Café Royal

This print depicts the interior of the ornately decorated Cafe Royal. Here two customers sit in front of the one of the large gilt mirrors that lined the walls of the Grill Room, referred to as London's most beautiful dining room. The Cafe Royal opened in Regent Street in 1865. Owned by a bankrupt French wine merchant who had fled his native country to avoid a prison sentence, it soon became popular with London's social elite including the playwright Oscar Wilde, the artist James McNeill Whistler and the future King Edward VII. Those requiring greater privacy could hire upstairs rooms away from the public areas.