Liverpool restaurant with 'millionaire's table' was 'internationally famous'

A Liverpool restaurant which has a "millionaire's table" was known across the globe. Opening in post war Liverpool generations will remember visiting or hearing stories about The Rembrandt Club on Slater Street in Liverpool city centre.

It was top restauranteur Ted Roberts, who started out as a kitchen boy at Liverpool Conservative Club, who founded the business as part of the Robley Group. The club was opened in premises previously occupied by a Chinese sweet shop and a Polish shoe repairer's workshop in 1949.

Mr. Roberts started the business in food rationing days with a licence bought for £200 from a Chinese restaurant in Seel Street. Inside, the club had red lighting, red wallpaper, red roses and red glasses for red wine.

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The Rembrandt Club also set meals before royalty, as well as stars of film, stage and television. In its early years, the business had established itself as a successful venue, with a "millionaire's table and membership list of famous names."

In January 1963, the Liverpool Daily Post reported: "The Rembrandt Club is small almost tiny - but it is internationally famous. There are two dining rooms and together they provide for only sixty covers to be laid at once but there are people in Mayfair who swear that Britain’s best food is not the West End of London but in Slater Street, Liverpool.

"The Rembrandt has 1700 members and a long waiting list." In its time, The Rembrandt Club had 50 millionaires, two earls, 20 lords and 25 knights who were members. In September 196, the ECHO reported: "You are likely to find Americans discussing The Rembrandt Club in a New York bar; you will hear of it in Paris, in Hamburg, in South America."

Through the years, many will remember being members of the club, or even working there. Back in 2003, chef Tom Parry told the ECHO how he learned his trade as a five-year-old commis chef at the former members-only Rembrandt Club.

At the time, he said: "It was an amazing place. We used to order the best beef from Scotland, oysters from Norfolk, French beans from Kenya and strawberries which were flown in from aboard and wrapped in bundles of cotton wool.

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"When Bob Monkhouse was doing his stand-up routine in the city, he would spend the morning in the restaurant drawing up his list of jokes for the following evening. Members also included all the region's Lords and Ladies.

"Their chauffeurs would pull up in their Bentleys at the back of the club, knock on the kitchen door and hand the chef a gratuity in an envelope." One image from the ECHO's archive shows the early days inside the venue.

But, after celebrating 21 years in business, it was announced that The Rembrandt Club, then owned by J. Lyons & Co, was to close its doors for good. In July 1971, a spokesman for the company said the club was being closed for "environmental reasons due to changes and redevelopment of the area south of Bold Street."

It's now been decades since members or staff headed to The Rembrandt Club. But it is still remembered by generations from across the world.