Memories: Eating Out in Post-War London

Though my Ma was a chef, we didn't eat out much in post-war London - didn't need to, really. Battersea had no restaurants in those days, anyway, just a few greasy-spoon caffs, the posher cafes in Arding and Hobbs and Battersea Park and the hole-in-the-corner near Battersea High Street open market, where, on winter marketing days, we were taken for a cup of steaming tea and a toasted, buttered bun.

There was/is still an Eel and Pie shop, again in Battersea High Street, whose pie and mash I was allowed to try once and disliked. She used to buy live eels there because my father liked them - cooked, of course; I didn't until decades later. Once, when I was about nine she asked me to pick up the eels from the shop while she did the rest of the market shopping, saying I was to stand outside the shop with the packet of eels and wait for her. The eels were chopped, live, into eatable lengths and wrapped in greaseproof, then brown paper. I picked it up and stood outside the shop, as told, with the package in my hands. Two minutes on and it started wriggling. I dropped it at my feet and stood there, too squeamish to pick it up! My mother and the stallholders close to burst out laughing as I told her what happened. I can remember being much miffed when she told me I'd never make a chef. Too right, there, Ma! 

When we did eat out, usually for birthday treats, she insisted that we explore world cuisines, such as they were in London in those days; the Swiss Edelweiss in Pimlico, Veeraswamy's off Regent Street, Good Friends in the Docklands, a particular French restaurant in Greek Street, Soho, opposite the wonderful bakery that's still going strong, The Gay Hussars just up the road, Blooms in the East End, the big, barnlike Schmidt's German restaurant in Charlotte Street, also Soho, whose food I didn't much like, Brusa's, the Italian restaurant in St Martin's Lane near Covent Garden, a Swiss vegetarian restaurant at the back of Duke Street, opposite Selfridges's, that made the best cheese omelette in London, etc. I can also remember eating at Rules - and Simpsons in the Strand where she had been the wartime sous chef. All of these would have been expensive for my family, but my mother saved from birthday to birthday so we could all enjoy dishes she didn't cook at home, but knew well. 

What it all did was set me up for exploring the 60's boom in London restaurants once I'd started college and left home. It also set me up as a collector of recipe books and as a cook of as many cuisines as I could explore. Some legacy, eh?