Half a century of change in hotels and restaurants
In June 1952, Egon Ronay, at 26, was the youngest restaurant manager in London. The 96 Piccadilly restaurant, no longer in existence, had a grill room, banqueting rooms and a night club named Carousel.
It was one of the top restaurants in the capital, where people went to eat and dance. Dinner, followed by dancing to jazz bands, was the fashion and the Colony, in Berkeley Square, was an example of a popular restaurant for dinner and dancing.
Other leading restaurants were the Coq d'Or, which occupied the building where Langan's Brasserie now stands, the Caprice, the Savoy Grill and the restaurant at the Ritz.
Restaurants almost exclusively offered French cooking which, according to Ronay, was very good. He said: "French chefs of today say that before they were born, good food did not exist but that is absolute rubbish. In the very top restaurants food was as good then as it is today, but there were far fewer restaurants. There are many more restaurants today but there are many more people who can afford to eat in them."
Ronay believes the number of restaurants in London has increased at least 30-fold, with the most marked change being in the explosion of casual, inexpensive places to eat.
In 1952 a popular choice for people wanting a quick bite was the Lyons Corner Houses dotted around the capital. Tea at Lyons was, said Ronay, "a treat", while the breakfasts were "marvellous". Ronay, a fan of the former Lyons Corner Houses, said snack food elsewhere was, by and large, "inedible rubbish".
"If you went to a pub, all you could see was a sausage sizzling on a hot plate, hard boiled eggs in vinegar and Scotch eggs," he said. "There has been a revolutionary change in the mass market."
George Goring, managing director of the Goring hotel in London, was working at a privately run hotel in Hamburg, Germany, in June 1952.
At that time the majority of hotels in London were privately owned. The few hotel groups included the Savoy Group and Lyons Hotels, which owned the Cumberland.
British Transport Hotels owned hotels outside the capital, including Gleneagles and the Balmoral in Scotland.
The Goring, opened by Goring's grandfather Otto Goring in March 1910, was one of several privately owned grand hotels in London. Others included the Park Lane and the Ritz hotels, which were owned by Sir Guy Bracewell-Smith, who also owned Arsenal FC.
Another marked difference was that, unlike today, there were fewer hotels in the capital.
Goring said: "At the beginning of the Queen's reign, if you had a hotel in London you were laughing because there were not enough bedrooms."
Standards in hotels have, according to Goring, "soared" since then. There were no toiletries in bathrooms and slippers and dressing gowns in bedrooms were unheard-of.
Stephen Korany, who ran the Basil Street hotel in Knightsbridge from 1953 until he retired in 1995, added: "Lots of hotels had bedrooms without bathrooms. These, along with single bedrooms, have disappeared."
The use of ration books in 1952 meant food was limited and Goring remembers that his father, who was then running the hotel, had to use whatever ingredients he could find to feed his guests.
He said: "My father used to shoot rooks and make rook pie, which tasted like shepherd's pie. He also shot rabbits and made all sorts of dishes with them. People thought it was veal.
"Then there was Mrs Goring's salad that my mother made with anything she could get her hands on - Spam, lettuce, tomatoes, anything."
Visitors to the Goring were either Americans who travelled to Britain on cruise ships, or wealthy British people who would often bring their families and stay for two or three weeks at a time.
by Louise Bozec
