I ate the Cecilian dinner, a seven-and-sixpenny _table d'hôte_ meal, which I found quite excellent. This is the menu: Huîtres Natives on Hors d'Œuvre. Consommé Princesse. Crème Parisienne. Filets de Sole Carême. Quartier d'Agneau Arléquine. Pommes Macaire. Caille en Cocotte au Jus d'Ananas. Salade. Asperges, Sauce Hollandaise. Glacé à l'Andalouse. Friandises. The delicate sauce with the sole, the neatness of the garnish of the vegetables with the quarter of lamb, the plumpness of the quail and their contrast of taste with the pine-apple, would have assured me that the kitchen is in first-class hands, even had I not known that M. Jean Alletru, a chef who stands very high in the estimation of his brother chefs, had succeeded M. Coste, when that great man retired. I might have spent a shilling less and have eaten an alternative dinner without the oysters in it, or I might have taken advantage of an arrangement by which anyone dining at the Cecil can pay a fixed price for his or her dinner, and choose practically anything they like from the _carte du jour_, which is a very ample one, and which generally contains some of the _spécialités_ created by M. Alletru. This is the list of these _spécialités_ and a couple of very pretty little dinners can be arranged from amongst them, the only thing needed in addition being a soup. _Tomate en surprise au caviar, turbotin Prince de Galles, filet de sole Clarence, timbale de truite froide Norvégienne, ris de veau St Cloud, caille à la Salvini, poitrine de volaille Providence, selle d'agneau Cecil, poularde à la Jacques, fraises Tetrazzini, bouteille de champagne en surprise._ I have given high praise to M. Alletru, but the highest praise that a _maître-chef_ can receive is that which comes from his brothers in art, and no higher compliment could be paid to the management of the Hotel Cecil and their _chef de cuisine_ than that the Ligue des Gourmands, the association of all the principal French chefs in England, when they held their first Dîner d'Epicure under the presidency of M. Escoffier, placed themselves in the hands of the Cecil and of M. Alletru, who, with his brigade of cooks, sent to table the dinner that M. Escoffier had designed. If I print the menu of this banquet, a banquet at which there were three hundred guests present, in preference to that of any of the many banquets at which I have been a guest in the great banqueting halls of the Cecil, it is because in my opinion it is the perfection of a dinner of ceremony. The _Dodine_ and the _Fraises Sarah-Bernhardt_ were the two sensational dishes of the feast, but it is not a dinner of many courses of rich food, and is interesting without being heavy: