City Chop Houses

In London Night and Day, Sam Lambert suggests a few City taverns that were already hundreds of years old when the book was published in 1954. Because they enjoy listed status and can’t be arsed about with, the pubs haven’t changed much since then. At least not to look at. But a visitor from the last century might find some of the details have changed.

Dr Butler’s Head, Coleman Street EC2

A local ruffian enquires about hiring the upstairs function room

1954: ‘A.L.C. only and your bill may be 10s. Bar and buffet ground floor. Side entrance to restaurant on the first floor, with a balcony overlooking at second floor level. Half-timbered interior, carpeted floor. Rolls and butter waiting for you, beer obtained from downstairs. Coffee at 9d comes by the pot. Served by Frank, get him to tell you about Dick Turpin.’

2017: ALC? What’s that? A la carte, maybe? The balcony has gone, as has Frank, but the present manager was happy to tell me about the eponymous Dr Butler and ask if I wanted to see the cellar. Anticipating something dark and ancient and mysterious, I followed him downstairs. But it turned out to be just the kind of pub cellar you’d expect.

 

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Wine Office Court, 145 Fleet Street

1954: ‘Built 1667 (and they don’t let you forget it, it’s on all the mustard and pepper pots). Ye fare will probably add up to around 10s. Tailed waiters tread the sawdust floor. Pre-war eminent visitors were given a pipe and tobacco free, but times are changed. Seating mostly in horse boxes, three aside, others on Windsor chairs. Alleged spiritual home of Dr Johnson.’

2017: Interestingly, London Night And Day calls this pub simply ‘Cheshire Cheese’. Perhaps it became ‘Ye Olde’ Cheshire Cheese when another Cheshire Cheese turned up not far away, also claiming, like its Fleet Street namesake, to have had Charles Dickens as a customer. But that one doesn’t have a parrot. This one does. And lots of coat hooks.

The other Cheshire Cheese. Not so much ‘Ye Olde’ as ‘Ye More Recent’

Pimm’s, 3 Poultry EC2

Oh dear. Pimm’s has gone dry.

1954: ‘Sandwich bar in old-fashioned pub atmosphere. Patronized by city gents. Famous gin-sling with a flower of the herb borage on top and much else underneath, known world-over as a ‘Pimms’, issued from here eighty years ago.’

2017: No. 3 Poultry has disappeared, along with the birthplace of Pimms. I’d have been tempted to keep the bar but change the name of the street. Who wants to say they work in a chicken?

Simpson’s Tavern, Ball Court, 38½ Cornhill EC3

1954: ‘We suggest the grill room on the ground floor, where Ernie (been there 45 years) will show you to your seat and hover anxiously over you. Panelled room, high-backed horse boxes, three aside. Speedy service and 6s. will cover you on a three-course lunch. The people you will see, in city suits, with Oxford accents, 90 percent male. In a corner of the room, a grill, the coke still glows (to keep the gravy warm). No chops, no steak. Would you mind putting your hat on the brass hat rail, Sir? Albert in chef’s hat presides over the grill.’

2017: No chops? Their website proudly claims that Simpson’s Tavern is the oldest chophouse in London, so perhaps the writer of London Night and Day was a bit confused on his visit. If you watched SS:GB on TV you’ll recognise the interior of this place as the location of the first meeting between DS Archer and the American journalist Barbara Barga. It’s also supposed to be the inspiration behind Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, although I suspect the number of tucked-away pubs claiming this fact is similar to the number who claim Dickens as a regular. Upstairs, the hirsute waiting team enjoyed reading about the 1954 version of their place of work.

Watling Restaurant, corner of Watling Street and Bow Lane

1954: Claims to be the oldest house, first to be built after the Great Fire in Cordwainers ward. Reputedly a refreshment house for Wren’s workmen. Home from home for Australians during the war. One bar and seats for 20 in the front room. Don’t ring the bell unless you want to buy drinks all round.

2017: This pub has also become ‘Ye Olde’, presumably in a bid to attract the tourist dollar. The bell is still there but, luckily for any hapless visitor, nobody seems to be aware of the tradition once associated with it.

 

Eating out

In his introduction to the lunchtime dining chapter of London Night and Day, the author notes that ‘if you are in a watch-pawning mood, there are the great popular chain-restaurants of Lyons, A.B.C. and Express Dairy, where you can probably eat for less than anywhere else in the world.’ These he ignores (and luckily doesn’t attempt to substantiate). He leaves out posh hotels like the Ritz (a favourite, he says, of Diplomats and International Mystery Men) and the Savoy (‘Femmes Fatales and the International Spy Ring’), too. Instead he picks restaurants (and a few tea shops) that would today be described as mid-market.

Torino, 61 Dean Street

1954: ‘Here you can order minestrone or spaghetti or just French bread and a piece of camembert. Both dishes delicious. Next to you a Briton in boiler suit reading the Daily Mirror, a Spaniard in leather jerkin and beret, a Frenchman and eight Italians – round a table for four, talking twenty to the dozen. Pink tile table tops and check table cloths, Luigi de Rossi at the cash till. Don’t bother to take your coat off. Don’t lift the net curtain.’

2017: For a long time 61 Dean Street was a brothel. Perhaps it still is. I happened to work in the office next door for a week in March 2017, and I didn’t see any dubious comings or goings. Didn’t hear any, either. Kept myself to myself. No business of mine, what people get up to… free country… live and let live… world’s oldest profession…

The House Of Hamburger, 1 Leicester Street

1954: ‘You can get a hamburger (served with a salad at 3s 6d) but in spite of its name, this is a fish restaurant. Sit at one of the small tables or on a stool at the L-shaped bar (chromium glass rails overhead hung with imitation loaves and lobsters) to eat your Whitstable oyster, jellied eel or any other kind of fish you fancy.’

2017: The owners must have dropped the ‘Hamburger’ name shortly after London Night And Day was published, because Londoners will know this place as the site of the legendary Manzi’s fish restaurant. That closed in 2007, to be replaced by an overpriced and short-lived Vietnamese restaurant. On the day of my visit the place was between cuisines, with the staff not sure what the owners had in store for it.

Driver’s, 46 Glasshouse Street

1954: ‘Oyster bar, etc. Emphasis on fish food. Suitable for tourists.’
2017: Still suitable for tourists but there the similarity ends.

Maison Bertaux, 28 Greek Street

 1954: ‘Salon de Thé au premier, in pink, concealed lighting and gilt mirrors. Seats a very tight 28, with no room for coat hangers.’

2017: Bertie’s House is still very much a feature of contemporary Soho. Interior paintwork is still very much a feature of last-century Soho.

Georges Jacquet, 9 Old Compton Street W1

 

1954: ‘Father and son, Swiss patissiers. Comfortable room for 15. You can take cakes away. Omelettes at 3s at any time of day.’

2017: Georges and his son are long gone, and probably just as well. Now it’s just another Soho sex shop. OR IS IT? No. It’s a Mexican restaurant cunningly disguised to look like a sex shop. No, I don’t either.

Pâtisserie Bruxelloise, 82 Berwick Street W1

1954: ‘Here you can have tea OR coffee. Emil Vandermissen came over in the first world war and you will find him in the bakery at the back of the shop. You can see all that goes on there by looking in the mirror. The counter comes from Italy.’

2017: Here’s Neil on Google reviews: ‘(Cotton Café is) one of the few places in Soho you can still get a decent fry up that’s not hipster’d up or at a ludicrously posh price.’ But no Italian counter.

New Scala, 69 Charlotte Street W1

1954: ‘Typical real-life restaurant, green and cream decorations, steamed-up windows, Coca Cola and foreign film advertisements, Balkan waiters, sish kebab, spaghetti, mixed grill or just plain fish and chips. Ask for coffee and it is drawn from a silver monster next to the cash till.’

2017: Awaiting new lessees, by the looks of it. 

Pini’s, 44 James Street W1

1954: ‘A plate of spaghetti as you remember it from your last trip to Italy. As much as you can eat, à la Bolognese (and al dente too if you can wait 20 minutes) for 2s 4d. Pay Serafino Pini as you go out. Open until 9.30.’

2017: It’s been Sirena since 1981. What happened to Pini? If he’s the fascist featured in this book, I’m not sure anybody cares.

Mirabelle, 56 Curzon Street W1

1954: ‘If it’s hot and you want something right out of doors, remember the courtyard here where you will lunch al fresco under a roof of creepers which might be vine leaves. Large wine list seems to have some vintages earlier than the eternal ’47s and ’45s.’

2017: Looks like they’ve dramatically expanded the courtyard.

96 Piccadilly, W1

1954: ‘Get a table by the window which overlooks the Green Park, but with scarlet buses in between. Décor here is stage-designer’s wedding cake rococo, pink to off-white, nice for those who like that sort of thing’.

2017: Well, I prefer that sort of thing to this sort of thing – a beautiful building in a prime London location left to rot and decay. Where’s the spirit of the 1969 Piccadilly squatters when you need it?

T Wall & Sons, 113 Jermyn Street W1

1954: ‘Meat pies and ice cream manufacturers. Club-like, bowler-hatted atmosphere. Eat at bar, meat pie sales counter at your back, or on high stools up against the trestle table. De rigueur are sausages and pie de jour (their own).’

2017: in 1976 Wall’s moved out and Rowly’s moved in. The Daily Telegraph says they serve ‘what may very well be the finest steak and chips joint in the land’. No one at Rowly’s was available to argue.