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
When the old couple died, and Philippe succeeded to the business, he
soon bought up the tin shanty and the ground belonging to it, built
the Cavour as it now is, the bar occupying the site of the original
restaurant, and made a little garden on the space now occupied by a
cinema show.
Of this little garden Philippe was very proud. He liked to be able to
go out of his restaurant and pick a bunch of mignonette to give to any
lady, and he grew some vegetables and oranges there as well as flowers.
He had an eye also to the main chance, for when anyone pointed out to
him that he was wasting a valuable site by making a garden of it, he
nodded his head, and replied: "The earth he grow more valuable every
day."
Philippe, short, grey-haired, with a little close-clipped moustache,
always wearing a turned-down collar and a black tie, had a very
distinct personality of his own. He was a first-class man of business,
was up every morning at five o'clock to go the rounds of the market,
riding in one four-wheeled cab, with another one following behind, into
which he put his purchases and brought them home with him. He had no
love for teetotalers, and he budgeted for the very liberal dinner of
the house on the understanding that his customers should drink wine
therewith. When he found that some of the guests were drinking only
water, he used at once to send a waiter to them or to talk to them
himself, and to tell them that he would charge them sixpence extra.
After a time he found it entailed less loss of temper to notify this on
the bill of fare, and the Cavour menu still bears the legend: "No beers
served with this dinner. Dinner without wine, sixpence extra."
The restaurant of the Cavour is a large white room, with a smaller
room, also white, running back from it. Access to the big room is
obtained from Leicester Square by a narrow corridor decorated with
allegorical figures of the various months of the year--awful daubs,
whoever it was who painted them. The big room is lighted from above
by a sky-light, and there are large globes of electric light in the
ceiling. There are many large mirrors let into the walls, and down
each side of the room run brass rails for hats and coats. There is
oilcloth on the floor, with strips of carpet over it in the gangways.
The waiters go to a bar near the entrance door for the wine and other
drinkables, which are served out there by Mrs Dale, or by her deputy.
Some of the waiters, mostly French, were in the restaurant for many
years under Philippe, but there is a new manager now with a curled-up
black moustache.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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