"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. The St James's was not by any means the first hostelry at the corner of Berkeley Street, for in the stage-coach days a coffee-house--the Gloucester, I think--occupied the site, and some of the coaches for the west used to start from it; but I have already given you a fill of the history of the forerunners of the Berkeley, and will come at once to recent years and the modern building.