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
The Gatti's of to-day has adapted itself to modern requirements,
but it caters for much the same class as of yore, and its food is
still excellent material, well cooked, though there is a great deal
more variety now than there was in the old chops and chips days. It
retains, however, all its old democratic ways. Its clients choose
their own tables and their own seats, hang up their own coats and then
catch the attention of the waiter who has charge of the table. The
restaurant--cream and gold, with French grey panels in its roof--has
now four entrances: the Adelaide Street one, two in King William
Street and one in the Strand. While the main restaurant remains an _à
la carte_ establishment with a plentiful choice of dishes, including
a list of grills, there is a _table d'hôte_ room at the King William
Street side, a handsome hall with a gilded roof and pink-shaded
electroliers, which throw their light up on to the ceiling. The latest
addition to the dining-rooms is a banqueting hall, reached by marble
stairs from King William Street. It is a handsome and well-proportioned
room, with a musicians' gallery at one side, and an ante-room half-way
up its stairs, and it holds one hundred and fifty feasters quite
comfortably.
At the same little table where their father and their uncle sat,
the two Messrs Gatti of to-day--John (ex-Mayor of Westminster) and
Rocco--sit, young copies of their predecessors, in that one of them
has kept a plentiful head of hair, whereas the other one has been less
conservative. They give the same attention to the business of the
restaurant that the original Gattis did, but the semicircular desk has
vanished and the work of taking the counters is now done by deputies on
either side of a great screen which stretches before the wide entrance
to the kitchen. Mr de Rossi, dapper and energetic, is the manager of
the restaurant, and it is always a comfort to me that when I lunch or
dine under the musicians' gallery the _maître d'hôtel_, whom I have
known for thirty years, comes and gives me fatherly advice as to the
choice of dishes for a meal.
The kitchen of the Adelaide Gallery is one of the few in London that
possess a large open fire for roasting, and its Old English cookery
is, therefore, always good. It caters, however, for all nationalities,
and as an indication of what its prices are, and of the variety of its
fare, I cannot do better than give you the list of entrées I find on
the _carte du jour_, which I took away the last time I dined at Gatti'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