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
Many of the City chop-houses nestle together in the alleys and courts
between Cornhill and Lombard Street. There, on either side of one of
the narrow little passages, you will find Simpson's Chop-houses, with
pleasant grey-green walls to their rooms and a window in which simple
food, cooked and uncooked, is shown as bait to draw in the hungry
passer-by; and there in Castle Court is the George and Vulture, which
is also Thomas' Chop-rooms, which dates back to 1660, is proud of its
Dickens' traditions, and is more ambitious in its bill of fare than
most of the chop-houses.
There also, in Chance Alley, is Baker's Chop-house, which, that there
may be no mistake as to its pretensions, describes itself on a board at
the Lombard Street entrance to the alley as a tavern, and a chop-house,
a coffee-house, and soup-rooms. It is a dignified little house, which
bears its years well--it was founded in the seventeenth century--and
which, with its two bow-windows with small panes of glass and its glass
door in between, commands confidence even before one has crossed the
threshold. Inside one of the windows are wire screens to give privacy
to the company in the house, but the other window begs all men to
look in and see the fish and the joints, the vegetables, the salad
stuff, and, perhaps, a loin of cold beef, samples of what the larder
contains. Beyond this rampart of good things edible you may see dames
and damsels attired in black, busy in a glassed-in little room drawing
beer, taking payment from satisfied customers for what they have eaten,
and a grave gentleman, with white hair and beard, making entries in
a large ledger; for the little portioned-off space you are looking
into serves as bar and counting-house, some old punch-bowls on a shelf
giving it its right old-world note.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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