Restaurateur

“ Nowhere, perhaps, can a person p. 264live so economically. At every hour of the day and night, itinerant restaurateurs bring to your house whatever provisions you need: soups, ragouts of mutton and beef, vegetables, pastry, rice, vermicelli, etc. There are dinners for every appetite, and for every purse—from the complicated banquet of the rich, to the simple and clear broth of the beggar. These restaurateurs are coming and going to and fro almost without interval. They are generally Moslems—a blue cap distinguishing them from the Chinese. ”

“ For example, there are few men of extraordinary profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle. Whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid proof of such profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far as I can learn, did not think the subject adapted to minute investigation;—nor do I. Yet in the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical, it is not to be supposed that the restaurateur would lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont to characterize, at one and the same time, his essais and his omelettes. ”

“ How often, too, does one come across the man who grumbles at the cook when the real fault lies with him who cut the food! The greater number of those who dine in a first-rate restaurant and are pleased to pose as gourmets never in this respect appear willing to learn by experience or example, but quietly turn to their neighbour, and discuss the latest news, the weather, and their personal affairs, while the maître d'hôtel is giving an example of an art the acquisition of which has cost him the study of a lifetime and contains perhaps the secret of a great gastronomic success. ”

“ So I orders the brand of dinner the waiter hints I ought to have,—little necks, okra soup, broiled lobster, guinea hen, and so on, with a large bottle of fizz decoratin’ the silver tub on the side and some sporty lookin’ mineral for me. It don’t make any diff’rence whether you’ve got a wealthy water thirst or not, when you go to one of them tootsy palaces you might just as well name your vintage first as last; for any cheap skates of suds consumers is apt to find that the waiter’s made a mistake and their table has been reserved for someone else. ”

“ There was no such thing as a restaurant; each one by turn must do his own cooking in the inn kitchen, open to all. We, of course, were expected to carry our own provisions and do our own culinary work like any other respectable travelers. This we had frequently done before where restaurants were not to be found. Many a time we would enter an inn with our arms filled with provisions, purchased at the neighboring bazaars, take possession of the oven and cooking utensils, and proceed to get up an American meal, while all the time a hundred eyes or more would be staring at us in blank amazement. ”

“ In a large city one can procure many excellent dishes at the confectioner’s and pastry-cook’s. For a large buffet luncheon, as for a ball supper, the hostess should issue her order to some reliable firm of caterers. For a lunch-party of smaller size, she should endeavor to have the dishes cooked in her own kitchen. Almost every one now prefers home to hotel cooking, if the former is all that it should be. We should advise the young hostess, therefore, if she or her maid has a fair understanding of the culinary art, to have the main staples of her bill of fare prepared at home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the keenest desire not to be thought disrespectful or ungallant, I really believe that, however well a woman may manage her household, her cook, her husband, and her kitchen expenses, she cannot order a dinner at a restaurant. Whether it be the plethora of choice, or the excitement of the lights and music, or awe of the maître d’hôtel and the sommelier, I do not know, but I am sure that the good hostess who [Pg 27] gives you a very eatable little dinner at her own house will make hash of the best restaurant carte du jour in her endeavours to order what she thinks is nice and appropriate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Next the apprentice waiter, promoted from assistant cook or scullion-boy, who carries on a conversation in signs behind your back with the waiter opposite him, smothering his laughter at intervals in the same napkin with which he wipes your plate, and who, when he changes a course, slants the dishes up his sleeve, keeping the top one in place with his chin, replacing the plates again with a wavy motion, as if they were so many quoits, each one circling into its place—a trick of which he is immensely proud. ”

“ At noon I always picked the restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the commissionnaire who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen do?
"Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and then they'd say: 'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried potatoes?' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place. ”

“ He is much more likely, the head waiter, who has summed him up, prompting him, to order very much the dinner that he would have eaten in his suburban home had he been dining there that night.
Every good cook has his little vanities. They are all inventors; and when any one of them, breaking away from the strict lines of the classic haute cuisine, finds that a pinch of this or two drops of that improves some well-known dish, he immediately gives it a new name. ”

“ These waiters are certainly ubiquitous; at the table there is one at each elbow, at night a stranger is escorted to bed by a grand procession, and one pulls off his boots while another unbuttons his shirt-collar, and a third lights the gas and turns down the bed-clothes; a waiter meets you at the door, another takes away your overcoat and gives it to a waiter who presents you with a brass check for it—there are waiters in the bar, in the washroom, in the barber-shop, in the cellar, in the reading-room; waiters running races through the halls all night ”

“ Well, we mean to equip a small private restaurant for ourselves and we want you to take charge of it. You won't have to do much except oversee the business and arrange the bills of fare. We want plain, substantial old-time meals and cookery. When we have a hankering for doughnuts and apple pies and cranberry tarts, we want to know just where to get them and have them the right kind. We're all horribly tired of hotel fare and fancy fol-de-rols with French names. A place where we could get a dinner such as you served yesterday would be a boon to us. ”

“ If you or I, in the absence of the maître d'hôtel and the head waiter, fall into the hands of an [Pg xix] underling, Heaven help us. He will lure you or me on to order the most expensive dinner that his limited imagination can conceive, and thinks he is doing his duty to the patron. Luckily, such ill-luck as this rarely occurs. The manager is the man to look for, if possible, when composing a menu. ”

“ Fortunate now are the owners of cold beverages, for none but a fire-eater could swallow the scalding potations that are now left as perquisites to the waiter. Amid the babel of departure may be distinguished, ‘Please remember the waiter, sir!’ ‘Didn’t take for your dinner, sir.’ ‘Glass of brandy, ma’am.’ ‘A basin of soup and a pint of ale gone away without paying!’ ‘Chambermaid, ma’am.’ ‘Ostler, sir! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet it is a serious one for the hostess who gives the latter form of dinner. The cook often requires extra help (dishwashing, etc.) ; and where a chambermaid is available, she has to be drafted as a second waitress or an extra waitress engaged. There must be a helper on duty in the pantry, for there must be no hitch in any detail of the formal dinner service. So the extra pantry-hand must serve soup and pour coffee, see that there is crushed ice always ready, stack up soiled dishes, open wine bottles (yes, this is still done!) ”

“ This garden is about a thousand feet long and four hundred wide, with trees, flowers, and fountain, and a band plays in the afternoon to the entertainment of the crowd of loungers who have dined at the Trois Frères, Vefour, or Rotonde, lounge in chairs, and sip café noir, or absinthe, if Frenchmen, or smoke cigars and drink wine, if Americans. The restaurants here and in the vicinity are excellent; but one wants a thorough experience, or an expert to teach him how to dine at a French restaurant; otherwise he may pay twice as much as he need to have done, and then not get what he desired. ”

“ Boiled beef and carrots have fallen into disuse, except among a few obstinate grey-haired clerks, who would sooner give up clerking than change their habits; tavern lunches are popular enough, among bucolic book-keepers; but the great man, the star luncher in the eye of the up-to-date caterer is the young man with the clean collar.
For him and his kin we have the tea-shop, the dining-rooms, the restaurant, the café, Lyons', the A.B.C., the Mecca, and others. Snacks of fish, vegetarian dinners, quick lunches; smart waitresses to serve him and smile upon him. ”

“ Remember that every sound can be heard in the dining-room, so be very careful not to make the slightest noise in handling the silver and china and to move the dumb waiter up and down very quietly and slowly. Be ready, when the waitress hands you the plates that have been used, to hand her back instantly the fresh plates for the next course till all are handed out, and to ring one bell to signal the cook the first time the waitress makes a sign to you to do it, and two bells the second time she gives you this sign. ”

“ No preparation is required except to add to the dining paraphernalia a pair of chopsticks and a set of apparatus, nor is any one obliged to reflect whether there is room at table or whether the viands suffice, for guests and hosts alike sit upon the mats, where accommodation can always be found, and a word to a neighbouring restaurant produces fish and soup in abundance. ”