Schmidt’s

Famous for its reasonably priced ‘ continental ‘ dishes, Schmidt’s, located at 33/43 Charlotte Street, off the north side of Oxford Street in an area dubbed ‘ Fitzrovia’ was essentially a delicatessen with a restaurant at the rear. It opened in 1901 by butcher Friedrich Schmidt as a delicatessen that served a largish German community in the area. A restaurant was added after the First World War, which served mainly German food, such as wurst, frankfurter, pork knuckle and other hearty dishes, and soon became very popular, despite anti-German feeling following two World Wars.

It was infamous for its surly and sometime downright rude waiters (though a few diners disputed this ) and in the absence of high quality but cheap continental restaurants, especially in the Fitzrovia area, it attracted a clientele that valued German food. Of the journalists and writers who dined there, one of its most famous was T. S. Eliot who when Chairman of Faber and Gwyer ( later Faber & Faber) was a customer while working at the company’s Queen Square HQ, just a fifteen minute walk away. Unfortunately, we don’t know how often Eliot dined there, or whether he went at lunchtime or after work, or even if he took poets, such as Auden, MacNeice or George Barker there for lunch. Louis MacNeice, who worked at the BBC in Langham Place, which is a ten minute walk away, may have been one of the poets, but it is a sad fact that most writers don’t actually mention in letters or diaries where they dine, unless it is with a famous individual. Another diner was the Soviet spy Donald Maclean who spent his last evening at Schmidt’s before leaving permanently for Moscow in 1951. It would be nice to know what he ordered—perhaps something traditionally British for his last ever night in Britain.  

We don’t know if Schmidt and his family had strong political views—left or right—but it is interesting to note that the first edition of Socialist Register, a radical leftist newspaper with an international flavour, was launched in the restaurant in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville.

This eating place has undergone various transformations since its heyday in the nineteen thirties. In the mid fifties, when the following description was published by  Fanny and Johnnie Cradock, it was the haunt of literary agents and publishers, among other types.

‘ As the Ivy restaurant is to the theatre, so Monseigneur’s is to that critical, cocktail of pedants, psychiatrists and introverts, the book publishers and the literary agents, the majority of whom are addicted to good food. A minority in our experience requires more of a wine than it is young and not corky. Only a fraction can distinguish between wines that have been fairly ordinarily handled and wines that have been cherished in the great tradition. For this reason the Monseigneur, where the food is never less than good  and is sometimes more than very good, suits this brigade down to the socks. Signor Gualdi suffers from insufficient cellarage and keeps a relatively small stock of wines. Such as he keeps will serve you well—in their category, but his wine list does not soar vinously, as he will be the first to agree. Indeed, this courteous and experienced restaurateur soars above the only point of criticism to his own lasting success and the gratification of many contented diners. Among these, in other days, Signor Gualdi numbered the then Prince of Wales, who was particularly addicted to a house speciality of 1955, Choux Monsieur, a welcome and original addition to the hors d-oeuvre trolley. Equally agreeable is the house custom of a dish of the day, Silverside of Beef and Dumplings on Wednesday, Bouillabaisse on Fridays, are days in which we have interested ourselves profoundly. The coffee, too, is excellent, made on the proprietor’s remarkable little table Vesuvius at luncheon-time, when the restaurant seethes with custom and by night, when the tempo is suited to a more leisurely pattern of dining, which is pursued in great comfort.’

What the Cradocks omit to mention among their catty remarks on literary agents is that the Monseigneur Grill was a significant example of Art Décor design and internal décor. Certainly the RIBA seems to think so, as its archives contain a number of striking photographs showing the interior of the restaurant. Designed by architects William Henry White & Sons in 1931 and decorated by French decorators Marc-Henri and Laverdet ( who also designed the interior of the Whitehall Theatre in 1930 ) in a flamboyant style, its dining area was decidedly spacious, but lacked a certain intimacy.

It’s instructive to get an American view of some British institutions. So here are Peter Passell and Leonard Ross on ‘The Best London Restaurant’.

The trouble with eating in London is that it is like eating in New York. There are vast hordes longing to dine well and dozens of exciting new restaurants longing to fill the void. Yet somehow nothing seems to work out. Perhaps it is only a scarcity of talent—-running a restaurant well demands more than one chef imported from the Continent. More likely it’s incentives. There aren’t enough people who both know good food and are willing to pay for it. Restaurants are made or broken by who shows up, not by what is served. The few establishments that start out with standards find little reason to maintain them. No guidebook inspector will turn the decline into headlines; no army of food pedants will organize a boycott.

Of course, there are a few bright spots. Robert Carrier’s relentless pursuit of the nouveau may irritate the snob, but the fixed menus frequently work well. Inigo Jones’s lovely room can make up for an occasional error in service. The fish is very fresh ( and very expensive) at Wilton’s. The new Capital Hotel dining room produces the best rack of lamb north of Paris. Marynka demonstrates that Polish food is no joke.

But for our money we’ll take London’s Indian/Pakistani restaurants. They tend to be much more sophisticated than the North American version and not nearly so lacking in grace. The best of them, Sri Lanka, is in fact not Indian but Ceylonese, a variant on the national cuisines of the subcontinent. This pretty little restaurant near Earl’s Court ( an unsocial twenty-minute taxi ride west from Mayfair) prepares the predictable curries, flavored rices, and breads as well as well as any other in London and adds a dozen distinguished  Ceylonese specialties. Among them, a super-hot tomato broth ( perhaps really a puree of chili peppers), the pleasure of which comes in the vibration of subtler spices in the aftertaste; delicate rice-flour crepes served with fried eggs; chewy fried breads stuffed with egg, vegetables , or meat, and far superior to the usual Indian paratha; a steamed rice-flour cake drowned in coconut milk. With a couple of German lagers, the bill comes to two pounds per person.

Today, the eating scene in London has changed incredibly. Here you can eat around the globe, from Brazil to Russia and Indonesia to California, often from street stalls in Brick Lane and Portobello Road, a development that Passell and Ross could hardly have imagined. The Indian/Pakistani restaurants are still there, of course, and are proliferating day by day. It is odd that our Americans fail to mention the curry houses centered on Brick Lane, and further east, in and around Whitechapel High Street, where the best of them offer high-class ‘ home-cooking ‘ of the kind described by the authors. But it is true that Sri Lankan restaurants are not as common, but are becoming more so and those that flourish today serve some of the dishes described by Passell and Ross. The restaurant selected out for special praise, however, appears to have gone.

As for the other top restaurants mentioned, Wilton’s is still there and is still very expensive. The restaurant at the Capital Hotel is flourishing and is probably still offering its rack of lamb. Unfortunately, the Marynka near Earl’s Court appears to have disappeared, but there are other Polish eateries in the capital, including the rather dowdy Daquise, near the V & A, which seems to have been around since the First World War.[R.M.Healey]