Platter

“ If empty plates are supplied the waiter passes the entrée on a platter held on a folded napkin on his left hand, using his right hand to help balance it. Each guest serves himself.
At the conclusion of this course the plates are removed and empty warm plates placed for the meat course. The meat should be carved before it is brought to the table and after the waiter has served each person he serves the vegetables. If there is only one waiter it is more convenient to have the vegetables placed on the table in large vegetable dishes from which each guest serves himself. ”

“ By the time we reach the dining-room, with its expanse of polished floors and high column-supported ceiling, seventy or eighty boys are seated at long tables, which present an inviting appearance with their white enamelled cloths, platters piled high with bread, and rows of capacious bowls steaming with fragrant tea. ”

“ Sometimes even with my cosmopolitan palate— (and the best of everything is good enough for me) ,—I did not quite like the dishes, and the meat was not always of the best quality— (English beef and mutton rather spoil a fellow for the Continent) ,—yet a dish was seldom put before me at a Restaurant that was not well cooked, and delicately seasoned.
If a man has a delicate palate and knows how to order a dinner; if he has a stomach perhaps a little on the wane; if he wishes to leave the table without the feeling of being loaded, but with an inclination to dance, he ought to live in Paris. ”

“ A sumptuous feast is represented: the handsome dining-room is filled with voracious guests; footmen are waiting on the diners, or attending to side tables; butlers are drawing corks, course is following course, the cook and his assistant train are hurrying in with fresh dishes. Among the waiters, undetected, is our friend the grisly skeleton, who is busying himself with a dish he is conveying to the table. ”

“ The table cloths at every meal are masses of lace, and every sort of wonderful implement in the way of different gold forks and knives for every dish lie by your plate; and such exquisite glass; and some even have old polished tables like Aunt Maria, but instead of the simple slips they have mats and centrepieces and squares of magnificent lace. Only the very highest cream of the inner elect have plain table cloths and a little silver like we do at home. ”

“ The kitchen was not the least attractive of these destinations,—with the ample fire in its spacious chimney-place, the shine of the pots and pans on its wall, the blackened beams across its low ceiling, its table devoted to culinary business, its greater table devoted to gastronomic business—for all guests of low station, including the servants of those of higher station, ate in the kitchen,—and the oaken settles and joint-stools so tempting to the tired, hungry, and thirsty traveller who might appear in the doorway. ”

“ Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody’s card in it, you wisely seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decanters of sherry down the tables, at very respectable distances; melancholy-looking salt-cellars, and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth; and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London since the accession of George the First. ”

“ The noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and dessert of the menu differed from the bill of fare of the previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter. ”

“ I am bound to confess that the great salon with its painted panels, its buffet and its skylight screened by an awning, is not a lively room; but the attendance is quiet, soft-footed, and unhurried, and the cooking is distinctly good. It has of course its spécialités du maison, and classical dishes have been invented within its walls; but the man who wants to take his wife out to dine, and who is prepared to pay a couple of sovereigns for the meal, will find that he need not exceed that amount. Here is the menu of a little dinner for two which I ordered last winter at the restaurant. ”

“ The first sight that greets one's eyes on entering the hall is a view of the kitchen, generally with a cook in white clothing busy about his work as the centre of the picture, and those who lunch and dine are, as of yore, asked to walk through the white-tiled, beautifully clean domain of the chef. A grill-room now forms part of the establishment, and the character of the meals is changed in that table d'hôte dinners at various prices are the trump cards of the establishment. ”

“ The necessity for neatness and orderly arrangement of servings is obvious. At large parties where there is plate service it is wise to make up a sample plate before the time of serving in order to determine the best arrangement of food and in order actually to show those who are to dish up the food how each plate must look when it is placed before the guest. One who is inexperienced in planning menus, especially for parties, should accustom himself to visualizing the meal as it will appear when written upon the menu card and as it will appear upon the plate. ”

“ The hors-d'œuvre were on the table, but it was difficult, hungry as she was, to induce the little prima donna to leave her first view of the river, a river now grown steel-colour in the growing darkness, and to turn to the prosaic side of life, and dinner.
It is a comfortable dining-room, with its green curtains to the big bow-window, its paper with a flower pattern, its mirrors and its great panes of glass through which the arched looking-glasses of the hall can be seen. Of our fellow-diners there was no one whose face is well known to the world. ”

“ The guests being brought in by the host, wash their hands, out of a laver or ewer, over a hand-basin, or bowl, and wipe them with a hand-towel; then they sit at the table on chairs. The carver breaketh up the good cheer, and divideth it. Sauces are set amongst roste-meat in sawsers. The butler filleth strong wine out of a cruse, or wine-pot, or flagon, into cups, or glasses, which stand on a cup-board, and he reacheth them to the master of the feast, who drinketh to his guests.” It will be observed that one salt-cellar is here placed in the middle of the table. ”

“ To this day it is likely that a last auspicated volume still sits on its shelf with the spice jars in some English country kitchen and that a worn and toothless cook still thumbs its leaves. If the guests about the table be of an antique mind, still will they pledge one another with its honeyed drinks, still will they pipe and whistle of its virtues, still will they—
"EAT"—A flaring sign hangs above the sidewalk. By this time, in our noonday search for food, we have come into the thick of the restaurants. In the jungle of the city, here is the feeding place. ”

“ There is really a great artist there—a man whose sole hobby is his kitchen, and who, if he chooses, can send you up a dinner second to none. His name is Guichard. Go and have a talk with him. Hear what he has to say on the fond-de-cuisine theory. Let him arrange your menu and await the result with confidence. That confidence will not be misplaced.
For purely local dishes of the cuisine-bourgeoise type, you might try a meal at the Hôtel de la Poste. But for general comfort the English Club stands easily first. ”

“ On the contrary, there are many tables where the closest economy is practiced; and yet the table-cloth is so white and smooth, the dishes, silver, glass, and other table articles so bright, and arranged with such propriety; the bread so light and sweet; the butter so beautiful, and every other article of food so well cooked, and so neatly and tastefully served, that every thing seems good, and pleases both the eye and the palate. ”

“ Good table-d’hôte; a dozen dishes of meat and vegetables come on in succession, all hot. The cuisine in the south of France will not compare with that of Paris. Dessert of native fruits, prunes, olives, pears, apples, raisins, figs. Visited the theatre; large house, but poorly supported; no style in fitting up; the outside presents a fine front, but miserable inside. Opera-glasses in general use. On entering, you see women with stands for coats, hats, sticks, etc., and a table filled with opera-glasses for hire, all of which gives a small emolument to these honest people. ”

“ Others ran in and out of the kitchen, bearing to the waiters, to be dispensed among the guests, interminable relays of the waffles of those times, golden brown, delicately rich, soft, yet crisp, of a peculiar lightness,—a kind that will be seen no more, despite the food inventions and dietetic improvements, for the artists of that choice cookery are all dead and their receipts only serve to mark the decadence of proficiency. ”

“ On the ground floor is the kitchen. On the first floor at the head of the first staircase is the public dining room where a good cheap meal can be obtained, and on the second and third floors are the private and more select chambers. In each room is a bill of fare.
An ordinary first class restaurant dinner comprises from ten to thirty dishes, and for any special occasion a hundred or more are often served. ”

“ I had eaten my hors-d'œuvre, and the waiter brought me the clear soup I had chosen. It was not as hot as it should have been; but the kitchen is some way off from the tables at the far edge of the awning, and, with one of the most wonderful outlooks in the world, one is not prepared to be over particular as to cookery. ”

“ A dîner de restaurant is pleasant from its novelty. The guests seem less ceremonious and more gay; the absence of the elegance that marks the dinner-table appointments in a maison bien montée, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed garçons hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking maître-d'hôtel and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner often wanted in more luxurious feasts. ”

“ A delicious smell of roasting comes from the kitchen, and in the dining-room the long table is laid for a good, old-fashioned dinner with good old wine. How nice and comfortable everything is! One might fall ill with longing to be home. ”

“ In the great gilded cage of the restaurant and the big room the windows of which open on to Glasshouse Street, the custom is to eat the lunch of the day, or to select dishes from it, while dinner is an à la carte meal. If one entertains a lady at dinner one probably orders a dinner which canters through the accepted courses, and I have by me the menu of such a one:
Hors d'œuvre Russe. ”

“ With hundreds of restaurants to select from, each specializing on some particular dish, or some peculiar mode of preparation, one often becomes bewildered and turns to familiar names on the menu card rather than venture into fields that are new, of strange and rare dishes whose unpronounceable names of themselves frequently are sufficient to discourage those unaccustomed to the art and science of cooking practiced by those whose lives have been spent devising means of tickling fastidious palates of a city of gourmets. ”

“ Then the doors leading into the dining room were thrown open, disclosing a table covered with rosetrees in full bloom five feet in height and a concealed orchestra began to play. There were twenty-four seats and a footman for each two chairs, besides two butlers, who directed the service. The dinner consisted of hors-d'oeuvre and grapefruit, turtle soup, fish of all sorts, elaborate entrées, roasts, breasts of plover served separately with salad, and a riot of ices and exotic fruits. ”

“ Upstairs are the kitchen, where the woman cook responds to the verbal shorthand shouts of the waiters by putting chops and steaks on to the grill and clanging the oven door as good things to bake go into its recesses, and other old rooms, in which are some interesting relics of the old lexicographer, the chair in which he always sat at the Mitre, and other things curious and quaint, but they must await inspection till after lunch, for to-day is a pudding day, and the fat waiter with a moustache is waiting for our orders. ”

“ Besides innumerable restaurants, a flying kitchen travels about, with every thing cooking as it goes along, and clean-looking men, with white aprons, to serve the food; one ringing a bell, and looking out in every direction, to see what is wanted. ”

“ There, men could dine, like gentlemen and Christians, upon all the friandises of the French kitchen, much cheaper and far more wholesomely than at their own tables upon the tough, half-sodden fibres of the national roast and boiled, or on the hazardous resources of hash, gravy soup, and marrow puddings. ”

“ The tailor inspected it on all sides and said, “Thou didst not make a masterpiece when thou mad’st that; it is a bad old table.” “But it is a table which furnishes itself,” replied the son. “When I set it out, and tell it to cover itself, the most beautiful dishes stand on it, and a wine also, which gladdens the heart. Just invite all our relations and friends, they shall refresh and enjoy themselves for once, for the table will give them all they require.” ”

“ It is a pleasant, soothing, hearty place—a restful temple of food. No strident orchestra forces the diner to bolt beef in ragtime. No long central aisle distracts his attention with its stream of new arrivals. ”

“ There is nothing more conducive to thorough enjoyment of an evening, to the thorough enjoyment of a menu, than when table and appointments are perfect and artistically simple. The hostess should give as much time and thought to the preparation and arrangement of the table, as she does to the planning of the menu. She will find that her guests will appreciate novel lighting effects, surprising color tones, unusual serving innovations. And she will find that a correctly laid table will add surprisingly to the entire success of her dinner party. ”