Restaurant

My idea of hell is eating out at a restaurant so I am probably amongst the least qualified people to talk about this subject in the UK. Give me a jam sandwich and a cup of tea at about 6 o’clock and I’m happy.

I wasn’t thinking about this when I was listening to my latest Freeman Wills Croft audio book set in the 1920s (I’m addicted to the Golden Age of crime fiction). Two of the characters were arranging to meet and they settled on a Gentleman’s Club. It was then that I thought why don’t they meet in a restaurant. Why not indeed? So that is where I started to have a look as to why not.

Actually, in one way or another, people have always been able to eat out (i.e. away from their normal residence or the home of another person), and the ancient wayside inns and market town taverns bear testimony to the needs of travellers and traders over the centuries. Even in the early 1900s office workers, often commuting from the suburbs, had been recognised by ABC restaurants and, more famously, by J. Lyons & Co. with their teashops and, from 1909, their Corner House restaurants. People all over the country knew of Lyons Corner Houses even when there were none locally.

a typical Lyons Corner House

However, World War 1 had been a social and political watershed. The peace of the 1920s remained contested with rich and poor experiencing changed social and economic circumstances. Not only had so many families been devastated by loss of life and injuries, in post-war Britain the established values were more frequently questioned.

Voices of authority were less convincing to those who had survived military service, or escaped domestic service for the munitions factories. Those who had hoped for a more equitable social landscape in the aftermath of war were being disappointed. The war had drawn men from the labour market for military service and provided opportunities for young women, in large numbers, to engage with employment in offices and factories rather than domestic service.

domestic servants, a disappearing breed

There was a desire among middle and upper class households to re-establish patterns of domestic service. Although this servant problem had existed at the turn of the century (and still does in my experience) this was a turning point. The servants had learned that there was life outside of Downton Abbey.

It seems that there were a few more reasons for the changes in social attitudes. Through these years, and into the 1930s, the UK was beset by the paradox of economic decline and change, old industries faltered dramatically but new ones emerged offering hope. In general terms, there was increased leisure time from shorter working weeks and the establishment of paid holiday entitlement; increased real wages and, in response, increased public and private sector leisure provision. The rapid expansion of cinema and radio opened peoples’ ears and eyes to such different expectations.

In the early 1920s, wealthy young people who ostentatiously dined and danced had been seen as outrageous. But as their exploits became seen or heard folk began to think why not me. The convergence of music, dancing and dining was evident in programming for radio stations.

dining and dancing in a Piccadilly restaurant 

In evidence to the Royal Commission on Licensing on behalf of the Hotels and Restaurants Association in 1930, George Reeves-Smith was to say that … ‘owing to social changes, to the entirely different views now held in regard to taking meals in public restaurants and to the domestic servant difficulty, a large proportion of the public of every class in London and on the road now took their meals in hotels and restaurants’.

Most of the above was taken from an article in the Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, Dining Out: Restaurants and British Society in the 1930s by Phil Lyon.

There was zero chance of me not having this poem below by Billy Collins as the themed poem.

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book—José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light
that falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

                    

Thanks for reading. Feel free to post a comment. 

Terry Q.