1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book Coronation Edition

EXPLANATION O those readers who may wonder at the Grown over the letter N with the wreath surround a short explanation is necessary. The Crown is a copy of the Imperial Crown of France. The letter N is not the initial letter of Napoleon III, but is the initial of the second name of the founder of the Cafe Royal. When Daniel Nicols Thevenon arrived in London in 1864, a fugitive from the fierce bankruptcy laws of France, with his wife, of cash they had none, and they worked at anything they could get until they had saved a few pounds with which they opened a small Cafe Restaurant in Glasshouse Street. This modest establishment they named the " Cafe Restaurant Nicols." With tireless energy they built up their business until it expanded over the site occupied by the famous building to-day. As soon as the financial tide had turned, Nicols repaid every penny he owed to his creditors in France. It was not until the eighties that the name " Cafe Royal " was chosen, and this was due to a suggestion from the son-in-law of Nicols that a better sounding name than Cafe Restaurant should grace the portals of a restaurant that was the meeting place of the fugitives from their beloved France, and, what was more, an establishment where the cooking was a byword for excellence and the cellars beyond reproach. The decision that the crown surmounting the letter N should be chosen for the design and the premises rechristened Cafe Royal satisfied both the proprietor and his somewhat chauvenistic son-in-law, for the former considered that the

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