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
"Look here, my lad"--anyone under seventy is "my lad" to the
General--said he, "I want you to give me a bit of advice."
I said the correct platitude, and awaited developments.
"My nephew Bill, the one in the Hussars, has just married, and he and
his wife are coming up to town, and I want to know where to take 'em to
dine."
I reeled off the list of the half-dozen most fashionable restaurants;
but the General cut me short. "Ay, my lad, that's all very well; but
the girl that poor old Bill's been and married is a vegetarian. What
d'ye say to that, now?"
The General had put into the word "vegetarian" just the tone of
astonished disgust he would have employed had he told me that the young
lady was a militant suffragette; but I did not echo that at all. "Take
them to the Eustace Miles Restaurant in Chandos Street," I advised;
"and whatever your niece's fads may be, you can give her what she wants
there."
Old "Rats" thanked me with the chastened thankfulness that men show
when given the address of a specialist for some obscure disease of
which they think they are a victim, wrote the address down on a card,
and went after Colonel Bunthunder into the smoking-room to tell him all
about it.
It occurred to me, however, directly the old General had left me, that
I was sending him to a restaurant into which I had never myself been,
and concerning which I knew nothing, except that I always look into its
windows and at its bill of fare whenever I pass down Chandos Street;
and, therefore, in order that I might be able to give the old man some
detailed information from my own experience, I went next day to Chandos
Street to lunch.
Before I set down what my experiences were, I wish to express my
personal admiration for the single-mindedness of Mr Miles and his
wife in doing the work they have set themselves to do. That Eustace
Miles, half trained, went into a tennis court to defend his title of
amateur world champion against a young American gentleman trained to
the second, and that he made a fine fight for the championship with
the odds desperately against him, shows that a diet of non-flesh food
doesn't kill pluck or stamina. And before the authorities asked Mrs
Miles not to send the E.M. soup barrow down to the Embankment on winter
nights, as they wished to clear that thoroughfare of derelicts, she
and her helpers had done much to feed the hungry and to reclaim some
of those who were not irreclaimable, which shows that a kind heart
thrives on Emprote and Protonnic and Compacto, and the other meatless
foods with strange names. Lastly, that the Eustace Miles Restaurant
celebrated last year the seventh anniversary of its opening, shows that
London wanted such a restaurant, and that it has kept its clientele.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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