COVE

Due to dining and seating restrictions in the Crystal Palace, food and refreshment vendors stationed themselves right outside the Great Exhibition of 1851. Most notably, the renowned French chef, Alexis Benoît Soyer, pictured in the third image above, took over the nearby Gore House in London and transformed the space into Soyer’s Universal Symposium of All Nations, a restaurant boasting a capacity of more than 1,500 persons. The Great Exhibition commissioners requested that he run the refreshments area, but he felt too restrained by their regulations, so he took the liberty of creating his own extravagant dining area to accommodate all guests visiting the Crystal Palace. The Symposium was designed with 14 separate rooms and an expansive garden, all elaborately decorated to represent various world regions. There was even an ice room that was replenished daily to mimic the Arctic. Soyer's symposium had smaller competitors within the Great Exhibition, such as the refreshment area, a gated section in the Crystal Palace. Soyer rightly felt that his design would be more successful than the refreshment area, which explains why he declined to run it in the first place.

Great Exhibition Booth Displaying Pickles and Preserves, Designed by Audrey Wakefield, 2025. This simulated booth, superimposed over the interior of the Crystal Palace's west wing, offers novelty Victorian pickle jar apparatuses and various pickles, both bottled and in barrels. In the display, Victorians gather around cloth tables to examine the various goods before them. While there was likely not a booth dedicated to selling pickles alone, many pickled vegetables and preserves made their way into the Great Exhibition. The Victorians consumed more than 1,046 gallons of pickles during the six-month tenure of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (King).

Louis Haghe, "The Refreshment Area at The Great Exhibition of 1851," 1851. This final illustration reveals that, although Soyer felt too restricted by the Great Exhibition's dining rules, a small refreshment area in the Crystal Palace was available to guests. Haghe's illustration shows how popular this area was with many Victorians standing around tables due to the limited seating capacity. It appears as though the refreshments consisted mainly of beverages and smaller snacks, as opposed to large meals, to serve customers promptly. This snack-bar style eating area motivated many Exhibition-goers to visit Soyer's Symposium for a more complete dining experience.

Unknown Artist, Illustration of "The Gardens Surrounding the Symposium," Illustrated London News, 1851. Since the Gore House was situated across from the Crystal Palace, Soyer was able to capitalize on the square footage of the establishment and the surrounding grounds. Due to the lack of extensive dining options at the Great Exhibition, people flocked to the gardens outside Hyde Park at Gore House. This illustration depicts the Symposium gardens complete with fountains, sculptures, and a gazebo-style structure to entertain visitors depicted in this scene.

Unknown Artist, "Soyer's Symposium of All Nations," Advertisement and Menu, 1851. In this pamphlet from 1851, Soyer presents a more formal invitation to his Symposium of All Nations. He included meal pricing at two shillings for a French-English dinner, but he made sure to make a profit even if guests did not come to dine by charging one shilling for general admission. He entices potential customers with promises of themed cuisines that take guests on a unique international dining experience. Though the Great Exhibition did not sponsor it, Soyer's symposium parallels the design of the Crystal Palace, which prided itself on its regional variety of goods. He highlights fantastically decorated rooms that emulate mythical settings as well as the Monstre Table Cloth—a table cloth over 100 feet long—as crowd-drawing spectacles. The tablecloth was unfortunately soiled almost immediately as people began dining, and it was eventually stolen, part of the many losses Soyer faced in his symposium.

George Augustus Sala, “Symposium Gastronomicum of All Nations.” The House that Paxton Built (London: Ironbrace, Woodenhead & Co. [i.e., Adolphus Ackermann], 1851), plate 13.  The illustration, part of a satirical pamphlet which also critiques the ongoing domestic US slave trade, represents one of the unorthodox ways Soyer advertised the restaurant to fairgoers at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Sala's illustration includes a depiction of Soyer with a small portable stove, one of his inventions that bolstered his reputation, leading the Great Exhibition designers ultimately to reach out to the renowned chef.  The illustrator also adds a graphic critique of the domestic slave trade that continued in the United States. He depicts a slave holder sitting upon three slaves, forming what Sala calls the "American Planter's Arm Chair" as part of the "contributions from the Western World." This satirical depiction is relevant to the Great Exhibition since three American slaves escaped the South and made their way to England to demand their right to freedom and equal treatment. Though Soyer's ambitious plans were never fully realized, Soyer left a lasting impact on the communities he served. His innovative cooking techniques and recipes for the Great Exhibition persisted beyond the Victorian era.

Works Cited

King, Ed: “The Crystal Palace and Great Exhibition of 1851.” British Library Newspapers. Detroit: Gale, 2007.