Dinners and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London

The first information that I received as to Mrs. "Charlie" Sphinx having returned from Cannes was in a little note from the lady herself, delivered on Sunday at lunch-time, to t...

The handwriting on the letter was familiar. The letter bore a U.S.A. stamp. I wondered why Miss Dainty, of all the principal London theatres, whom I had seen off one day last su...

The white-faced house with gilded balconies that stands at the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly is an old friend with a new face, for in the year of grace '97 the old ho...

While I sat in the anteroom of the Hôtel Avondale and waited for the Epicure, whom I had asked to come and dine with me, as a general practitioner would call in a specialist in...

"I want father to take me to see 'The Liars,'" said pretty Miss Carcanet ("Brighteyes" to her friends), "but he says that he sees too many of them as it is in his club smoking-r...

I would be willing to make you, my dear sir, a very small bet, that if in the early afternoon you go into the restaurant where you intend to dine in the evening and disturb the...

Sometimes after a period of depression one wants a tonic in dinners, as one does in health. My gastronomic malady had been a family feast at which I had sat next to a maiden aun...

Man and boy, these six years or so, I have known little Oddenino, who now rules the destinies of the Café Royal. The little man, with his quiet, rather nervous manner and big se...

It was in the noble cause of conversion of fellow-man that I dined at the Hotel Cecil. One of my uncles, the Nabob--so called by us because he spent many years in the gorgeous E...

She is a charming little lady, and her husband, to tell the truth, spoils her just a little. Most married dames would have been content, if they wished to dine at a restaurant o...

I dined one day early last week at the Trocadero, a little specially-ordered _tête-à-tête_ dinner over which the chef had taken much trouble--his _Suprêmes de sole Trocadéro_, a...

The little curly-headed, light-haired page, who is the modern Mercury, in that he gives warning when one is rung up at the telephone in the club, came to me in the reading-room...

The responsibility of giving dinner to a Princess, even though she be not a British Princess, but the bearer of an Italian title, is no light one. Claridge's, "the home of kings...

It was pleasant to see Miss Dainty's (of all the principal London theatres) handwriting again. She had read all the "Dinners and Diners," she told me, and did not think that any...

The battle-painter and I were walking down the Strand, uncertain where to lunch, when just by the theatrical bookshop a man in a shabby suit of tweed and a billycock hat, drawn...

I have a vague remembrance of having as a small boy been taken round the Houses of Lords and Commons as a holiday treat. The Houses cannot have been sitting at the time, and the...

In the morning, with my shaving water, was brought a note in a dashing feminine handwriting. It was from the little American prima donna to say she was sorry that she had forgot...

"Oh, yes," said my maiden aunt. "I read of your going out to dinners and taking actresses and grass-widows and other pretty ladies to dine. I wonder you are not tired of so much...

"If you will dine with me on Sunday night I will give you dinner in the most interesting private dining-room that any restaurant in London can show," I said to little Mrs. Tota.

I was getting to the end of a tiring day in a dingy office in Fleet Street, and the little printer's devil, who was sitting on a chair in the corner by the fire playing cat's-cr...

I was somewhat in a quandary. I was going to the new play at the St. James's, and had made up my mind to dine at a little club not far from Charing Cross, of which I have the ho...

La Princesse Lointaine was passing through town on her way to Rome, to her husband's palazzo--to the great grim building where the big suisse stands on guard by the entrance, an...

Whenever I have come across a Philistine who has eaten a vegetarian dinner, he always professes that he narrowly escaped with his life. Now this I knew must be an invention, and...

The little American prima donna was not so faithless as I thought, for when, Goodwood being over, I wrote to her and asked her if she would not take pity on a poor bachelor stra...

I had been kept late in Fleet Street on Saturday, and at a little before seven I woke to the fact that it was near the dinner hour, that I was in the clothes I had worn all day,...

He was the junior subaltern when I commanded H company in the old regiment, and a very good subaltern he was. It was only the other day that I read how in one of the first skirm...

The Victory Chapter of the Knights of the Pelican and the Eagle, perfect and puissant princes of Rose Croix, has been closed, and gentlemen in evening clothes are being helped i...

If I had to set an examination paper on the art of dining, one of the questions I should certainly ask the examinee would be: "What occupation or amusement would you suggest for...

"The best dinner in London, sir!" was what our fathers always added when, with a touch of gratification, they used to tell of having been asked to dine on the Queen's Guard at S...

"None of your d--d _à la's_, and remember I won't get into dress clothes for anybody." That was what the old gentleman wrote, and it was not an easy matter to find a dining plac...

I felt like an extract from a Christmas story after the manner of Charles Dickens. I was the unfortunate, desponding individual driven at Christmas time to eat a solitary dinner...

"So you are the man who is writing those articles about 'Dinners and Diners,'" said old Sir George, when I dined quietly last week with him and Lady Carcanet. "Good Lord! Who'd...

He, a gentleman on the Stock Exchange, who has generally a stock of good stories, mentioned in the course of a letter to me that he had heard a really good tale of the last bye-...

Yet another invitation to dine from an unknown friend, and this time with a tinge of mystery to give it piquancy. My would-be host offered to give me what he believed to be one...

The superior person and I were chatting in the club as to eating generally, and he was holding forth on the impossibility of discovering any dining place, as Kettner's was disco...

I first met Arthur Roberts in the buffet of the Cavour, and first heard there the tale of "The Old Iron Pot." On that occasion I was taken by a friend into the buffet, a long ro...

The American Comedian and myself stood at a club window and looked out on London. He was rehearsing, and so enjoyed the rare privilege of having his evenings free to spend as he...

It is not the least pleasant part of writing of dinners and those who eat them that it brings me some varied correspondence, and perhaps the pleasantest letter I have received w...

I am beginning to flatter myself that I am a success in clerical circles. One week I took out to dinner my sister-in-law--who, I omitted to state, is the daughter of a dean; and...

"I thought your Galatea a superb creation, and flatter myself I gave an entirely new reading of the part of Chrysos's slave," I said; and our leading lady was kind enough to say...

MY DEAR AUNT TABITHA--First, let me thank you for the tracts entitled "The Converted Clown" and "The Journalist Reclaimed"; they will have my attention. It was no doubt your nep...

When I looked at the above I groaned aloud. Was it possible, I thought, that any human being could eat a meal of such a length and yet live? I looked at my two companions, but t...

The honorary secretary of the Regimental Dinner Club, who is the gentleman who, in one of the little rooms, somewhat resembling loose boxes, of Cox and Co., the military bankers...

"I have no amusement at all now," said little Mrs. Tota--we always called her Mrs. Tota up at Simla, for she was as bright and perky as her little namesake, the Indian parrot. "...

The dramatic moment of the evening came when Juliette, the new French maid, with despair painted on her face, out of breath, and with her bonnet on one side of her head, came ru...

He is a rising young artist with an idea, an idea which is, or was, to make him and me rich beyond dreams of avarice; all that is wanted now being a publisher who will see matte...

There were some portions of my aunt Tabitha's letter from the North which were distinctly satisfactory. She was kind enough to say that both she and my cousin Judith, the most d...

It was half-past seven, or it may have been even a little later, when I encountered the recorder of racing romances wandering along the eastern half-mile of Piccadilly, and both...