1936 On the Continent

Crawford Street, and
Gerard’s
in Bond Street are the other leaders.
    F URNITURE: Old furniture tends to accumulate near St. James’s Square and in Soho. A shop which enjoys the most august custom in the land is that of
Moss Harris
in New Oxford Street. There is some pleasant furniture-hunting to be done in Marylebone High Street, and near by, in St. Christopher’s Place, a little traffic-less street as quiet as Venice, are remarkable stores of real interesting things.
Botibol
and
Mallett
both have unique and important prices.
    Gordon Russell’s
modern ideas can be studied in Wigmore Street. One of the most up to date of the big furnishing stores is
Heal’s
in Tottenham Court Road.
    D OMESTIC G EAR:
Staines
, in Victoria Street, has such a collection of domestic fittings and gadgets as must meltthe heart—and the purse—of any woman or man. Gifts for the house are here numbered by the thousand.
    C LEANERS AND D YERS:
Achille Serre
does fine work very reliably.
Eastman
and
Pullar
have huge followings.
Duggin
in Duke Street, Oxford Street, has a useful system of special flat rates for a quantity of work; and he uses neat little chip-labels, easily detached, instead of the usual sprawling stitchery.
    G IFTS IN G ENERAL: Knightsbridge has just asserted its growing importance by the opening of
Rivoli
, a branch of the famous German gift store
Rosenhain
. It is a mixture of Asprey’s, Fortnum & Mason’s, Drew’s and Hamley’s. The most important departments are ladies’ handbags, week-end cases, and travel kit, jewellery, card tables and accessories, smokers’ accessories. The general tone is expensive, although prices are lower than at the stores above mentioned.

    LONDON BY NIGHT
By ERIC DUNSTAN
    Y OU are a visitor to London. You’ve money to spend and time too. How best can you do both? So much depends on your taste, but, if you can only find it, there’s something for everyone in our great city.
    Let’s start with food. You must eat something and somewhere before you go on to your theatre, concert, music-hall, or circus. But where? Let’s assume first that expense is only a secondary consideration. You want the best. Where can you get it? First, come the great cosmopolitan hotels where to dine you
must
dress, that is to say, you
must
wear a dinner jacket, and, if there are ladies in your party and you’re going on to a show, “tails” and a white tie are
de rigueur
. Most exclusive, but not perhaps except to snobs, the most amusing is Claridge’s. If there is foreign royalty in town that’s where they stay, or at the Carlton, which is about on a par. The Ritz is smarter for lunch than for dinner; the Berkeley for both. The Dorchester, Grosvenor House, the Mayfair or the Savoy are all in the same flight; a first-class cosmopolitan cuisine, such as you will find in the same class of hotel in any of the great capitals of the world.
Restaurants Proper
    Then there is the same type of restaurant with the same range of prices and menus but without the hotel attached. Quaglino’s in Bury Street, the favourite haunt of our ex-King in his Prince of Wales days; the Apéritif in Jermyn Street; Prunier’s in St. James’s Street where fish is the speciality; the San Marco in Devonshire House with its gay décor by Oliver Marsch, and dozens more. In these and their peers, dinner with wine will not cost you less than a pound a head, if you do things well, though you may get out a little under if you spoil your ship for a ha’p’orth of tar.
    If food and drink but no band or cabaret is what you want, then I suggest you will eat and drink better at Boulestin’s in Southampton Street or the Jardin des Gourmets in Greek Street. But these are not places to dine before a show so much as when you want to eat at leisure, relish your food and make a night of that only. You’ll pay well for it but it will be worth paying well for.
    Between these, the most expensive, and Soho, the cheapest of London’s restaurants, there are myriads of moderate priced eating places where for about half the price of the first category, i.e., for, say, ten shillings a head, you can dine reasonably well. The Hungaria in Lower Regent Street, the Café Royal in Regent Street; the Trocadero in Shaftesbury Avenue; the Cumberland at the Marble Arch; Prince’s in Piccadilly; Simpson’s in the Strand, the one place where they specialise in English joints; The Ivy opposite the St. Martin’s Theatre, where all film and theatredom dine