Londoners were better supplied with eating-houses than their neighbours on the Continent, as we learn from the description of the street of cookshops on the Thames side by Fitz-Stephen:--
'There is also in London, on the bank of the river, amongst the wine shops, which are kept in ships and cellars, a public eating-house; there every day, according to the season, may be found viands of all kinds, roast, fried and boiled, fish large and small, coarser meat for the poor, and more delicate for the rich, such as venison, fowls and small birds. If friends, wearied with their journey, should unexpectedly come to a citizen's house, and, being hungry, should not like to wait till fresh meat be bought and cooked ... meanwhile some run to the riverside, and there every thing that they could wish for is instantly procured.
'However great the number of soldiers and strangers that enters or leaves the city at any hour of the day or night, they may turn in there if they please, and refresh themselves according to their inclination; so that the former have no occasion to fast too long, or the latter to leave the city without dining. Those who wish to indulge themselves would not desire a sturgeon, or a bird of Africa, or the godwit of Ionia, when the delicacies that are to be found there are set before them. This, indeed, is the public cookery, and is very convenient to the city, and a distinguishing mark of civilization.'
Mr. Riley points out in his Introduction to the _Liber Custumarum_ that the _Coquina_ of Fitz-Stephen was in reality a Cook's Row, not merely a solitary cookshop. In Fitz-Ailwyne's Second Assize (1212) the cookshops on the Thames were ordered to be whitewashed and plastered and the inner partitions to be removed, from which it would appear that lodging-rooms had been 'constructed for the harbouring of guests and travellers in contravention of the city regulations, which at all times during the thirteenth and two succeeding centuries strictly forbade cooks and pie-bakers to keep hostels for the entertainment of guests. In the fourteenth century, however, most of these cookshops had made way for genuine hostels and herbergeries,--to be kept only by freemen, and on no account by foreigners,--though we find mention made of one or two cookshops lingering on the city margin of the Thames so late as the reign of Edward the Third.'[121]