Inheritance, Memories and Goulash: Dining With My Grandfather at The Gay Hussar

With his passing, I reached out to John Wrobel, the restaurant’s former general manager, who started working at the restaurant in 1988, before Sassie’s imminent departure. “Victor walked out of the building in 1988, at 14:10 on a Tuesday and never returned,” he says.

Over the next thirty years, Wrobel was the general manager at The Gay Hussar. He witnessed highs and lows, including some of the restaurant’s busiest periods, and its most difficult ones. Boozy political lunches slowed down, and generations of restaurant goers eventually died off. He tells me that once older generations passed on, their children and grandchildren usually stopped coming altogether.

And while the customer base changed over the 65 years of The Gay Hussar’s reign, sometimes the staff did not. From the early 60’s for over a thirty-year period, Laszlo Holecz served as head chef. In general, there was very little staff turnover, which hastened its decline as the times changed.

“They were set in their ways,” Wrobel says. “The same person was cooking. And it became impossible to refresh the menu.”

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Regardless, Wrobel remembers some of the food fondly.

Admittedly, it wasn’t always good, and could occasionally be stodgy. But when it was good, it was great. “The beef goulash soup,” he sighs. “When made properly, it was just delicious!” Wrobel also loved the ‘Hungarian bouillabaisse’, as he calls it, a simple and very traditional Hungarian fisherman’s soup seasoned with noble sweet paprika.

A dish of stuffed cabbage with minced veal, pork and rice was another beloved staple; some customers would just have one plate and nothing else. One afternoon, Wrobel received a phone call from one Mr. Goldstein, a regular, inquiring how old the stuffed cabbage was. Wrobel replied that it was three days old. “In that case I’ll give it another week,” Goldstein bellowed down the line, implying the rolls only improved with a bit of age.

In a professional kitchen, a good roast duck or goose is difficult to execute but it was one The Hussar’s chefs accomplished regularly, serving it alongside red cabbage and apple sauce. It was usually ordered with a side of Hungarian potatoes, prepared by frying the potatoes in rendered smoked bacon or goose skin with onions and caraway seeds.

Wrobel also confirmed customers who dined often gossiped and goulashed in a conniving manner. “The place was home to misinformation and secrets,” he says. “Two men would come in, sit at different tables next to each other and occasionally have to switch, as they picked the wrong side. Bad ears.”

The last day of John Wrobel’s 30-year stint at The Gay Hussar was in 2018, when the restaurant shut its doors for good.

When Wrobel wasn’t working on Greek Street, he worked in other big hotels owned by Corus and Regal. He says when one leaves the staff quarters to enter the main lobby, there was usually a sign over the door that read “On Stage,” as one would find in a West End theatre. Although there was no sign in The Gay Hussar, he said it felt like there should have been one – “working there always felt like a performance.”

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Which brings me back to my grandfather, Peter.

He was an illustrator and lectured at Central School of Art and Design (now part of Central St. Martins) for fifteen years on the Charing Cross Road, one street over from The Gay Hussar.

My grandmother, Françoise, fondly recalls eating in the restaurant with him, and confirmed he was a regular, often dining alone or joining friends impromptu. He was also very friendly with Victor Sassie, whom my grandmother describes as “always there. Old, not thin. Rather plump. Very kind and cheerful.” On one occasion, my grandfather decided to steal an ashtray from the restaurant, now one of my most treasured possessions.

But while Peter and The Gay Hussar are long gone, with any traces slowly fading away, the old restaurant served the clientele of its era for many years and accumulated more history and achieved more success in its time than perhaps any other in the city. It lives on in verbal recollections, occasional homages, Martin Rowson’s collection of paintings (recently donated to The National Portrait Gallery) and in eccentric family heirlooms passed from one generation to the next.

Perhaps, then, a kind of inheritance is what remains.

The building will forever be an heirloom, one which Noble Rot have inherited to honour for, hopefully, a long tenure. The food we cook and the wine we serve are steeped in tradition, history, and nostalgia, with the utmost respect for its previous occupant, but our gazes are focused on the future.

I’d like to think that what we do makes our guests happy in the same way the Hussar did for its clientele all those years ago. The Gay Hussar was of its time in the way that Noble Rot and others are indicative of the present.

As for me, I’ll continue to cook in the basement of 2 Greek Street, thinking about Victor Sassie welcoming in my grandfather, and Laszlo Holecz preparing a plate of goulash for him. As many have before me, I’ve now inherited this kitchen floor and walls, these floorboards, and the spirit of a cherished institution – it’s now my responsibility to cook good food and honour that history as the cooks after me should do with the same fervour.

I never stepped foot in the building whilst it was The Gay Hussar. And although I feel very connected to the space and energised to be here, I will never gaze upon those bright paprika red walls. I wish I could experience it, just once – but I can’t. I will never share a meal with my grandfather. But if I had, I imagine he would have ordered goulash.