Jammet's Of Dublin: 1901-67

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

PART I

1. In the Beginning

2. St Andrew Street and Church Lane

3. Haute Cuisine

4. Celebrations Turn to Ashes

5. William Orpen: Dinner in Jammet’s

6. Nassau Street and Adam Court

7. The Emergency

8. Art, Design and the Boys

9. Louis Jammet

10. Egon Ronay Sees Stars beyond the Swing Door

11. Ulysses Undone

12. Louis Jammet Is Dead: An Appreciation by Micheál MacLiammóir

PART II

13. A Day in the Life of Jammet’s by Shay Harpur, Sommelier

14. Shay: The Sommelier’s Tale, by Jackie Harpur

PART III

15. Jammet’s Staff – Simply the Finest

16. Sally Dowling’s Romance

17. Jimmie and Victor

18. What a Delicious War

PART IV

19. Stories from the Restaurant

20. The Grill Room Delivers

21. Oh to Be in the Bar

22. Hijinks in the Blue Room

23. The Trinity Set

PART V

24. Food, Fabulous Food – Original Menus and Recipes

25. A Poem, a Dream, a Delight!

Appendix 1: 1967 Wine List

Appendix 2: Letter from Jimmie Beggan

Appendix 3: The Short Circuit by Patrick Campbell

Notes

Index

Copyright

Acknowledgments

SHAY HARPUR

deserves both acknowledgment and thanks for his compelling manuscript, and Jackie for giving me the opportunity to build up and out from it. Jennifer Harpur, the eldest of Shay’s five daughters, for all her fine work on the translations. Lucinda Kehoe and Andrew Gallen for painting and drawings. The Jammet family, helpful and encouraging: Louis Jammet’s daughter Róisín Hood, and her sons, Grattan in Dublin and Garrett in Philadelphia; André Jammet in New York; Josie Jammet and Sue Park in London; Catherine Payne in London, and her father, Pierre Jammet, who owned Le Bristol Hôtel in Paris.

Sally Gorey, whose vivid memories of living in as a cashier convinced me that there were stories aplenty out there. Alan Stoner, all the way from Texas, whose love for the restaurant and Mamie scintillates through his account of life in the Grill Room. Eamonn McCann, who drew up the floor plans. Marie Hurding with memories of her father and autographed cards. Noel Flynn with photos and documents from his father Paddy. Alex Findlater, most generous with time and material. Frank Bouchier-Hayes, who drew my attention to many Jammet gems in the newspapers. Shane O’Toole, who sent images and a copy of his interview with Noel Moffett. Lucy and Ken Monaghan, and Robert Nicholson of the James Joyce Museum, who answered all my questions. Barry Canny and Aidan Corless who allowed reproductions of unique pages from the Jammet and Burlington Hotel Visitors’ Books.

Suggestions from correspondents have led me down some intriguing byways, and to all these people I’d like to extend my sincere thanks. Florence Campbell, Andrew Carpenter, Kenneth Carroll, Declan Carty, Emma Clarke Conway, Liam Collins, Neil Donnelly, Paul Fanning, the late Desmond FitzGerald, Joan Gallagher, Seán Gallagher, Michael Gantley, James Gorry, Alan Graham, David Hackett, Marianne Hartigan, Rose and Martin Hopper, Tommy Hopper, Patrick Judge, Aoife Kellett, Ann Keys, Breda Maguire, David Miller, Eddie Murphy, Frank Murray, Cian O’Carroll, John O’Neill, Una O’Neill, Michael O’Sullivan, Vincent Palmer, Fred Pattison, Patrick Quinn, Benita Ryan, James Ryan, Christopher Sands, Margaret Scott, Philip Sheppard, Deirdre Sugrue, Jean Swift, Pauline Swords of the National Gallery of Ireland, Pamela Walker, Sheila White.

For the finer points of haute cuisine, I relied heavily on the patient expertise of Gerry Connell, B.Sc. (Hons) LCGI, lecturer in Culinary Arts at the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology. Gerry trained as a chef in Jammet’s and was consultant on the authentic Jammet recipes at the end of this book. Deconstructing the restaurant’s menus fell to Paul Kavanagh, who trained in DIT under the great Jammet chef-turned-lecturer, Paddy Dunne. Paul’s calmness during several anxious phone calls was greatly reassuring.

One reference source I had constantly at hand also originated in DIT. It was written as a PhD thesis by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire: ‘The emergence, development and influence of French Haute Cuisine on public dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900–2000: an oral history’ (2009): http://arrow.dit.ie/tourdoc/12. Máirtín’s scholarly research was an indispensable guide for my own work on Jammet’s, and the assistance and images that he provided are much appreciated.

I would like to pay tribute to those who crafted this book from an impossible dream into a physical reality: Jonathan Williams, for his great care and attention to detail; The Lilliput Press and designer Marsha Swan for their beautiful production; and editor Fiona Dunne for her boundless patience, support and creative expertise.

For Sheila O’Hagan, poet, author and mentor: her encouragement and sage advice over many years is deeply appreciated. Gratitude, too, to friends in the St Stephen’s Green Group and the Maynooth Writers’ Group, who offered a much-needed sounding board, and to Ann Egan, who proofread the original manuscript and shared my enthusiasm. Enthusiastic, kind, supportive and handy at the cooker – all these epithets apply to my husband Dudley, who kept me fed, watered and sane during months of long hours at the computer, and to whom I can only say a heartfelt thank you.

Preface

THE SMALL, BATTERED

cardboard box on my desk was secured by a frayed blue ribbon tied in a careful knot. Inside, not sheer silk stockings as advertised, but eighty-two dog-eared pages of pure gold. Shay Harpur’s manuscript, lovingly typed by his wife Jackie, was the last of many versions on which he worked during the 1980s.

Jackie’s gesture of entrusting the culmination of his work to me was daunting, but from the moment I began to read I was captivated by Shay’s passion for this world within a world, and by his pride in being part of a great restaurant. His original manuscript, edited, is incorporated in this book as ‘A Day in the Life of Jammet’s by Shay Harpur, Sommelier’. Shay’s memoir was the springboard that propelled me to discover more. From an unlikely beginning in 1901 when the restaurant was founded by two French brothers, Michel and François Jammet, its doors remained open throughout some of the most turbulent events in recent Irish history – British rule, the Easter Rising, War of Independence, First World War, Second World War – there was something very special about the place.

A letter to Irish newspapers seeking anecdotes and memorabilia prompted an extraordinary and wholehearted response. I wish to thank all the contributors featured in this book for contacting me, and for then graciously following up on the many queries and requests with which I bombarded them.

The Jammet family have been generous participants in this project of recording a precious piece of their history. From the ‘Irish’ side, Louis Jammet’s daughter Róisín Hood and her sons Garrett and Grattan have provided invaluable information, photographs and ephemera. The unique Wine List was a real find. With the closure of the Nassau Street and Adam Court premises in 1967, some of the contents were sold, others were lost. The rest was hurriedly packed into unmarked boxes and distributed among the family to whomever had storage. Garrett, who lives in America, happened to have a large basement, and that’s where many documents, cutlery and crockery were shipped and lay undisturbed for years, before he conducted an exhaustive, and dusty, search.

The ‘French’ side of the family, many of whom became distinguished hoteliers and restaurateurs, are represented by André Jammet. André, founder of the legendary La Caravelle restaurant in New York with his wife Rita, has been a great source of encouragement, with knowledge of the family’s historic restaurant in Paris and many images.

From cardboard box to all-consuming quest: wherever I turned, there were people keen to talk, to remember, to immortalize one of Ireland’s best-loved dining establishments. Here are the stories about the food, the wine, the service; most of all, about the people who worked and played in Dublin’s one and only French restaurant – Jammet’s.

Alison Maxwell, Maynooth, November 2011

Introduction

The pleasures of the table are common to all ages and ranks, to all countries and times; they not only harmonize with all the other pleasures, but remain to console us for their loss.

Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste, 1825)

THE STORY BEGINS

in the hamlet of Saint Julia de Bec near Quillan in the foothills of the French Pyrenees with two brothers. Michel is twelve and François seventeen. The year is 1870. There is no work, so the brothers start walking.

In Perpignan they get jobs as kitchen boys, but the dream is of Paris and fortune. Before long, they set out again, journeying almost the length of France, south to north, until they reach the capital. Again, the jobs easiest to find for two scrawny, impoverished lads are those in restaurants. Although very different in temperament – Michel is high-spirited and eager, François cautious and quiet – both brothers possess a flair for the art of fine cooking and a great capacity for hard work. Quickly they progress from kitchen boys to trainees to chefs, little realizing that in a few short years they will create a restaurant of such high standards that it will rival the Café de Paris, the Savoy of London and Rome’s Quirinale.

Jammet’s. From 1901 to 1967 the restaurant attracted the great, the good and the downright interesting of Irish society. Artists, poets, actors, judges, barristers, doctors, chancers and characters trundled through its doors in search of superb food and wine or banter in the back bar. It would even leave its imprint on perhaps the greatest novel of the twentieth century, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Inside the doors of Jammet’s, ruminates the impressionable Mr Bloom, the ‘high class whore … wore her veil only to her nose’.¹ Later in his daylong perambulation, Leopold Bloom comes across Corny Kelleher laughing at ‘two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet’s. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief …’²

But there was no grief for the restaurant in a backward island perched on the western edge of a continent. Accolades heaped upon Jammet’s over the years were little short of ecstatic. In 1928 it was described in Vogue magazine as ‘one of Europe’s best restaurants … crowded with gourmets and wits’ where the ‘sole and grouse were divine’.³ London’s Daily Express said the restaurant was the one place to go in Dublin for ‘wit, character, variety, good conversation and good food’,⁴ and Jammet’s was heralded as ‘the only restaurant in Dublin with an international reputation for its cuisine’.⁵ The restaurant became so famous worldwide that envelopes simply addressed

Jammet’s

Europe

reached Dublin within a week of being mailed.

During the 1950s Restaurant Jammet, together with the Russell Hotel, was twice awarded the rare distinction of being among the ten most outstanding restaurants in Britain and Ireland by influential American magazine Holiday.⁶ The other eight were in London: Le Caprice; the Savoy Hotel Restaurant; Mirabelle; Isola Bella; White Tower; l’Ecu de France; and Wheelers and Bentley’s oyster bars. In 1963 Jammet’s earned two of the first stars that Egon Ronay awarded in Ireland. It was a restaurant, he said, ‘in which Ritz and Escoffier would feel at home’.⁷

It is true that perhaps not everyone went to Jammet’s. David Norris considered its ‘luxurious celebratic dining’ rather too ‘racy’. When trainee chef John O’Neill tried to impress a girl with the name of the place he worked in, she queried, ‘What jam factory?’ James Joyce’s biographer Richard Ellmann said that such was its reputation for food cooked the French way, the Joyce family referred to Jammet’s as ‘Underdone’s’.

Names from its Visitors’ Book are redolent of a golden age: Maureen O’Hara, Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Maurice Jarre, Ingrid Bergman – 165 pages of stage and screen history. The book dates from 30 August 1945 to 6 April 1967. A selection of autographed cards from the 1960s illustrates more of the luminaries who passed through Jammet’s portals – Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Rod Steiger, Laurence Olivier, David Niven and many more.

Stories from Jammet’s, sweet and spicy, are retold here: Jack B. Yeats, who sketched a bucking horse on a birthday menu; Liam O’Flaherty, notorious for getting on his high horse; Patrick Kavanagh, trying to get a mistress. Maeve Binchy found dining there an unforgettable experience – never to be repeated! Bruce Arnold got engaged in the back bar, on his own! Harry Davies says the very name was ‘mentioned in hushed tones’; there were ‘lots of red curtains and plush sofas, gilded mirrors, amazing smells coming from the kitchen and a frisson from being at such a celebrated restaurant’. For racing correspondent Tony Sweeney the restaurant sparked ‘a sixty-year love affair with fine food’ and was almost the first place in Dublin to which he brought his French bride, Annie.

Then there were the lads out for a rollicking good time, like Peter Maguire and chums who staged a bullfight in the Blue Room; Chris Pringle’s mates in the back bar who, over copious pints, organized a disastrous raid on the ducks in St Stephen’s Green; and Garech Browne, who watched his pal Nicholas Gormanston save the artist Seán O’Sullivan from drowning by fishing his drunken head out of a bowl of pea-green soup.

Many ingredients combine to make a good restaurant exceptional, but the greatest of these is the staff. Here you will read of waiters, cashiers, chefs, kitchen porters, the potato peeler, the doorman, the maître d’hôtel and ‘the boss’ himself, Louis Jammet. In Nassau Street, all were intensely involved in a carefully choreographed, occasionally chaotic, endeavour to please more than seven hundred discerning customers in seven different venues, all under the same roof.

Waiter Johnny Kinsella says Jammet’s was ‘a wonderland’; Alan Stoner was cock-a-hoop at getting an entry-level job that was considered ‘quite a prize’. Sally Dowling, who lived in and worked as a cashier, remembers it as ‘a home away from home’. Chef-turned-lecturer Gerry Connell appreciates the training he received in real French cuisine.

Shay Harpur was a Dublin boy from Cabra with a brave heart and a quick brain who made it all the way from cloakroom attendant to qualified sommelier in five short years. He never lost his sense of awe at being able to do the job he loved in the place he called ‘a palace’. ‘A Day in the Life of Jammet’s by Shay Harpur, Sommelier’ is Shay’s warm and factual account of working in the restaurant, illustrated with drawings by Andrew Gallen.

Tuesday, 5 August 1955: the beginning of Horse Show Week. Shay’s day starts at 8.30 am and ends nigh on two o’clock the following morning. He describes the way things used to be done, from cleaning the cutlery in a ‘cauldron of boiling water into which was added washing soda and a discarded aluminium pudding bowl’ to the ministrations of the maître d’ with his ‘long, thin hands of a surgeon, slender enough to excavate in the most obscure of places, deft enough to pocket a fiver with the panache of a magician’. Regulars fall under his astute gaze as well: MacLiammóir and Edwards bickering like an old married couple; the Earl of Wicklow perusing the wine list for ten long minutes, then ordering the house red as usual.

Rich memories, fabulous foods, rare insights into Dublin life and characters during the sixty-six years of its treasured existence, the story of Jammet’s, like the best stock, had humble beginnings.

Part One

1. In the Beginning

Paris is the culinary centre of the world. All the great missionaries of good cookery have gone forth from it, and its cuisine was, is, and ever will be the supreme expression of one of the greatest arts in the world. Most of the good cooks come from the south of France, most of the good food comes from the north. They meet at Paris, and thus the Paris cuisine, which is that of the nation and that of the civilized world, is created.

Algernon Bastard, The Gourmet’s Guide to Europe, 1903

FROM THE PYRENEES TO PERPIGNAN TO PARIS

the Jammet brothers worked their way up in restaurants serving the finest cuisine in the world. Michel’s culinary skills became so celebrated that he was offered opportunities in private service. However, it was his association with Henry Roe, an Irish whiskey distiller and philanthropist, that was to change his life and establish his connection with Ireland.

While visiting Paris in 1887, Henry Roe asked Michel to work as head chef in his private residence, Mount Anville in Dundrum, County Dublin. This was a fine feather in Michel’s tall white hat. He was young and ripe for adventure. On arriving in Dublin he discovered just how important and wealthy Henry Roe was. His company, Geo. Roe & Co., Distillers, was the largest distillery in Europe. The premises in Thomas Street (later to be acquired by the Guinness brewery) covered seventeen acres, produced two million gallons of whiskey annually, and exported to the United States, Canada and Australia. Roe himself devoted an astronomical amount of his own fortune, nearly £250,000, to the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral in the heart of medieval Dublin. Michel revelled in his command of Roe’s large kitchen and staff.

Four years later Lord George Henry Cadogan, the politically influential British earl, was so impressed by Michel’s skills that he offered him the position of head chef in his newly acquired stately home. Michel seized the chance and moved to Culford Park in Suffolk, England.

Viceregal Lodge, residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (now Áras an Uachtaráin), Phoenix Park, Dublin, c.1900. Drawing by Andrew Gallen.

In 1895 Lord Cadogan was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland – the monarch’s representative and head of British executive rule in Ireland – an important and socially active role. Michel returned to Dublin with his wife Josephine and two small children, Louis and Catherine, to take command of the kitchens at the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park. Lord Cadogan entertained on a lavish scale and took a keen interest in the banquets. Such was his regard for Michel’s prowess that it was said he could detect the absence of his chef’s personal touch in some dishes served by temporary chefs employed during the Dublin Castle season.⁸ Michel catered for many illustrious dignitaries, including the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1897. A year before her death, Queen Victoria stayed in the Viceregal Lodge. When walking in the garden one morning, she passed Josephine leading six-year-old Louis by the hand, and paused to exclaim, ‘What a lovely little boy.’ She could never have imagined just how influential that boy would become in Dublin society.

In 1900, with the encouragement of Lord Cadogan, who was due to retire, and with all his contacts among the gentry of Irish society, Michel decided to leave private service to form his own establishment. It was a big step, and one he didn’t want to take alone. Meanwhile, François had remained in Paris where he, too, had achieved high status. By 1888 he was head chef at Café des Deux Mondes, rue de la Paix. Before long, he was managing a historic Parisian restaurant: Boeuf à la Mode, rue de Valois, Palais Royal.

Boeuf à la Mode. Courtesy André Jammet

This restaurant was founded in 1792 near the Palais Royal, 8 rue de Valois, Paris, by two brothers from Marseille. It was then taken over during the period known as the Directory (1795–99) – le Directoire – by Tissot, who transformed it into a more elegant restaurant. A new sign over the door, of an ox dressed up as a fine lady or belle, contributed to its success. During the period known as the Restoration (1814–30), Tissot used to dress the ox up in the ‘fashions of the day’, e.g. draped in a shawl or wearing a crochet bonnet. This amusing comment by Berthe Bovy and Pierre Fresnay (both well-known actors) appeared in the Visitors’ Book: ‘The cuisine is better here, dear Ox, than with the cows across the road’, referring to the Théâtre Français. The restaurant closed in 1936.

François married Eugenie Loisel, daughter of the widowed owner of Boeuf à la Mode. They adopted Catherine, the daughter from a former marriage of François, and had a son, Hippolyte. But Michel was urging his brother to join in his new venture in Dublin. After much thought, François agreed, handing Boeuf à la Mode over to Catherine and her husband, chef Felix Auger. The great Irish odyssey of Jammet’s of Dublin was underway.

2. St Andrew Street and Church Lane

… a handsome building of grey cut stone, with Ionic columns to lend it a grand air, and numerous plate-glass windows to lighten its interior. At the end of the fifty-foot balcony that overhung its entrance, sat a giant representation of a turtle. An outsize, gilded gridiron suggested the culinary delights available within … and from