Eating Out

The restaurant in its modern form was an important addition to the nineteenth-century urban landscape. It epitomized the new forms of metropolitan culture. The restaurant is explored here through the way in which it developed forms of commercial hospitality, which were in turn, integral to the discourses of the West End. Pleasure districts function partly through a discourse of hospitality which makes them inviting. Eating out was never just about the consumption of food; it was about the facilitation of forms of social interaction. The chapter looks at elite restaurants such as Romano’s on the Strand, which were crucial to the nightlife of the rich. It then looks at the way the West End developed food for the masses by delving into two business empires. First, it studies the world of Lyons catering, which established a hugely successful franchise of tea shops, starting in the West End. It then looks at the world of the Gattis, who owned cafeterias, music halls, and theatres. The Gatti’s restaurant on the Strand was a major West End venue which attracted middle-class diners in an opulent setting but with affordable prices.