Two lifts take banqueters down from the entrance hall of the Piccadilly Hotel to the ante-chamber of the new banqueting-room somewhere down in the bowels of the earth. The new rooms are below the grill-room, and the Piccadilly must have almost as much depth below the street level as it has height above it. The ante-room is classic in its ornamentation, is white, or a very light grey, in colour, and its decoration is elaborate. Here, between eight o'clock and half-past eight, some three hundred Gastronomes and their guests assembled, and I received a warm welcome from Mr Louis Mantell, of the National Liberal Club, the hon. secretary of the society, and from Mr J. L. Kerpen, of the Hyde Park Hotel, the president of the society, who was wearing his jewel of office, hung by a gold chain round his neck. Colonel Sir William Carington, the hon. president of the society, was to have taken the chair at the dinner, but a bereavement prevented him from being present, and the president of the year presided in his place. I found pleasant familiar faces all about me. There were, amongst many others, Mr Judah of the Café Royal, M. Soi of the Savoy, M. Kramer of the Carlton, M. Jules from Jermyn Street, M. Gustave from the Lotus Club, Mr George Harvey from the Connaught Rooms, M. Luigi of Romano's, Mr Edwardes, M. Pruger from the Automobile Club, M. Boriani from the Pall Mall, Messrs Harry and Dick Preston up from Brighton, and scores of other pleasant acquaintances. At the half-hour punctually, a young toast-master with a most majestic voice announced that dinner was served, and the three hundred of us made our way next door into the new great banqueting-room that was receiving its gastronomic baptism. It is a fine spacious room, though its construction is rather curious, for, no doubt owing to exigency of space, the roof of a portion of it is comparatively low, though the major part is quite lofty. It must, however, have admirable ventilation, for at no period during the evening did the room become uncomfortably warm or the atmosphere uncomfortably smoky. The colouring of the walls is of stone with a slight tinge of chrome. Round a portion of the hall runs a gallery with a handsome railing of black and gold, and a double staircase at the end of the room leads up to this gallery. The ceiling is ornamented with fine paintings of gods and goddesses in the clouds; there are large mirrors on one side of the room and, in spite of the different heights of portions of the ceiling, the acoustic properties of the great hall are excellent. An admirable band, the leader of which I think I remember as a solo violinist on the stage, played us in to dinner and made music during dinner, there being loud calls for M. Boriani, the Caruso of the gastronomic world, when a selection from _La Bohème_ was played.