Consuming Interest
By LESLIE. ADRIAN rrtits week I was present at a small, informal ceremony when a French Routiers sign was handed over to Mr. Claude Pirkis, owner of the `Fiddlers Three' Restaurant, Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, one of the first London restau- rants to display the blue and red circle which has become so familiar to tourists in France since the days of currency restriction. As I mentioned the other day, the Relais Routiers is an organi- sation started twenty-four years ago to recom- mend good, simple eating places for lorry drivers and those who earn their living on the roads. But its influence has spread, and today Les Amis des Routiers include thousands of tourists who are also looking for plain and inexpensive cook- ing; this year the Rdutiers have spread to Great Britain; a list of selected restaurants appears for the first time in their annual guide. This is now on sale for 12s. 6d., post free, from the organi- sation's London representative, M. Gilbert Lesage, 13 Chelsea Embankment, London, SW3.
M. Lesage is now engaged full-time—he had visited 'Fiddlers Three' seven times unannounced before he handed over the sign—in testing pos- sible restaurants here. At an early stage it was Obvious that the food budget of the average British lorry driver and that of his opposite num- ber in France were very different. Few transport workers here will pay the 9s. average on which the Relais Routiers works. M. Lesage found his possibles' among the smaller restaurants and tea- shops : not the transport `calls.' In Britain he is Working on a 10s. average for a meal, but if a restaurant is outstandingly good value he will allow 12s. 6d. He has few dogmatic views about English or French cooking, although he is the son of a famed French restaurateur. His initial list ranges from Tudor cafés with home-made scones to a fish and chip shop and places like `Fiddlers Three,' which has a Provençal kitchen.
I do not normally publish the names of recom- mended restaurants, and I sympathise with 'Atticus' of the Sunday Times in his recent pro- nouncement that wild horses would not drag from him the name of a London restaurant he had visited on the first Routiers list. But the value of the system is so obvious that restaurants should be encouraged to try to qualify for it; and if this can be done by giving publicity to those which have already qualified, then publicity there should be. So, for the record, three restaurants have won their roundels in Central London : the Mon Plaisir in Monmouth Street, Shireff's in Great Castle Street and the 'Fiddlers Three.' M. Lesage hopes to have 120 places throughout the country by the end of the year and next year it will be 200. The maximum will eventually be 400, for the Routiers keep standards up by fixing the total number of recommended restaurants. As new ones come in, the borderline places may find themselves dropped.
Glyndebourne time will soon be here again, and a comment on the catering arrangements (which are proudly declared, on the cover of the little booklet supplied to all who buy tickets for the opera, to be 'under the personal supervision of Vernon Herbert') may be not out of place.
I fear Mr. Christie, that presiding genius who has made Glyndebourne into one of the world's leading opera houses, must be told bluntly that his catering arrangements are not only unworthy of his music, but would be rather more appro- priate for the cafeteria at the Regent's Park Zoo. To begin with, ordering dinner in March for consumption in July is ridiculous; how do I know whether I shall feel like Item E (roast young Sussex chicken) or Item F (grilled contre- filet steak Mozart)? 1 know the answer is that ordering dinner four months in advance facilitates service; all I can say is that things worked per- fectly well in the old days.
But this is not all. If one accepts the fact that dinner must be ordered in advance, it is pre- sumably not unreasonable to order the wine as well. But this year there is an added refinement —unrefinement, it ought to be called. You have to order your aperitifs, too! The thought of solemnly writing down, in the space provided, 'One dry martini and one gin-and-tonic' (Schweppes, of course), is .well-nigh intolerable, particularly if the day I go turns out to be a real English July day and I suddenly feel like a double Scotch.
And still Mr. Vernon Herbert's personal super- vision is not done with me. Last year the effort of deciding on a July dinner with snow still on the ground could be avoided; an excellent cold buffet was provided in one of the dining-halls, for purchase on the spot. This year Mr. Herbert has calmly announced that he has removed all the seating from this buffet; we have now to stand up as though we were in a milk-bar, balancing plate, roll, fork and wine as best we may.
And while I am on the subject, I could well dispense with the 'annotations' M. Andre Simon has provided for the wine list. 'A Princely wine in gorgeous Court dress,' he says of a hock, and 'A true gentleman . . . honest, courteous, mature and such good company,' of a Pommard. I really thought Mr. James Thurber had polished this nonsense off for good and all when he had the host in one of his cartoons say, 'It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused'by its presumption.'
Yes, I know I go to Glyndebourne for the opera, not for the food. But the opera is set in such perfect surroundings and an evening there is so much more than merely a musical event that it seems a pity to spoil it with so large a dose of ungracious living.
Following my comments on the difficulty of finding hotel rooms in big provincial cities, 1 have heard from some London organisations prepared to find accommodation; and the manager of Hotel Booking Service, Mr. George Elliot, 56 Coventry Street, WI (GER 5052), has explained to ine how they work. They do not book rooms en bloc in the way theatre-seat agencies operate, but they are known to the hotels and therefore can offer some security. The snag with many casual telephone bookings is that the clients fail to turn up and the hotel loses a night's takings. There is a charge of 3s. on a single room and 5s. on a double for personal bookings through these agencies. A deposit of one night's accom- modation is also necessary. But if you book through a business organisation known to the agents, there is no charge and no deposit.
One advantage these agents have is that when central hotels are fully booked they have a good list of smaller places. Even in that well-known trouble-spot Manchester, I am told.
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