I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street (the Tesco end). It was made in homage to the Wall’s sausage and ice-cream fortune, although it opened in 1976, after the Wall’s sausage and ice-cream company (I call it that because it sounds magical) was sold to Unilever (less magical). So it is quite a late homage. The Wall’s sausage and ice-cream fortune, how I love to type the words; did you know that Mr Wall moved into ice-cream so as not to sack staff in the summer months, when no one — except me and George IV — wants to eat sausages? That is worth remembrance.
It looks like a fairytale Edwardian shop; a Downton Abbey shop you would probably call it now, since Downton Abbey has taken over from the Almanach de Gotha as the repository of knowledge of all things posh and, in this moronic age, this is an excellent thing. (Underlying message of Downton Abbey: wealth exists for the benefit of the little people in the basement plus dogs. I once discussed this with Lord Carnarvon, who had the vacant eyes of the near-sighted or the truly stupid. You only see that look in belted earls and labradors.) It has huge windows, curly golden signage, and a plaque to Mr Wall, which was unveiled by the Marquis of Carisbrooke — a grandson of Queen Victoria — as thanks for all the sausages Mr Wall shovelled into the mouths of Lord Carnarvon’s ancestors and his friends. (Could this be a CBeebies series?)
Here, you see, was the first Wall’s butcher’s shop, the HQ of enemies of pigs everywhere, and, in a more complex way, of George IV, who also bought his sausages here, although I am not sure that he did so in person.
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