The Gourmet's Guide to LondonNewnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
General
The Gourmet's Guide to London
Newnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel)
Restaurants -- England -- London -- Guidebooks
chauffeur, who has also been well fed, finds a fresh supply of petrol,
and how the contented travellers reach at midnight the town where they
intend to sleep.
The scene of another story is a minor cathedral town in Italy or Spain,
and the tale commences with a vigorous denunciation of the principal
hotel in the place: stuffy rooms, vile food cooked in rancid oil; an
impudent head waiter and an unhelpful hall-porter. The central division
of the story deals with a long day of sight-seeing; a midday meal of
sandwiches, "horrid things made of the ham of the country and coarse
bread"; and a terrifying adventure when, having lost their way in a
network of streets, the ladies of the party are stared at by some
horrible unshaven men who say un-understandable things in patois, and
then laugh. The tale concludes thus:--"Just as we thought that we
should have to pay one of the impudent little boys to show us the way
back to that disgusting hotel we turned a corner, and there we saw a
clean little restaurant with little trees in front of the window and a
bill of fare, with lots of nice things on it quite cheap, hanging on
the door-post."
There are unlimited variations on the above, and the tale can take from
two minutes to three-quarters of an hour in the telling, according to
the volume of guide-book gush and the amount of lip-smacking over the
food that is introduced into it.
But why go to France, Italy or Spain to obtain these materials for
a story? The circumstances can be exactly reproduced in London. The
preliminaries are to eat nothing between breakfast and dinner-time and
to tire yourself out with exercise. Then, if you wish to indulge in the
motoring adventure, engage the most rickety taxi-cab to be found on any
stand and drive round and round the inner circle of Regent's Park until
the inevitable breakdown occurs. When, after a quarter of an hour's
delay, the chauffeur says that he is ready to go on again, tell him to
drive to Soho Square, then to go down Greek Street, and to stop when he
comes to the Restaurant Gustave.
Or if it is the cathedral city incidents you would like to live through
once more, start in a worn-out condition from Golden Square, and make
your way in a zigzag through the narrowest streets and alleys you can
find to St Anne's, Soho, which is big enough to be a second-class
cathedral, and go on, still zigzagging, till you reach Greek Street and
Gustave's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account