A still more famous house was the PONTACK’S HEAD, formerly called the WHITE BEAR, in Christ Church Passage, (leading from Newgate Street to Christ Church.) This tavern having been destroyed by fire, Pontack, the son of a president of the parliament of Bordeaux, opened a new establishment on its site, and assuming his father’s portrait as its sign, called it the Pontack’s Head. It was the first fashionable eating-house in London, was opened soon after the Restoration, and continued in favour until about the year 1780, when it was pulled down to make room for the building of the vestry hall of Christ Church. De Foe describes it as “a constant ordinary for all comers at very reasonable prices, where you may bespeak a dinner from four or five shillings a head to a guinea, or what sum you please.”[111] In the beginning of the eighteenth century the dinners had become proverbially extravagant:-- “Now at Pontack’s we’ll take a bit, Shall quicken Nature’s appetite. Here, shew a room! what have you got? The waiter (cries) What have we not? All that the season can afford, Fresh, fat, and fine, upon my word A Guinea ordinary, sir.” This Guinea ordinary was:-- “---- every way compleat, Adorn’d and beautifully dress’d. But what it was could not be guess’d.” The waiter, however, gives the _menu_, which contains--Bird’s nest soup from China; a ragout of fatted snails; bantam pig, but one day old, stuffed with hard row and ambergris; French peas stewed in gravy, with cheese and garlick; an incomparable tart of frogs and forced meat; cod, with shrimp sauce; chickens _en surprise_, (they had not been two hours from the shell,) and similar dainties.[112] Pontack contributed much towards bringing the French wines in fashion, being proprietor of some of the Bordeaux vineyards which bore his name. About the same time another tavern flourished, with its master’s head for sign; this was CAVEAC’S,[113] celebrated for wine; of him Amhurst sang:-- “Now sumptuously at Caveac’s dine, And drink the very best of wine.” Though it cannot be said that DON SALTERO put up his portrait for a sign, yet his coffee-house was named after him, and is still extant under the same denomination in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. This house was opened in 1695 by a certain Salter, who had been servant to Sir Hans Sloane, and had accompanied him on his travels. Chelsea at that time was a village, full of the suburban residences of the aristocracy, and the pleasant situation of Salter’s house soon made it the resort of merry companions, on their way to or from friends’ villas, or Vauxhall, Jenny Whin’s, and other places of public resort in the neighbourhood. Vice-Admiral Mundy, on his return from the coast of Spain, amused with the pedantic dignity of Salter, christened him Don Saltero, and under that name the house has continued till this day.