Trattoria

“ She took my arm, giving it a friendly hug, just as Ruthita did when she was glad. We walked over to the Piazza Torquato Tasso. Seating ourselves at a table beneath the trees, we called for wine. The light from the trattoria fell softly on her face. The air was dreamy with fragrance of limes. At tables nearby other men and women were sitting. Across the way in the tavern my men-at-arms were still singing and carousing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each footman, with his tray, is followed by a fellow-footman, carrying a large bottle of golden-hued wine, and a huge, dark, rich looking roll on silver waiters. The twelve footmen, with the trays, suddenly veer round, and stand in a line opposite to the table, and each opposite to an "apostle;" the twelve trays held before them, with their seventy-two bowls, all forming a kind of pattern—soup, fishes, spinach; soup, fishes, spinach; pudding, prunes, brown meats; puddings, prunes, brown meats—all down the room. ”

“ A most appreciable surprise was the excellent cuisine, and as ornament to the dining-room table, between a pair of tall preserve dishes, and on either side of the central bouquet, stood an unexploded German shell. One of them had fallen on to the proprietor's bed, the second landing in the pantry, while twenty or thirty others had worked more efficiently, as could be attested by the ruins of the carriage house, stables, and what had once been a glass covered Winter garden. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the outside of the tavern, whither we betake ourselves to wash, are a tub of water, a basin and a towel, for all the guests; but as only one person can perform his ablutions at a time, it will be necessary for us to form ourselves in a line, and take our turn—the first comers being entitled to the front places. We are now ready to replenish the inner man. The bar is convenient for those who wish to imbibe. Breakfast is announced. We seat ourselves at the table. Before us is a reasonable quantity of beans, pork and flapjacks, served up in tin plates. ”

“ What comings and goings through the kitchen of vintagers at work in the wine-press! How important that their strength should be kept up by large reinforcements of boiled beef and potatoes, and how warm and savoury the steam that filled the kitchen from the great kettles! We children used to make the most of the confusion to settle ourselves upon the fire-dogs, our pockets full of nuts which the wind had scattered over the farm lane, or which we had ourselves surreptitiously knocked off with switches. ”

“ Once a week, or once a fortnight at the least, I went to a goodly and spacious and ancient tavern on the high road, and had a grilled chop, potatoes, bread, and beer; which came to one and a penny or one and twopence. Les Cotelettes de Mouton, Sauce Bénie the dish is called by the experts of the haute cuisine. I can recommend it. And in the evenings I sometimes exceeded, though not so violently. I would, nine evenings [Pg 120] out of ten, buy my provision of bread at a shop at the bottom of the long main road, opposite or nearly opposite to Uxbridge Road Station. ”

“ The restaurant has still good bread and wine, nothing more.
The fields are almost deserted; miles of rich meadow and crops in the white sunshine. One or two farmers or women with stout little [Pg 188] sons at work in the crops, make rare and startling breaks in the passing lonely landscape.
But there was a change to-day. Every now and then in remote places a scouting car with a splash of uniforms, or a vicious-looking mitrailleuse car with helmets cloaked in linen, threatening over its grey edges, met us in the miles of shaded lanes. ”

“ The pincers and tongs of the rose-makers, and the pressing-molds of the leaf-workers, were taken off the fires, and in their place appeared stew-pans and spiders, and pots and kettles. Bacon and chops sputtered, steak sizzled; potatoes, beans, and corn stewed merrily. What had been but lately a flower-garden, by magic had become a mammoth kitchen filled with appetizing sounds and delicious odors. White-aproned cooks scurried madly. It was like a school-girls' picnic. As they moved about I noticed how well dressed and neat were my shop-mates in their white shirt-waists and dark skirts. ”

“ If you dine with them at a tavern, in order to be more at your ease, the fish is too little done—the sauce is not the right one; they ask for a sort of wine which they think is not to be had, or if it is, after some trouble, procured, do not touch it; they give the waiter fifty contradictory orders, and are restless and sit on thorns the whole of dinner time. ”

“ But the crowning audacity of his day was the purchase of a delicatessen dinner—cold chicken, sweet pickles, potato salad, Swiss cheese, bologna, rye bread, a wooden plate of butter, and four bottles of imported English ale. He spread it on the table, in the dishes of the "decorated English tea-set," drew up two chairs, and surveyed his work from the doorway with a chuckle of uncontainable delight. ”

“ In many houses the butler arranges the luncheon, table with flowers or fruit, plates of thin bread-and butter, jellies, creams, cakes, and preserves, a dish of cold salmon mayonnaise, and decanters of sherry and claret. He places a cold ham or chicken on the sideboard, and a pitcher of ice-water on a side-table, and then leaves the dining-room, and takes no heed of the baser wants of humanity until dinner-time. An underman or footman takes the place of this lofty being, and waits at table. ”

“ In offices, ware-rooms, banks, commercial houses, and stores, meals were served to all employés. Numberless little bodegas, and cheap, dirty shops were scattered about the purlieus and back streets, where white and colored laborers side by side ate fried fish or garlic stew, and drank aguadiente (native rum) or red wine. In some of the bodegas of the lower order asses were kept tied to the counter, to be milked on the spot, for invalids and people of delicate digestion. The coffee served at these very bodegas was rich and delicious. ”

“ A French cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit, stewed German fashion with the game. Trout, which the family themselves replace by raw salt-herring, and game, form the whole dinner. Of wines and beer they drink at dinner a most extraordinary mixture, but as the wine is all the gift of Emperors and merchant princes it is good. ”

“ After two or three hours “amateur touting” on such a place as Newmarket Heath, the sportsman is ready for any sort of food, from a dish of liver and bacon to a good, thick fat chop, or an underdone steak. I have even attacked cold stewed eels (!) upon an [Pg 14] occasion when the pangs of hunger would have justified my eating the tom-cat, and the landlady as well. But chops and steaks are not to be commended to furnish forth the ordinary breakfast-table. I am coming to the hotel breakfast presently, so will say nothing about fried fish just yet. ”

“ We may see the mills that ground the flour for the bread, and, indeed find unground wheat kernels. We see the oil still preserved in the jugs, the residue of wine still in the amphorae, the figs preserved in jars, the lentils, the barley, the spices in the cupboard; everything awaits our pleasure: the taverns with their “bars” ”

“ All the farmers being by this time jogging homewards, there was nobody in the sanded parlour of the tavern where he had left the horse; so he had his little table drawn out close before the fire, and fell to work upon a well-cooked steak and smoking hot potatoes, with a strong appreciation of their excellence, and a very keen sense of enjoyment. ”

“ He always came into the shop at the same time—half-past two; he p. 49always sat in the seat next the window; and three days out of six, he would order the same dinner: a fourpenny beef-steak pudding—we called it beef-steak, and, for all practical purposes, it was beef-steak—a penny plate of potatoes, and a penny slice of roly-poly pudding—‘chest expander’ was the name our customers gave it—to follow. That showed sense, I always thought, that dinner alone; a more satisfying menu, at the price, I defy any human being to work out. ”

“ If the dish is large, it should be carried in her hands; if small, on a tray. The waitress then watches to fill glasses and pass rolls. Having done this, the chambermaid returns to the pantry and when the roast course has been removed and fresh plates have been substituted for used ones, she hands the waitress the
Sixth course—the salad following her all around the table with whatever accompaniment there may be and then returning to the pantry. ”

“ For dinner, which is to be partaken of at fourteen reals, one has a soup, a fry, an entrée, a roast, a salad, two sweets or fruits, bread and wine. The entrées are usually rib of mutton, veal or a beefsteak, which sometimes makes you think there is something like leather. A hen, which is a luxury, rates at fourteen reals, but a tortilla of the hen's eggs is to be preferred. ”

“ If 95 the barbecue is given at the expense of half a dozen gentlemen, you may safely calculate that at least thirty servants will be employed in bringing together the good things. Those belonging to one of the entertainers will probably make their appearance on the ground with a wagon load of fine young pigs: others will bring two or three lambs, others some fine old whisky and a supply of wine, others the necessary table-cloths, plates, knives, and forks, others an abundance of bread, and others will make their appearance in the capacity of musicians. ”

“ The tea saloons are divided into two large rooms furnished with stools and tables. Cakes, preserved fruits and tea are served. The cups are usually covered so as to prevent the aroma of the tea from evaporating.
"Dog and cat" restaurants consist of one large public apartment, with the entrance to the dining room through the kitchen.
Soup stalls are found on the street corners of the cities. They sell luncheons of fish, pork, soups, vegetables, fried locusts, etc., from one to two cents. ”

“ Those whose employers were in a small way of business, or allowed them insufficient salaries, frequently used to ‘box Harry,’ that is have a beef-steak, or mutton-chop, or perhaps bacon and eggs, as I am going to have, along with tea and ale instead of the regular dinner of a commercial gentleman, namely, fish, hot joint and fowl, pint of sherry, tart, ale and cheese, and bottle of old port, at the end of all. ”

“ And each individual expects his own mess to be as carefully looked after as a whole saloon dinner. Natural, perhaps, on his part, but for the hapless cook purgatorially inconvenient. I was once a passenger from an Irish port to Liverpool in a weekly boat, and in the grey of the dawn was waiting at the galley door to buy a cup of coffee. Men came and went incessantly, banging oven doors and flinging utensils from side to side of the red-hot stove-top. The cook was absent, engaged aft in some business or other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the duff bubbling fiercely, and the beef on the other side of the stove keeping in tune with it, the men's dinner needs no more thought on his part except to keep the fire going; so that he will be able to do a bit of cleaning up, if he has a weakness in that direction, or he may sit and smoke and meditate. The steward is preparing the cabin dinner [Pg 216] aft in his pantry: a fruit pie, some tasty combination of tinned meat and potatoes, or even a fowl, if they are carried. In any case, as a rule the cook has only to see the food for the cabin through the actual cooking. ”

“ Being set ashore, with very little money in their pockets, and no definite plan of operation in their heads, they sought out a cheap tavern, where they regaled upon a smoking steak, and certain flowing mugs of beer, as only men just landed from the sea can revel in the generous dainties of the earth. ”

“ This song is written against Grocers."
"God made the wicked Grocer,
For a mystery and a sign, That men might shun the awful shops, And go to inns to dine; Where the bacon's on the rafter And the wine is in the wood, And God that made good laughter Has seen that they are good. ”