COVE

Due to dining and seating restrictions in the Crystal Palace, food and refreshment vendors stationed themselves right outside the Great Exhibition. Most notably, the renowned French chef, Alexis Benoît Soyer, pictured in the illustrated advertisement 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 more than 1,500-person capacity. The Symposium was designed with 14 separate rooms and an expansive garden, all elaborately decorated to represent various regions of the world. Much like the illustration suggests there was even an ice room (that was replenished daily) to mimic the Arctic.

“Symposium Gastronomicum of All Nations.” From George Augustus Sala, The House that Paxton Built (London: Ironbrace, Woodenhead & Co. [i.e., Adolphus Ackermann], 1851), plate 13.  The illustration shown, 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. Though his ambitious plans were never fully realized, Soyer left a lasting impact on the communities he served, and his innovative cooking technologies and recipes for the Great Exhibition persisted beyond the Victorian era.