Putting the French Restaurant on the London Map from the Late Nineteenth Century to the First World War

Abstract

This chapter considers how the French restaurant arrived in London bringing out aspects that have been previously been less extensively treated in this better-known period of its history. It was indeed the era of the grand hotel restaurants, of the Entente Cordiale and the Franco-British Exhibition and the development of cultural and culinary relations between London and Paris on several different levels. Yet while Escoffier was celebrated at the Savoy, many different Frenchmen and women lived and ate in areas of London such as Soho and (what would become known as) Fitzrovia, often as political exiles and refugees in very difficult circumstances. The chapter is divided into three sections: ‘Setting the Scene: French Cuisine and Forms of Culinary, Cultural and Social Display in Nineteenth-Century London’; ‘The French Restaurant Arrives in London: Famous Names and (In)Famous places’; ‘The Expansion of the French Restaurant in London: from “foreign kickshaws” to “a notable gathering of Frenchmen” charting changes in attitudes towards French food and restaurants. The chapter ends at the outbreak of the First World War as many Frenchmen working in London’s restaurant business left to join the French forces at the Front.