifts which bring the dishes down from the kitchen at the top of the house. There are two staircases, one, the main one, from Coventry Street, and another one from Wardour Street, leading up to the restaurant. The waiters are mostly Germans, who speak good English, and who have the bearing of drilled men. I have no doubt that Mr Appenrodt, who at one time sacrificed a growing business to go back to Germany to do his military training, does not engage any of his countrymen who have shirked their years of service. The only drawback to the restaurant that I have noticed is an unavoidable one owing to the construction of the house, that the personnel of the coffee kitchen have to pass through the restaurant coming and going about their work. The people who dine in the restaurant at Appenrodt's seem to belong to all classes. When I have dined there early I have seen amongst the customers men and ladies whom I recognised as belonging to the Variety profession, and who eat an early meal before going to the theatres where they perform. Many of Appenrodt's countrymen and countrywomen dine in the restaurant, and the black-coated classes of respectable Londoners and their womenfolk have already found out how good the food is there. Having seen all these things, and feeling sure that Appenrodt, with his many shops and his restaurants, meant a new power come into the centre of London, I became curious as to the owner, or owners, of the name and asked whether it was just a _nom de fantasie_ or whether there really is such a person in the flesh as a Mr Appenrodt. I was assured that there was a Mr Appenrodt and that if it would gratify my curiosity to talk to him he would be very pleased to meet me. And so it came that I met Mr Appenrodt in his own restaurant, and found him to be a very quiet, patently sincere German gentleman, with a round face, pleasant, steady eyes, hair a little thin on the top and a large dark moustache. He told me across a luncheon-table the story of his life, and I was able to assure him that other people besides myself would find the history of his early struggles in England an interesting one. He was born in Berlin in 1867, and, having been a clerk in a Hamburg shipping agency, came to this country when he was nineteen years old to learn the English language. He soon found a billet in a City office, as correspondence clerk at a pound a week, and he determined to stay in England, though his father, who was a spirit distiller, wished him to return to Germany and the distillery.