Qass Book .o t /*\ .Ug.5- ^ ]1 i i -AV M. No, ^«&&&e^&&&&&&&&$i&&$i&^&&&^&&€r&$:&^^ ilf Hi The death of Frederic of the Tour d'Argent, in Paris, and the acquisition of Giro's at Monte Carlo, by a British syndicate, occurred while this edition was in the press. THE GOURMET'S GUIDE TO EUROPE THE GOURMET'S GUIDE TO EUROPE BY LIEUT.-COL. NEWNHAM-DAVIS , THIRD EDITION NgW YORli^J^ BRENTANO'S 1911 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS .WASHINGTON m ■ III I "nT By tran$f«r U. S. SoWlrft Home Lib. HAT 2 3 19S? ;1 ^^ r i ^ •• ■♦♦;• Printed by "Ballantyne, Hanson 6r> Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh The pleasu7'es of the table are common to all ages and ranks, to all countries and times ; they not only har- monise luith all the other pleasures, but remain to con- sole us for their loss Brillat Savarin. ^SWwPP^^*- ai''^*'^f:H|fc, PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION My idea in writing this book is to give information to travelling Anglo-Saxons, of both sexes, who take an interest in the cookery and food of the countries they pass through, and are not content to dine and breakfast every day at the hotel in which they may happen to stay. In the present edition a considerable amount of new information regarding the bourgeois restaurants will be found in the Paris chapter, and the chapter on the restaurants of French provincial towns has been amplified. I have rewritten the chapter on Berlin from personal experience, and have dealt more fully with The Hague, Geneva, and the Northern Italian towns than I did in previous editions. I have care- fully gone through the book, and corrections and additions will be found in every chapter. I have added to the information concerning the dining possi- bilities of most towns, some slight indication of what amusements are to be found " after dinner," and I hope that this feature may prove useful. Once more I thank Mr. Horace Lennard for bring- ing up to date the Belgian chapters. I record with much regret the death of Mr. viii Preface to 'Third Editio?i Algernon Bastard, who was my collaborateur in the first edition of this book. I once more plead extenuating circumstances should there be any inaccuracies in the book, for it is very difficult, even with willing helpers, for one man to keep his eye on all the restaurants of Europe. With the publisher's cordial assent, no advertise- ments of any hotels or restaurants appear in the book. As travelling gourmets, for the good of the great epicurean brotherhood, have helped me in the past by sending me information of any new dining-places which can be recommended, and of any alterations and improvements in old-fashioned ones, so I hope they will continue to do in the future. I am particularly indebted to several German and Austrian gentlemen who have written to me concerning the chapters on their countries. Any letters addressed to ' me at the Naval and Military Club, Piccadilly, will be gratefully received and acknowledged. N. NEWNHAM-DAVIS. CONTENTS PARIS The Classic Restaurants — ^The "Smart" Restaurants — The Summer Restaurants — Across the River — Restaurants of the Parisians — Restaurants of the Quartier — Montmartre Restaurants — Foreign Restaurants — -The Cheap Restau- rants — The Restaurants of the Suburbs — The Bill and Tips — Parisian Clubs — " After Dinner " II FRENCH PROVINCIAL TOWNS Some Dishes of the Provinces — Calais — Boulogne — Wime- reux — Hardelot — Le Touquet — Montreuil - sur - Mer — Dieppe — Martin -Eglise — Puys — Pourville — Etretat — Havre — St. Adresse — Gonneville — Duclair — Rouen — Caudebec — Honfleur — Trouville — Caen — Dives — Cher- bourg — Granville — Mont St. Michel — St. Malo — Cancale — Parame — Dinard — Dinan — Roscoff — Brest — Quimper — Pont Aven — Quimperle^The Loire Country — Bor- deaux — Arcachon — Biarritz — Marseilles — Aries — Nimes — Avignon — Cannes — Nice — Beaulieu — Monte Carlo — Mentone — -The Pyrenees — Pau—Aix-les- Bains — Vichy — Evian ... .... 62 III BELGIAN TOWNS The Food of the Country — Ghent — Antwerp — Spa — Ostende — Bruges — Heyste — Blankenberghe — Nieuport . • '33 X Contents IV BRUSSELS PAGE The Restaurants of Brussels — ^The Clubs — "After Dinner" . 151 V HOLLAND The Food of the Country —The Hague Restaurants — The Hague Clubs — Scheveningen — Amsterdam— Rotterdam . 165 VI GERMAN TOWNS The Cookery of the Country — The Rathskeller — Beer Cellars — Dresden — Munich — Nuremberg — Stuttgart — Frankfort-on-Main — Diisseldorf — The Rhine Valley — Homburg — Wiesbaden — ^Baden-Baden — Ems — Aachen — Hamburg— Kiel ...... 174 VII BERLIN The Classic Restaurants — The Hotel Restaurants — Restau- rants of the People — Military Restaurants — Cafes, Cabarets, and Bars — Open-air Restaurants — Clubs . 215 VIII ITALY Italian Cookery — The Italian Lakes — Turin — Milan — Genoa — Venice — Bologna — Spezzia — Florence — Pisa — Leghorn — Lucca — Rome — Clubs of Rome — Naples — ^Palermo . 232 IX SPAIN The Cuisine of Spain — Barcelona — The Clubs of Barcelona — Port Bou — San Sebastian — -San Sebastian Clubs— Bilbao — Portugalete — Madrid — Madrilene Clubs — Andalusian Contents xi PAGE 27: Cookery — Seville — Sevilian Clubs— Bobadilla — Grenada — Jerez— The Clubs of Jerez— Cadiz — The Cadiz Clubs — San Lucar — Algeceiras— Ronda — Malaga — The Mala- guanean Clubs X PORTUGAL Lisbon — Lisbon Clubs — Cintra— Estoril — Cascaes — Oporto — The Clubs of Oporto — Bussaco — Pampilhosa . XI SWITZERLAND The Food of the Country — Lucerne — Basle — Bern — Geneva — St. Moritz — Davos . . . . .310 XII AUSTRIA Austrian Cookery — Vienna — Salzburg — Baden — Carlsbad — Marienbad — Other Towns .... 320 XIII HUNGARY The Cookery of the Country — Buda-Pesth — Buda-Pesth Clubs — Other Towns ..... 340 XIV ROUMANIA The Dishes of the Country— The Restaurants of Bucarest — Bucarest Clubs — Sinaia , , , . . 346 xii Contents XV SERVIA PAGE The Food of the Country — Belgrade — Kijievo . . . 352 XVI BULGARIA The Food of the Country — Restaurants of Sofia — The Union Club 355 XVII TURKEY Turkish Cookery — Constantinople Restaurants — Therapia — Constantinople Clubs ....... 358 XVIII GREECE Grecian Dishes — Athenian Restaurants .... 365 XIX DENMARK The Hours of Meals — Copenhagen Restaurants — The Bade- hotels on the Sound ....... 367 XX SWEDEN The Food of the Country— Stockholm Restaurants — Saltsjo- baden — Storvik — Gothenburg . . . , '37? Lontents xiii XXI NORWAY PAGE The Christiana Restaurants — Throndhjem .... 378 XXII RUSSIA Russian Cookery — St, Petersburg — Clubs of St. Petersburg — Moscow — The Moscow Clubs — Odessa — Kief — War- saw — Helsingfors — Yalta ...... 380 PARIS The Classic Restaurants — The " Smart " Restaurants — The Summer Restaurants — Across the River — The Restaurants of the Parisians — Restaurants of the Quartier — Montmartre Restaurants — Foreign Restaurants — The Cheap Restaurants — The Restaurants of the Suburbs — The Bill and Tips — Parisian Clubs — " After Dinner." An Englishman who loved his Paris beyond any other city of the world once said to me, as we stood chatting in the Place de FOpera, "If you find the central spot of this square, you may rap your stick upon it and say, * This is the centre of the world.' " Paris is certainly the culinary centre of the world. Wherever the great cooks are born — and most of them as a matter of fact see the light in the Midi — they all come to Paris to learn their art, and then go out through the whole civilised world as culinary missionaries preaching that there is but one cuisine, and that the Haute Cuisine Frangaise. France is the country of good soups, of good fish, of good vegetables, of good fowl, of good sweets. Hors croeuvrc are a Russian invention, and are only to be tolerated when at a restaurant they keep a diner in good temper while the chef is cooking the fish. Oysters, prawns, and caviare may, I think, be excused from this anathema ; but the real gourmet who orders a dozen Cancales or Marennes with which to commence * A 2 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe a dinner rarely introduces fish into his menu. Caviare, be it black or grey, be it sent from the land of the Volga or the states of the Danube, is too excellent to be a mere relish. It is a dish for dejeuner ; and the man before whom has been placed a jar of good caviare sunk in cracked ice, who has a fresh lime and some Brittany butter at his elbow, and who is brought relays of hot toast, may well leave the consideration of the plat which is to follow until his appetite for caviare is appeased. Curiously enough, the squeeze of lime or lemon juice on the caviare was not originally intended to give a contrast of taste. When transport was less rapid, the caviare which reached Western Europe was not always as fresh as it should be, and the lemon juice was used to disguise any musty taste. Soup, in my humble opinion, should be the hors d^ceuvre of a dinner ; and a thimbleful of strong hot soup to commence a meal would, I believe, stimulate without cloying, and leave a diner with an appetite unimpaired for the dishes that are to come. This, however, is my own little pet heresy, and I do not wish to insist upon it. Russia is the only country the soups of which can compare with those of France. Ever since the days when Henry IV., whose memory is honoured in the name of more than one soup, vowed that every French peasant should have a fowl in his pot, soup, from the simplest bouillon to the most lordly consommes and most splendid bisques^ has been better made in France than anywhere else in the world. Every great cook of France has invented some particularly delicate variety of the boiled fillet of sole, and Dugiere achieved a place amongst the immortals by his manipulation of the brill — I always find, may I say in parenthesis, that a safe card to play in any Paris restaurant and in any good restaurant of the provinces is to ask for the " sole of the house " at the fish stage of the dinner and the ^^fine of the house " with the coffee. The soles of the north of France are as good as any that ever came out of British waters; and Paris — sending tentacles west to the waters where the sardines swim, and south to the home of the lamprey, and tapping a thousand streams for trout and tiny gudgeon and crayfish — can show as noble a list of fishes as any city in the world. The chef de cuisine who could not enumerate an hundred and fifty entrees all distinctively French, would be no proficient in his noble profession. The British beef stands against all the world as the meat noblest for the spit, and Scottish sirloins are sent as far south as Monte Carlo, but the French ox which has worked its time in the fields gives the best material for the soup-pot ; and though the Welsh lamb and the Southdown sheep are the perfection of mutton young and mutton old, the lamb nurtured on milk till the hour of its death, and the sheep reared on the salt-marshes of the north, make splendid contri- bution to the Paris kitchens. Mutton is often de- scribed on the bill of fare by the name of the breeder of the sheep. Several of the great sheep-breeders of France, the Marquis de Behacque amongst them, have imported Southdown sheep, and the mutton called by their names has an English ancestry. Veal is practically an unknown meat in London ; and the calf of Pontoise, which has been fed on milk and yolk of egg, and which has flesh as soft as a kiss and as white as snow, is only to be found in the Parisian restaurants. Most of the good restaurants in London import all their winged creatures, except game, from France ; and the Surrey fowl and the Aylesbury duck, the representatives of Great Britain, make no great show against the champions of Gaul, the fowls of Mans and Houdan and Bresse, and the duck of Rouen, though the Norfolk turkey holds his own. A vegetable dish, served by itself and not fiung 4 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe into the gravy of a joint, forms part of every French dinner, large or small ; and in the battle of the kitchen gardens the foreigners beat us nearly all along the line, though I think that English asparagus is better than the white monsters of Argenteuil. A truffled partridge, a partridge a la Bourguignonne^ cooked in a terrine with a red wine sauce, or the homely Perdrix aux cJwux^ or the splendid Faisan a la Financiere show that there are many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him ; and a woodcock, in my humble opinion, never tastes so well as when it has been flamhe^ an auto-da-fe which takes place almost under the diner's nose. The Parisian eats a score of little birds we are too proud to mention in our cookery books ; he knows the difference between a mauviette and an alouette^ and I trust insists on his cook not sending him to table the skylarks, for a true gourmet should never encourage the slaughter of any winged thing that sings. Perhaps the greatest abasement of the Briton, whose ancestors called the French " Froggies " in scorn, comes when his first morning in Paris he orders for breakfast with joyful expectation a dish of the thighs of the little frogs from the vine- yards. An Austrian pastry-cook has a lighter hand than a French one, and the heathen Turk makes the best sweetmeats in the world, but the Parisian open tarts and cakes and the fr'iandises^ the creams, and the ice, or coupe-jacque at the end of the Gallic repast are excellent. Let me omit the regulation long moan over the dis- appearance of the great restaurants, the dining-places which made much culinary history. The Riche, the Cafe Veron, Hardi's, D'Hortesio's, Bignon's, the Trois Freres Provencaux have either disappeared or have been converted into brasseries or tavernes, and men swiJl beer in the Marivaux where poor Joseph flourished his knives over ducks of surpassing juiciness. 'Farts 5 The Maison Doree and the Grand Vefour have been the most recent additions to the list of casualties. At the Maison Doree I was one of those friends of the house who were allowed to choose any two dishes from the luncheon carte for a quite ridiculously small sum of money, and the old waiter who wore the decoration for long service treated me with as much respect and as great deference as though I had thousands of francs to spend. At the Grand Vefour, the house to which M. Hamel, cook to the king, brought in the time of Louis Philippe the surplus crockery from the palaces, that his clients might dine from royal china — but now, alas ! turned into a tavern and an American bar — I, while still a very small boy at Harrow, made my first essay in selecting a dinner at a Parisian restaurant. I ordered one dish, quite at random, and then sat, very small and rather afraid, looking at the mirrors and the gilding, wondering what I had ordered, whether it would be very long in making its appear- ance, and whether I should have enough money to pay for it when I had eaten it. When my dish did appear, it was a strange, dark-looking thing, which I eventually discovered was a rdble de lievre. I fancy that the stately maitre (fhotd^ who carved the dish, for me with all dignity, must have been inwardly much amused at the disappointment of the small patron. I had hoped that something very sweet, with plenty of cream and sugar in unexpected places, would appear, for I had chosen far down the bill of fare. The Grand Vefour has gone the way of all flesh, and the Verdiers, now that the Maison Doree is no more, are scattered about Paris. Casimir, the great cook of the Maison Doree, went to the Champeaux, and I have, at various times, heard of others of the family at the restaurant on the Isle de Jatte, where the duellists breakfast after scratching each other on the forearm, and at the Restaurant des Fleurs, which now calls 6 The Gourmefs Guide to Europe itself Le Grand Vatel. But, as I have written, I do not propose to deliver a funeral oration over the dead restaurants. Some of the classic restaurants still survive, and happily flourish. The Classic Restaurants Two restaurants in particular, the Cafe Anglais and Voisin's, have undisputed right to classic honours, and Paillard's I think may be allowed to scrape into this category. The Cafe Anglais, the white-faced house at the corner of the Rue Marivaux, has a history of more The Cafe Anglais, than a hundred years, k was originally 13 Boulevard des a little wine-merchant's shop, with its Italiens j^^j. leading into the Rue Marivaux, and was owned by a M. Chevereuil. The Peace of Amiens first brought it into favour with the English, and at that period the charge for a dinner there was three louis. The ownerships of MM. Chellet and de L'Homme marked successive steps in its upward career, and when the restaurant came into the market in '79 or '80 it was bought by a syndicate of bankers and other rich business men who placed it in the hands of its present lessee. The Comte de Grammont Caderousse and his companions in what used to be known as the " Loge Infernale " at the old Opera, were the best-known patrons of the Anglais ; and until the Opera House, replaced by the present building, was burnt down, the Anglais was a great supping-place, the little rabbit-hutches of the entresol being the scene of some of the wildest and most interesting parties given by the great men of the Second Empire. It was to the Anglais that Rigol- boche raced in the costume of Eve from the Maison Doree. The history of the Anglais has never been written because, as M. Burdel, the lessee, will tell you, it never could be written without telling tales anent great men which should not be put into print ; but if you ask to see the book of menus, chiefly of dinners given in the " Grand Seize," the room on the first floor, the curve of the windows of which look up t|ie long line of the boulevards, if you are shown that treasure you will find in it records of dinners given by the late King Edward when he was Prince of Wales, by the Due de Morny and by D'Orsay, by all the Grand Dukes who ever came out of Russia, by " Citron," and Li Hung Chang, and Le Roi Milan, by the lights of the French Jockey Club, and many other celebrities. There is one especially interesting menu of a dinner at which Bismarck was a guest — before the terrible year of course. While I am gossiping as to the curiosities of the Anglais I must not forget a little collection of glass, mostly with gold initials, and silver in a cabinet in the passage of the entresol. Every piece has a history, and most of them have had royal owners. The great sight of the restaurant, however, is its cellars. Electric lamps are used to light them, luminous grapes hang from the arches, and an orange tree at the end of a vista glows with transparent fruit. In these cellars, beside the wine on the wine-list of the restaurant, are to be found some bottles of all the great vintage years of claret, dating back almost as far as Noah's vineyard, an object-lesson in Bordeaux ; and there are little stores of brandies of wondrous age, most of which were already in the cellars when the battle of Waterloo was fought. A dreadful shock was given in the early days of June 1910 to the habitues of the Anglais when they found on the white front of the restaurant a great placard announcing that the building was for sale. The sale was necessary owing to some difficulty in division of the property, and was the result of the com- 8. T^he Gourmefs Guide to Europe plicated French law of succession. Francs 1,300,050 were bid for the building, which passed into the possession of a Belgian syndicate. Till the ter- mination of the present lease the restaurant will be carried on as before. What will happen when the lease falls in, only the members of the Belgian syndicate know. The Cafe Anglais does not advertise itself in any way. Until late years its name was in very small golden letters on its front ; but some new glass plates with big lettering have now been put over the win- dows. A majority of people who did not know their Paris used to pass its white-curtained windows without any idea that it was a restaurant, and it still requires a little moral courage for a stranger to walk into an establishment which so obviously keeps itself to itself. Once inside, however, this feeling disappears ; the ladies in black silk who sit at a desk in the tiny hall facing the door smile reassuringly, and either in the triangular room to the right, where a gilt tripod gives light in the centre of the floor, or in the two little rooms to the left there is sure to be a table vacant. There is the charm of perfect quiet about the Cafe Anglais. No man dining there ever rushes away from it to go to a theatre or a business appointment. If a first act has to be missed, or somebody kept waiting, it is a regrettable necessity ; but to hurry over a lunch or a dinner at the Cafe Anglais would be a crime as dastardly as lese-majeste. The three downstairs rooms are all white ; the service is absolutely silent ; the plump head-waiter has learned the secret, which, until I became a frequenter of the Anglais, I believed was only possessed by the dignitaries of the Church, of being fat without being hot ; the linen and the silver on the tables are perfection. There are tiny details of the service at the Cafe Anglais I always enjoy : I 'Pan's 9 like, for instance, the heart-shaped little paper slip put on the neck of the bottle of any decanted wine, with the cru and the year noted on it. I feel personal satisfaction when M. Burdel, very distinguished in appearance, with iron-grey hair en brosse, and with the broad black ribbon of his eye-glasses stretching across his shirt-front, walks through the rooms, bowing to a client here, making a suggestion there. When he halts at my table and inquires whether I have had a good passage across the Channel, I almost purr with satis- faction. I like the presence of my neighbours at other little tables ; they all look as though they played some important part in the great world, and most of them do. The plats du jour at the Anglais are invariably admirably prepared, and it is the one restaurant at which I have eaten a Gigot de sept heures cooked as it should be. The Potage Ceremani^ made from the livers of fat fowls, is no longer on the daily bill of fare at the Anglais, a fact which I do not regret, for this particular delicacy used to cost £^i a plate when served at a banquet, and I never pay as much as that for my entire dinner. Duglere was the chef of the Anglais, M. Burdel was one of his pupils, and a Barbiie Duglere is one of the special dishes of the house. Potage Germiny used to be claimed as a dish of the house both by the Anglais and the Maison Doree — indeed, one of the MM. Verdier once told me a detailed story of Casimir announcing to the Marquis de St. Georges that he had invented the soup and dedicated it to him, and of the tears of joy the Mar- quis wept — but the Anglais can now alone assert its right to it as a creation. Filet de Sole Mornay^ and Poularde Albufera^ which is really poor little Portugal's one great addition to the book of cookery,^are two of the dishes which the Anglais cooks better than any other restaurant in the world, and Pomnies Anna may perhaps be added to this tiny list. lo T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe May I pause here to tell you the tale of how the recette of the Poularde Alhufera came to Paris. When in Peninsula days the French troops sacked the monas- tery of Albufera, the only thing of any value that they found was the book of recipes in the kitchen. Some of these were new to the French cooks, and one in especial of a chicken stuffed with rice proved so de- lectable that the recette was forwarded to headquarters at Paris, and duly took its place in the golden book of the haute cuisine. On the subject of the prices at the various res- taurants I write at the close of this chapter. The payment of the addition — the word is slangy, but it is used even at the Anglais — is a disagreeable neces- sity, and a polite maitre d''hotel deplores its necessity as much as does a satisfied client ; so I tuck the details away out of sight till the last moment, and only say now that a man with any knowledge of how to order a dinner and with a louis in his pocket can walk into any restaurant in Paris as though he were an Emperor. I always chuckle over a tale of three young English- men who, coming to Paris for the first time, thought that they had discovered Voisin's. They fancied that all the other English who had been to the French capital had overlooked this quiet restaurant with win- dows cloaked by lace curtains in the sleepy Rue St. Honore, and that they were likely to obtain a rough but well-cooked bourgeois meal there at quite a nominal price. The various stages of their disillusion- ment were amusing. Voisin's, like the Cafe Anglais, is a white restaurant inside; but its whiteness is relieved by the deep red of mahogany. It has a corn- Restaurant fortable brown front on the ground floor. Voisin, 26 Rue Like the Anglais, it had quite humble St. Honore beginnings, the original Voisin of 1813 being a wine merchant in' a very small way of business. M. Bellanger, his head waiter, enlarged the T^aris 1 1 little restaurant, but it was not until the present pro- prietor, M. Braquesac, took possession, after the days of the Commune, that the restaurant rose to its greatest glory. When I first saw Voisin's, it looked as unlike the house of to-day as can be imagined. I was in Paris immediately after the days of the Com- mune, and followed, with an old General, the line the troops had taken in the fight for the city. In the Rue St. Honorc were some of the fiercest com- bats, for the regulars fought their way from house to house down this street to turn the positions the Communists took up in the Champs Elysees and the gardens of the Tuileries. The British Embassy had become a hospital, and all the houses which had not been burned looked as thouo-h thev had stood a bombardment. There were bullet splashes on all the walls, and I remember that Voisin's looked even more battered and hopeless than did most of its neighbours. The cellars of Voisin's were flooded during the great rise of the Seine in the early months of 1 9 10, and the bins of the wonderful vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundies were threatened with a bath of icy water ; but the precious bottles were carried as carefully as if they were children to a place of safety above flood level, and were restored to their snug saw- dust beds again when the danger had passed. The diplomats have always had an affection for Voisin's, perhaps because of its nearness to the street of the Embassies ; and in the " eighties " the attaches of the British Embassy used to breakfast there every day. Nowadays, the clientele seems to me to be a mix- ture of the best type of the English and Americans passing through Paris, and the more elderly amongst the statesmen, who were no doubt the dashins; vouns; attaches of thirty years ago. M. Braquesac, grey-haired, and with an aquiline nose, is always, when he is in the restaurant, the most distinguished-looking man there. 12 T^he Gournief s Guide to Europe M. Braquesac has a racing stable, as his amusement, and his talk to his cronies amongst the clientele of the restaurant is generally of Longchamps and Auteuil and Maisons Lafitte. Young M. Braquesac, almost as distinguished in appearance as his father, is always in evidence as the manager of the restaurant. There is always a feeling of calm in Voisin's. Paul, the maitre (Thotel^ is quite episcopal in appearance, and the head sommelier, whose face is round and whose hair is curly, is equally well favoured. From the street a glass door leads straight into the restaurant. Two dames de comptolr^ who sit at a little desk by the door, look as though their lives had been entirely free from trouble. Close to them, in one iof the small v^ndows, the fruit for dessert is placed. Voisin's has two rooms downstairs, an outer one and an inner. The white of its walls and the gleam of its mirrors are subdued by the deep red of the mahogany of its door and window frames. A little staircase leads to the rooms above. The great glory of Voisin's is its cellar of red wines, its Burgundies and Bordeaux. The Bordeaux are arranged in their proper precedence, the wines from the great vineyards first, and the rest in their correct order down to mere bourgeois tipple. Against each brand is the price of the vintage of all the years within a drinkable period, and the man who knew the wine-list of Voisin's thoroughly would be the greatest authority in the world on claret. Mr. Rowland Strong, in his book on Paris, tells how, one Christmas Eve, he took an Englishman to , dine at Voisin's, and how that Englishman demanded plum-pudding. The maitre d^hotel was equal to the occasion. He was polite but firm, and his assertion that " the House of Voisin does not serve, has never served, and will never serve, plum-pudding " settled the matter. ^aris 1 3 Voisin's has, amongst the specialties of the house, its own particular soup and its fillets of sole. The Poularde Voh'in is a most admirable bird, and its chaud- froids and the terrines of foie gras are world-famous. If the mattrc d'^hotel looks upon you with eyes of favour you will be presented by him with a little pink card folded in two on which is the menu of a dinner given at Voisin's on Christmas Day 1870, on the ninety-ninth day of the siege, and you will note that though Con- som?}je d^Ekphanty Le Cha?neau rot'i a Panglaise (I won- der whether this was a sly joke at perfidious Albion), and Le Chat flanque de Rats are prominent dishes, the wines are Mouton Rothschild 1846, Romanee Conti 1858, Grand Porto 1827, and other great wines of great years. If the Anglais and Voisin's may be said to have much of their interest in their " past," Paillard's should be taken as a restaurant which p^iuard is the parent of the present up-to-date 38 Boulevard restaurant. The white restaurant on desItaUens the Boulevard des Italiens has sent out more culinary- missionaries to improve the taste of dining man than any other establishment in Paris. Joseph, who brought the Marivaux to such a high pitch of fame, came from Paillard's, and so did Frederic of the Tour d'Argent. Henri of the Gaillon, Notta, Charles of Foyot's — all were trained at Paillard's. The restaurant has its history, and its long list of great patrons. Le Desir de Roi^ which generally appears in the menu of any important dinner at Paillard's, and which has foie gras and, I fancy, the ^'trails" of woodcock and snipe as its principal com- ponents, has been eaten by a score of kings at one time or another, his gracious Majesty the late King Edward heading the list. The restaurant at first was contained /in one small room. Then the shop of Isabelle, the Jockey Club flower girl, which was next door, was 14 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe acquired, and lastly another little shop was taken in, the entrance changed from the front to its present position at the side, the accountant's desk put out of sight, and the little musicians' gallery built. M. Paillard has pleased the ladies amongst his customers by giving them music with their dinner. He also gives them music, too much music, with their supper. Paillard's has now a supper clientele of the most unblemished respectability. The great classic restaurants resemble Napoleon's Old Guard in that they die but do not surrender. The Maison Doree went to its end like a hero, refusing to bow to vitiated modern tastes. M. Paillard, however, prefers that his restaurant should not die, and if the modern ladies who sup like to see Spanish dancers gyrate while they eat their chicken, and are prepared to go up to Montmartre to see them, M. Paillard, being a gallant man, will save the ladies the journey to the northern heights by allowing dancers in his restaurant on the boulevards. All this savours of the modern smart restaurant, and I feel a doubt whether Paillard's should not be now classed amongst the " smart " instead of the " classic " restaurants. The restaurant as it is with its white walls and bas-reliefs of cupids and flowers, its green Travertine panels let into the white pilasters, its chandeliers of cut glass, is very handsome. M. Paillard, hair parted in the middle and with a small moustache, irre- proachably attired, wearing a grey frock-coat by day, and a " smoking " and black tie in the evening, is generally to be seen superintending all arrange- ments, and there is a maitre (Thbtel who speaks excellent English. Amongst the specialties of the house are Pomme Otero and Pomme Georgette (both created, I fancy, by Joseph when he was at Paillard's), Sole Paillard^ T'lmbale de queues d^ Ecrevisses Mantua^ Filet Paillard^ ^aris 1 5 Rouennais Paillard, Terrine de Fo'ie Gras a la gelee au Porto, Perdreau et Caille Paillard. The " Smart " Restaurants " Breakfast che-z Henry, dine at the Ritz, and sup at Durand's," was the advice once giv^en me by a man who knows his fashionable Paris Henry's, Place thoroughly; and it is difficult to better Gaillon it. Henry's is in the Place Gaillon. There is another Henry's, an English hotel and bar, in the Rue Volney. Henry's is on the site of a much older restaurant, the Maison Grosstetes, which had its days of celeb- rity under the Second Empire. Henri Drouet, a former maitre d''hotel at Paillard's, restored the for- tunes of the restaurant and partially rebuilt it ; and the present proprietor, M. Marius Durieux, who wears Piccadilly- weeper whiskers, who is his own maitre d^hotel, and who learned his business at Pail- lard's and at the Gaillon, has further decorated and enlarged the restaurant. The plate-glass windows are curtained with lace, a little shelter of gilt metal and glass is over the door, pillars of white and grey marble with copper capitals stripe the front with soft colour. Go in through the revolving glass door and you find yourself in luxury. Two rooms thrown into one stretch before you, another room is to the left. The restaurant is white in colour, but its chandeliers of cut-glass, its etageres and flowers, its liberal orna- mentation, keep it from being severe. The tables are put as close as possible to each other all round the three rooms, the darnes de comptoir are given a tiny desk against the wall, the chasseur hurries back- wards and forwards through a small door with coats flung over his arm and hats balanced on sticks and umbrellas. Henry's is always full, the proprietor is always in despair because he cannot accommodate all 1 6 The Gourmefs Guide to Europe his would-be clients, and his patrons who have secured tables beforehand feel that they have shown singular acuteness in doing so. The cuisine of Henry's is excellent. A number of dishes named after the Rue Port Mahon, which is on one side of the restaurant, are some of the Gaillon specialties, and Consomme Fortunato, Crepes des Gourmets^ the Poires Gaillon^ and, of course, the sole of the house, are excellent. I know of no restaurant where the hors dCceuvre are more excellent and varied, where the sweet dishes, creams and open tarts, and fruit are more tempting. At Henry's there is always on the bill of fare a larger number of plats du jour^ ready at any moment, than at any of the other restaurants of the first class. The fly in the milk to me in the Place Gaillon is that, the dining tables being so close together, the serving tables have to be placed in the centre of the rooms, and no serving table can ever be a beautiful or appetis- ing sight. M. Marius has now extended his activities to the Chateau de Madrid on the border of the Bois de Boulogne, where he has built an hotel and rebuilt the old restaurant. La Rue's and Durand's are on either side of the Rue Royal, where it joins the open space before the church of La Madeleine. Both have a few little tables and chairs outside, forming what is known Durand's, Place as a terrasse ; both are in high favour de la Madeleine with travelling Britons; both are as neat as new pins ; a porter of noble proportions is ready to call up the motors at each door ; a little page, who likes to be called Chasseur^ is alert to do any small service which may be rewarded by a tip. Durand's is to the east of the Rue Royale, and carriages cross the pavement to reach it. Jules Simon in marble looks longingly over his shoulder at the restaurant. On entering, a great pane of glass to one side [forms a transparent wall to one of T*aris 1 7 the restaurant's rooms. On a shelf against this glass are the little baskets of apples and pears and other fruits. The da?nes de comptoir are enthroned in the entrance hall. Durand's has made enlargement after enlargement, and its interior at first sight looks as though one room were reflected in three or four great mirrors. In reality, three or four rooms have been opened one into the other. The waiters are mostly plump, and are all polite ; a table is swiftly pulled out, and space made for him who would break- fast or dine, and the gar^on, who has a quick eye for the nationality of the clients, and knows the shade of politics of his French customers, puts a newspaper — British, American, or French — on the table. One of the proprietors, brisk little men both, with a napkin over one arm, glances to see that the table is all in order, a comfortable maitre d^hotel bows as he offers the carte de jour^ and behind him the black-aproned sommelier waits for you to make a choice of wine. Durand's has, of course, its specialties. Its Consomme Baignense^ its Barbue Durandy its Poulet Saute Grand Due, and its Soufle Pole Nord are excellent. Durand's clients are drawn from many nations, and many of the Parisians breakfast and dine and sup there. A Parisian in Paris is more particular than the most strait-laced of the travelling British and Americans where he takes his women-folk at supper-time, and Durand's at that hour combines smartness and respectability. The Brav' General was a good patron of Durand's, and many of his friends, grey-headed, military-looking gentlemen, still breakfast there. It was, I believe, in one of the little private dining-rooms at Durand's that General Boulanger sat and doubted whether he should initiate a coup d^etat, and finally went home to bed. The Cafe Riche also claims to have been the house in which the General failed to make up his mind — perhaps the would-be Dictator had two evenings B 1 8 T'he Gou7nnef s Guide to Europe of irresolution. I give the menu of the table d'hote supper Durand's gave its customers one Christmas Eve, that being the night when all Paris, respect- able and not quite respectable, sups at one cafe or another : — Consomme de Volaille au fumet de Celeris. Boudin grille a la Parisienne. Ailerons de Volaille a la Tzar. Cailles a la LucuUusi Salade Durand. Ecrevisses de la Meuse a la nage. Crepes Suzette. Dessert. Champagnes. Clicquot Brut, Pommery Drapeau Americain. G'^'' Fine Napoleon. The boudin is the indigestible sausage, in which pigs' blood is an ingredient, which is a necessary portion of every Christmas Eve feast. The proprietors of Durand's now own the little pavilion which Paillard opened in the Champs Elysees. The interior of La Rue's is pleasantly bright. Its seats of crushed strawberry colour, its pillars with the La Rue's, Place deep pink silk running half-way up de la Madeleine them, its mirrors with cut-glass elec- troliers on their surface, make it a typical Parisian restaurant. In one corner a band plays quite in- ojfFensively. When the original proprietor of La Riie's retired with a fortune in 1909, M. Vaudable, a former maitre d'hote! in the restaurant, and M. Nignon, who is an cx-chef de cuisine of the Hermitage at Moscow, stepped into his shoes, and the cookery of the restau- rant became to a great extent Russianised. If I were to publish in full the leaflet which gives the " Mets Russes Nationaux " to be obtained at La Rue's, I should practically give a list of most of the plats in the Russian cuisine. The Russian soups Rassolnik and ^aris 1 9 Stch'i and Salianka^ sturgeon cooked in various forms, and Koid'ih'ianka of fishes, ^raz'i Popoloskiy ^zou a la Tartare^ Scfwchlik Pokarsk'i^ and a dozen entremets which are delightful to the tastes, but the names of which read like different varieties of sneezes, are all on this list. Where Cubat failed Nignon has suc- ceeded, and the Parisians flock to La Rue's to eat the plats of their allies the Russians. A word of advice should be addressed, however, to the ynaitre d' hotel 2.t La Rue's, and indeed to the maitres (Vhotel of all fashionable restaurants in Paris, not to treat cavalierly people whom they do not recognise as frequent customers, but who may have been in past days very good friends of the house. Such a man, a friend of mine, lunching at La Rue's, ordered an apple for his guest, an abbe, and when the bill was brought called attention to the fact that 4 francs had been charged for the fruit, he supposing that two apples had been put down on the bill. The ?naftre criiotel did not behave at all politely, and the reduction of 50 centimes which the house offered to make, was proffered with such a bad grace that it was refused. As a matter of fact at that time the charge for an apple at the Cafe Anglais and most other smart restaurants was 3 francs. This incident shows that it is wise to ask the price of fruit at La Rue's before ordering it. The Cafe de Paris, in the Avenue de I'Opera, is at breakfast and dinner time a restaurant much frequented by cosmopolitan Paris, and q^^^ ^^ p^j.^g the cuisine is excellent. It is wise if Avenue de you wish to breakfast there to tele- I'^pera phone m advance for a table. At supper-time the butterfly ladies of Lutetia are to be seen there m all their glory. The building is wedge-shaped, and two rooms fork right and left from the entrance. The room to the right is the one most in favour with the Parisians. The leader of the band of Tziganes, 20 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe a pale young man, with a mass of red hair, who is dressed in ordinary evening clothes, is a favourite object for the pencil of Sem and other Parisian caricaturists. It is quite possible that if there is a rage for Apache dances, or for Spanish dances, or for Otaheitan dances, one of these dances may be per- formed by professionals at i a.m., for the Cafe de Paris, content that its excellent cookery shall keep it in the front rank at the breakfast and dinner hour, despises none of the methods which supping places adopt to attract customers. The Ermitage Restaurant at the Rond Point of the Champs Elysees used to be a smart restaurant, much frequented by people of position in the world of sport. Chevillard was the original proprietor. It then passed into the hands of Emile Aoust, whom Englishmen will remember at the Amphitryon Club, and from this to those of M. Courtade, a Belgian. The restaurant at the time I write is closed ; but it is sure sooner or later to be reopened, as its position is an excellent one. The newest of the smart restaurants is the Daunon, which has sprung up in the road of that name near The Daunon, its junction with the Avenue de I'Opera. Rue Daunon The restaurant is a large hall, lighted from above, with walls of light colours ornamented with Wedgwood plaques. There are green marble pilasters with gilt capitals, and great flower baskets on the wall which conceal electric lamps. The carte is chiffrcy the prices reasonable, and the attendance good. After supper there are " attractions " which take the shape of dancing girls. Of the restaurants attached to hotels I do not propose to write at length. At the Elysee Palace Eiys^e Palace, in the Champs Elysees the restaurant Champs Elysees {§ ^n excellent one, and there is also a grill-room on the London model which is very Varis 2 1 popular with theatre-goers both at dinner and supper time. The restaurant of the new Meurice Hotel in the Rue de Rivoli is making a bid to be considered something better than a mere appanage The Meurice, of the hotel. The room is a very fine ^^^ ^® Rivoli one, with marble pilasters and cut-glass electroliers, and a good picture in the circular panel above the fireplace. Its cooking is decidedlv good. I find that on days when there is racing in the Bois an appreciable number of parties on Restaurant des their way to the course call a halt at Champs Elysees, the Restaurant des Champs Elysees, Champs Elysees which is a part of the Hotel d'Albe, to breakfast. The restaurant of the Hotel de Crillon, the great palace at the north-west corner of the Place de la Concorde, is the newest of the notable Hotel de Criiion dining places attached to hotels. The Place de la Con- restaurant is on the first floor in the ^^^^^ Salon des Aigles of the Dukes of Crillon, and the cuisine is excellent. The Restaurant Volney is an offshoot of the Chat- ham Hotel, but has a separate entrance in the Rue Volney. It is a snug dining place, with The Volney, Rue red carpets, red screens, a scarlet band Volney in a crimson alcove, and lamps which are apparently of mother-of-pearl. There is an abundance of flowers always on the tables. I can recommend the sole of the house, served with truffles and the flesh of lobsters. My dinner on the one occasion I have dined there cost me 1 8 francs, a moderate sum for quite a good meal. The Ritz Restaurant holds an exceptional position in the dining world of Paris. The Ritz Hotel is not a large one, but the Ritz Res- The Ritz, Place taurant is of a goodly size, and therefore Venddme the Ritz establishment is a restaurant firstly and an 22 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe hotel secondly. It is the restaurant of the smartest foreign society in Paris, and the English, Americans, Russians, Spaniards, dining there always outnumber greatly the French. It is a place of great feasts, but it is also a restaurant at which the maitres d^ hotel are instructed not to suggest long dinners to the patrons of the establishment. In M. Elles' hands or that of the maitre cChotel there is no fear of being " rushed " into ordering an over-lengthy repast. This is a typical little dinner for three I once ate at the Ritz, and as a feast in the autumn it is worth recording and repeating : — Caviar. Consomme Viveni. Mousseline de Soles au vin du Rhin. Queues d'Ecrevisses a TAmericaine. Escalopes de Riz de veau Favorite. Perdreaux TrufFes. Salade. Asperges vertes en branches. Coupes aux Marrons. Friandises. In the afternoon the long passage with its chairs, carpets, and hangings, all of crushed strawberry colour, is filled with tea-drinkers, for the " five o'clock " is very popular in Paris, and the Ritz is one of the smartest if not the smartest place at which to drink tea. In the evening the big restaurant, with its ceiling painted to represent the sky, and its mirrors latticed to repre- sent windows, is always full, the contrast to a smart English restaurant being that three-quarters of the ladies dine in their hats. Sometimes very elaborate entertainments are given in the Ritz, and I can recall one occasion on a hot summer night, when the garden was tented over and turned into a gorge apparently somewhere near the North Pole, there ^aris 23 being blocks and pillars of ice everywhere. The anteroom was a mass of palms, and the idea of the assemblage of the guests in the tropics and their sudden transference to the land of ice was excellently carried out. The Summer Restaurants Of all the pleasant impressions that Paris leaves on the mind of any one not too blase to be receptive the remembrance of breakfasts and dinners eaten in the open, with delightful surroundings of flowers and green turf and great trees, is one of the pleasantest. The little tables, the white-aproned waiters scuttling over the gravel, the checker of light and shade, the colour and movement are all redolent of the spirit of Paris. Breakfast at Ledoyen's on the day of a vernissage at one of the Salons, dinner at the Armenonville or Pre Catalan or Chateau de Madrid on a hot June night, tea at the Cascade after a race day at Long- champ, are part of the. life of all those who are in the movement ; and to watch the bourgeoisie enjoying themselves whole-heartedly at the Porte Jaune in the Bois de Vincennes, to sit on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri IV. at St. Germain and to look over the plain and the twisting rivers towards Paris, to breakfast at the Pavilion Bleu at St. Cloud, and afterwards see the merry-making of the bridal parties that have come out from the city, are each a separate delight. The Champs Elysees hold several clusters of the summer restaurants, which open as soon as the chestnut trees are in blossom. Ledoyen's, on the south side of the central road, has been a favourite dining-place for more than half a century. Guillemin, who was cook to the Due de Vincennes, brought the restaurant into great favour about 1850. Ledoyen, whose name the restaurant bears, was originally a plongeur^ and 24 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Surope it may be that his early experiences in a cellar gave him the knowledge of wine which enabled him later Ledoyen's, in life to lay down one of the best Champs Elysees cellars of wines in Paris. Ledoyen's is built on the plan of most of the open-air restaurants. A gay little pavilion, which contains the kitchen and some salons, and round three sides of which runs a glazed shelter, a refuge should the weather be cold or rainy, is the hub of the restaurant. Flowering creepers and grape vines are trained up the supports of the shelter, and fuchsias and other flowers give a plenitude of colour. In front of the little house is a gravel space, which is enclosed either by a privet hedge or by shrubs in green tubs. Trees large or small give shade to the enclosure, and the white- clothed tables are dotted here and there. Ledoyen's is not an expensive restaurant, and all the worlds of Paris go there. On a Sunday you will see a grey- headed old retired officer giving breakfast to his son, who is in the uniform of a military college, and the little clerk entertaining his fiancee and his future mother-in-law, as well as the well-to-do Parisian and his wife, and the inevitable parties of Americans and English. At Ledoyen's the waiters push about great dishes on high cradles, and the joints of the day are carved at the little tables. To say that one always gets one's food at the out-of-doors restaurants as hot as one does where one is nearer to the kitchen would be to say the thing which is not ; nor is the service always as quiet-footed and unhurried as in the classic restaurants ; but the out-of-door restaurants vary as much as the indoor ones do in character — and in price. The Pavilion d'Elysee and Laurent's, on the north side of the central road, near the Rond Point, are quite first-class in every way, even as to prices. The Elysee is a charming little building, and is a magnified jewel-case in stone and glass and metal. It has its pink and white awnings for hot days, and its in- terior is light and bright and summery. pavillond'Elysee, Paillard opened it, and then parted with Durands, his rights to a company, and the com- Champs Elysees pany made it over to the proprietors of Durand's. The proprietorships and managements of the Parisian restaurants change as often as do those of the Paris theatres, and only the tax-collectors try to keep well informed as to the various permutations and combina- tions. The Elysee remains what Paillard made it — a very charming little summer restaurant, with excel- lent cuisine and service, and prices to match. Laurent's Restaurant, built after the model of a Roman villa, stands far back from the centre road, and is so enclosed by trees and thickets that one has to look for it to find it. About once every three years it is thoroughly renovated and redecorated, and it is, as it has always been, one of the pleasantest as well as one of the quietest of outdoor restaurants. Laurents, The azaleas and the rhododendrons Champs Elysees which are about it clothe it with colour in the spring and early summer, and the acacia trees keep its little space of gravel in pleasant shade. For many years I used to dine at Laurent's every Grand Prix night with a well-known explorer and traveller, and a Canard Pornpeiane^ a wonderful cold duck with black and red figures designed upon its snowy breast, was always one of the dishes on the menu of my host's dinner. A little band, which plays quite in- offensively, is the latest addition to the attractions of Laurent's. Partly for old association's sake, partly for its quiet, partly for its good cuisine, I always have a warm corner m my heart for Laurent's. The restaurant of the Ambassadeurs is on summer nights one of the dining-places to which the cosmo- politan world of Paris flocks. The ex-proprietors and 26 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe present managers of Maxim's, the supping-place in the Rue Royale, are the lessees of the Ambassadeurs, and TheAmtoassa- ^^^ cuisine is very good. The tables deurs, Champs sought after are those of the front of the Eiysees balcony which faces the stage, and to sit after dinner and smoke and drink coffee and listen to and watch the performance is one of those combina- tions of pleasant things obtainable in Paris, at a price, but which are unknown to us in London. The Am- The Alcazar, bassadeurs has a little garden behind Champs Eiysees it, which is a pleasant place at break- fast-time. The Alcazar has a restaurant and a gar- den which is under the same management as the Ambassadeurs. The Pre Catalan is the latest addition to the smart restaurants in the Bois, though some of the older ones have lately been rebuilt. The Pre Catalan used to The Pre ^^ ^ farm where children and a few Catalan, Bois fashionable ladies used to drink milk in de Boulogne ^j^^ early mornings, and there always had been a chalet restaurant at its entrance. The proprietor of one of the most popular Paris newspapers saw that the children were monopolising one of the most charming enclosures in the Bois, and he obtained the right to build a restaurant and lay out a garden there. The restaurant is a great banqueting hall with a cupola in the centre. Large mirrors on one side reflect the long windows on the other, and the big room, all white and ornamented with great taste, might well have been copied from some palace. The servants wear quiet handsome liveries, and the carte du jour has the prices marked against the various dishes, information which some of the restaurants do not give to their clients until the bill is presented. The Pre Catalan has its lawn, which is a favoured spot at tea- time on race days. Both the Pre Catalan, and the restaurant next on my list, the Armenonville, are now ^aris 27 controlled by M. Charles Mourier of the Cafe de Paris. The Pavilion d'Armenonville, another of the Bois restaurants, has always been in high favour with smart Paris. It has been the custom since Armenonville its building that men shall wear dress Bois de clothes when dining at this restaurant, ^o^io^^ie an unwritten rule which has not been enforced in any other restaurant. When the very broad glass shelter which runs round the house is filled with diners, the ladies in dinner dresses and plumed and feathered hats, the men in their evening black and white ; when the tables are heaped with flowers; when the trees outside are garlanded with coloured lanterns ; when the two bands, playing alternately, make gentle music which does not interfere with conversation, then Armenonville forms a scene brilliant enough for any theatre to stage. The luxurious surroundings have, of course, to be paid for, but though the prices at these little palaces in the great wood are high, they are not exorbitant. The Chateau de Madrid used to be a collection of old buildings grouped about a courtyard in which were trees. Under these trees were chateau de little iron tables ; Japanese lanterns Madrid, Bois were amidst the foliage; and there de Boulogne was a pleasant sensation in dining thus in a half light, with the buildings around all in deep shadow. The old buildings have now disappeared, and have been replaced by a brand new white restaurant, with great plate glass windows and large mirrors, and decoration of trellis work, and by a new hotel which stands facing the road. The trees still remain, and under them on hot evenings the little tables are still set. But the charm of the old chateau has disappeared. There is a blaze of electric light, and a band plays all the airs of the moment. M. Marius, of Henry's of the Place 2 8 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe Gaillon, is the proprietor of the new hotel and new restaurant, and the prices are those of the Place Gaillon, and also, happily, so is the cookery. The chateau is just outside the Bois, and the steam trams of the Chemin de Fer du Bois run past it. One break- fasts there very pleasantly on race days. The Pavilion Royal, at the near end of the lake in the Bois, used to be a bourgeois restaurant, where one Pavilion Royal, might breakfast and dine in compara- Bois de Boulogne tively humble company at a compara- tively humble rate. It, however, has been rebuilt and redecorated, has become smart, has an excellent cook, and its prices have risen with its reputation. The Chalet du Cycle, which also used to be a very bourgeois restaurant, has also now grown proud, and calls itself L'Ermitage de Longchamps. The Restaurant de la Cascade is a gay little cafe near the racecourse, and many people breakfast on its lawn on race days. The Chalet des Isles is a favourite lunching-place when the lakes are frozen. In the Avenue Victor Hugo is Carron's, a simple Carron's ^"^ cheap restaurant, which is some- Avenue Victor times patronised in cold or wet weather ^^^° by men going to the races. A gar- gantuan dinner can be obtained there at five or six francs. The Select Bar is a little restaurant, and is rather off the beaten track, but the St. Cloud tramcars pass it. "Le Select" ^^ ^^ kept by two sisters who give their Bar, Quai de personal attention to everything with Billancourt excellent results. A very quiet, little- frequented eating-house it was, and the prices very moderate. It has of late, however, sprung into fame, and on days when there is racing at St. Cloud, it is wise to retain a table there in advance by telephone. The specialty of the restaurant is the garhure^ the >avoury mess of the south, but two days' notice must be given for the preparation of this deHcacy. Across the River The Tour d'Argent on the Quai de la Tourelle, nearly opposite the island on which Notre Dame stands, has been made known to the Tour d'Arg-ent world by its proprietor, Frederic Quai de la Delair. It is a small old-fashioned Tourelle house, with a narrow entrance hall and a low-ceilinged parlour. I can remember the days when its floors were spread with sawdust, but it has outgrown that sign of simplicity. Frederic much resembles the pictures of Ibsen. He has a wave of hair, now whitened and rather thinned by the years, curving back over his head, and flowing whiskers. A chat with the master of the restaurant is an amusing part of a lunch Dr dinner. There is a famous portrait of Frederic painted by one of his friends, an artist ; and I once had the satisfaction of comparing the picture and the original. Frederic's daughter held the picture, and he, having passed a hand over his hair and having spread out his whiskers, stood close to the canvas, assuming the expression which the artist had repro- duced. Frederic's conversation is amusing and in- structive. He has some curious theories. He holds that different kinds of fuel should be used for the roasting of different kinds of meat, believing that the spiced scents of some woods transmitted in the cook- ing add to the pleasure of eating all kinds of game. Frederic is not alone in holding this belief, for the old Roman gourmets thought as he does, and spent large sums of money on the woods for their kitchen fires, as do also the Japanese, that very practical and up-to-date nation believing that burning sticks transmit their essences to that which is cooked before 30 T'he Goiirmefs Guide to Europe or over them. Every visitor to the Tour is given a paper whereon are printed the " creations faites a la Tour d'Argent par Frederic." The great cook — for Frederic goes into the kitchen to give the finishing touches to the dishes for appreciative cHents — has named many of his inventions after well-know^n people who are, or have been, good patrons to the establish- ment. (Eufs General Williams^ Filet de L'levre Arnold White^ Filet de Sole Lo'ie Fuller^ are three out of two- score dishes to which celebrities have become god- parents. A poet has sung Frederic's praises, for the Marquis de Lauzieres de Themines has put into archaic rhyme a eulogy of Frederic and his works and a description of serving Canard a la Presse : — " La d'un canard, donte reste la carcasse Dans line boite, on la broie, on la moud. Un rude engin I'ecrase/.la concasse. II resulte un jus exquis au gout." There are many claimants to the honour of having discovered the method of squeezing the last drop of juice out of a duck, but the real discoverers were the poor peasants of the Midi, who smashed with stones the carcases of their tough and skinny ducks to extract all the essences. One of the great maitres d' hotel whom Paillard's has sent forth — whether it was Frederic or Joseph or Charles or another matters little — remembered this custom of his p(^ys, and the silver turnscrew was the result. Joseph, whose carving and squeezing of the duck was quite a sacri- ficial ceremony, generally used two ducks, one well- cooked for the meat and the other part- cooked for the juices. Frederic gives on his leaflet wild ducks, wood- cock, Le Poulet Belgrand^ La Langouste TVinterthur^ and F'leds de Mouton Poulette as the dishes which have made the fame of the house ; but the Filet de Sole Cardinal^ little fillets pressed into crayfish tails and served with a red crayfish sauce, is the best known of ^aris 3 1 all Frederic's creations. Frederic is a believer, as all great maitres crhbtel are, in a very short dinner. When the Secretary to the Behring Sea Conference interviewed Frederic, at Lord Hannen's request, told him that the members of the two Missions would dine at the Tour d'Argent, and sketched out a twelve-course dinner with two soups, two entrees, and a sorbet in the middle of it, Frederic asked him very politely to take his diplomatists elsewhere, for such a barbarous meal would never be served on the Quai de la Tourelle. Frederic has a short way with all Philistines, even if they be of the gentler sex. I once took a lady to breakfast at the Tour — she had selected it as being close to the Morgue, and thought that a good lunch would be a cheerful beginning to her sight-seeing — and Frederic himself had come to take the order. " Eggs, a bird, a vegetable, an entrcmet^'' I had said, as if I were inventing a new drawing-room game, and Frederic had run his fingers through his wave of hair and had gone into a reverie — the reverie which precedes some wonderful combination. I in- sinuatingly said, " For the eggs," as the cue for his first pronouncement. Frederic breathed hard and looked at the ceiling. " Uffs a la plat^' said the lady, who fancied we were both at a loss as to how eggs could be cooked. Frederic came back from the clouds and o;ave the ladv one look. It was not a look of anger or contempt, but simply an expression of pity for the whole of her sex. The Restaurant de Lapcrouse on the Quai de St. Augustine is old-fashioned in appearance, and its first floor is a rabbit warren of little Laperowse dining-rooms decorated with scenes Quai St Augus- of rural merrymaking and landscapes. ^^^® This restaurant is a favourite lunching-place of the lawyers whose business lies hard by in the Palais de 32 l^he Gonrmefs Guide to Europe Justice. The students in the " Quartier '* when they are in funds sometimes dine at this restaurant, which they call " Le Navigateur " — there is a portrait of the old sea-dog and a sketch of his ship the Astrolabe on the carte du jour. Some of the specialties of the house are Filets de Sole Laperouse^ Bouillabaisse^ which is served always on Fridays, and Tripes a la mode de Caen^ provided on Thursdays. The connoisseurs say that the Maison Joanne in the Rue Montorgueil cooks the finest tripe in Paris ; but the little upstairs room in that establishment near the Halles is not to be compared in comfort with the rooms of the " Navigateur," and I have tasted the tripe at both establishments and could detect no difference. The burgundy at the Laperouse is excellent ; Corton and Chambertin of 1878, Richbourg 1874, Clos Vougeot 1893, and a beautiful Romance 1887. Its Bordeaux, its Chateau Yquem in particular, and its wines of the Rhone are also to be recommended. Foyot's, where one lunches well if one is going to spend an afternoon in the Luxembourg,- and Foyot, 33 Rue where one dines before going to the de Tournon Odeon, is quite an aristocratic restau- rant. It is one of the restaurants which M. Charles Mourier controls. The restaurant is at the corner of the Rues de Tournon and Vaugirard, and when the Anarchists thought that to blow up a restaurant would be a warning to aristocratic diners, Foyot's appeared to them to be very handily situated for their purpose. The bomb exploded, but the only person hurt was an Anarchist poet who had been so false to his tenets as to have taken a very pretty lady to dine a deux in this restaurant of the well-to-do, and to have given her Truite Meuniere to eat. Needless to say, Paris laughed at the incident. Potage Foyot^ Riz de f^eau Foyot^ Homard Foyot^ and Biscuit Foyot are some of the dishes of the house, and are all excellent. T^aris 3 3 Of the restaurants of the " Quartier " I write in conjunction with those of Montmartre. The Restaurants of the Parisians In labelling some restaurants as being Parisian I only wish to indicate that they are more patronised by the French people and less by the cosmopolitan world of Paris than the "smart" restaurants are. If we start from the Madeleine Square and walk up the boulevards towards the Place de la Bastille, we shall pass most of the best known of the typically French restaurants. In the Madeleine Square Lucas, Place de is Lucas's. It used to be a very quiet ^^ Madeleine and rather sombre restaurant, and its clients were very steady-going, a number of the better-class visitors from the provinces making it their headquarters at meal- times. Large windows, m nouveau art frames, have now taken the place of the old-fashioned casements, and the interior has been rather garishly decorated. I suspect the prices of having gone up a step when the alterations were made, but the „ cuisine remains quite excellent. The Ang-iaise, Harengs Lucas are the most appetising 28 Rue Boissy hors crceuvre I know, and in the cellar "^ there are some fine old cognacs which are not at all unreasonable in price. In the Rue Boissy d'Anglas, behind Lucas's, is the Taverne Anglaise, a quiet establishment, the patrons of which say that they get Lucas's cookery at considerably less than Lucas's prices. A little way up the Rue Royale is Weber's Res- taurant, which at one time was known as His Lord- ship's Larder, and where the cookery webers, Rue used to be semi-British. Weber's Royale is entirely French now, and has swallowed up one or two neighbouring establishments, including * c 34 'T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe an Irish American bar. A detective of European fame used to find it useful to dine in this bar and to listen to the conversation of other diners. The name of the plat du jour was always on a bit of cardboard which was hung over the bar. One day the detective found that D.D.S. was the dish of the day, and inquired its meaning. "S stands for spy," said the man behind the bar. Sherlock Holmes looked at the faces which surrounded him, and did not ask for an explanation of the other letters. That, however, is very ancient history. Weber's to-day is a large bright restaurant much patronised by French- men belonging to the liberal professions, by the Depu- ties, who find this restaurant within easy distance or their Parliament house, and by English resident in Paris. The Taverne Royale is close to Weber's. I do not propose to give a list of the Tavernes, which hold to the Paris restaurants somewhat the same position the grill-rooms hold to the London ones. At the Tavernes Royale, Tourtel, Brebant, simple food, sufficiently well cooked, and admirable light beer are obtainable, and after some days of eating rich food in the temples of the higher art it is pleasant to rest one's digestion by a cup of simple clear soup, the thigh of a fowl, and a slice of cheese at a Taverne. Viel's, or to give it its alternative title, the Restaurant de la Madeleine, is on the boulevard of that name. It is a white-faced restaurant, and its interior is also Viel's Restau- white. Its prices are moderate, and I rant, Bde. de have found it a pleasant restaurant at la Madeleine ^j^j^j^ ^^ ^^p^ ^^^ -^ j^ p^^j-onised by a pleasantly Bohemian world of authors and actors and actresses and artists, who go there to avoid being stared at and to eat their evening meal in peace and quietness. The Taverne Olympia, which opens its doors at 5 P.M. and closes them at the hour of early breakfast, ^aris 3 5 has its principal entrance in the Rue Caumartin. The Taverne is an underground place of feasting. Its prices are moderate, and its simple Taverne food is well cooked. There are two or Olympia, three of the little theatres in the Rue ^^® Caumartin Caumartin, and the Taverne benefits by its propin- quity to them. On the Boulevards des Italiens and Capucines the restaurants crowd together. Every big cafe has a restaurant as part of its establishment. The Cafe de la Paix boasts a grill-room ; the private rooms at the Cafe Rougemont are exceedingly well decorated; at the Americain, where the dining clientele is quite different from the supping one, great joints are wheeled up to the tables and carved there. Julien's, the La- fitte, the restaurant of the transformed Cafe Riche, which is making a bid, a not very successful one, to become a light-hearted supper restaurant — all have their crowd of French diners. In the Rue Port Mahon is Cerny's Bar, which has taken the place of the Cabaret Lyonnais, a house where tench used to be cooked with cerny's Bar, infinite skill, and where a still pink Rue Port Mahon champagne used to be the favourite wine. Cerny's Bar is very central for the theatres. It is managed by two ladies. The clientele of the restaurant con- sists of racing men, young men and their lady friends, actors and butterfly ladies. Every one seems to know every one, conversation flies across the snug dining-room, and the diners throw poker dice to see who shall pay for the dinners. On this account it is rather embarrassing for a solitary stranger to visit ; but beyond an expression of surprise at seeing a strange face, he will not be disturbed. No a la carte dinner is served, only a six franc table d'hote meal which is always excellent and of reasonable length, and is served at lightning speed to any man who tells 36 T'he Goiirmef s Guide to Europe the waiter he is in a hurry. The restaurant is closed in August, and during parts of July and September. A curiosity in restaurants is Blanc's, in the Rue Favart, close to the Opera Comique. Its specialities Blanc's, ^^e the dishes of the Midi, and those Rue Favart vf\\o are curious in such matters can taste there the Brandade^ and Aioli^ and Bourridi\ and Bceiif en dauhe without making the railway journey to the land of Tartarin. In the Passage des Princes, but a stone's throw from the boulevards, is Noel Peters', an excellent specimen xT^ 1 Tj«+«^c- of the bourgeois restaurant. I am Noel Peters , t> r 1 1 -vt 1 24 Passage des sorry, however, to nnd that JNoel Pnnces Peters' now describes itself as an American restaurant, hoping to draw into its net the thousands of Americans who drift through Paris, and who would sooner eat dry hash and crackers than the most elaborate dishes of the French cuisine. The rooms are decorated with reproductions of the tiles and stencilled patterns of the Alhambra at Granada, the colour of which is very gorgeous and very beautiful. A large sum of money was expended on this decora- tion, and it is well worth the while of any one lunching or dining at the house to walk round the rooms and to look at their adornment. The prices are reasonable, and the service quiet. The fish dishes at Noel Peters' are always excellent, and the sole of the house is to be warmly recommended. The sole of all soles is, however, to be found further up the boulevards, at the Restaurant Marguery. M. Marguery, who died in the winter 1909—10, is mourned as a benefactor to Paris, for he it was who took a lead when the boulevards had to be decorated in honour of any great celebrity, and he was always to the fore in any big scheme of charity. If there were starving poor he fed them, and his name headed a list of subscribers on the occasion of any great catastrophe, such as a big fire or a flood. Marguery's, which has banqueting rooms as well as public dining-rooms, is next door to the Gymnase Theatre, and is always crowded and bustling. The .S^/^ylf«r§-«£'ry, the secret Marguery. of which is the very strong fish stock used 34 Boulevard in its preparation, is a noble dish, and so ^onne Nouvelle is the Barbue Marguery^ and there are a score of other creations of the house ; but it was on the back of his sole that M. Marguery rose to great wealth and eminence. But before proceeding as far up the boulevards as Marguery's I should have dealt with the restaurants of newspaper land which lie round and about the Faubourg Montmartre. If you walk up Restaurant the Rue de Richelieu from the boule- Gauclair, vards you come, after a hundred yards ^^® ^^- ^^^^ or so, to what appears to be one of the ordinary Parisian drinking houses. The bar, however, is of marble, and if you look up to the first floor you see an illuminated sign telling that this is the Restaurant Gauclair. Round the corner in the Rue St. Marc is the entrance. There is a small white room on the ground floor, and this is the favourite dining-place. There are three other dining-rooms on the first floor, and a little salon for private parties. The house at meal times is always in a bustle, and resonant with the voices of the waiters shouting orders down speaking- tubes to the cook in the basement. The cookery ot the Gauclair to-day, under M. Maurice, is very much what it must have been when the restaurant was first founded in 1810. It is the good bourgeoise cuisine, everything excellent of its kind. Nor is it likely to deteriorate, for most of its clientele are the gentlemen who drive quills and occasionally wield the ^' epee de combat " on behalf of the TempSy the Matin^ and other great papers which have their oflSces in the neighbour- hood. Most of these gentlemen are gastronomes ot the highest order. 38 The Gourmefs Guide to Europe Beauge's is another quiet, essentially French res- taurant in this central quarter. It shows a brown face, its principal entrance, and windows with lace curtains to the Rue St. Marc, and it has another en- Beauges, trance in one of the arcades behind the Rue St. Marc Varietes, its face turned towards the arcade being rather forbidding in appearance. It was founded in 1848, and except that it is lighted by electricity, must now be very much as it was when first built. The street entrance leads into a little ante-room where cold meats and tarts and fruit are set out temptingly. The tables are placed very close together in the little rooms on the ground floor, and the lady at the desk is squeezed up against the window in her little pen ; but the restaurant has a dignity of its own, and the plump proprietor is efficient though unhurrying. It has its " dishes of the house." There is, of course, a Sole BeaugCy and there is a Filet cle Barhue Beauge and Rognons Beauge^ and a very special Tarte Beauge, The patrons of the restaurant are like its cookery, comfortable and unpretentious. Lapre's, in the Rue Druot, next door to the Figaro offices, was originally an oyster shop, and still retains a little oyster bar in its front of light oak. Little Lapre's, curtains of green silk and lace shelter Rue Druot diners and those who sup at Lapre's from the eyes of the curious outside. A little grotto and creepers on trellis and baskets of illuminated flowers form part of the adornment of the first room. In the second room are more illuminated bouquets of flowers and mirrors in Oriental frames. Lapre's is open all night long, and is much frequented by journalists and also by pretty ladies. It has its specialties, which are mostly of fish and oysters, and lobsters and langoustes. It has a dozen various methods of cooking shellfish, and its oyster soup and its Filet de Barbue are both excellent. Tarts 3 9 Boilave's, just off the Faubourg Montmartre, at the corner of the Rue Montyon, has oysters in baskets, and bottles and shell-fish in its windows. Boilave's, It would be taken by the uninitiated to ^^^ Montyon be a bar, but in the side street is an entrance to the restaurant, and the dining-rooms will be found on the first floor. Boilave's holds in Paris very much the position that the Cheshire Cheese did in London before it was discovered by the American tourists. The Redacteurs-en-Chef and Secretaires de la Re- daction congregate there. Only women cooks are employed, and the cuisine is kept rigorously bour- geoise, none of the foreign introductions which have been accepted by the haute cuisine being permitted. Midler's, in the Rue Pasquier, which is another journalistic resort, is one of the few Miiller's, remaining little "dives" which never Kue Pasquier close. Of course the Coq d'Or, the entrance to the restaurant of which is in the Rue St. ^ ^.q^. Marc, is the best known of all the Rue Montmartre resorts of Parisian journalists. It is and Rue St. Marc part cafe, part restaurant, the restaurant being de- corated in the nouveau art style, while the cafe is all of dark woods. Maire's, at the corner of the Boulevards St. Denis and Strasbourg, is the connecting link between the smart restaurant and the bourgeois one. At one time it used to be very smart indeed, but its cuisine then was no better than it is now. If a Frenchman is taking his wife to the Theatre Antoine or the Scala, he dines previously at Maire's. There j^^ire are many dishes of the house, all good. 14 Boulevard The poulet Maire is an excellent bird, ^*- ^^^^^ there is no better fillet of beef than that which bears the name of the house, and its ^ole a la Russe is excel- lent. There is on the wine list a Beaujolais which is named Charbonnier, and which is, in a way, connected 40 lihe Gourmet' s Guide to Sw^ope . with the rise of the house from very small beginnings. The first proprietor of the restaurant found in the cellar of what had been a small wine-shop rows of bottles under a heap of charcoal. He called the wine Charbonnier, and its fame went abroad. The present Charbonnier is the successor of that first famed Beau- jolais. I am told that Maire's under new manage- ment hopes to recover its former supper trade. There are restaurants still further up the boule- vards which deserve notice. When the Folies Dramatiques or the Ambigu Theatres have, either of Gosselin, them, a successful play, the Restaurant 50 Rue de Bondy Gosselin, a quiet little a la carte estab- lishment at the corner of the Rues de Bondy and de Lancry, reaps a harvest ; and if any adventurous British theatre-goer ever journeys so far as the Theatre Dejazet, he may safely dine at the Restaurant Bon- Bonvalet valet, on the Boulevard du Temple. 29 Boulevard The Bonvalet, which is painted brown du Temple outside up to the third story, and which has some big saloons for marriage feasts and banquets, is a house with some history attached to it. Under the name of the Cafe Turc, it was a fashionable gathering-place in the days of the First Empire. Ladies used to go there to sup, and as a concession to these fair visitors no smoking was allowed in the cafe. The Bonvalet provides table cChote meals as well as a la carte ones, and I have dined there in the days of my youth very satisfyingly for three francs. Les Quatre Sergents de Rochelle, named after the heroes of the " Conspiration de la Rochelle," whose fame has been perpetuated by Eugene Serg-ents, '^^e, is the last restaurant 1 need men- 3 Boulevard tion on the boulevards. It is on the Beaumarchais -d i j r> i • t • n Jooulevard Beaumarchais. it is all white outside, and cream and gold within. A picture of the four gallant sergents, who were so basely ^an's 4 1 betrayed by Goupillion, clinking cups, is on the face of the restaurant. Inside, the wine-growers and mer- chants and buyers from the great depot across the river, fine, fat, bull-necked gentlemen, eat rich meats and drink generous wines. A /i/et dc bceuf at the Quatre Sergents always seems to me to be more juicy than any I get elsewhere, and the restaurant has a good cellar of Burgundies. Of restaurants away from the Grands Boulevards the Boeuf a la Mode, the Regence, and the Cham- peaux deserve special mention. The first is in the Rue Valois, which runs down one side Boeuf a la Mode, of the Palais Royal. Its signboard, 8 Rue de Valois which is of an ox garlanded with flowers, has a his- tory. When the restaurant was first established in June 1816 and hung up its sign of an ox dressed in garments of the fashion of the day, the Comte Decazes, the then chief of the Paris police, denounced the inn-keeper to the king as a revolutionary, and was commanded to inquire into the matter of the seditious sign-board, " for," the order ran, " the ox, the symbol of force, is dressed in red cashmere, with a straw hat having white plumes and a blue ribbon, and this hat, which obviously represents the crown, is falling off." The proprietor of the res- taurant was held to have been prompted by no treasonable design in his choice of a sign-board, but flowers were at once painted in place of the fashionable clothes. It is quiet and quite comfortable. When I first knew it the walls of its rooms were either ochre-coloured or covered with green trellis work, but now they have become fashionably light in tint. The dish from which the restaurant takes its name is always on the bill of fare, and is served with due dignity on silver plates. I always find the cuisine at this restaurant excellent, and the prices moderate. It is an establishment at which I often 42 77/6' Gourmet's Guide to Europe see English ladies lunching without escort, and the proprietor, who is immensely proud of being allowed to supply our Queen Mother with woodcock pates, 4 Champeaux. speaks English fluently. The Cham- ' 13 Place de la peaux is the restaurant of the raris Bourse Stock Exchange, being in the Place de la Bourse. Its dining-room is a winter garden, with trees, palms, hanging baskets, a fountain, and an abundance of flowers as decorations. It was at the Champeaux that the Chateaubriand was invented, and the cuisine has always been of the best. I need hardly pause to tell my readers what a real Chateau- briand is, but I find that even in Paris any thick steak is called by that name. The real Chateaubriand was invented for the great man of that name by the first Champeaux. It is a steak of great thickness with two thin slices of rump-steak tied above and below it. These slices are burned in the cooking and are thrown away, the steak done-through being passed over a bright fire before being served, to brown it. When Casimir, the celebrated cook, left the Maison Doree, he went to the Champeaux. At lunch-time the restaurant does a great trade, but by the dinner hour the bustle of the day has ceased, and one dines both leisurely and well. The cellars of the establishment contain some very fine wines. There is a pretty story connected with this restaurant. Champeaux, its founder, as a poor boy came to Paris, starving and without a sou. A kindly restaurateur gave him at daybreak a dish of broken food. When he himself was prosperous and a restaurateur he ordered that all the food left over should each morning at daybreak be given to the hungry poor, and this is still done. The Cafe de la Regence dates back to the year 1 718, and it has some very interesting relics of past glories kept as curiosities. It has kept abreast of the Varis 43 times, and flames with much light outside at night. It has a little room off the cafe with mirrors and panels painted with flowers, and with ^^^^ ^^ i^^ leather-covered seats against the walls, Regence, Rue where excellent bourgeois dishes are ^*- ^0^°^® served to its excellent bourgeois clientele. It is an a la carte restaurant. Its prices are moderate. The cafe is in the Rue St. Honorc, almost opposite to the Comedie Fran^aise. All the world knows Maxim's as a rather noisy supping place, where Maxim's, the ladies are not all of the "upper Rue Royale ten " ; but comparatively few people know that it is a quiet but not unamusing restaurant at lunch and dinner time, and that its cookery is noticeably good. There are a dozen other restaurants away from the boulevards which deserve a word : sylvain's, Sylvain's, for instance, in the Rue 12 Rue Halevy Halevy, which at one time was the chosen supping place of the butterfly ladies, but which now is chiefly celebrated for an excellent brand of old cognac (it has lately changed hands, and M. Jarandon, the new pro- prietor, has smartened up the house and advertises a " symphonic orchestra" and a "terasse exotique") ; the big Brasserie Universelle in the Avenue de I'Opera, which gives its clients a choice of fifty hors dceuvre; and the Restaurant de la Rotonde in the Boulevard Hauss- mann — all three have faithful and admiring clienteles. If you are going by a mid-day train from the Gare St. Lazare, you can breakfast in reasonable com.fort at the Restaurant Mollard, facing the station, or at the Restaurant de la Pepiniere, a rotisserie which Mr. Roland Strong was the first Englishman to discover, and which has since prospered exceedingly. The food there is very cheap, and the game and poultry are excep- tionally well cooked. The Restaurant Lequen, facing the Gare du Nord, is also a well-managed establish- ment. 44 ^/^^ Gourmet' s Guide to Europe The Restaurants of the Ouartier Of the restaurants of the Quartier, Lavenue's, opposite the Montparnasse station, is one of the best. Lavenue ^^ ^^^^ ^ Z2iik^ which is quite gorgeous, 68 Boulevard and in the three h'ttle rooms at the Montparnasse \^2.z\i some of the most celebrated men of the world of art — Rodin and Falguiere, and Jean Paul Laurens and Bonnat and Whistler — used to meet to breakfast and to talk art. At the Cafe Soufflot Cafe Soufflot ^^ budding doctors and the students Boulevard St. of thp Polytechnic hold their feasts; ^^*^^®^ and at Thirion's, on the Boulevard St. Germain, you will find half the young British and American art students in Paris at breakfast. Thirion's looks like a cheap photographer's studio, for its walls Thirion Boule- ^^^ chiefly of glass. A bill of fare is vard St. Ger- pasted on the window-panes of the ^^^^ ground floor giving the plats de jour and the prices. Just inside, Madame, plump and smiling, sits at her desk. The waiters rush back- wards and forwards, doing wonderful balancing tricks with piles of plates and mugs of beer, the chickens stray in from the back yard and pick up crumbs, and a great noise of jovial Anglo-Saxon speech drowns the clatter of knives and forks and plates. Thackeray used to breakfast at Thirion's when he was an art student, and Dickens knew the little restaurant well. MONTMARTRE RESTAURANTS There are many places where one may dine, and dine well and cheaply, in the Montmartre district ; Rat Mort, Place but different establishments gather in Pigalle a yeiy different clientele at different hours of the evening. At the Rat Mort, in the Place PIgalle, early in the evening artists and artists' models and other people of the Butte dine and pay 2.50 f. for their dinner. Later in the evening the butterflies of Paris take possession of the restaurant. p^\;^'^yQ de So it is w^ith the Abbaye de Theleme, Theleme, Place almost next door to the Rat. At 7 p.m. ^^^^^^ it has its diners, none of w^hom is overburdened with money. At 2 a.m. Grand Dukes and millionaires from South America and the young men about town of all nationalities, and actresses and cocottes de grande marque occupy all the tables. There is a third restaurant in the Place Pigalle in the same building as a little music hall ; a restaurant which has led a short and chequered life. The police thought that the suppers at a louis a head which were graced by the presence of ladies in the costume of Eve were a scandal, and closed the restaurant for a time, but it has now reopened on far more respectable lines, and describes itself as Pigal's. The music hall is now occupied by a cinematograph show. At the restaurant of the Place Blanche many of the well-known artists breakfast and dine, and the onion soup there is celebrated. Next door to ^af^ ^^ laPiace the Bdite au Fursy, the little theatre Blanche, Place where Fursy sings his Chansons Rosses ^i^^<^^® and the Poetes Chanteurs and a pretty actress or two play impudent little revues, is a restaurant which, I believe, is owned by the directors of the Treteau de Bal Tabarin, where there are pictures Tabarin, Rue of nymphs on the walls, and where a ^^^^^i® simple dinner can be eaten with amusing and Bohemian surroundings. The Bohemianism of the place becomes overwhelmino; later in the evenina;. All the restaurants on the heights are not Bohemian : some of them are quite sedate. I used at one time to dine occasionally at Le Pere Lathuille, a comfort- able old-fashioned restaurant which possessed a pare, 46 T'he Goiir?7Jefs Guide to Europe which was really only a garden, but which had an historic interest, for it was there that the Count de Neipperg used to meet Queen Marie Louise. Le Pere, however, has disappeared, the restaurant and pare having been obliterated by a huge music- hall. A pleasant old-world restaurant is Au Pere Pere Boivin, Boivin, in the Avenue de Clichy. Its 6 Avenue Clichy service is somewhat slow, but its cookery is good and its prices moderate. It has a good cellar of red wines, and it has a larger selection of the wines of Touraine and Anjou than is to be found elsewhere in Paris. Its Burgundy is excellent and cheap, and its old brandy is excellent and rather expensive. Various plats of veal kidneys are its specialties, and are excellent. The downstairs room is rather small, but there is a large room above. In this room on Saturday evening are often to be found wedding parties of the tradespeople of the quarter, and the feasts are amusing to watch. Le Pere Boivin is 'about fifty yards from the Clichy station of the Metro. Under the theatre and dancing-room of the Moulin Rouge, a place of entertainment I need not describe, Moulin Rouge, is a supper and dining hall opened in Place Blanche the early days of 1 908 with a great flourish of trumpets. Its decorations are gorgeous, and it has several orchestras. When last I saw this hall it had been converted, permanently or as a temporary measure I know not, into a ball-room. Foreign Restaurants and Oyster Bars If the foreigner in Paris wishes to eat the dishes or his own country, Lutetia shrugs her pretty shoulders and permits him to do so. Jews, Turks, infidels, and all the outlanders, can dine on food cooked after their ^Paris 47 national manners, if they will. If an American longs for dry hash and corn cakes he will find them at Leon Caquet's Restaurant in the Rue Daunou. Leon has succeeded Vian, who catered Leon's, 22 Rue with wonderful success for the English- Daunou speaking colony during the dark days of the siege. The Americans who always cluster in the morning in and round the Banking Agency at the corner of the street as often as not go over to Leon's for breakfast, and the proprietor, who is a good business man, always has two or three typical American dishes ready on his bill of fare. Leon's is a small restaurant, one little room on the ground floor and another in the entresol^ but I should fancy that it must be a gold mine to its owner. A very Parisian restaurant, which has been partly captured by the United States, is Prunier's, in the Rue Duphot. It is the aristocratic oyster and snail shop of Paris, and it has attached to it prunier, Rue a very busy restaurant, which does a Duphot great trade during the months with an r in them. Outside the establishment is a long counter, on which are thousands of oysters of all the kinds beloved by Frenchmen and foreigners, and half-a-dozen men are busy all day long opening them and packing them in little baskets for the en v'llle trade, or giving them over to the waiters for the customers in the restaurant. The rooms on the first floor are quite gorgeous, but the snuggest room is on the ground floor, a little brown red-curtained chamber, with a sawdusted floor, where you may see fat Burgundians eating the rich snails of their native province, drawing the long brown, steaming, gelatinous things out of silver bowls with silver two-pronged forks. The Americans do not go to Prunier's to eat snails, but they find there oysters cooked in the various styles to which they are accustomed across the Atlantic, Prunier imports 48 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe Blue Points, his broiled lobsters are excellent, and his chef will fry, or scallop, or broil, or stew oysters as well as any cook above whom the Stars and Stripes wave. I am sufficiently patriotic to prefer a Colchester Bag to a Boston Steak, but the latter combination of good beef and good oysters is to be obtained in perfection at Prunier's. Another restaurant which has an oyster bar in the front of its premises is Le Grand Vatel in the Rue St. T.PvoT,H vPtPi Honore, a house which has had a Le Grand Vatel, ' . a u d 275 Rue St. chequered existence. As the Kes- Honore taurant des Fleurs it made a bid to be one of the supping-places of Paris. Then it changed its name and adopted the American cuisine. It next adopted the Russian cuisine. It seems now to exist quite happily with oysters and the French cuisine as its strong card. Drouant's Restaurant, which began as an oyster-bar, Drouant. Place faces Henri's across the Place Gaillon. Gaillon Its fare is simple and cheap, and its oysters excellent. It merits discovery by Anglo-Saxons. There are scores of British bars in Paris where an Englishman, if he desires a chop, can get one, but most of the English in Paris are quite contented with plain French cookery. The Italians, on the other hand, patronise the Italian restaurants, and even the French acknowledge that an Italian cook fries well, and that the Risotto^ with its various seasonings, the many different forms which the Paste Asciutte takes, and the Minestrone and the Fr'itto M'lsto^ are good dishes. There are half-a-dozen Italian restaurants in the centre of Paris, but I have only eaten meals Restaurant ^^ ^^° ^^ them — the Restaurant Italien, Italien, Passage which is in the network of galleries du Montmartre behind the Varietes, and Sansiarto's, in the Rue St. Augustin. The first-named was the res- taurant at which Rossini used generallv to breakfast, ^aris 49 and I believe it was there that he invented the com- bination of force-meat and macaroni which he taught the chef of the Maison Doree to make, and which bears his name. The Restaurant Italien has many- mirrors and a frieze of Italian landscapes. Great Chianti flasks stand in plated tripods on a shelf, and on the desk, behind which two comfortable ladies in black are enthroned, are two great bowls filled with flowers or bright-tinted foliage. The waiters all wear moustaches. This, until three years ago, was a proof evident that they were not Parisians ; but since the great strike every waiter in Paris may grow a moustache if he wishes to, and many of them have done so. On Monday, at the Restaurant Italien, you will find Lasagne Passticciate as the plat du jour^ on Tuesday Osso BucOy on Wednesday Risotto a la Mila?iaise, on Thursday and Sunday Ravioli and Timbale Milanaise^ and on Friday a selection of Italian dishes of fish. The Zahajone^ the Italian egg-nogg, 'which can be drunk either hot or cold, is admirably made at the Res- taurant Italien. Minestrone is the soup of the house. Sansiarto's is the home of Neapolitan sansiarto, Rue cookery, for Sansiarto came from St. Augustin Naples, and so did his successor Bernasconi, and all the dishes of the south, the Mozarelle in Carozza^ the Pizza alia Pizzaiola, and the other plats of that sunny land, are obtainable there. The Posilippo of the house is excellent. The Spanish restaurant which bears the name of Senor Don Jose Roblez Ruiz, in the Rue de Helder, is an excellent restaurant in which to Roblez, 14 Rue study the Spanish cuisine, for the oil de Helder used there is above reproach, and the garlic is not too much insisted on. The restaurant has rooms both on the ground and first floors, and the decorations are brilliantly- coloured pictures of the modern Spanish school. When a pretty lady, her hair D 50 T'he Gour?nefs Guide to Europe piled high after the Andalusian fashion, sits at the little desk, with the plates of oranges and apples before her, and the patchwork of a rich-coloured landscape behind her, she forms quite a perfect study of Spanish life. An old waiter, with the head of a Roman senator and a method of talking French which recalls the hard click of the castanettes, will always advise the novice as to what he should order, and tell him how the dishes of the day, the Gu'n'iUio^ the Cocido, the Arro%^ or the Bacalao^ are prepared. Senor Don Jose had a fine cellar of Spanish wines, and Leon, who has succeeded him, sees that both the cookery and the cellar of the house are kept up to the mark. There are several Austrian and Hungarian res- taurants in Paris, the most typical one being that in the Widerman, 5 R^^ Hauteville, kept by M. Widerman, Rue HauteviUe where floors and walls are of comfortable brown, and seascapes form the decorations. All the appetising snacks the Austrians love — the smoked goose's breast, the little sausages, the many cold pre-, parations of fish — are to be found here ; and the Restaurant cuisine is that of Vienna. The Res- Tch^que, 7 Rue taurant Tcheque, kept by Madame dePortMaHon YiM%2k, in the Rue de Port Mahon, almost opposite to Cerny's Bar, which has replaced the Cabaret Lyonnais, is celebrated for its Gulyas. Greeks in the Rue des Ecoles, Turks in the Rue Cadet, and other Orientals, have their own res- taurants in various parts of Paris, mostly across the bridges ; but the man who faces the delicacies of the near East, as served in the West, requires a stomach of the poet's triple brass. The Cheap Restaurants A word as to the very cheap restaurants of Paris. The Bouillons Duval and the Bouillons Boulant are ^aris 5 1 extremely cheap a la carte establishments, and two francs goes a long way towards obtaining a satisfy- ing meal. Of the many very cheap table d'hote establishments, Philippe's, on the first floor of a house in the Palais Royal, is a typical Philippe, Palais one. Half-pay officers, authors, and Royal journalists, and a great number of clerks and other men of the pen, patronise Philippe's. The custom there was* for the clients of the establishment to sit at long tables. Directly all the seats at a table were filled the waiters took round the two soups, of which a choice was given, and the dinner commenced. Nowadays small tables have replaced the real table (Vhote. The charge for lunch is i f. 60 c, for dinner 2 f . 10 c. I should say a word for the table (Fhote breakfasts both at the Grand Hotel and at the Continental. Each is an excellent 5 francs worth. The Restaurants of the Suburbs The Pavilion Henri IV., on the terrace of St. Germain, where every travelling Briton pavilion Henri and American breakfasts once during iv., St. his summer stay in Paris, is " run " by ^®^"iam the management of the Champeaux, and one gets very excellent cooking and service in consequence, the prices not being at all exorbitant. One groanj, sitting at the little tables on the terraces and looking at the view, to think of the chances some of our hotels near London, with even finer views, throw away through lack of enterprise. The Pavilion Bleu at St. Cloud, at the foot of the terrace slope, and having a fine view of the Seine, is a cheerful little restaurant pavillon Bleu, with good cookery and a capital cellar St. Cloud of wines. M, Moreaux, who is a power in the 52 T^he GoiiDiief s Guide to Europe world of restaurants, has, or had, an interest in the restaurant ; he bought many of the bins of fine wine at the sale of the Maison Doree and sent them out to St. Cloud. The wedding parties which patronise the cheaper restaurants in the town are a never-ending source of amusement. The Pavilion de Belle Vue, which has a splendid view over the Seine, is also on the wes- ^ ^ ^^ tern side just outside Paris. IV^ Poullard has acquired this restaurant. The Porte Jaune, on an island in one of the lakes of the Bois de Vincennes, is a merry restaurant. The Porte Jaune P^'^^es are cheap, the food is plain but Bois de sufficiently well-cooked, and its great Vincennes attraction is that breakfasting there on a Sunday or on a holiday one is right away from the tourist's beaten track, and that one can see the people of Paris enjoying themselves at their ease. Another little cafe restaurant on the island in the Lac de St. Mande in the Bois de Vincennes is also quite an amusing place to visit. At the much-advertised Casino of Enghien-les- Casino, Enghien- Bains there is a restaurant overlooking les-Bains ^^g lake, where the cookery is good, and the prices at a corresponding height. This is the menu of a dinner at which I was one of the guests, which was a very carefully ordered and well- cooked and well-served feast : — Hors d'oeuvre. Consomme Madrilene. Creme de poisson Soubise. Barbue a la Russe. Selle de Behaque a la Montmorency. Poularde en cocotte Grande Cercle. Aubergines Cochachinois. Profiterolles Dcsir du Roi. Friandises. Van's 5 3 At Fontainebleau the Savoy Hotel is a new modern hotel, and its cuisine is quite first-class. It is some dis- tance both from the town and chateau, savoy Hotel, This hotel makes very substantial de- FontaineWeau ductions, both for rooms and meals, to golfers who come to play on the Fontainebleau links. The cuisine of the Hotel de France et de I'Angle- terre, an old house, with furniture and engravingjs which are quite in keeping with the ^^^^^ ^^ Fran^® palace across the way, is decidedly good, et de I'Ang-le- The meals are a la carte^ and the prices *?^^®' ^o^*^i^®" are high. The attendance is good, and people who go to Fontainebleau to visit the chateau will find it a capital though expensive place at which to breakfast. Of the accommodation and cookery in the surround- ing villages, an artist, who knows the forest well, writes thus to me : " At Barbizon the Hotel des Charmettes, and at Marlotte the Hotel Mallet, are fairly comfort- able and picturesque inns, though apt to be over- crowded in the summer. In fine w^eather meals are served under an awning in the garden, and the prices are quite moderate. They do not pretend to be any- thing but inns, and the company is usually somewhat mixed. At Samois-sur-Seine the Hotel Beau Rivage is a small but comfortable hotel, with a terrace on which meals are served. The terrace has a delightful view of the river." The Golf Club of Fontainebleau has a good club- house, where an excellent 3-franc lunch is served. It is possible to dine there on giving The Golf Club, notice. The subscription is 125 francs Fontainebleau a year for men, 100 francs for ladies, and 200 francs for double tickets. For a month, a quarter, a week, the subscriptions are in like proportions. For a day the fee is 5 francs. The links are open all the year round. 54 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe At Versailles the classic restaurant at which to lunch is that of the Hotel des Reservoirs, Madame Hotel des ^^ Maintenon's old villa. All the Reservoirs, crowned heads who visit the palace Versailles ^^^ given an official lunch at the Reservoirs. Below is the menu of dejeuner offered there by the President of the Republic to King Edward and Queen Alexandra on 4th February 1907:— Hors-d'oeuvre varies. CEufs brouilles pointes d'asperges. Filets de Sole Mornay. Noisette d'Agneau. Pomrties de terre nouvelles. Chicoree a la Creme. Poulardes froides. Salade. Pots de creme, vaniile et chocolat. Desserts varies. This is an excellent menu to suggest for any large party. My experience this year of the restau- rant of the hotel, which has a big glassed-over balcony, is that the prices are quite moderate, but that the service is rough. In old days the waiters in black ties and dress coats had the dignity which comes of serving in a house which entertains kings. But they have been told so often to " hustle along " by Ameri- can patrons that they now almost fling the food at their clients. The Hotel des Reservoirs now has a rival in the newly-built Trianon Palace Hotel at the corner of the park. The restaurant of this hotel Trianon Palace i 1 • ^ ^1 • has a long open-air terrace, the views from which are agreeable, and on this terrace a 6-franc breakfast and a 7-franc dinner are served. I break- fasted there during the early days of the hotel's exist- Tarls 5 5 ence, and found the service rather confused, but no doubt this has now been altered for the better. There is a little restaurant on the Isle de la Jatte which acquired a reputation for good Restaurant de breakfasts when the island was a fa- la Grande Jatte, vourite ground for duellists to settle ^^^® ^® ^^ ^^^^^ affairs of honour ; and any one who wishes to see the Parisian counterpart of our Hampstead can dine on a platform amidst the foliage of the big ^e vrai Robin- trees at Sceaux-Robinson, and can pull son, Sceaux- up to his eyrie the basket, containing ^o^i^son cold fowl and bottle of red wine and a yard of bread, by a rope. I am told that the Rond Royal at Compeigne has a pleasant restaurant at which to breakfast, but I cannot write from personal experience of it. The Bill and Tips I now come to the very important matter of prices. A Frenchman will tell one that it is possible by careful choice of dishes to obtain two good meals at a com- fortable restaurant a la carte for ten to twelve francs a day. My experience is that an Englishman who is in Paris to enjoy himself, going to the best restaurants, and neither stinting himself nor launching out into extravagance, spends about fifteen to sixteen francs on his breakfast and from eighteen to twenty francs on his dinner. For instance, the last time I dined at the Cafe Anglais by myself, this was my dinner : A half- dozen Ostend oysters, Potage Laitues et Quenelles, Merlans Frits, Cuisse de Poularde Rotie, Salade Romaine, some cheese, half a bottle of Graves i^ Cru, and a bottle of St. Galmier. It was a very simple dinner, but I did not want an elaborate one, as I was going on to a theatre. This dinner cost me eighteen francs. When two people dine together the cost a head is 56 'The Gourmet's Guide to Europe always less than for a single dinner, and in many of the restaurants one portion is quite sufficient for two people. This used to be the case in all, but now on many of the cartes du jour the mystic letters "P.P." follow the prices, which mean that the figures show what is charged per pcrsonne. Somehow or another a Frenchman and his wife always dine more cheaply than an Englishman and his wife. It is, I believe, because the maitre cVhotcl will generally save the pockets of his compatriots if he can, but has not the same sympathy for the strangers who come to the restaurant. I will take as being typical three other bills I have preserved. One is for a lunch for two people at Maire's : Hors cTceuvre^ a dish of eggs and tomatoes, a Filet Ma'ire and potatoes, cheese, a couple of pears, a bottle of the Charbonnier of the house, and a bottle of mineral water. The total of this was 18 f. 50 c. At the Restaurant Laperouse I have eaten prawns, always an expensive dish. Bisque^ Filets de Sole Lape- rouse^ Noisettes de Veau Sautees Champignons^ Haricots Verts nouveaux^ and a slice of cheese, and drinking a bottle of Musigny, have been charged, for two, split- ting the portions, 17 f. Breakfasting by myself at the "Au Pere Boivin," I have eaten Goujons Frits, a Demi-Noisette de Filet Grille Sauce Estragon, and Cepes Bordelaise, have drunk half a bottle of Vouvray, and have been charged 7 f. To these totals the tips must be added. In the expensive restaurants a franc per louis or a franc per head is the least the head waiter expects, and I am sorry to say that we English and the Americans have so spoilt the market that a franc is scarcely received now with a "Thank you" at the smart restaurants. The sommelier is always on the watch expecting a tip, the portier who takes the hats and coats and the chasseur who calls a fiacre are permanently hopeful. A half franc apiece to these worthies is more than sufficient. If one is fairly generous three francs should see one clear after dinner or breakfast ; but some men deal out francs to every servant who looks as though he would like one. The Paris Clubs The Club life of the Parisians differs very consider- ably from the Club life of Britain and America. In a Parisian, or indeed any club of the continental nations, the " introducers " of any candidate have, when he becomes a member, a far larger responsibility than the proposer and seconder of a candidate for any London or New York club. The introducers, amongst other duties, are expected to present the new member to such gentlemen of the club as are of their acquaintance, and the new member has to record in his memory the faces of those gentlemen to whom he has been introduced and be ready to greet them. This etiquette makes all club life a little difficult to the Englishman or American who for . the first time becomes a member of a purely French club, or of a club organised on French models. The Anglo-Saxons in Paris, to escape this etiquette, have always of late years possessed a club or clubs of their own. Among the Anglo-Saxon clubs which are in existence in Paris at the present time is the Travellers' Club in the Avenue des Champs Elysees. The „, „ „ , house, the Hotel Pavia, has history ciub, Avenue attached to it. It was presented to a des Champs I • ; • • 1 1 f 1 Elysees great demi-mondaine \\\ the days or the Second Empire, and its salons became a centre of the dragon-fly life of impenitent Paris. When France fell sobbing into Russia's arms, proclaiming that she had at last found her amant de cotmr^ Cubat, the well- 58 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe known restaurateur of St. Petersburg, who had been cook to a Czar, thought that as Paris loved St. Peters- burg so ardently, louis might be coined in a Restaurant Cubat in Paris while only roubles were to be taken in St. Petersburg. The Restaurant Cubat, excellent as it was, with its mixture of the French and Russian cuisines, did not " catch on " in Paris, and after the great Exposition of 1900 Cubat went back to St. Petersburg. For a while the Hotel de Pavia remained empty, but eventually the Travellers' Club was formed on European lines, having an attached association in London, and it has become an admirably managed club on the same lines as the best London clubs, and with a subscription equally high. The British Club, which has been in existence a dozen or more years, has had many homes. It began life in the Grand Hotel, emigrated to Club, 8 BoTiie- the Boulevard des Capucines, moved vard Males- on to the Rue de I'Arcade, and now, ®^^®^ at last, seems to be securely established in the Boulevard Malesherbes, not a stone's throw from the Madeleine. The tax the French authorities levy on clubs has been a difficulty which the British Club has had to meet, and, like the Travellers', it has faced it successfully. The subscription to British members residing in Paris is ^2 a year, and there is a small entrance fee. The club has foreign and country members, and it extends the privilege of temporary membership to certain of the London clubs. The British Club has an English billiard-table, a reading- room, and a certain number of bedrooms for the use of its members. The Lawn Tennis Club on the Isle des Puteaux is a pleasant place at which to take afternoon tea Tennis Club, under the big sunshades, and in the Isle des Puteaux summer-time is a meeting-place for the smart people of the French and Anglo-Saxon world. The Polo Club at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, close to Longchamps, is to Paris what Ranelagh and Hurlingham are to London. It has its Poio ciuto, little pavilion where the ladies take tea, Bagatelle and its flower-beds and decoration are very well arranged. Bagatelle has its gymkhanas, its races tor children, and its competitions for ladies, after the manner of the clubs upon which it is modelled. If La Boulie had done nothing else to deserve fame, the fact that it was the training ground on which Massy, one of the world's champions. Golf Club, learned his golf would make it notable. La Boulie Great attention has been given to the greens. They have been partially underlaid with sand, and in the summer are watered daily. Of the purely Parisian clubs in Paris the Union Club is the most exclusive. It corresponds perhaps more nearly to the London Marl- borough Club than to any other club r union, Boule- I know. Its club-house is on the vard de la Boulevard de la Madeleine, where it occupies two floors of one of the big houses. There is very little card-playing at the Union, the traditions of the club being that it should be a salon and not a gaming-place, and politics are kept rigorously in the background. It has nearly 400 permanent members and a little over 200 honorary members. King Edward was one of the permanent members. The best known of the Paris clubs is undoubtedly the Jockey Club. If nothing else about it is re- membered, the story of Isabelle the j,^^ jockev flower-girl, who was practically adopted Club, Boulevard by the club, can always be recalled, des Capucines The club was founded by an Englishman, Lord Seymour, and many of the members of the British Jockey Club also belong to the French one. A " commission of dukes " secured the present club- 6o T'he Gourmet' s Guide to Europe house on the Boulevard des Capucines and super- intended the furnishing and adornment of its very- comfortable rooms. The Club of the Rue Royale is very much like any of our large London social clubs. It is at the corner CercledelaRue ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ Royale in the great Hotel Royale, Place de Choislin ; one face looks on to the Place la Concorde j^ |^ Concorde and the other looks across the Rue Royale to the Ministry of Marine. Some of the English residents in Paris belong to this club. Every one u^ho has v^alked in the Champs Elysees on a fine summer day has noticed the w^ell-groomed elderly gentlemen w^ho sit on the raised runion Artis- terrace at the corner of the Rue Boissy tique, Rue d'Anglas and w^atch the people coming issy g ^^j o-oins: from the Place de la Con- corde to the Champs Elysees. These are the members of the Epatant, as the Cercle de I'Union Artistique is familiarly called. This club is the most amusing of all the Parisian clubs, and its fetes, its theatricals, its art exhibitions, have gained for it its astonishing nickname. Other Parisian clubs are the Automobile, next door to the Cercle de la Rue Royale, w^hich has a garden on its roof; the Military Club in the Avenue de rOpera ; and the Cercle Agricole, v^^hich is the most aristocratic and entirely French of all the clubs. AFTER DINNER To give any description of the performances likely to be found at the opera-houses and theatres and music halls of Paris would be an impossible task, for there is a constant change not only in the entertainments, but in the style of entertainment as well. The Opera and the Opera Comique, of course, arc standing dishes ^aris 6 1 for their particular types of opera, and the Fran^aise and the Odeon are subventioned to keep classical comedy alive. The Gymnase and the Vaudeville generally house modern comedy, and at the Palais Royal, the Varietes, and the Nouveautes there is an abundance of Gallic salt in the pieces performed. One little tip I may give even to Anglo-Saxons who knov^ their Paris, and that is to buy at any kiosk, on the day of arrival, the little paper Comoedia^ which not only gives the " casts " of all plays, but also a sketch of the plots. It also gives the programmes of all the music halls, big and small, tells one who are the stars singing at them, anv! what Revues are run- ning, and gives all the Cabaret Artistiques, and the places at which the bands play in the afternoons. It is a great help in deciding what plays may suit one's mood after dinner, or what other amusement one prefers. II FRENCH PROVINCIAL TOWNS Some Dishes of the Provinces— Calais— Boulogne— Wimereux — Hardelot— Le Touquet—Montreuil-sur-Mer— Dieppe— Puys— Pourville—Etretat— Havre — St. Adresse — Gonneville— Du- clair — Rouen — Honfleur — Trouville — Caen — Dives — Cher- bourg— Granville— Mont St. Michel— St. Malo— Cancale— Dinard — Roscoff— Brest — Quimper — Pont Aven — Quimperle — Bordeaux — Arcachon — Biarritz — Marseilles — Cannes — Nice — Beaulieu — Monte Carlo — Mentone — The Pyrenees — Pau — Aix-les-Bains — Vichy. When I sat down to write for the first edition of this book a chapter on the cookery and restaurants of the big towns and bathing-places and summer towns ot France, I had no idea of the impossible task I had undertaken. I had, to use an expressive Americanism, bitten off more than I could chew. No chapter could possibly cover this wide subject ; only a large book would do it justice ; and that book is not likely to be compiled, for no Frenchman would have the patience to write it, no German the taste, and no Englishman the knowledge. Almost every town of any import- ance has some special dish or some special pate of its own, there are hundreds of good old inns where the cuisine is that of their province, and there are great tracks of country, which ought to be marked by some special colour on all guide-book maps, where the cookery is universally good. Do you know the Chapeau Rouge at Dunkerque, the good old inn with a cardinal's hat as a crest, where the cookery FreJich Provincial Towns Gi^ is that of the northern provinces at its best, and where the Friday dhier maigre is a good example of what good ecclesiastical cookery used to be ? At Lille there is a restaurant, the Divour, the entrance to which is up a passage leading from the main street, which should be included in any guide to good eating in France, and I am sorry not to discourse on this and the buffet at the station, which is in high favour with the townspeople. Do you know the Cloche at Dijon ? and the Univers at Perigueux ? and the Cambronne at Nantes ? and the Lion d'Or at Reims ? These which come to my mind as I write are but a few of the tens of hundreds of inns and taverns of big towns in France which deserve each a chapter, but which are beyond the scope I am going to allow myself. One exception I am making to my own rule, and that is, that I hope to include in other editions of this book some information as to the restaurants and dining- places to be met with on favourite expeditions in the interior of France. I have made a beginning in this edition by giving attention to the tours of the Roman cities in Provence, and have written a few words about the towns of the Loire. It sometimes happens that a gourmet making a journey through some portion of France in search of the picturesque finds himself in a district of good cooks, and makes note of the fact and enjoys their handiwork. This occurs more often in the southern provinces than elsewhere. Leaving the Roman cities of Provence, and the Provencal cookery, the gourmet who has time to journey leisurely, and has an auto- mobile at his command, may make a most pleasant journey of gastronomic e5<:ploration in the district between Montpellier and Toulouse, which is a cradle of great cooks, and where the traditions of the cookery of the Romans, brought by great soldiers and great administrators into Gaul, still linger. The land of 64 T^hc Gourmet's Guide to £u7^ope the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saone, from Verdun down to Dijon, is another and a more northerly paradise of good cookery. In Dordogne there is not a peasant who cannot give a traveller en panne a truffled omelette which would make an alderman's mouth water, and a tumbler of the vin p'urre a fusil^ which is quite one of the best of the wines of the people ; and all the Midi from the Alps to the Pyre- nees is a happy hunting ground for the gastronome. In this chapter, however, I only, with the excep- tions I have already stated, intend to write of those seaside towns of amusement to which an Anglo- Saxon is likely to go to enjoy himself in summer or autumn or winter, and the towns in their neighbour- hood to which excursions will probably be made; of the principal "cure" places to which a Briton or an American is likely to be sent by his doctor, and of the big ports at which a traveller going to or coming from France may be obliged to remain for a few hours or a few days. I roughly follow the coast- line in writing of the various towns on the sea. Calais Calais, now that it possesses a bright little casino on the beach, which, of course, possesses a restaurant, and has had its bathing machines newly painted, aspires to be a " resort/' and considers itself just as good as any of its neighbours. Its buffet at the Gare Maritime still remains the best Gare Maritime r • ^ ^ ^ n-ir^i-im ot Its restaurants. 1 he Calais buffet has always had the reputation of being the best, or one of the best, railway refreshment rooms in France ; and though the typical Englishman in a hurry gene- rally calls for stewed chicken and mashed potatoes, and tells the waiter to open the bottle of wine which is nearest to him on the table, the man who is not F7'ench Provincial Towns 65 suffering from train fever asks the cook what is in the dozen chafing dishes and casseroles which are kept hot on the centre table, looks at the vegetables, and gives a glance at the buffet of cold meats and the fruit counter before he sits down and orders his breakfast. The minute occupied by doing this is not misspent. AFTER DINNER If you are detained at Calais (and every man at least once in his lifetime is detained at Calais) you will pro- bably find a travelling company, should the period of the year be winter, playing in the theatre, which stands in a square just off the Avenue Leon Gambetta. There is a second theatre in the old portion of the town, close to the Hotel de Guise. In the summer the evening's amusements are focussed at the little Casino. Boulogne Before turning my attention to the existing res- taurants in Boulogne let me drop a figurative tear for the smallest and most distinctive of the Boulogne restaurants, the little white cafe-restaurant on the north pier, which has been destroyed by fire. The monies to be obtained there were always of the freshest, and its fish dishes — Sole Normande or Sole au vin hlanc or Sole Dieppoise — were excellent, for it has one of the best fish markets in the world to draw upon. I have eaten as good a Chateaubriand there as any man could require. When the improvements to the har- bour are completed a new north pier, giving a wider entrance, is likely to be amongst them, and the little white restaurant will probably be re- erected on this pier. An able gentleman, M. de St. Andre, has be- 4. £ 66 'T'he Gourmets Guide to Europe come the new director of the Boulogne Casino, and amongst the departments which he has galvanised into Casino life is the restaurant. One of the pro- Restaurant prietors of Maire's, in Paris, is now the lessee of the restaurant, and gives his personal atten- tion to its management. The banquets which are given there are quite good examples of big dinners, and as a change from the table d'hote meals of the hotels a breakfast on the terrace may be safely essayed. In the town, in the Rue de la Coupe, there is a The Royal Oak, little tavern, the Royal Oak, kept by Rue de la Coupe ^n Englishman. The Royal Oak is renowned for its hams and its Welsh-rabbits. The buffet at the Gare Maritime is an uncertain quantity. I have known it at periods to be an Gare Maritime example to English railway refreshment Buffet rooms, but at other times it drops down to the unappetising level of the usual station buffet. There is a petit salon leading out of the large room which is a pleasant place in which to dine, and a letter or a telegram to secure this room and a specially ordered little dinner or breakfast is a precaution I always take if I entertain one or two people while waiting to catch a train at the other station. This is one of the dinners which a manager provided on one of these occasions : — Salade Boulonnaise. Consomme Royal. Filet de Sole en surprise. Tournedos Princesse. Dessert. The salade is a savoury mixture in which moules play a leading part. The filet de sole was surprised to find itself inside a potato baked with its jacket on. The confectioner's shop of Caveng in the Rue Victor Hugo must be mentioned! f only because more French Provincial Towns 67 little cakes and other confectionery find their way from that shop across the Channel to little English children than from any other shop in caveng's, Rue France. There is a comfortable tea- Victor Hugo room adjoining the shop, and a salon behind it. Tea is not the only liquid served in this annexe, for an Englishman who wants a whisky and soda or a glass . of wine can get either of them there. The Boulogne Clubs The English club of Boulogne no longer exists. Its numbers dwindled to twelve, and then two of those twelve quarrelled, and the club dissolved itself. A card with a good London club in a corner and the payment of five francs secure entrance to the Club Prive of the Casino. A good deal of money has been spent in putting in good order the golf links near Wimereux. AFTER DINNER In the summer time the theatre of the Casino caters for the needs of the Boulogne public, and gives them in turn comedy, operetta, and " Music Hall " per- formances. The stock company takes holiday should any Star with his or her own company pay a visit to Boulogne. In the winter the town theatre, just off the main street of the town, is open, but the perform- ances are not too well patronised. A carnival ball, however, at this theatre is well worth seeing, be- cause of the extraordinary mixture of people who form the dancers. The best sight that Boulogne has to show after dinner is a Bal Populaire in the grounds of the Casino, a ball at which the fisher girls in their distinctive costume form the majority of the dancers, 68 T^he Goiir?nefs Guide to Siirope V/iMEREux, Hardelot, Le Touquet The little towns to the south of Boulogne, and within easy reach, I know better than I do those to the north. Wimereux, the nearest northerly town, has its two or three hotels all with restaurants, and Splendid Hotel, of these the Splendid seems the most Wimereux popular. There is a cafe in the Casino, and a theatre, but I do not remember a restaurant there. To the south of Boulogne, Mr. Whitley, Hotel des Mar- ^^o made history as the organiser of mousets, Har- the first Earl's Court exhibitions, *^®^°*- secures during the summer season a cook from one of the big London restaurants for the Hostelerie des Marmousets at Hardelot. The cookery at Le Touquet is quite good. M. Diette, who was at the Berkeley in London and after- wards at the Palais at Biarritz, is the lessee of three of the hotels, the Golf Hotel, the Atlantic, and the Her- mitage, and he has good cooks at all of them, and gets all his meat and his fowls and most of his other pro- The Hotels of visions from Paris. Madame Mouston Le Touquet at the Regina, and the proprietor of the Hotel des Anglais follow suit. Though the golfers who come over from England to play on the links sometimes grumble at the Le Touquet prices, they rarely abuse the cookery. Le Touquet-Paris Plage, the town settlements, boasts two Casinos, one in the forest and the other on the sea front. Little horses, baccarat, and an entertainment of some kind in the theatre are to be found at both during the summer season. Montreuil-sur-Mer Any one interested in old France and old French customs and old French manners should qo from I French Provincial Towns 69 Boulogne by train or by motor-car to Montreuil-sur- Mer, and eat a mid-day meal at the Hotel de France. The hotel is just what an inn was in , „ , , rill 11 I Hotel de France the days or plumed hats and long boots, " Miladi " might look out of one of the upper win- dows at any moment, and one would not be in the least surprised to see Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan swagger down the rickety staircases. To breakfast on a sunny day in the courtyard where creepers form a canopy is an artistic pleasure, and the food prepared in the spotlessly clean kitchen is quite well cooked and palatable, though the service and napery are rough, and the cellar has no great pretensions. In the kitchen, through which visitors can pass at any time, the whole family of the proprietor is busy ; even the old grand- mother will make a salad, in the mixing of which she is an adept, for a favoured guest. One of the daughters of the house married the patissier of the town who makes woodcock pates^ the fame of which deserves a wider publicity than it has. Montreuil has a liqueur of its own distilled from the wild plums and other woodland fruits which grow in the moat of the old fortifications. Dieppe Dieppe has its own particular dish in the Sole Ditppoiscy in which shrimps and mussels add their flavour to the white wine sauce; and Monies Marinieres and Coquilles St. Jacques it also claims as its own. Being a town of Normandy, it is a stronghold of such local dishes as Sole Normande and Faisan Nor?nande^ a pheasant cooked in a tureen with apples. In the little streams of the forest in the country behind the town swim trout, the flesh of which is exceedingly and pleasantly sweet. Dieppe has always been a town of good cookery, and in the days of the Second Empire Lafosse*s 70 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe Restaurant in the Grande Rue was one of the best dining-places in the provinces of France. You dine very well nowadays in Dieppe, for the restaurant of the Casino and the Royal, in friendly rivalry, keep each other well up to the mark. The Royal is one of the Gordon Hotels, and M. Varnier, Hotel Royal , . . . i r j ^ ^u who in winter is to be round at the Metropole, Monte Carlo, is the director. The windows of the restaurant of the hotel look over the great stretch of grass which separates the houses of the Plage from the sea. The prices of the Royal are said to be high, but I found that I dined in the very pretty little restaurant of the hotel just as well as I should have dined in a first-class Parisian restaurant, and that the prices were those of Paris. This is one of the little dinners for two I ate at the Royal, very well cooked, very well served, and not costing a fortune : — Cantaloup Frappe. Potage St. Germain. Rouget en Papillotte. Cotelette de Veau en Cocotte. Aubergines Frits. Coupe Royal. The Casino Restaurant is managed by M. Dou- coudert, who is the proprietor of the Grand Hotel. The Casino It is a white room, with a wall of Restaurant windows looking out on to the terrace and the sea. Of an evening it is pleasant to sit at one of the open windows and to look on the terrace in half light with its little tables and its groups of people walking leisurely backwards and for- wards, and to hear the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, mingling with the strains of the band. On fire-work nights there is no better position from which to see the Catherine-wheels splutter and the rockets shoot up than the windows of this little French ^ro\mcial T'owris 71 restaurant. The cookery there is quite good, and the prices are about the same as those at the Royal, which seem to me not cheap, but on the other hand not extortionate. Just outside the Casino gates, and under the same management, is the Casino Brasserie, a long wooden shanty painted in bright colours, where The Casino a* little band plays and many cool Bocks Brasserie are consumed, and where there is much jollity. An excellent lunch is to be obtained for 2.50 francs, and the dinner at 3.50 francs is also excellent at the price. All sorts and conditions of men and women lunch and dine there, and any one who does not require quietude while he takes his meals will find the place distinctly amusing. The Faisan Dore, kept by M. Cabois, is a restaurant above a charcutier's shop in the Grand Rue. A little flight of stairs leads to the first floor, The Faisan Dore, where is the dining-room, and in the 74 Grand Rue interior, on the ground floor, can be seen a white- capped, white- jacketed cook, very busy amid the Vandyke shadows of his kitchen. The prices are moderate, and the resident English give the little restaurant a good deal of their custom. The Restaurant A. Lefevre, in the Rue de I'Hotel de Ville, has a clientele of men of the brush and pen. It is to all outward appearance a workmen's Restaurant A cafe, for it turns to the street a room Lefevre, Rue de with brown walls and black covered 1'^°*®^ ^^ Vill® seats against the- walls and zinc tables. Little chairs and some white painted tables are outside on the terasse^ an old woman who is the grand-mere sits at the comptoir inside. This simple establishment is the restaurant beloved of old by Whistler, and Madame Veuve Bellet, the young and sprightly widow who is the proprietress, will tell you how he used to come there every day to breakfast, saying that he could not get a ^ole Dieppoise really well cooked anywhere else. 72 The Gourmet's Guide to Siirope Many artists of note have followed Whistler's example in breakfasting at the cafe, and there is a pleasant artistic and literary and theatrical atmosphere about the place. Henri, the waiter who spends his spare time in the kitchen, the shining pots and pans in which can be seen down a passage, is a character who is quite willing to go out fishing at unearthly hours of the morning to secure soles for a favoured customer. Madame Bellet, who is a cook, and a very good cook too, on occasions, will cook the fish secured by Henri to oblige any old friend. I was taken to lunch by one such old friend, and the excellent meal I was given left a mark on my memory. A table was laid for us in the salon, a little room where a stuffed seagull hangs from the ceiling, where a piano occupies a corner, and the windows of which look out on to the sunny little square, in the middle of which stands the old grey church of St. Remy. Madame was in the kitchen, but Mademoiselle, her daughter, in rose- sprigged muslin, was there to wait on us. A pretty smiling girl is Mademoiselle. The great question of the wine to be drunk with breakfast had to be settled. Madame had sent us a message that she recommended the old Chambertin. Mademoiselle thought we should prefer the Barsac. We solved the difficulty by drinking a bottle of Chambertin first and then a bottle of Barsac, and we came to the conclusion that Mademoiselle was a good judge. An omelette aux credettes was followed by the ^ole Dieppoise^ with a delicious sauce m which tiny mushrooms and monies and shrimps were bathed. A grilled chicken came after with lemon squeezed over it, and then Madame in black silk and lace walked into the salon to hear what we thought of the sole. For the sole we had nothing but compliments, but Madame was a little grieved to hear that we thought the old Chambertin had seen its best days and that we liked the old Barsac French Provincial T'owns 73 better. " Oh, you gentlemen ! It is always like that. You like the Barsac best because it is a pretty girl that recommends it," said Madame, shaking a finger at her daughter, who laughed back at her. A cream cheese of the country, so light that it melted in the mouth, completed the repast. While I am writing my reminiscences of good lunches at Dieppe, let me describe a lunch I ate in admirable company just outside Dieppe cios Normand at an open-air breakfast place one sum- Martin-Eg-lise, mer on a hot day. At a long Porte Normande Normande the motor cars come to a halt in a little village street. A Norman gate has above it a thatched roof, and the long roof to this gate also shelters an array of white clothed tables. Beyond it is an orchard where wooden tables are set under the trees. From a barn, which has been converted into a kitchen and which has on its outer wall a copper washing-basin and a little cistern and a towel on a roller, issues a plump lady in a black dress. She is bare-armed and bare-headed. She is Madame, the proprietress. Says she, " Certainly Monsieur can have Truite Meuniere and a Poulct en Cocotte and Haricots Verts Panaches and a Tourte a la Creme, and will the ladies choose their table ? " for a lady and her two little daughters were of our party. We go through the orchard to the trout-stream which, with a pleasant gurgle, runs between grass-covered banks. The water is crystal clear, and moves the long green weed in it gently to and fro. The shadows above the pebbles are trout, cautious, well-fed fish, which are rarely to be caught at this point with a fly, but which by some means or another are regularly transferred from the stream to the tank in the barn. Hidden by trees, but its presence made clear by the clack-clack-clack of its wheel, is the mill driven by this stream. Across the water are meadows in which placid cows graze, and in the 74 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe shadow of a pollard willow an old peasant sleeps. The apple trees by this brook shelter the most favoured tables, and one of these we secure and sit on rush- bottomed chairs to look at our neighbours while the trout are being cooked. There are two big parties of good bourgeois, each with a silver-haired grand-mere in the place of honour, each with the men in shirt- sleeves, for the mid-day heat is tropical, each with its three or four^ children. There is a pretty lady wear- ing a purple motor-veil and a white dress, and her cavalier, a Frenchman who plays for big stakes at the Casino ; there is a widow and her two daughters ; there are two Englishmen ; and a fat Frenchman in a broad-brimmed Panama hat and a nankeen coat, who mops his head continuously with a bandanna handker- chief. In the distance, near the Porte Normande, a violinist and a 'cello player in scarlet jackets and an Italian girl with a guitar make fine patches of vivid colour amidst the green. There are plenty of farm animals in the orchard. A white goat comes to the table and stands on ifes hind-legs to ask for bread, and a superannuated old sheep-dogwhich,one of the little girls asserts, has Chippendale legs, puts a cool nose against one's hands as a hint that he is present and ready to be fed. A little flock of geese take to the water and swim up stream, keeping just level with our tree, their beady eyes on the alert for any crumbs which may be thrown them. Our tree is no ordinary tree. Withies have been interwoven in its branches and a creeper trained over them. I do not suppose this is good for the tree's apple-bearing, but it certainly makes an ideal sunshade of it. A waiter in shabby dress clothes, whose shiny red nose tells of much running to and fro in the heat, lays a white tablecloth and receives our order for some of the oldest cider of the house with a resonant " Bon'^ He presently comes shuffling over the grass with his arms full of hot plates, two French Provincial Towns 75 bottles of cider, and a covered dish in which sizzles the trout. The cider proves to be excellent, as it should be, for we are in Normandy, the cider country. The Italian girl begins to sing songs, " Santa Lucia " and "Adio Napoli," and the others, which always conjure up a vision of moonlit nights in the Bay of Naples and the singers rowing round the vessel. The 'cello moans in accompaniment to the voice and the tinkling guitar, and gives that undercurrent of broken- heartedness which is in most of the south Italian peasant songs. It is quite incongruous, these songs of the south in a Normandy orchard, but the sunshine and the old cider and the clack of the mill and the sound of running water brings it all into the picture. The fowl in its big brown circular pot is as good as the trout has been, and the Italian girl, smiling to show two rows of brilliant teeth, brings round the plate with a napkin folded on it into which the sous are slipped. She asks us whether we would like to hear " le petit " play and sing. " Le petit " is a small boy in a sailor's dress, who is one of the little troupe, and who presently takes a violin and leads the band of three with much aplomb. Then he comes to an open space amid the trees and sings a comic song with a little dance after each verse. He too brings round the plate and takes away with it a great triangle of the tourte^ having looked to the Italian girl for permission before he accepts it. And then we find that it is nearly three o'clock, and we have to drive through the Foret d'Arques and see the castle and be back in Dieppe by four. So the little girls are sent running to tell the chauffeur to be ready, and we pass out of the lotus-land calm of the orchard on to dusty roads. The Italian girl, her mouth full of bread and sausage, comes to the door of the barn kitchen to wish us the pretty Italian equivalent of " Au revoir," and " le petit," clasping a toy boat, comes with her to wave 76 T'hc Gourmet's Guide to Europe his hand. The name of the orchard restaurant is the Clos Normand, and it is at Martin-Egh"se, a mile or two out of Dieppe. The Dieppe Clubs The subscription to the Grande Cercle des Bains, the Baccarat Ckib of the Casino, is 10 francs. Mem- bership of a good Enghsh club does away with any delay in admission. The Dieppe Golf Club, of which the British Vice-Consul is secretary, has an i8-hole course, and is a mile from the town. Visitors pay 2.50 francs a day, 10 francs a week, and 25 francs a month. The nine holes on the sea-side of this course are situated in wonderfully picturesque positions. PUYS At Puys, a mile and a half from Dieppe, Mons. Pelletier laid down an excellent cellar of wines in the Hotel Chateau de Puys. The Chateau de Puys ^ ^r^u-u..i ^ ^ restaurant or this hotel, on a plateau jutting out seawards and commanding some marvellous views, is a pleasant place at which to breakfast. POURVILLE At Pourville, two miles from Dieppe, uphill, past the golf links, M. Gras is responsible for the enter- „ ^ , , ^ . tainment at the Hotel Casino. The Hotel du Casino , . , restaurant has a special reputation achieved, in the first place, by " Papa " Paul Graaf, who was one of the chefs at the Tuileries in the days of Napoleon III. A gourmet en voyage writes thus • to me of M. Gras : " Gras is a very shrewd fellow who adds every year to his hotel accommodation. French Provincial Towns 77 which fs extremely simple — no gorgeous furniture or anything of that sort. The place is not cheap, and for meals a la carte the charges are bv no means low. But the food is good and uncommonly well cooked. Gras looks after his business very closely, and is proud of his kitchens and larders, which he loves to show to visitors. His wines are good and not too expensive, and he can cook you a lobster a V Amer'icaine as well as it can be done in any New York restaurant. My impression of the Hotel du Casino is that it is a second- rate place run in first-rate style." Etretat At Etretat there is a Cafe Restaurant in the Casino where a dejeuner, v'ln comprisy is obtainable for 4 francs, and a dinner for 5 francs ; but most of the English settled in Normandy go either to the Hotel Hauville or the Hotel Blanquet for any meals when they visit this seaside town, the prices at the Roches-Blanches being somewhat frightening. The Hotel Blanquet charges 4.75 francs for its dejeuner served at separate tables. Havre Havre is one of the towns in which the Englishman or American crossing to Southampton or coming thence often finds himself for some hours. Tortoni's in the market-place has a reputation for good Tortoni, Place cookery. Judging from the two or Gambetta three dinners I have eaten there, both a la carte and the table d'hote one at 5 francs — eight courses and a pint of wine for one's money — the cookery is of the good solid bourgeois order. Tortoni's Hotel Restaurant must not be confounded with the Brasserie Tortoni quite close to it, which is a bachelor's resort ; and 78 l^he Gour?72efs Guide to Europe which I, as a bachelor, have found very amusing sometimes after dinner. Frascati's Restaurant, an adjunct to the big hotel on the sea-shore, is the classic restaurant of the place, Frascati, Rue ^^d many a man who has come over du Perrey by the midnight boat and has stayed for a bathe and a meal at Frascati's before going on to Paris by the mid-day train has breakfasted there in content. The Ecrevisses BordelaheSy the Croutes aux Champignons^ the Salade Russe here have left me pleasant memories. In the winter the chef retires to Paris or elsewhere, and the restaurant is not to be so thoroughly trusted ; and sometimes when a crowd of passengers are going across to Southampton by the night boat to catch an American steamer, I have found the attendance very sketchy, owing to the waiters having more work than they can do satisfactorily. The res- taurant in summer is in the verandah facing the sea. The Hotel de Normandie is a hostel at which the Hotel de Nor- cooking and the wines are good. This mandie, Rue de is a menu of a table d'hote diner maigre ^^'^^ served there on Good Friday, and it is an excellent example of a meal without meat : — Bisque d' Ecrevisses. Reine Christine. Filets de Soles Normande. Nouillettes Napolitaine en Caisse. Saumon de la Loire Tartare. Sorbets Supreme Fecamp. Coquille de Homard a I'Americaine. Sarcelles sur Canape. Salade panachee. Asperges d'Argenteuil Mousseline, Petits Pois au Sucre. Glace Quo Vadis. Petits Fours. Corbeille de Fruits. Dessert, French Provincial Towns 79 The restaurant of the Continental Hotel, on the Chaussee des Etats Unis, opposite to the Setee, has recently become one to be recom- The Continental, mended. One of its specialties is a Chaussee des Foulet Grand Due, in the sauce of which ^*^*^ ^^^^• both whisky and brandy are used. I have not tasted this alcoholic dish myself, but I have the word of a gourmet of unblemished taste that it is excellent. One of my correspondents sends me an account of Perrier's, a little restaurant, which I give in his own words : " The quaintest and most origi- Perrier's, nal place in Havre is a little restaurant The Quay on the quay, opposite where the Trouville boats start from. It is known equally well as * Perier's,' or the Restaurant des Pilotes. It is kept by one Buholzer, who was at one time chef at Rubion's in Marseilles. He afterwards was chef on one of the big Trans- atlantique boats, where he learnt to mix a very fair cocktail. The entrance is through a tiny cafe with sanded tiled floor. Thence a corkscrew staircase leads to a fair-sized room on the first floor. All the food you get there is excellent, and Bouillabaisse or Homard a V Amer'icaine, ' constructed ' by the boss, is a joy, not for ever, but, in the case of the first-named, for some time. The house does not go in for a very varied selection of wines, but what there is is good." My correspondent qualifies this good report by telling me that the last time he breakfasted at the Restaurant des Pilotes it took the proprietor a very long hour to prepare the feast. The Fox Bar alongside the Bourse has during the past two years been much patronised by the sporting members of the British community. _ _ T • 1 1 T^ 11/ I^ox Bar It IS owned by Reynard, who is the proprietor of the Cafe Guillaume Tell on the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Jules, the bar-tender, was 8o 'The Goiirmefs Guide to Europe for years smoke-room steward on La Champagne^ and can mix any cocktail ever invented in America. St. Adresse The outlying suburb of Havre, St. Adresse, is, I have little doubt, the future summer "resort" of Havre. One of the richest and most Le Commerce . . ^ , r ^u j enterprismg Y rencnmen or the day, M. Dufayel, whose great shops in Paris are world- known, has acquired a large space of land there, has built a splendid club, which he leases at a pepper- corn rent to the local yacht-racing association, and a fine restaurant to be called the Commerce, which, however, is at present without a tenant. An hotel which was commenced by M. Dufayel has been de- layed in erection by landslips. There are half-a-dozen little cafes and restaurants Le Broche a ^.t St. Adresse, and the Broche a Rotir Rotir has always been a favourite resort of the people of Havre. GONNEVILLE At Gonneville, which can be easily reached by train either from Havre or Etretat, at the Hotel „ , . , Aubouro; there is a very interestins; Hotel AubOUrg n r u l it- 1 collection or old cupboards, chma, and works of art. The food is excellent, and very cheap, and the proprietor is a " character " who is very proud of his visitors' book. DUCLAIR On the upward voyage, going from Havre to Rouen, Duclair is passed twelve miles from Rouen. French Provincial 'Towns 8i The Hotel de la Poste there is a house worthy of special notice. The proprietor, Denise, himself cooks a Canard-Duclair with a skill that no Hotel de la great chef could better. He has a Poste good cellar, but the visits of a little band of gourmets from Havre have made serious gaps in its bins. The hotel, with the exception of the kitchen, which re- quired no improvement, has lately been entirely modernised. Havre Clubs The Cercle Fran9ois I. is a social club which consists of about i8o members. It opens its door to all nationalities. Members can give cercle Fran- their friends cards of admission for the 9ois I. day, week, or month without charge. The cuisine is excellent and the wines well chosen. At St. Adresse, the Havre Yacht Club has as a home a beautiful building, probably the finest club- house of the kind in Europe. It stands Palais des high above the bay, opposite the win- Regattes ning flag in the regattas. It has a long wide verandah, and its suite of rooms, high and finely proportioned, comprise a dining-room, a ball-room, and a concert- room or theatre. AFTER DINNER Havre boasts two theatres — the large municipal theatre in the Place Gambetta, where one obtains solid amusement, and the Theatre-Cirque on the Boulevard Strasbourg, where lighter fare is provided. The Folies Bergeres in the Rue Lemaitre is the Cafe Concert of the town. There is music after dinner at Frascati's and the Casino at St. Adresse. 82 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe Rouen The restaurant at the Hotel d'Angleterre is the dining - place at which the travelling Englishman TT«+^i A^K^cr~-\r. ^cnerallv orders his ^ole Normande and Hotel d Angle- ^ J . i i » i j terre, Cours La net on Konennane^ and the notel and Bbieldieu restaurant, which have been recently redecorated, are very fresh and smart. The proprietor Hotel de Paris, of the Hotel de Paris, on the Quai de 50 Quai de Paris Paris, prides himself on the cookery in his restaurant, and his 4-franc table cVhote dinner is really an excellent meal at the price. I am told by men who know Rouen well that the cookery Hotel de la ^^ ^^ Hotel de la Poste is all that a Poste, Rue fastidious diner can require, and that Jeanne d'Arc ^|^g prices are very reasonable. The Restaurant de la Cathedrale in the Rue des Carmes is under the direction of MM. Convert and Restaurant de la Schwartz, the former of whom was for Cathedrale, Rue a while rnaitre-chef at Marlborough des Carmes House. Its cookery under the personal superintendence of M. Convert is first-class, and it has an excellent cellar of wines. MM. Convert and Schwartz cater for some of the leading clubs in the city — the Union and Lloyd's, for instance. The view of the cathedral from the windows of the restaurant is a fine one. Of course the Rouen duck is not any particular breed of duck, though the good people of Rouen will probably stone you if you assert this. It is simply a roan duck. The rich sauce which forms part of the dish „ , , _, was, however, invented at Rouen. The Restaurant de jt, tip/at /t 1 Paris, Rue de delights or the bole Normande 1 need not laGrosse dilate on. A 2;ood bottle of bureundv Horloge . ^ . b / IS the best accompaniment to the duck. The Restaurant de Paris, in the Rue de la Grosse French Provincial 'Towns 83 Horloge, is a very cheap restaurant, where you get a great deal to eat at dinner for 2 francs, and where you will find the Choux Farcies and other homely dishes of Normandy as well as the excellent little cream cheeses of the country. AFTER DINNER At the Theatre Frangais the municipality supplies for the winter a company to play comedies and operettas. The Theatre des Arts, on the Quai de la Bourse, is popular, and there are two Cafe Chantants, the Al- hambra in the town, and the Folies Bergeres on the island in the midst of the river. There are concerts on summer evenings at the Cafe Victor. Caudebec en Caux In the quaint little mediaeval townlet of Caudebec the cookery at the Hotel de la Marine, a good old- fashioned hotel beloved by artists, is Hotel de la quite good. The hotel is new in front. Marine and is old-fashioned and picturesque in its back regions. Its proprietor is now building a quite new hotel, the Villa Isabelle, with a good garden before it and a fine view of the Seine. HONFLEUR Crossing the Seine, one is in the land of cider and Pont I'Eveque cheese. At Honfleur you will find splendid Monks Marinieres and a very J ^ 7 / 75 7 A , I ij r I • 1 Cheval Blanc good table a note at the oid-rashioned Cheval Blanc on the Quai ; and at the Ferme St. Simeon up on the hill, in beautifully wooded ground, 84 The Goiirmefs Guide to Europe there is to be obtained some particularly good spark- ling cider. Honfleur has a special reputation for its shrimps and prawns. Trouville — Deauville During the Trouville fortnight, when all the world descends upon Trouville, the various big hotels and the Casino have more clients than they really can cater for. At the Roches Noires, or the Paris, one is likely to be kept waiting for a table, and at the Casino a harassed waiter thrusts a red mullet before one, when one has ordered a sole. The monies of Trouville are supposed to be particularly good, and also the fish. There are table d'hote meals at the restaurants of the Helder and De la Plage, the second being the cheaper of the two, and food is to be obtained at Tortoni's and at the Brasserie on the edge of the Promenade des Planches. But Trouville in the season may be taken to be exiled Paris in a fever, half as expensive again, and not half so " well done." The amusements after dinner are concentrated at the Casino and a little music hall, the Eden Casino. Caen My experience has been that whether one stays on a yacht or in a hotel or villa at Trouville one is glad to motor over to some one of the towns in the district to eat a meal in quiet, and to escape for an hour or two from the racecourse and the baccarat-room. Dives and Caen form the goal of two of the pleasantest excursions from Trouville. Tripes a la mode de Caen may be a homely dish, but it is not to be despised, and it can be eaten quite at its best in the town where it was invented. I have eaten it with great content at a bourgeois French Provincial 'Towns 85 restaurant, opposite to the Church of St. Pierre, the Restaurant Pepin, if my memory serves me rightly, and a Sole Bordeaux to precede it. The p^pin proprietor, M. Chandivert, was very 13 Marche-au- anxious that I should add a Caneton ^°^^ Rouennaise to the feast, but I told him that " to every town its dish." He gave me a capital pint of red wine, and impressed on me the fact that he had obtained a gold medal at some exhi- Busch, 1 Rue bition for his andouillettes. Another St. Laurent restaurant celebrated for its tripe is that of Busch, in the Rue St. Laurent. Caen is the town of the charcutiers^ and you may see more good cold viands shown in windows, in a walk through its streets, than you will Ang-leterre, Rue find anywhere else outside a cookery ^^- "^^^^ exhibition. Caen is an oasis in the midst of the bad cookery of Western Normandy ; and the restaurant at the Hotel d'Angleterre and the Restaurant de Madrid are very much above the aver- Madrid, Rue age of the restaurant of a French S*- ^^^^ country town. In both restaurants you can dine and breakfast in the shade in the open air, the Madrid having a good garden, the Angleterre a great tent in the courtyard, — a welcome change from the stuffy rooms, full of flies, of most Normandy hotels. I have a most pleasant memory of a Homard Amer'tcaine, cooked at the Hotel d'Angleterre, which was the very best lobster I ever ate in my life. The old chef who made the fame of the Angleterre has retired, but his successor is said to show no falling off in the art of preparing a good dinner. I would suggest to the wayfarer to breakfast in the garden of the Madrid and dine at the Angleterre. There is a little restau- rant, A la Tour des Gens d'Armes, on a la Tour des the left bank of the canal, which is ^ens d'Armes much frequented by students, and where an al fresco 86 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe lunch is served at a very small price. The food is good for the money, and there is always a chance of finding some merry gathering there. A note of warning should be sounded as to the cider and vin ordinaire supplied as part of the table d'hote dinners in Caen, and indeed everywhere in Normandy. There is almost invariably good cider to be had and good wine on payment, but the cider and wine usually put on the table rival each other as throat-cutting beverages. Vieux Calvados is an excellent pousse cafe. It reads almost like a fairy tale to be able to recount that the delicious oysters from the coast-villages of Ouistreham and CourseuUes can be bought at 50 centimes the dozen, or very little more. Dives The Hotel of Guillaume le Conquerant at Dives is an interesting old house full of curiosities. There is Guillaume le some furniture there which belonged Conquerant to Madame de Sevigne, and the chair used by her when writing some of her letters. The courtyard with its statues, its flowers, and its creepers is quite out of the ordinary. Mons. Remois, its pro- prietor, is a man of great taste, and has personally superintended the restoration of the old house. The 5-franc table d'hote dinner is quite good of its kind. Cherbourg Cherbourg, the calling-place for Atlantic steamers, is a very likely place for the earnest gourmet to find himself stranded in for a day, and I regret that there is no gastronomic find to report there. A most com- petent authority writes thus to me on the capabilities of the place : — French Provincial Towns 87 " There are no restaurants, in the true sense of the word, in Cherbourg. " The leading hotel, where most of the people go, and which is the largest, with the best cuisine and service, is the Hotel du Casino. This Hotel du Casino, hotel is managed by Monsieur Marius, ^^ Plage and though partially shut during the winter season, travellers can always get a good plain dinner there. During the summer season, that is from May till October, the hotel is fully open, and has a petits chevaux room, entry free of course, and also good military music in the gardens, twice a week. The gardens are also very prettily illuminated very often, whilst from time to time firework displays help to pass away the evenings. The dining-hall faces the only nice portion of beach in the town, and being entirely covered in with glass, is warm in winter and cool in summer, when it can all be open. The meals are usually table cThote^ but it is possible also to order a dinner a la carte if one prefers to do so. Here also the traveller will find a little English spoken amon? the waiters and maitres cChotel. The wines are pretty good, but there is no very special brand for which the place is known ; nor does the hotel boast of any special plat. " The Hotel de France, another fair-sized hotel, is the one patronised mostly by the naval and military authorities of the town, but is not so Hotel de France, amusing a place for the traveller to ^^® ^^ Bassin stay at or dine at ; though I understand that the dinner to be obtained there is in every way satisfactory. " Finally, I might mention two other hotels at which one can dine comfortably ; these are the Hotel d'Amiraute and the Hotel d'Angleterre, at both of which a good plain dinner is served. " The chief joint obtainable here to be recom- mended is of course the mutton, as Cherbourg is 88 'fhe Gourmet's Guide to Europe noted for its pre-sale all over France ; but beyond this the food is of the usual ordinary kind to be obtained in most French towns of this size." Granville On the west coast of Normandy, Granville is the first town of any great importance. Its hotels still adhere to the Norman custom of placing Casino ^^j ^j^^ guests at one table, unless an extra 50 centimes a head is paid. A 4-franc dinner with a pint of wine included is served at the Casino Restaurant. M. Roche, who made a fortune in London in Old Compton Street, has taken a little hotel near Granville, and as he learned cooking under Frederic of the Tour d' Argent, he may be depended upon for an excellent meal. Mont St. Michel In no holiday resort that I know of is there more energetic touting carried on by restaurants than at Mont St. Michel. Boys in blue aprons interrupt their game of tossing sous into the air to shout to the passengers arriving by tramway the merits of the various restaurants on the rock, and all the way up the narrow street, which climbs, by steep gradients and occasional steps, to the abbaye, the best-looking maid of the many cafes and restaurants stands at the door offering a card, and extolling the view to be seen, the luncheon to be eaten, or the coffee to be drunk. The higher one goes up the street the cheaper the luncheon becomes. At the Poulard establishment, almost on a level with the sea, the price is 3 francs. A hundred feet higher the price drops to 2 francs. From the number of Poulard's establishments one might suppose that the mount was peopled by Poulards, French 'Provincial T'owns 89 but the establishment nearest the gate of entry into the fortifications is the Restaurant Poulard, with a celebrity for the making of a great eighteen-egg omelette, and for fowls roasted, half-a-dozen at a time, on a great spit. Madame Poulard, in old days, used herself to wield the titanic pan in which the omelette was made. I believe that the good lady has sold her restaurant to a Paris syndicate, and has re- tired ; but the great pan is still to be seen in the kitchen, and is used when tourists wish to see the omelette made. Poulard Jeune and Poulard Aine used to have res- taurants in opposition to each other, but they are now joined under the name of Poulards Les Poulards Reunis, and form one large hotel restau- i^eunis rant, with several "dependances." There is plenty of noise at the Poulard Restaurant, for a waiter in the shelter across the street, where coffee is served, rings a big bell whenever he has a few seconds to spare. The luncheon rooms, big bare rooms of match-boarding and plaster, are on the first floor, and when the summer season is at its height there is often a great crush on the narrow staircase leading up to them. A big table runs down the centre of each room, and there are smaller tables by the walls. Sturdy waitresses in black bustle about, clearing away dirty plates and glasses, and laying a fresh set for each new arrival. The lunch is a big 3-francs worth, with the usual 50 centimes added for proud people who wish to sit at separate tables. On the day I lunched there it consisted of cold ham, an omelette, mutton cutlets and potatoes, roast veal and salad, and cakes and cheese. The Duguesclin, further up the street than the Poulard establishment, has an airy ^ne Duguesclin dmmg-room lookmg out on to the rampart. The lunch is, I believe, a 1.50 one, but it may have risen to 2 francs. 90 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe St. Malo Brittany, the land of eggs and butter, is also a land of gigantic meals at very cheap prices, roughly served, wholesome no doubt, but better appreciated with an appetite sharpened by Brittany air than they would be under less healthy conditions. In St. Malo there is one restaurant, that attached to the Hotel de France et de Chateaubriand in the Hotel de France ^^ ^, ^ l • j u- i l et de Chateau- rlace Chateau briand, which has preten- briand, Place sions to distinction and elegance. The Chateaubriand ^ *. ^u ^ .. • • • i entrance to the restaurant is in a side street. The rooms have crimson portieres to their windows ; there are palms, and the little tables are not set too near each other. The linen and cutlery are better than are usually to be found in Brittany. A lunch and a dinner of the day are the meals usually served in this restaurant, the prices, if I remember rightly, being 3 and 5 francs respectively. It is as well to take the meal which is ready, for I have found by personal experience that the kitchen has no great variety to offer for a lunch or dinner a la carte. In the Place Chateaubriand, the little square which is the centre of the life of the town, in which are four or five cafes, two of which at least have ladies' Hotel del'Uni- bands as an attraction, is the Hotel de vers, Place I'Univers, the dining-room of which is Chateauhriand patronised by the " commis voyageurs " who come to St. Malo on business, and who go to no hotel that has not good sound bourgeois cookery. The room, or rather rooms, are rather low, and a long table (Thote table runs down the centre of each ; but there are small tables at the side for the use of people who do not wish to herd with all-comers. The price of the meals is a small one, and the cookery is prob- ably the best in the town. French Provincial Towns 91 The Franklin Hotel, almost next door to the Casino outside the walls of the town, caters for an English and American clientele which lives en pension 1 ^T-i 1 -1 1 The Franklin there. i he meals, neither very good and not remarkably indifferent, call for no special comment. Other restaurants in the town, for which corre- spondents have had a good word as to cheapness, are the Perdrix in the Rue Jacques-Cartier, and that of the Lion d'Or in the Place Chateaubriand, and the restaurant in the fish-market, with a specialty of shell-fish ; but I cannot speak of any of these from personal knowledge, except the latter, where I ate monies a la marinlere amidst noisy though amusing surroundings. AFTER DINNER In summer any one staying at St. Malo is quite likely to see a very good performance of opera at the Casino. The opera and the ballad are recruited for the season from the younger members of " The " profession in Paris, and a clever band of singers and dancers is usually brought together. There is, of course, a baccarat club and the usual ball game in the Casino. Cancale A tram connects St. Malo with Cancale, the town of oysters. The Hotel Duo;uesclin, ^ which has a large garden, is a plea- sant halting-place, and its prices are very cheap. Parame My knowledge of the restaurants of Parame, the town which adjoins St. Malo, is confined to a dinner and a lunch eaten in the restaurant of the Hotel 92 77z6' Gourmefs Guide to Europe Royal. They were both very well cooked little meals. As I was a guest on both occasions, I do not know what their cost was. In the summer the Casino at Parame has all the usual attractions, and the chemin de fer in the Club Prive is often for very high stakes. DiNARD It is rather surprising that, at sucli a flourishing town of amusement as Dinard is, there should be so few first-class restaurants ; but the people who live in the beautiful villas entertain, for the most part, in their homes, and the greater number of people who stay in the hotels are en pension^ and are contented with the table cfhote meals of their hotel. The one restaurant of the first class is that attached to the Restaiirant de Royal Hotel. It is a semicircle of I'Hotel Royal glass windows, with a wooden roof, and though it affords splendid views of the bay and the islands, is a difficult restaurant to keep cool in summer and warm in autumn. It is closed during the winter months. It is quite first-class in all its appointments. Its cookery justifies its prices, which are on the Bois de Boulogne scale. Leoni's band makes music outside in the lounge, and M. Renaud, who manages the restaurant of the Cannes Casino so successfully during the winter months, brings his good taste and his knowledge of the predilections of each member of a large clientele to Dinard for the summer season as the manager of the restaurant. The other restaurant in Dinard which merits parti- cular description is the Restaurant Beau Vallon, on Restaurant ^^^ Vicomte, the peninsula which runs Beau Vallon, out into the Ranee, the great estuary La Vicomte ^j^j^j^ j^ between Dinard and St. Malo. The restaurant is an easy walk from the town, and the cliff path by which it can be approached is a French Provincial T'owns 93 pleasant way by which to reach it. The restaurant, which is quite a small building, has in its grounds a terrace half way down the cliff, where there are a dozen little tables set out, and which commands a very fine view across the Ranee to the St. Servan bank. There are also tables sheltered by hedges of privet, and little summer houses, each with a table in it. The Beau Vallon is a favourite place at tea time, and it is also popular at luncheon time. The prices, as a rule, are quite moderate ; but if the proprietor is put on his mettle he can serve a feast of ceremony with due dignity, and charge a high price per head for doing so. A dish of crab is one of the specialties of the house. Crab and langoustes are plentiful in this part of the coast, and in the St. Malo fish-market I saw a number of boxes of sardines in salt. At one time the sardines deserted this coast, but I take it that they have now returned. Very sweet little Slips come from the bay, and one of the delicacies is fried Equilles, the little eels which are dug out of the sand. They are dug for on other sandy beaches, but are, I believe, usually used for bait. They are rather oily, but quite pleasant morsels. Of the many very cheap restaurants which are near the landing-place, and in the main street at Dinard, that Des Colonies in the largest of the streets is the tidiest and most airy. The lunch there is a 2-franc one. The Dinard Clubs The Dinard Club is cosmopolitan in membership, but the Anglo-Saxon members greatly outnumber the others. It is run on pleasant British The Dinard lines, and its cookery is French, but ^^^^ plain enough to suit British tastes. It has bridge and billiard rooms. The subscription is 120 francs for a. 94 T^he Gourmefs Guide to Surope year, lo francs for a week, and other sums in like pro- portion for other periods. The Golf Club of Dinard is four miles distant at St. Briac. The links are good ones Tne Golf Club ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^j^j^ ^^^ gg^ ^^j^^g^ A tramway connects St. Briac with Dinard. AFTER DINNER The Dinard Casino, with its opera and operetta troupes, its balls, its Tzigane musicians, and its baccarat club, focuses the evening amusement of Dinard. There is a second Casino, which was at one time in competition with the " high life " one, but is now to be incorporated into the Royal Hotel. DiNAN All the hotels at Dinan cater for the excursionists who come there for the day by steamer or raik I ate at the Hotel de Paris et d'Angleterre portions of a huge meal, which comprised ham, cold bar and sauce Tartare^ beef, and a fricassee of haricots hlancs^ veal and potatoes, cheese and fruit, the cost of which, including unlimited red or white wine or cider, was 2 francs. Had I gone to the Hotel de France or the Hotel de I'Europe I should have been offered a similar bar- barous feast at the same extraordinarily small cost. ROSCOFF Roscoff is celebrated for its primeurs^ for the Gulf Stream gives it an equable climate, and the market gar- deners whose ground is near the sea supply vegetables to the Paris markets very early in the year. Lobsters and langoustes are exported in great quantities from Roscoff, and here, as along all the Brittany coast^ French Provincial Towns 95 prawns, artichokes, eggs, lobsters, crabs, langoustes are plentiful. Hotel des Bains Here is a typical Breton menu, one de Mer of the meals at the Hotel des Bains de Mer, Ros- coff:— Artichauts a I'Huile. ' Pommes de terra a I'Huile. Pore frais froid aux Cornichons. Langouste Mayonnaise. Canards aux Navets. Omelette lines Herbes. Filet aux Pommes. Fromage a la Clreme. Fruits, biscuits, &c. Cidre a discretion. This is rather a terrible mass of food ranged in the strangest order, but I insert it to show the traveller in Brittany that he need never think his meal ended when he reaches the omelette, and that he had better take a gargantuan appetite with him. Brest This great naval town has better cafes than it has dining or lunching places ; the Cafe Brestois in the Rue de Siam, and the Grand Cafe in the same street, beina both good. Besides the restaurants attached to the hotels, there are the Restaurant Aury and the Brasserie de la Marine, both on the Champ de Bataille, but I have no details concerning them. OuiMPER At the Hotel de I'Epee the table d'hote meal is good at ^ francs a head. The hotel is a real „ . , , vt-^^^i 1 1 r 1 • J T- u • • 1 ^oX€i de 1 Epee old-fashioned J:, 1 11 ^ • J The Princess' Opera has very regularly patronised, deserves a special good word. The Restaurant Re, which was originally a fish and oyster ^ ^ ^„, , , , .°, . -^ •' Restaurant Re shop, but which is now a restaurant with fish as its specialty, is also an excellent place for 122 77/f Gourmefs Guide to ^ Europe men of moderate means. Madame Re learned the art of the kitchen at the Reserve at Marseilles, and she knows as much about the cooking of fish as any woman in the world. When it came to my turn in the interchange of dinners for six to provide a feast, I went to Madame Re and asked her to give me a fish dinner, and to keep it as distinctive as possible of the principality, and she at once saw what I wanted and entered into the spirit of it. She met me on the evening of the feast with a sorrowful expression on her handsome face, for she had sent a fisherman out very early in the morning into the bay to catch some of the little sea hedgehogs which were to form one course, but he had come back empty-handed. The menu stood as under, and we none of us missed the hedgehogs : — Canape de Nonnats. Soupe de poisson Monegasque. Supions en Buisson. Dorade Bonne Femme. Volaille Rotie. Langouste Parisienne. Asperges Vinaigrette. Dessert. The ^oupe Monegasque had a reminiscence in it of Bouillabaisse^ but it was not too insistent ; the supions were octopi, but delicate little gelatinous fellows, not leathery, as the Italian ones sometimes are ; the dorade was a splendid fish 5 and though I fancy the langouste had come from Corsican waters and not from the bay, it was beautifully fresh and a monster of its kind. The Riviera Palace has a restaurant to which many p. . people come to breakfast, high above Monte Carlo and its heat, and the cook is a very good one. Any mad Englishman who like myself takes long French Provincial 'Towns 123 walks in the morning, will find the restaurant at the La Turbie terminus of the mountain ^ m ^• ., 1 , , . , La Turbie railway a pleasant place at which to eat early breakfast ; and the view from the terrace, where one munches one's petit pain and drinks one's coffee and milk, with an orange tree on either side of the table, is a superb one. After the tables are closed the big room at the Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo fills up with those who require supper or a " nightcap " before going home ; and though a sprinkling of ladies may be seen there, the half-world much preponderates. The night birds continue the evening at the Carlton, where the lights are not put out until the small hours, and see daylight at the Austria. Monte Carlo Clubs The Sporting Club, which was established to save the gamblers who went over to Nice to play baccarat the fatigue of a train journey, is the club of the principality. Some golf links, 2000 feet above the sea, have been made at Mont Agel. AFTER DINNER The directors of the great Monte Carlo industry — that of winning the money of gamblers — do not en- courage their guests to stray too far away from the gaming tables. The concerts in the Casino theatre and the performances of opera are world-renowned, but it is often not easy for ordinary visitors to obtain tickets for seats during the opera season. There are comediettas and operettas at the little glass palace in the Casino gardens, but they are usually performed of an afternoon. A new theatre on the Condamine, for 124 ^'^^^ Gourmefs Guide to Europe the benefit of the people of Monaco, is amongst the proposed improvements which are to come from the profits of the tables. Mentone Mentone has splendid tea-shops at Rumpelmayer's and Eckenberg's. A pleasant restaurant at which to The Winter lunch is that of the Winter Palace, and Palace the Belle Vue has been improved by a new dining-room. Many people drive from Monte Carlo to lunch or take tea at the Cap Martin Hotel, and it is a pleasant place with a splendid view from the great terrace. Another favourite restaurant at the end of a drive is the Restaurant des Rochers Rouges, just across the Italian frontier. Mentone has at last obtained its much - needed Casino, containing all that is necessary to make it a success, on the ground of the Chateau du Louvre. Mentone has its club, to which the subscription is 100 francs for the season, or 25 francs a month. It has also its golf club. The Pyrenees As a gastronomic guide to the Pyrenees I cannot do better than introduce to you my very good friend C. P., who knows that part of the world as well as any native, and whose taste is unimpeachable. I therefore stand down and let him speak for himself: — Throughout the Pyrenees, in nine hotels out of ten, you can obtain a decently cooked luncheon or dinner — neither above nor below the average. But in order to depart from the beaten track of the ordinary menu, abandon all hypocrisy, oh, intelligent traveller ! and do not pretend that you can turn a French Provincial 'Towns 125 fastidious nose away from the seductions of the burnt onion and the garlic clove, the foundations upon which rests the whole edifice of Pyrenean cooking. Phari- saical density would be only wasting time, for these two vegetables will be your constant companions so soon as you decide to sample the cuisine bourgeoise of the country. You should on no account fail to venture on this voyage of exploration, as some of the dishes are excellent, all of them interesting, and, once tasted, never to be forgotten. To attempt to enumerate them all, to describe them minutely, or to give any account of their preparation, hardly comes within the scope of these notes. Suffice it to give the names of two or three. First comes the Garhure^ a kind of thick vegetable soup containing Heaven knows what ingredients, but all the same sure to please you. Next comes the Confit (FOie^ a sort of goose stew, utterly unlike any- thing you have tasted before, but not without its merits. Next, the Cotelettes (V I'z.ard marine may in- terest you. The izard, or chamois of the Pyrenees, has been marine or soaked for some time in wine, vinegar, bay leaves, and other herbs. It thus acquires a distinctive and novel flavour. Don't forget the Ragout and the Poulet^ either chasseur or else paysanne ; nor yet the Pie de Mars if in season. By way of fish you will always find the trout delicious, either fried or else a la meuniere. (Don't miss the alose if you are at Pau.) Lastly, the Pyrenean pates^ Gibier and Foie de Canard^ are justly celebrated, and can more than hold their own in friendly and patriotic rivalry with any of those purporting to come from Strasbourg or Nancy. At first acquaintance you will not care much for pic-a-pou or the wine of the country, but with patience you may possibly learn to appreciate the Vin de Juran- con. Tradition has it that Henri Quatre's nurses preferred to give this form of nourishment rather than 126 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe the Mellin's Food of the time. Perhaps babies were differently constituted in those days. In any case you will always be able to get a good bottle of claret, bearing the name of some first-class Bordeaux firm, such as Johnson, Barton Guestier, or Luze, &c. If you are lucky enough to obtain a glass of genuine old Armagnac, you will probably rank it, as a liqueur, very nearly as high as any cognac you have ever tasted. A word of warning ! Don't be too eager to order whisky and soda. The " Scotch " is not of uniform quality. So much for eatables and drinkables. A few hints now as to where you might care to lunch or dine. Pau To begin with Pau. 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 tho. fond- de-cuisine theory. Let him arrange your menu and await the result with confidence. That confidence will not be misplaced. For general comfort the English Club stands easily first, and the Englishman who has been privileged to become a temporary member will find that the coffee room is admirably " run," and as for wine and cigars Palais d'Hiver, they are the best that money can buy. Pare Beaumont For a supper after the play you should give a trial to the restaurant of the Palais d'Hiver. The Gassion and the France, the two leading hotels, have both been renovated. The France has Hotel de France, a particularly good restaurant, and M. Place Royale Campagna, who came from the Casino Belle Vue at Biarritz, is in supreme command there. French 'Provincial Towns 127 This is a menu of a dinner which Comte Roman Potoki gave in the restaurant : — Hors d'oeuvre a la Russe. Green Turtle. Puree de Grives au Pain Noir. Pinces de Homard a la Hongroise. Selle de Veau a la Doria. Spooms au Cliquot. Tinamons de Meriel Truffes. Salade Potoki. Peches Dame Blanche. Excellences. For confectionery, cakes, candied fruits, &c., Luc or Seghin will be found quite Ai ; whilst for five o'clock tea, Madame Bouzoum has deservedly gained a reputation as great as that of Rumpelmayer on the Riviera. The golf-links and club-house at Billiere are the oldest, with two exceptions, in the world — outside Scotland, of course. Throughout the mountain resorts of the Pyrenees, such as Luchon, Bagneres de Bigorre, Gavarnie, St. Sauveur, Cauterets, Eaux Chaudes, Oloron, &c., you can always, as was stated previously, rely upon getting an averagely well-served luncheon or dinner, and nothing more — trout and chicken, although excellent, being inevitable. For the Hotel de Hotel de France, France at Eaux Bonnes I can say Eaux Bonnes something which is warmer praise than this, for its cookery is quite beyond reproach. At Argeles- Gazoust there is a choice of two good dining and lunching places — the Hotel du Pare, Hotel du Pare, kept by M. Lassus, and the Hotel de Argeies France, where young Peyrafitte controls the kitchen which his father, " Papa " Peyrafitte, made famous. " Papa " has retired, but now and Hotel de France, again comes to the Hotel de France Arg-eles to see that his son does not fall away from the family 128 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Surope traditions. " Papa " loved his cooking pots as a fond father loves his children ; to see him in his kitchen was to see a master of his art in his studio ; he understood exactly how local colour should be intro- duced ; and he loved, over a glass of quinquina and vermouth, to chat with any enthusiast of a like kidney. In conclusion, should you find yourself anywhere near Lourdes at the time of the Pelerinage National, go and dine at one of the principal hotels there — say the Hotel de la Grotte. You will not dine either well or comfortably, the pandemonium being inde- scribable. But you will have gained an experience which you will not readily forget. Adishat J Aix-les-Bains Most of the French cure places are for invalids and invalids only, and the gourmet who goes to them has to lay aside his critical faculties and to be content with the simplest fare, well or indifferently cooked, according to his choice of an hotel. Aix-les-Bains, the big Savoy town of baths, is the principal exception to the rule, for the baccarat in the two Casinos draws all the big gamblers in Europe to the place, and one half of Aix-les-Bains goes to bed about the time that the other half is being carried in rough sedan chairs to be parboiled and massaged. In the late spring there is an exodus from the Riviera to Aix - les - Bains ; doctors, mattres cfhotel^ musicians, lawyers, fly-men, waiters, move into summer quarters ; and any one who has time to spare, and enjoys a three-day drive through beautiful scenery, might well do worse than make a bargain with a fly-man for the trip from the coast to the town on the banks of the lake. When a fly-man does not secure a " monsieur " as a passenger, he as often as French Provincial T'owns 129 not drives a brace of friendly waiters over just for company sake. Thus any gourmet who knows his Riviera finds himself surrounded by friendly faces at Aix-les-Bains. There are excellent restaurants in some of the larger hotels, and you can dine in a garden, under lanterns lit by electric light, or on a glassed-in terrace whence a glimpse of the lake of Le Bourget under the moon may be obtained. The restaurants of the Casino, the Cercle as it styles itself, and of the Villa des Fleurs, are naturally the dining-places to which any one Th c 1 who is tired of his hotel table d'hote goes. I have always been well treated at both, and have always regarded the restaurant of the Villa des Fleurs as one of those dining-places .,.„ . _ , . , , 111 Villa des Fleurs where one is mvariably well treated. But I find that it is wise to inquire each season who is the maitre cVhotel at each, to ask as to the chef's qualifications, and whether the service is good. The one restaurant for which every one always has a good word is that attached to Nicola's Bar, opposite the entrance to the Casino. Nicola is a Nicola's bright little Italian, who marked him- self first in my memory by charging me two francs for a whisky and soda at his bar. His catering for his tiny restaurant, which is under a canopy, is fault- less. He will not have any salt-water fish in his larder, for Aix in summer is so hot that sea-fish do not alv/ays come to table quite fresh, and this risk he will not run in the interest of his clients. Nicola's prices are not low, but his chef's cookery is first-rate, and all the material beyond reproach. Many of the excursions from Aix have a little restaurant as the point to be reached. At Grand Port, the fishing village on the borders geaurivage of the lake of Le Bourget, there is a pleasant house to breakfast at, the Beauriva2;e, with ^ i 130 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe a garden from which an excellent view of the lake and the little bathing-place can be obtained. They make a Bouillabaisse of fresh-water fish at this restau- rant which is well worth eating, and which is gener- ally the Friday fare there. At Chambotte, where there is a fine view of the lake, Lansard has a hotel and restaurant. At Marlioz, near the race-course and an inhalation and bathing establishment, the pretty ladies of Aix often call a halt to breakfast, Ecrevisses Bordelaises being a specialty. At the little mountain inn at La Chambotte, the proprietor has married a Scotch wife, and her excellent cakes, made after the manner of her fatherland, come as a surprise to the French tourists. The chalets at the summit of the Grand Revard belong, I believe, to Mme. Ritz, wife of the Emperor of Hotels, and the feeding there naturally is excellent. Most people who go a trip to the Lac d'Annecy breakfast on the boat, though I believe there is a fair breakfast to be obtained at the Angleterre. On the boat a very ample meal is provided — the trout 2;enerally being excellent — which occupies the atten- tion of the intelligent voyager during the whole of the time that he is supposed to be looking at water- falls, castles, peaks, and picturesque villages. A run over to Allevard les Bains on a motor will in- troduce you to " Les Quatres Bouledogues" — Richard Les Ouatres ^^^ proprietor and his three animal Bouledogues, bull-dogs being the four. Richard is AUevard ^ humorist. He is a capital cook ; he writes poetry — of a kind ; and edits a newspaper. These are the specialites of the Quatre, which the restaurant is called for short : Petites Croustades a la Lucullus^ CEufs a la d' Orleans^ Tripailles Richard^ Tete de cochon a la Deibler^ Pain de Volaille a la Chevaliere^ Alhamhra de Canetons^ Turban de Queues de Langoustes a la MoKovite^ Tesckea an Kirsch d^ Allevard (Sauce French Provincial Towns 131 Sabayon\ Cafe pure chicoree^ Sirop de Parapluies toujours frais. AFTER DINNER The two Casinos, each having its theatre and each being quite catholic in the matter of entertainments, giving opera, operetta, variety shows, and fireworks, supply all the after-dinner needs of Aix, and the Club Prives put no unnecessary difficulties in the way of respectable strangers becoming members. Vichy Outside the hotels, the restaurants attached to which give in most cases a good table cVhote dinner for 6 francs and a dejeuner for 4, there are but few restaurants, for most people who come to Vichy live en pension^ making a bargain with their hotel for their food for so much a day — a bargain which does not encourage them to go outside and take their meals. The Casino of course has its restaurant. The Alhambra Taverne is a restaurant and Brasserie in the Rue Sornin, and the Fran^ais is in the Rue du Marchc. There are several small restaurants in the environs of Vichy. In the valleys of the Sichon and the Jolan, two streams which join near the village of Cusset and then flow into the Allier, are two little restaurants, each to be reached by a carriage road. Both the Restaurant les Malavaux near the ruins, and the Restaurant de I'Ardoisiere near the Cascade of Gourre-Saillant, have their dishes, each of them making a specialty of trout and crayfish from the little river that flows hard by. At the Montagne Verte, whence a fine view of the valley of the Allier is obtainable, and at one or two other of the places to which walks and drives are taken, there are cafes and inns where decent food is obtainable. 132 T'lie Gourmet's Guide to Europe The golf club, under the management of M. Aletti, is a flourishing institution, and the links are sporting ones. EviAN Evian, the most French of all the French watering- places, depends on its hotel restaurants for its good „ ^ , „ , meals. The terrace of Hotel Royal, Hotel Royal i-ii 1 juii- high above the town and the lake, is a delightful open air dining-place in warm weather. M. Metivier, who came from the Esplanade Hotel, the hotel owned by the Ritz syndicate in Berlin, is the maitre chef^ and M. Ali, the clever Egyptian, well known as the maftre dVwtel of the Armenonville in Paris, occupies a like position at the Royal in the late summer. The cooking is good, and nowhere can one eat to better advantage the Ombre, the king of all fishes that swim in the Lake of Geneva. The Splendide and the Hermitage, the two other large hotels of Evian, are above the average in their cuisine. Ill BELGIAN TpWNS The Food of the Country — Antwerp — Spa — Ostende — -Bruges — Heyste— Blankenberghe — Nieuport, I CANNOT do better in commencing this chapter than to introduce you to Mr. Horace Lennard, Htterateur and "fin gourmet," who knows his Belgium better than most natives of that country, who has written the notes on " the food of the country," on several of the towns, and to whom I am indebted for the entire succeeding chapter on the Brussels restaurants. The Food of the Country The Belgian is a big eater and a bird-eater. As a rule, in Belgium the restaurant that can put forth the longest menu will attract the most customers. There are people in Brussels who regularly travel out to Tirlemont, a little Flemish town nearly twenty miles away, to partake of a famous table d'hote dinner to which the guests sit down at one o'clock, and from which they seldom rise before five. The following is a specimen carte of one of these gargantuan gorges served in December : — Huitres de Burnham. Potage Oxtail. Saumon de Hollande a la Russe. Bouchees a la Reine. 134 'T^h^ Gourmet's Guide to Europe Chevreuil Diane Chasseresse. Becasses bardees sur Canape. Tete de veau en Tortue. Surprises GrazilJa {a sorbet). Pluviers dores poire au vin. Jambonneau au Madere. Petites feves de Marais a la Creme. Salmis de Caneton Sauvage. Faisan de Boheme. Salade de Saison. Dinde trufFee Mayonnaise. Glace Vanillee. Fruits. Gateaux. Dessert. All this for five francs ! with a bottle of burgundy to wash it down, at any price from a crown to a pound. One thing may safely be said about the Belgian restaurants ; a bottle of good, sound burgundy can almost always be bought in both town and country. It is often told that the best burgundy in the world is to be found in Belgian cellars. Whether this is a reputation maintained in honour of the Dukes of Burgundy who once ruled the land, or whether the good quality of the wine is due to the peculiar sandy soil, which permits of an unvarying temperature in the cellars, I will leave others to deter- mine, but the fact remains that from a Beaujolais at 2 francs 50 centimes to a Richebourg at 20 francs, the burgundy offered to the traveller in Belgium is generally unimpeachable. Ghent is another town famous for its big feasts. The market dinner on Friday at the Hotel de la Poste, which has just been rebuilt, is often quoted as a marvellous " spread," but ,x x^ . «T. ^ the best restaurant in Ghent is uil- Mottezs, Ghent 1 1 n tv/t , , a doubtedly Mottez s, on the Avenue Place d'Armes. This is an old-fashioned place, with no appearance of a restaurant outside, and a stranger would easily pass it by. Here one dines both a la carte ''Belgian 'Towns 135 and at table d'^hote ; the table cChote is well worth trying, though some of the dishes can be safely passed over. The wines at Mottez's are very good, and some special old Flemish beer in bottles should be asked for. A great local dish is Hochepot Gantois^ a mixture of pork, sausages, and vegetables which only the very hungry or the very daring should experiment upon at a strange place. Flemish cooking as a rule is fat and porky, and there is a dish often seen on the carte called Choesels a la Bruxelloise^ which is considered a delicacy by the natives, and it is supposed to be a hash cooked in sherry or marsala ; it is, however, a dish of mystery. A plat always to be found in Belgium (especially in the Flanders district) is JVaterzoei cie Poulet^ a chicken broth served with the fowl. This is usually very safe, and any one going to Mottez's at Ghent should try it there. The Rocher de Cancale is also a restaurant at Ghent that can be recommended. It is at the corner of the street leading to the Place d'Armes, on the way from the station. Carbonades Flamandes is another Flemish dish, which, if well prepared at a reputable establishment, can be eaten without fear. This is beef-steak stewed in " faro," an acid Flemish beer, and served with a rich brown sauce. Salade de Princesses Liegeoises is a salad made with scarlet runners mixed with little pieces of fried bacon. The bacon takes the place of oil, while the vinegar should be used with rather a heavy hand. When other salads are scarce, this makes an excellent dish. Of all the Belgian plats^ however, the Belgians place foremost Grives a la Namuroise^ which of course are only to be obtained in the autumn. I have said that the Belgian is a bird-eater, and throughout the country all kinds of birds — even, I regret to say, song-birds — are pressed into service for the table. A stranger visiting the Ardennes will be struck by the sad silence of the 136 The Goiirmef s Guide to Bur ope woods, which is caused by the wholesale destruction of the birds. How the supply is kept up it is difficult to say, but no Belgian dinner is considered complete without a bird of some sort, and when grives are in season, thousands must be served daily. A grhe proper is a thrush, but blackbirds and starlings often find their way to the casserole under the name of a grive. They are cooked with the trail, in which mountain-ash berries are often found. These give the bird a peculiar and rather bitter flavour, but the berry mostly used in the cooking is that of the juni- per plant, which grows very plentifully in Belgium. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe ; and there are several houses which make a specialty of Becasses a la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liege, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster feast at Colchester. At these festivities a little wax candle is placed on the table beside each guest, so that he can take the head of his hecasse and frizzle it in the flame before he attacks its brains. Then we have plovers and larks in any quantity, but I would not like to vouch for what are often served as alouettes and mauviettes. The one bird that we never get in Belgium is grouse, unless it is brought over specially from England or Scotland. It has always been found impossible to rear grouse in the country. In the neighbourhood of Spa there are great stretches of moorlands reaching almost to the German frontier, covered with heather, which look as if they would be the ideal home of the grouse. Here M. Barry Herr- feldt, formerly of the Chateau du Marteau at Spa, a real good sportsman, tried his utmost to rear grouse ; first he laid down thousands' of eggs and set them under partridges, but this proved a failure ; then he introduced young birds, but they all died off, and I think he has now given up the attempt in despair. Belgian Toivns 137 Whilst speaking of partridges, I ought to mention that there is no partridge in the world so plump and sweet as one shot in the neighbourhood of Louvain, where they feed on the beetroot cultivated for the sugar factories. At a restaurant Coq de bruyere is often served as grouse, but this is a blackcock. In many of the Belgian towns out of the beaten track good food can be obtained at tavernes and cafes, but as a rule it is best to avoid those in the vicinity of railway stations. It is well to go near the market-places. On the Grand' Place at Ypres, a wonderful old town well worth a visit, there is an excellent La Chatellenie, restaurant attached to the Hotel de la Ypres Chatellenie. The table cVhote at 2 fr. 50 c. is remark- able value for the money. Any one dining here should ask to see the club rooms and pictures upstairs. There is a good garage for automobiles here. At Thielt, another small town in Western Flanders, I have also eaten well for a reasonable price at the little Hotel de I'Esperance on the market-place, opposite the belfry, that has a very silvery carillon. The wines here — Moselles and clarets especially — are of good vintage years and well cellared. One last note : outside the capital and at all but the best restaurants the Flemish custom is to 'Mine" in the middle of the day and "sup" at about seven. .Antwerp It is strange that a big city and seaport like Antwerp, which is a favourite stopping-place of English and American visitors to the Continent, should have so few good restaurants. None of the establishments near the quays can be classed as even third-rate, and it is in the neighbourhood of the Bourse that the best eating-houses will be found. At the Rocher de Cancale, usually called Colon's ijB T'be Gourmet's Guide to Europe (after the late proprietor), the cooking and the wines are everything that can be desired, and the prices are by no means high. This restaurant is IiocIi6r d.6 . Cancale, situated at the corner of the Place de i9Ruedes Meir and the Rue des Douze Mois, a little street leading down to the Bourse. Antwerp has a grill-room that can be highly recom- mended in the Criterium, situated on the Avenue de Keyser, near the Central Railway Station. The Criterium Criterium is also known as Keller's, Avenue de and has a large English clientele. Be- Keyser sides chops and steaks from the grill, there are other viands, and a table d'hote dinner is supplied in the middle of the day at 2 francs 50 centimes. The food is of the best, while a special feature is made of English beers and other drinks usually sought after by the Briton travelling abroad. The restaurant at the Zoological Gardens is well managed and much frequented, and the Cafe Weber, a big establishment on the Avenue de Keyser, is also highly spoken of. At the Hotel St. Antoine on the Place Verte there is a grill room for outside visitors, but I have found it rather dear. Spa Once upon a time the pretty little town of Spa, situated among the green hills of the Belgian Ardennes, was one of the most fashionable and most frequented watering-places in Europe, but a succession of anti- gambling regulations reduced its attractions. Although the glories of the place have departed, its natural beauties remain. The Casino has been rebuilt, and both baccarat and peths chevaux were, or are, played there ; but the regulations as to gaming sometimes seem in abeyance in Belgium, sometimes they are severely enforced, and it is impossible to predict 'Belgian 'Towns 139 whether six months hence baccarat will be in full swing at the Club Prive, or whether chctnin dc fer will be played under the rose, with the constant fear in the minds of the punters that a police raid may take place at any moment. The authorities at Spa quite realise that more people used to come to Spa to try their luck at the tables than to drink the iron-waters at the Pouhon and other springs, or to take the effervescing baths and douches. Of the Spa restaurants as they exist to-day, there is little to be said and less to be praised. To tell the truth, there is not a really first-class restaurant in the place. To nearly all the springs, which are located in easy proximity to the town, so-called restaurants are attached, but the patronage being intermittent and uncertain, the choice of plats is limited, and the service is slow and bad. The Sauveniere Spring is nearest to the town, but the drive there is all uphill, monotonous, and dusty. The Geronstere is more prettily situated, and is a favourite resort for luncheon during the summer season ; but unless the meal is specially ordered beforehand, the visitor will, as a rule, have to be content with eggs, beef-steaks, or cutlets. The Tonnelet is situated on the roadside, and the restaurant there is often uncomfortable and dusty. Those who make the Tours des Fontaines will be best advised to stop for lunch at the Source de Barisart, which is situated in a most source de picturesque part of the woods, 160 feet Barisart above the town, from which it is distant about a mile. The much-writtenipf Promenade de Meyerbeer is close at hand, and a stroll beneath the trees before or after lunch will be enjoyed, for the surroundings are charming and romantic. If previous notice for a meal can be given, so much the better ; there is pro- bably a telephone from the town. In trout time this fish should be included, as it is caught plentifully in 140 T^he Gourmefs Guide to Europe the district, and is, as a rule, fresh and good. As before said, there is no good restaurant in the town, — excepting of course those in connection with the principal hotels, where a table d^hote is usually served at mid-day and in the evening. Perhaps the best of the restaurants is the grill-room and Brasserie combined, in the ground-floor of the Brasserie- rebuilt Casino, now called the Kurhaus. Restaurant, Neri of Nice is the restaurateur, and Kurhaus ^^^ ^^^^ lunch quite well there for about 9 francs, and dine for about 12. The gourmet can safely be advised to eat a meal at the Grand Hotel de I'Europe, where M. Henrard Hotel de Richard always paid great attention to I'Europe his cuisine. Although he no longer personally controls the management of L'Europe, the hotel is still under the direction of his family, and retains its high reputation. The following is a menu of a 7-franc table d^hote dinner served in September. It has not been specially selected, and is therefore a fair specimen : — Bisque d'Ecrevisses. Brunoise a la Royale. Truites Meuniere. Filet de Boeuf garni Beaulieu. Ris de veau Princesse. Petits pois a la Fran^aise. Pei^reaux rotis sur Canapes. ' Glace Vanille. Gaufrettes. Corbeille de Fruits. The wines here are good, the Moselle and Rhine wines being especially cheap. Other hotels with restaurants attached that may be mentioned are the Britannique (with a fine garden in which meals are served), the Bellevue, the Flandre, and the Rosette. Belgian 'Towns 141 The last-mentioned is a small hotel attached to the Palace of the late Queen of the Belgians, and is run by her Majesty's chef. The meals for the Palace were always cooked at the hotel, and the restaurant, though simply appointed, has latterly been excellent in its way. Strangers feeding there should try and secure a table on the little glass-covered terrace in front of the hotel. Mention might also be made of a couple of small restaurants that in the past were mostly supported by the professional players at the tables. One in a side street near the Casino, kept by a Frenchman, has a reputation for its cheap French wines ; and the Macon, at a franc the bottle, is indeed drinkable. At the other, the Limbourg, the cooking is German in character and flavour. Both places may be recommended as wholesome and honest to people who want to "get through" on about 10 francs a dav. There is no more to be said. OSTENDE Ostende, or as we call it Ostend, is not renowned for the cheapness of its food, and the great majority of its well-to-do visitors make a bargain with one of the hotels to take them en pension^ and are content with the table d'hote dinner, which looks quite showy on the menu card, though it does not waken that extra sense of appreciation which every true gourmet possesses. But Ostende is by no means a city of Dead Sea apples, though he who would dine well there amidst refined surroundings must have a long purse. The same syndicate, or company, which owns the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo has bought the ^he Royal big Palace Hotel, which with its Sports Palace Hotel, Club and its theatre and its great stretch "^^^ ^^^^® of garden, stands between the race-course and the sea, and the manager brings there during the season his 142 'The Gourmef s Guide to Europe cooks and maitres cThotel from the Cafe de Paris at Monte Carlo, and, I should also add, his prices. A stock of that old brandy which all connoisseurs know has also been laid down. The restaurant, with a stained-glass roof, has windows which look across the walk on the sea wall to thesea, and it is a remarkably pleasant place in which to lunch or dine or take tea ; but the prices are Monte Carlo prices. Let me give a personal ex- perience. I went there by myself to lunch. The carte du jour presented to the clients has no prices on it, which much exercised the mind of a veritable John Bull who was sitting at the next table to me and who asked, " How much is that ? " concerning the dishes, to which question he received soothing but quite non- committal replies. I ordered ^friture ot langues cTavocat^ the little flat-fish that somewhat resemble pointed tongues ; and as the shooting season had just com- menced, the maitre (^7w/^/ recommended two quails and 2.pilafo^ rice, which seemed to me to be an admirable suggestion. I ordered half a bottle of Chateau Car- bonieux and half a bottle of one of the mineral waters. After my quails — little birds with brown firm flesh, differing much in this from the fattened - up, im- ported quail of the South which we eat in London — I thought I would like a pear ; and the waiter brought me, packed in cotton wool, a monster pear and two apples with little landscapes traced with a graver upon their rosy cheeks. I know those pears and apples of old. If one happens to be giving dinner to a lady in whose company one does not wish to appear mean, and the waiter brings a box of those marvellous pears and apples to her, one makes a swift mental calculation of all the money one has in one's pockets at the same time that one wishes that the waiter might suddenly be struck with apoplexy. In the present case, being alone, I grinned at the waiter and told him to bring me something cheap. He returned with some peaches* Belgian Towns 143 They also were packed in cotton wool, and the bigger ones had a little collar and bow of black and gold ribbon just like pet kittens. I imitated my John Bull neighbour and asked the price. The waiter thought that the big peaches were eight francs apiece and the smaller ones five francs. " I will bring you some greengages, they are very cheap," said the waiter, who did not require to be told that I would be no peach- eater. Now I happened to know that greengages were very cheap that day. I had been round the market, and knew that they were being sold at 30 centimes a kilo at the stalls, and were 35 and 40 centimes a kilo in the shops, just as I also knew that at Jean Bogaert's shop in the Grand Place the quail were priced at I franc each. The waiter brought me a big box of greengages, and I took a handful, five in all. My bill came to 20 francs 75 centimes, and I found that I had been charged half a franc each for the greengages. The cooking at the Palace and the service are admir- able, for the major-domo always gives his guests of the best ; but the man who dines or breakfasts there must expect to pay gambler's prices. My heart went out to one of my friends who, when I laughingly told him of the cheap greengages, informed me that one day at the races his wife thought she would like to take tea at the Palace, and invited half-a-dozen other ladies. He was detained in the paddock, and when he joined the tea party found that not content with tea and cakes the ladies had eaten the contents of three of the boxes of specimen fruits. A dinner party would have cost him less than that afternoon tea. The Plage Hotel has always had a reputation for good cooking, and its restaurant used to be a place where a good but expensive a la carte ^-^^ pj meal was to be obtained. In the Hotel, The autumn of 1907 the hotel changed '^^S^^ hands, being sold by the Wagons Lits Company to 144 '^^'^^ Gourmets Guide to Europe the proprietor of the Splendid and Continental Hotels. The restaurant has now been divided into two parts by an imaginary line. Those careful guests who are en pension and eat the lunch and dinner of the day, quite good meals, are bowed to the left, the people who dine and breakfast a la carte are told to walk straight on to the tables in the centre and on the right. The Restaurant of the Kurhaus, as the Casino is called, possesses an excellent cook, and its prices THe Restaurant are high. The restaurant is in the of the Kurhaus, buildmg, and arches in the wall of the The Digue great concert hall connect it with the dining-room. Outside these arches, and actually in the concert room, the restaurant has a little roped-in enclosure, and it is quite chic to secure a table in this space and dine there on the nights when any celebrity is singing. You start your dinner at 8.30, the hour of the commencement of the concert ; you talk loudly and clatter knives and forks during all the orchestral items 5 and you become silent and allow the entree to get cold while Caruso, or Bonci, or Note sings. The Restaurant du Helder, attached to the big Brasserie of that name on the Boulevard van Iseghem, is a moderate-sized white restaurant. Restaurant t.. u u-^ '^ ^ u-^ u • du Helder, J-t has white etageres^ white chairs. Boulevard van and is much after the Parisian model. s-g em One has to note that the linen is not of the finest make, that the glass is not of the thinnest, that the imitation flowers on the table with electric lights concealed in them are just a little gaudy, to appreciate its provincialism. Its prices are about Parisian prices, those that one expects to pay at Durand's or La Rue's or Henri's, and both the cooking and service are good. The habitues of the restaurant tell me that no one is ever " rushed " there into ordering a longer and more expensive dinner than he requires, and that where two portions will Belgian T'owns 145 serve for three people, a suggestion is always made by the maitre d^hbtel that two will suffice. All of which I am glad to record. Most of the items on the bill of fare seemed to range between 2 and 3 francs, and if I had not been tempted by an 8-franc partridge my bill for a solitary dinner would have been under 20 francs. As an indication of the prices of the Helder, this was my dinner : A slice of Cantaloup melon, a slice of brill with white wine sauce, a partridge and salad Cceurs de Romaine^ a bit of Camembert cheese, and a pear. A small bottle of Sauterne and a small bottle of Vichy water, a cup of coffee, and a glass of the " fine " of the house, Courvoisier at a franc a glass, and very good at the price. My bill came to 24 francs 75 centimes, the melon and the partridge being the expensive items in it. The Cafe de Paris of Brussels has opened a branch in Ostende. The man who wishes to keep his dinner bill below 10 francs or even below 5 iieed not fare ill at Ostende. In the Grand Place "Au Gourmet, " is the charcutier's shop of M. Jean Grand Place Bogaerts, who is a " Fournisseur du Roi," but who modestly describes himself as Traiteur. In his shop window during the shooting season is always some choice game, and relays of fresh trout are sent him daily. On the first floor above the shop is a little restaurant which bears the title "Au Gourmet." It is a very unpretending little place, the knives are black-handled and the napery is coarse, but it is perfectly clean. On the mirrors are wafered the names of the plats du jour^ the cost of which seem generally to be i franc 50 centimes ; a modest bill of fare conveys fuller information ; a little girl sits at the caisse ; and an elderly waiter with a blue black moustache and embroidered shirt and gloomy views concerning life takes one's orders. Little 146 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Surope things show that the service is good. I ordered some shrimps as hors (Tceuvre^ and a finger glass was brought me after I had eaten them, and a large goblet was given me to wash the grapes of my dessert if I wished to. These are quite small matters, but they showed that the waiter, who looked like an Italian Count who had seen better days, knew his business. The prices charged for the game dishes showed me that one could get any of the birds shown in the shop downstairs at their sale price plus 50 centimes for cooking. Shrimps, a baby sole a la meunierey a roast snipe on toast with water-cress, cream cheese, a bunch of black grapes, a pint of Cerons, and a small bottle of Louise Marie, the best known of Belgian mineral waters, and my bill came to 6 francs 65 centimes. Partridges I noticed were priced on the bill of fare at 4 francs 50 centimes, quail at i franc 50 centimes. The wine list, which is short, contains some good names. Volney Santenoy at lO francs a bottle, and Chevalier Montrachet at 6 francs a bottle, should tempt connoisseurs. My snipe was overdone, but then I omitted to send word to the cook that I was an Englishman and liked my snipe but half roasted, a wise precaution anywhere on the Con- tinent for the man who likes his snipe to have "just flown through the kitchen," as they say in Ireland. There are Tavernesand Brasseries in number on the Boulevard van Iseghem, and in the Rue de la Chapelle, which runs across the town from the Digue to the harbour. On the Rampe de Flandre, which is the commencement on the seaside of the big street, is the Taverne St. Jean, a cheap and not particularly inviting The Taverne St establishment, which is kept by an ex- Jean, Rampe de head-waiter from Madame Re's fish Flandre restaurant at Monte Carlo, and he has brought some of the good traditions of that establish- ment with him to the borders of the North Sea. 'Belgian T'owns 147 The Taverne St. Denis is a little eating-house in the main street which is quite clean The Taverne St. in its appointments, and where I have Denis, Rue de obtained a quite satisfactory fillet, and ^^ Chapelle washed it down with some excellent beer from Bruges. The tea-rooms of Ostende are Marchal's, on the Boulevard van Iseghem. They and the patissier's shop form the corner of the block Marchal's which the new theatre occupies. The Boulevard van rooms, airy and marble-walled, are ^^®&^®^ quite first-class ; the waiters are in liveries which fit them ; and a Roumanian gipsy band plays. The foyer of the theatre is immediately above these rooms, and steps from the theatre hall lead into them. They serve as the theatre cafe, and the Englishman who wants something stronger than tea between the acts can be sure that his " peg " will be compounded of good materials. Maxim's, like its Paris namesake, Maxim's becomes merry about midnight, and Boulevard van remains open till the small hours. Iseghem The Clubs of Ostende The Club Prive of the Kurhaus is, at intervals be- tween raids and other disagreeable events, a baccarat club, and there is a roulette table which J • ^ • u r ^u Club Prive IS m use durmg certam hours or the day. It was during the season of 1910 a branch of the Cercle Litteraire in the town, but that did not prevent the police and magistrate from Ghent making a descent upon it. Forty-eight hours generally elapse between application being made and the acceptance of a candidate who belongs tp a recognised London club. It is wise to send in an application to the secretary before arriving at Ostende, Entrance fee is I louis. 148 I' he Gourmefs Guide to Europe The Sports Club at the Palace Hotel is also a club where chemin de fer is generally played. The com- mittee not infrequently exercise their The Sports Club • i ^ ^ 1 \ ij u u right to keep out would-be members who are not in their opinion sufficiently vouched for. The entrance fee is 2J louis. There are in the square of the town the Literary Club and the Club St. Cecile, but these are for the inhabitants of Ostende more than for the strangers within its gates. AFTER DINNER The theatre in the Rue de Flandre and the Boule- vard van Iseghem is excellently managed, companies playing comedy, opera, and operetta there, Brussels and Spa sending operatic stars, and travelling com- panies playing short seasons. At the Scala, the variety theatre on the Rampe du Cerf, a revue is produced early in the season, and runs till Ostende empties. The daily evening concerts at the Kursaal have a world-wide fame. The orchestra is formed of 120 performers, and all the greatest operatic stars of the world sing there as soloists. After the theatre and, the concert the clubs fill up, and the lights are not out at daybreak. Bruges I had always looked upon Bruges as the sleepiest city in the world ; and the most peaceful spot in Bruges I always considered to be under the apple-tree Hotel de Flandre '" ^^^ g^''^^" ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ Flandre, where the perfect occupation is to drink a bottle with a friend of the '67 Chambertin and to listen to the chimes ringing in the old brown belfry. The last occasion on which I was at Bruges was during the Golden Fleece Exhibition. I lunched at Belgian Towns 149 the Hotel de Flandre, and found it crowded by Eng- lish people who had come from Ostende and Brussels to see the exhibition. The dining-room has been enlarged and glitters with new decoration, and the extension has eaten up a part of the garden, though the apple-tree and the wonderful bit of statuary still remain. The wine list still contains an admirable selection of burgundies — the pint of Volnay which I drank was exactly in the right condition ; and peep- ing into the kitchen, I found that it is as clean and as perfectly kept as of yore. The cooking at the Hotel de Flandre 1 have never found noticeably good, but it is quite sufficiently good not to interfere with one's enjoyment of the burgundy ; and now that the scurry of an exhibition is no longer a disturbing element, I say to the good gourmet, go and sit under the apple-tree in the Flandre garden and study good burgundy under exceptionally pleasant conditions. Otto, who used to be head waiter at the Hotel de Flandre, is now proprietor of the Hotel de Londres in the Station Square, and he can cook .pj^g Hotel de a sole au grat'in as well as any man Londres, Station can. In the visitors' book of the hotel ^^^^^^ are recorded the names of some of the patrons of the prize ring who went over to Bruges to see the fight between Smith and Kilrain. It is a puzzle to dis- cover who the proprietor thought some of the noble lords were when he tried to write their names. Heyst and Blankenberghe Time was, not so many years ago, when at both these towns, northwards along the coast from Ostende, there used to be inns much patronised by the Brussels tradespeople who come in numbers to both these seaside resorts during the bathing season. The guests took their seats at long tables, each man and woman 150 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe with knife, fork, spoon, a yard of bread, and a glass before him or her. The serving maids then placed a great pile of plates, ten or twelve or even sixteen, in front of every diner. On the first occa- sion that I lunched at Heyst and this occurred, a horrible fear came upon me that I was going to be asked to carve some dish, but a glance round the table reassured me. The number of plates indicated the number of courses of the feast. All these old inns seem now to have vanished, and their places have been taken by tall modern hotels. I have lunched quite satisfactorily both at the restaurants of the Hotel des Bains and the Hotel du Kursaal at Blankenberghe, but they were modern moderate meals eaten amidst twentieth-century surroundings. NiEUPORT My experiences of the luncheons at the Esperance and Pelican at Nieuport, the old town which lies away south of Ostende, eleven miles down the coast, are that they are satisfying though not delicate meals. The gourmet will find, however, that the quaintness of the old town makes amends for its primitive cuisine. IV BRUSSELS The Restaurants of Brussels— The Ckibs — "After Dinner." Brussels must have been a gayer city than the Brussels of to-day when it earned the title of "a little Paris." There is at the present time very little indeed of Paris about the Belgian capital, and, in the matter of restaurants, there is a marked contrast betw^een the two cities. Here the latter-day Lucullus will have to seek in queer nooks and out-of-the-way corners to discover the best kitchens and the cellars where the wines are of the finest criis. The aris- tocracy of Belgium mostly dines en famille^ and the restaurants that cater for the middle classes are the most patronised. There are, however, several estab- lishments which provide for more refined tastes, but they will not be found upon the big boulevards or the main thoroughfares. Four of the best restaurants in Brussels are in two narrow little streets, and their exteriors resemble old-fashioned London coffee-houses, rather than resorts of fashion. Brussels is particularly destitute of smart rooms where one can sup in gay company "after the opera is over." Until the Savoy was opened, we had, in fact, nothing beyond the ordinary restaurant with its little cabinets particuliers. When Mr. Arthur Collins of Drury Lane was. in Brussels a few years ago, he asked me to take him 151 152 ^he Gourmets Guide to Europe one evening, after leaving the Scala, to the local Romano's. "We haven't such a place," I explained, "but vv^e can go to the Helder." "I dined there this evening," said A. C. ; " it was a very good dinner, but deadly dull ; show me something livelier." We resolved to try the Filet de Sole, thinking, as it was close to the Palais d'Ete, we were certain to meet some people there, but the place was empty. The fact is, Brussels at that time had little night-life beyond the taverns and bars of low character, but we now have three high-class supper-rooms in the Cafe de Paris, the Savoy, and the Grand Hotel Grill-room, which has a separate entrance in the Rue Gretry. If a stranger came to Brussels, and wanted to be shown the best restaurants, I should start him with lunch at the Savoy, dine him at the Helder or Filet de Bceuf, and finish him off with supper at the Cafe de Paris. The grill at the Savoy is excellent, and by no means dear, i franc 75 centimes is charged for a chop or steak, including pommes de terre well served. The hors, (Tceuvre are a specialty at luncheon. There is great variety, and the pickled shrimps would tickle the most jaded appetite. The Savoy is situated in the Rue de I'Eveque, by the side of the General Post Office. It was originally Savoy, Rue de a kind of offshoot from the American I'EvSque bar and grill-room of the Grand Hotel. Being done in good spirit and with good' taste, it soon acquired favour, and at certain times in the day the premises are almost too small. There are private dining-rooms upstairs, and a restaurant on the first floor has lately been added. Everything is a la carte. The plats fro'ids are a specialty at the Savoy, and are remarkably well served there. Lanson pere et fils is the champagne that seems to be the drink of the house. The Brussels restaurant en vogue at the moment of Brussels 153 writing is the Filet de Boeuf in the Rue des Harengs ; but the public is fickle, and tastes Filet de Boeuf, are constantly changing. To-morrow ^^^ ^^^ Harengs another establishment may become the favourite, espe- cially should some patron with a circle of friends quarrel with the management, or take offence at an apparent inattention. The Filet de Bceuf is a very small restaurant, consisting of two salleSy one called the " pesage," and the other the " pelouse." There are only six tables in each room, and only people well known, or recommended by the right set, have any chance of reserving a table. The patrons are prin- cipally leaders in the worlds of sport, finance, and the theatre. Everything is very dear, but very good. The dishes are specially cooked for each customer, and, consequently, one has to wait a little time after ordering before a dinner can be served. The Epaule de Mouton is also in the Rue des Harengs, one of the little streets already alluded to, which run from the Grand Place to the Epaule de Rue Marche aux Herbes. In this street, Mouton, Rue which is barely five yards wide, are ^®^ Harengs some of the best restaurants of the town ; but the stranger must be particular and not enter the wrong door, as they are all huddled together, and the names of some of the establishments are very similar. There is, for instance, a Gigot de Mouton next door to the Epaule de Mouton. It is at the Epaule, however, where the better cuisine will be found. Behind the door on entering a snug corner for a tete-a-tete is to be found. Although the title of the establishment sug- gests Simpson's and a cut off the joint, the bill of fare will be found thoroughly French, and everything is well and tastefully done. In ordering, it must be re- membered that one plat is enough for two persons, and this is the rule in most Belgian restaurants. The burgundy at L'Epaule de Mouton is renowned. 154 'T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe La Faille Dechiree is at a corner of another little street, the Rue Chair et Pain, close by the Rue des Fame Dechiree, Harengs. The construction and deco- Rue Chair et ration are quaint ; one sits in a kind of ^^^ tunnel and eats Homard a Y Amerka'ine^ which is a specialty of the house. Woodcock, when in season, is also a dish to be ordered here. Le Lion d'Or is a small establishment in the Rue Gretry, and may safely be called the chic little Lion d'Or, restaurant of Brussels. The salon Rue Gretry downstairs is a perfect little bonhonnlere^ and the rooms above are extremely cosy and comfy. The proprietor is Adolph Letellier (of course called simply " Adolph " by habitues of the house), and he is immensely popular among the young sports of the town. The vrai gourmet will appreciate ies plats les plus raffines^ on which Adolph prides himself. Every- thing is a la carte^ prices being plainly marked. They are not cheap. The restaurant and rooms upstairs are open till two in the morning. At the new Palace Hotel on the big square in front of the Garde du Nord is a restaurant, managed by The Palace Hotel M. Neri, from Nice. The table d'hote Restaurant dinner at 5 francs is well and copiously served. The wine that is made a specialty of here is the Champagne Rose Napoleon, which one always looks for at Paillard's in Paris. At the Palace Hotel Restaurant a feature is rnade of afternoon teas, and at five o'clock it is the rendezvous of Tout-Bruxelles. The Regina is a restaurant at the top of the town, near the Porte de Namur, that was opened in 1901, Re'gina, Porte and it was soon found necessary to de Namur enlarge the premises. It was the high- class kitchen that made the early reputation of the place, but after the alterations the character of the clientele changed and everything became more bourgeois. Flemish dishes are safe to try here. The prices are Brussels 1 5 5 very moderate, and the plats clu jour range from i franc to i franc 75 centimes, each plat being enough for two persons. Breakfast dishes, such as QLufs Gratines aux Crevettes and (Eufs Brouilles an fo'ie de Volaille^ are also well done here. Ecrev'isses Regina used to be a special dish of the house. There are always two special plats du soir. During the Brussels Exhibition of 1910 a number of new restaurants were opened in the neighbourhood of the Porte de Namur, but several of them do not look like surviving. Al- ready the names of some have been changed with the idea of attracting new clients. At the corner of the street leading to the Moliere Theatre from the Chaussee d'lxelles there is a large cafe-restaurant, which, after being closed for a short time, has re- opened under new management and is well spoken of. The Old Tour Tavern and the Cafe de I'Horloge are much frequented in this locality. The Helder is in the Rue de I'Ecuyer, near the Opera House. It is a smart restaurant, and the rendezvous of the monde elegant in Helder, Rue Brussels. No one thinks of dining de I'Ecuyer "there before half-past eight or nine o'clock. The proprietor is M. Artus fils, whom many will remember at the Carlton in London. He is a son of M. Artus of the Laiterie, and has gained a wide experience in high-class hotels and restaurants. He should be personally consulted if a special dinner is wanted. The Filet de Sole is in the neighbourhood of the markets and close by the Palais d'Ete. In the days when Emile Beaud was proprietor an niet de Sole, excellent lunch could be obtained here '^^^ Gretry at a fixed price, but now everything is a la carte. Prices are lower than at most of the first-class restau- rants, but the cuisine and wines are both safe and sound. There are private rooms upstairs. Wiltcher's, on the Boulevard de Waterloo, provides 156 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe the cheapest table d'hote of a bourgeois and somewhat English character in Brussels. The price is only 3 francs, and wonderful value is given for the money. Wiltcher's, One must not, however, expect any- Boulevard de thing smart in the way of service or Waterloo attendance, as the waiters have, as a rule, too many tables to look after, and the residents in the hotel receive the first consideration. The following is the menu of a dinner in January : — Consomme a la Reine. Filet de Sole a la Normande. Quartier d'Agneau. Mint Sauce a I'Anglaise. Epinards a la Creme. Poularde de Bruxelles en Cocotte, Croquettes de Pommes de Terre. Gangas du Japon a la Broche. Compote de Mirabelles. Salade de Laitue. Glace Arlequin. Biscuits de Reims. Cafe. In old Mr. Wiltcher's time a good many people came' from outside for the excellent food here pro- vided ; but now so many families reside all the year round in the hotel, that it is difficult to get a table for dinner when it is not ordered beforehand. One some- times meets a strange bird here. Gangas is a Japanese partridge. The birds migrate to Northern Africa in winter, and often cross to Spain, where they are caught in large numbers. The plumage of the gangas is very beautiful, and the flesh is excellent eating. The outarde, or little bustard, is often to be had at Wilt- cher's, and it is the only place at which I have eaten the great bustard, whose flesh is very much like a turkey's. White pheasant is another bird I remember 'Brussels 1 5 7 here. Excepting in its plumage, it in no way differs from the ordinary pheasant. A feature of Wiltcher's dinner is that no fruit is ever included in the menu, although coffee is always served. The story goes that Wiltcher the First, who took great pride in his table, found it almost impossible one winter to give as dessert anything beyond apples, oranges, pears, and nuts, there being no other fruit on the market. One day some diners rudely complained, and insisted on a change, expecting perhaps that pine-apple should be included in a dinner at this price. " You wish a change in the dessert, I hear," said Mr. Wiltcher, in the suave and courtly manner which had earned for him the sobri- quet of "The Duke." "Very well, to-morrow you shall have a change." To-morrow, there was no dessert upon the menu. When the reason for this was demanded, he simply answered: "You wanted a change, and you've got it. I shall give no fruit in future." This has become a tradition. Justine's is a little fish restaurant on the Quai au Bois'a Bruler, by the side of the fish market. It has distinctly a bourgeois character. It is Justine's, Quai not the sort of place you would choose au Bois a Brtiler to take a lady in her summer frocks to, but you get a fine fish dinner there nevertheless. There is no res- taurant in the world where monies a la ?narinlere are served in such perfection, and you can rely on every bit of fish supplied there being fresh. The exterior is unattractive, even dirty, and the service inside is some- what rough. On Fridays the place is always crowded, and there may be a difficulty about retaining a room upstairs, where it is best to go when you wish to be specially well served. In the old days it was the fashion to go on Fridays (or on any day for a fish lunch) to Le Sabot, a restaurant-estam'inet of the same order a little lower down on the quay, which has a reputation for its manner of cooking mussels j but, 158 'The Gourmefs Guide to Europe since the death of old Francois, who kept it, the place does not appear to be so much in favour, and the tide of custom now flows towards Justine's. It must be remembered that this house is mentioned simply as a feature of Brussels life and not as a representative restaurant. L'Etoile, in the Rue des Harengs, is the most famous restaurant in Brussels. In the time of Louis L'Etoile, Rue des Do!, it certainly held rank as the first Harengs of all, both for cooking and for wine ; and Emile Ollivier, Dot's successor, is doing his best to sustain the reputation. Neatly framed and hung on one of the walls is still to be seen the card signed by the late Henry Pettitt, the dramatist, attesting to the fact that he had just eaten the best lunch of his life. This card some years later was countersigned by a Lord Mayor of London ; and a Lord Mayor surely should be a good judge of a lunch. Whatever place is visited in Brussels, L'Etoile should not be missed. The stranger should be very careful to go in at the right door. The wines at L'Etoile have always been good, and Dot used to have some burgundy that was world-renowned. His Jine champagne W2is also famous, and he had some extra special for which he used to charge 4 francs 50 centimes a glass. I have heard Dot himself tell the story how a well-known restaurateur from London came one evening with two friends to see how things were done at L'Etoile. After dinner they sent for Dot, to compliment him and ask him to join them with a liqueur, and he was to give them some of his best brandy. They smacked their lips on tasting it, and the glasses were filled a second time ; but the gentleman who paid the bill rather raised his eyebrows when he saw the item, " Liqueurs, 36 francs." " He got even with me, however," said Dot, "for when I went to London I returned his visit. I had a good dinner (not so good, I think, as I 'Brussels 159 should have served), and I sent for him to join me with the coffee. While w^e chatted, I ordered cigars, repeating his words, ' Give us some of your very best. He did, and he charged me 7s. 6d, apiece for them." The rooms at L'Etoile are very small, and if any one wants to prove the establishment at its best, he should take the precaution of retaining a table and ordering dinner beforehand. The Palais Royal is a quiet little restaurant in the Rue Gr^try, where the cuisine is ex- paiais Royal, cellent. The proprietor is M. Got, Rue Gretry formerly chef at the Lion d'Or. This is a place that can be confidently recommended. The Cafe Riche used to be a high-class restaurant opposite the Helder, but it was closed a few years ago and the building has been converted into a big shop. The Cafe Riche was founded in 1865 by Gautier, the nephew of Bignon of Paris, who retained the pro- prietorship and management until his death. It had always had an aristocratic clientele^ and was specially favoured by Parisians visiting Brussels. During the political troubles in France the Due d'Orleans, Prince Victor Napoleon, and Henri Rochefort were all patrons of the Cafe Riche, and it required all the tact and savo'ir fa'ire of the proprietor to keep apart, and at the same time give satisfaction and pleasure to, the con- flicting parties. In the place of the Cafe Riche we have now the Cafe de Paris on the other side of the Opera House, at the corner of the Rue des Princes. This is the place to sup after the cafe de Paris, theatre. The director is M. Lastreto, Rue des Princes un meridional sympathlque. French cooking is a specialty, and everything is very well done. Duranton's, on the Avenue Louise, is now " run " by Monsieur Pierre Strobbe, who took Duranton's, a first prize at the Brussels cookery Avenue Louise exhibition. The restaurant is pleasantly situated, and i6o 'The Gourmet's Guide to Surope on Sunday, if you wish to go to the races in the after- noon, it is very convenient, being on the direct route to Boitsfort. There are three rooms on the ground floor, in which you can lunch. That on the right, a small narrow room, is considered to be the smartest, but the one on the left is the brightest. The charges are the same. The cooking for all the rooms is also the same, and it is good. Order your cab to be at the door half-an-hour before the first race. When the races are held at Groenendael, you should lunch or dine at the restaurant of the Chateau in the Chateau de woods there. You can order your Groenendael table by telephone. This is a very pleasant excursion in summer. The cooking is good, and the Moulin a Vent (1887) at 5 francs a bottle is the wine to ask for. The Laiterie is in the Bois de la Cambre. In summer-time it is indeed the most pleasant place to Laiterie, Bois de dine in Brussels. In the Bois there la Camtore are several places that supply lunches, dinners, and light refreshments, but the Laiterie is the only one that is really first-class. For seventeen years it has been under the management of M. Artus and his son. The establishment is the property of the town of Brussels, and is well kept up in every respect. Here on a Sunday as many as 1500 chairs and 400 tables are often occupied. In the evenings the gar- dens are brilliantly illuminated, there being 11 00 gas lamps. Music is discoursed by a Tzigane orchestra, and the late Queen of the Belgians, who often used to stop her pony chaise at the Laiterie to hear them play, subscribed from her private purse 200 francs every year to these musicians. Dinners are served at separate tables, under Japanese umbrellas, and the cooking is excellent ; but it is as well to secure a seat as near to the main building as possible, to overcome that objection to al-fresco meals — cold 'Brussels 1 6 1 dishes. The wines are good, and M. Artus has always the best marks of champagne in magnums. There must be something about the cellars of these outdoor places peculiarly favourable to beer, for no pale ale in the world can compare with that drawn at the bars of the Epsom grand-stand, and in Belgium there is no bottled Bass so fresh and palatable as that which one gets at the Laiterie. Other restaurants in Brussels worthy of mention are the Taverne Royale, at the corner of the Galeries Saint Hubert, where some real 1865 cognac can be had at 75 centimes the glass ; the Freres Proven^aux, in the Rue Royale; the Restaurant de la Monnaie (a large place, generally noisy, with not the most rapid of service) ; and Stielen's, in the Rue de I'Eveque. At the Taverne de Londres, in the Rue de I'Ecuyer, there is generally a good cut of cold roast beef with English pickles. A new restaurant, " Le Chapon Fin," has been opened in the Rue Gretry. It has boxes like Simpson's in the Strand. It is always crowded on Bourse days, and is specially patronised by visitors from Antwerp. On Wednesdays all the Brussels restaurants are crowded, that being Bourse day, and in more senses than one, " market " day, when over five thousand strangers, mostly men, come into the city from pro- vincial towns. In conclusion, I may mention that I have failed to discover the restaurant where George Osborne gave his " great dinner " to the Bareacres a few days before the battle of Waterloo. Thackeray records that as they came away from the feast. Lord Bareacres asked to see the bill, and " pronounced it a d bad dinner and d dear ! " Probably the place, therefore, is extinct ; for happily the double pronouncement cannot be applied to the dinners I have eaten at any of the restaurants mentioned in this chapter. * L 1 62 T!he Gourmefs Guide to Siirope ^ The Clubs The aristocratic club in Brussels is the Cercle du Pare, generally called the Cercle des Nobles. It is le des situated in the Avenue des Arts, and Nobles, the Belgian Jockey Club has lately Avenue des Arts x.2k.^r\ up its headquarters in an annexe. All members of the diplomatic services are admitted to the Cercle du Pare without ballot. The subscrip- tion is 200 francs a year. Members have the entry to a private stand on the Boitsfort and Groenendael Racecourses. The Cercle de I'Union is a very old-established Cercle del'Union, and aristocratic club at 56 Rue Royale. 56RueRoyale It is generally called "Le Bac," but there is not much play there nowadays. The Cercle des Sports is a new club on the Cercle des Sports, Avenue de la Toison d'Or, and Avenue de la takes the place of the old Cercle des Toison d'Or Eleveurs. It is a club of sports- men, and the annual subscription is 100 francs. The Cercle Artistique et Litteraire in the Rue de Cercle Artis- ^^ \^o\^ adjoining the Pare Theatre and tique, Rue de Wauxhall Gardens, is a very useful ^^ ■^^^ club for strangers. Entertainments are given here, and there is a good reading room. The Union Club, that formerly had its quarters at Wilteher's Hotel, has removed to premises on the Union Ciul), Avenue de la Toison d'Or. It is an Avenue de la English and American club. Years Toison d'Or. ^g^ there was an English club in the Rue de Trone to which an English billiard-table was left as a legacy by an old member. Round this table the present club was formed, but now the American element predominates. The subscription is small, and temporary members are admitted. Brussels 163 AFTER DINNER The Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, the Opera House of Brussels, is just off the Boulevard Anspach, and faces the General Post Office. It is subsidised by the State and the Municipality. An excellent com- pany is always to be feund there during the opera season, and prices are much lower than in London: Seats can be booked even in the cheapest parts of the house. On Sunday afternoons popular concerts are often given ; and during Carnival time there are several Fancy Dress Balls. In summer the orchestra of the Opera House performs every evening in the Wauxhall Gardens, adjoining the Park Theatre ; vocal numbers by well-known artistes are included in the programme, and " Wauxhall " is one of the pleasantest places to go to after dinner. The seats are arranged round little tables in the open air, and refreshments are served. At the Theatre Royal du Pare high-class comedies are played, in which a "star" from Paris usually appears. The popular theatre at Brussels is the " Galeries," situated at the end of the Galeries St. Hubert, the covered arcade that runs from the Rue de la Madeleine to the Rue de I'Ecuyer. Here popular successes from Paris are usually played, preference being given to musical pieces. In the middle of the same arcade is the Vaudeville Theatre. It is devoted to farces, usually of an extravagant or risque character. Smoking is allowed in this theatre. It is hardly the place to take one's daughter or maiden aunt. At the Olympia Theatre, near the Bourse, there is generally a good entertainment. The Alhambra, an enormous build- ing near the Hotel Metropole, used to be one of Barrasford's Music Halls, but it is now a theatre 164 T'he Gourmef s Guide to Europe devoted to strong melodrama and spectacular pieces. The " Moliere " is a cheap theatre at the top of the town, near the Porte de Namur. The Scala, opposite the Hotel Metropole, is a music hall often devoted to Revues ; the best Revue of the year, however, is always given at the Galeries. Other music halls are the Folies Bergere, near the Gare du Nord, and the Varieties. The Folies Bergere is a comfortable house with seats well arranged. A favourite portion of the hall is the " terrasse " with little tables, the charge for seats there being i fr. 50 c. There is also a one-franc promenade. In the middle of the Markets, at the back of the Grand Hotel, is a big building called in summer the " Palais d'Ete," and in winter the " Pole Nord." Here the summer entertainment is of a music-hall character, and is the best provided in the city. Seats can be booked, and there is also a pro- menade. The Palais, d'Ete is the place every one goes to after dinner in the summer months. When converted into the Pole Nord for the winter it is devoted to skating on real ice. Some of the fetes given here are well worth going to see. V HOLLAND The Food of the Country — The Hague Restaurants — The Hague Clubs — Scheveningen — Amsterdam — Rotterdam. The food of the middle-class Dutch consists to a great extent of vegetables, and it is characteristic of Dutch cleanliness that no lettuce is ever sent to table with a discoloured leaf on it, and that all vegetables are inspected with minute care to detect any blemish before they are allowed to go into the cooking-pot. Vegetable soups, salads, vegetable dishes and much fancy bread and butter and cheese, pastry, ginger- bread, honey cakes, and sweets form the principal dishes of a typical Dutch meal. A writer in Food and Cookery and the Catering Worlds writing on " Dutch Fare," thus describes a typical Dutch breakfast. " I made a note of what was actually on the table at the small and inexpensive hotel at which I put up in Amsterdam, and the list comprised various kinds of bread and rolls, including the currant rolls and loaves which are everywhere to be found, rye bread, biscuits, gingerbread (kept fresh in a small sarcophagus), liver sausage, salami, ham, raw ham, cold veal and pressed beef, all in slices, sardines, four kinds of cheese (the most violent restrained under a glass bell), marmalade, jam, butter, and a stand of boiled eggs. No wonder this hotel describes its breakfast as ' ex- tensive.' This is fairly typical of the first meal of the day in Holland, and one can do very well on it. 165 1 66 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe The coflFee is quite good, while tea, contrary to the behef prevalent in England, is by no means an un- known beverage, but is favoured by a great many Dutch people." The cookery of the better-class restaurants is purely French, a Frenchman being generally the chef. A feature of the cookery in the houses of rich merchants are the dishes of the Far East. Malay curries and the fruits of Java and Sumatra are often offered to the guest, and it is not at all uncommon for a merchant returning from the Dutch colonies to bring his Malay or Madras or Chinese cook home with him. The favourite dish of the lower classes is a sort of kedjeree, in which dried stockfish, rice, potatoes, butter, and anchovies all play their part. Sauerkraut and sausages, soused herrings and milk puddings also have claims to be considered national dishes. The hour of the mid-day meal throughout Holland is generally between noon and 2 P.M., and the dinner hour between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. The Hague There are several restaurants in the Hague which deserve mention. One is Twee Steeden in the Twee Steeden, Buitenhof. This is a new building Buitenhof next door to the Hotel Deux Villes, or Twee Steeden, a comfortable hotel with a garden. The building of the restaurant is of buff stone with a good deal of carving and gilding on the front and balconies of wrought iron. The walls of the restaurant's big room on the ground floor are crushed strawberry in colour, and the upholstery is of greenish grey. There are other rooms on the first floor. The service is good and quiet, and the menu of a breakfast of the day at 1.50, selected at random, was Coquille of Salmon^ pigeon and peas, escaloppe de Veau^ and cheese. Holland 167 Another is the Cafe Royal in the Vijverberg, an establishment which has its large room on the ground floor. The restaurant is comparatively cafe Royal, airy, and the cookery French, and my Vijverberg Dutch friends tell me " fairly good." I did not make experiment there mvself. The most distinctive of the Hague restaurants calls itself simply The Restaurant, though it made its name and its fame as Van der PijTs. It is in The Restaurant, the centre of the tou^n, and its three ^^ The Plaats windov^^s look out on to the dusty little triangle of the Plaats and the tower where the brothers De Witt were torn to pieces by the populace. The walls of the dining-room are panelled with blue silk, and during the week of my visit to the Hague, when I both dined and lunched several times at the restaurant, I was always received by a very fat maitre d'hotel^ who bowed in a dignified manner by letting his first chin drop into his second and third ones. The cuisine is French, and it has a cellar of excellent wines. A good set luncheon is served at this restaurant for the very moderate price of a florin and a half — it used to be a florin, but prices have risen in the Hague, as in other capitals. This is a lunch of the day, but I fear I have not kept a very favourable example of the menus. QLufs a la Gambetta^ Irish stew — made with- out onions and therefore rather tasteless — cold meats, and cheese. It is wise to order dinner a la carte^ and to give some hours' notice. It is advisable to secure a table near the windows, especially in summer. Some of the best wines are not put on the wine-list. In former years the proprietor of Van der Fiji's was possessed of a puritanical conscience, and would not allow any two people to dine alone in his private salons. So strictly did he adhere to his rule on this subject, that when a well-known man about town insisted on his right to dine in the petit salon alone with his 1 68 The Gourmefs Guide to Europe wife, the inexorable proprietor turned him out of the restaurant. There was, however, another well-known member of Hague society who succeeded where the gentleman who thought that matrimony overrode all rules had failed. The hero of the little story had made a bet that, in spite of the puritanical proprietor, he would dine a deux with a lady in the petit salon. He won his bet by subtlety. He ordered a dinner for three, and when he and the lady arrived they waited a quarter of an hour for the other imaginary guest. Then, remarking that he was sure Mr. X. would not mind the dinner being begun without him, the host ordered the soup to be brought up ; and so, with constant allusions to the man that never came, the dinner was served, course by course, and the bet won before the proprietor had the least idea that a trick had been played upon him. A somewhat similar story, it will be remembered, is told of Delmonico's and its proprietor in the early history of that great New York restaurant. In the American story, the youth who had dined in a cabinet particuUer with a lady, in contravention of the rules of the house, had not the sense to hold his tongue until after he had paid his bill. When that document did make its appearance, some of the items were astonishing. " You don't expect me to pay this bill ? " said the staggered diner to the proprietor, who had made his appearance. ^' No, I do not," said Mr. Delmonico ; " but until you do you will not come into my restaurant again." The following are some of the dishes of which Van der Fiji's makes a specialty — Foule au pot Henri IV. ^ Sole Normande^ Cote de Bceuf a la Russe, Homards a F Americaine, Poularde a la Parisienne, Perdreaux au choux^ Omelette Siberienne^ Soujffie Palmyre^ Poires Alaska^ most of them standard dishes of the usual cuisine Fran^aisCy though the Omelette Siberienne was invented Holland 169 to please a British diplomat who preferred a soup^on of absinthe to either rum or Ktimmel with his omelette. And this is a typical menu which reads as though it were for a French banquet : — «■ Huitrcs de Zelande. Caviar. Consomme Diplomate. Truite Saumonee a la Nantua. Poularde a I'Imperiale. Noisettes de Chevreuil a la St. Hubert. Delice de foie gras au Champagne. Becassines roties. Salade St. Clair. Tartelettes aux Haricots Verts. Mousse Antoinette. Sandwiches au Parmesan. Dessert. Of the hotels which contain restaurants, the Hotel des Indes and Hotel Vieux Doelen have a reputation for good cookery. The former was Hotel des indes, in olden times the town house of the Lang-e Voorhoot Barons van Brienen. In winter many people of Dutch society, coming to the capital from the country for the season, take apartments there, and during that period of the year the restaurant is often filled by very brilliant gatherings. The manager and proprietor is Mr. Haller. It was the hotel at which I stayed, and I generally dined there, finding the dinner of the day well cooked, and quite elaborate enough to satisfy a man whose tastes are simple but rather exacting. The restaurant can serve elaborate banquets, as the following menu will prove ; it was composed for a banquet given by Count Henri Stiirgkh : — Huitres. Consomme Bagration. Filets de Soles Joinville, Carre de Mouton Nesselrode. 170 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Bur ope Parfait de foie'gras de Strasbourg. Fonds d'Artichauts a la Barigoule. Grouse rotis sur Croutons. Compote de Montreuil. Cceurs de Laitues. Creme au Chocolat et Vanille. Paillettes au Fromage. The Vieux Doelen, a house with a pleasant old- fashioned front looking on to a shady square, has a Vieux Doelen, beautiful old dining-room, and it is here Towmooiveld that every year the smartest balls in the capital take place, given by the Societe du Casino, and generally attended by their Majesties and the Court. The Hotels Paulez and Bellevue are other hotels to which restaurants, for which some of my corre- spondents have a good word, are attached. Hock's fish shop in the market has a room where excellent oyster suppers are served ; but this is not a Hock's, Market place to which ladies should be taken Pi^ce at night, for it is then patronised by damsels who take the courtesy title of actresses, and the students from Leiden. The clubs of the Hague are the Plaats Royal, the Hague Club, and the Witte Societeit. The latter of these is a large club with a fine Witte Societeit, reading - room, and is hospitably in- Piein clined towards such strangers as have the necessary introductions. Its town house is in the busiest part of the city. It has a terrace, and on hot days the chairs of the club overflow on to the square before it. It has a pavilion, in an enclosure which, being of wire netting, resembles a gigantic chicken- run, in Het Bosch, the park outside the city. In this enclosure in summer a band plays on Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon. The friends of the members sit in the enclosure and drink tea or coffee Holland 1 7 1 and eat ices. The general public walk about out- side. The Hague Club is the aristocratic club of the city, the members of the nobility and The Hague Club, the diplomatists being amongst its Vooriiout members. The Plaats Royal is small and exclusive. It has a semi - circular white front, the long piaats Royal, windows in which look out on to the Plaats little lake and the Plaats. AFTER DINNER During the week of sleepy summer weather I was at the Hague every place of amusement was closed. If one wished for entertainment of an evening one took train or tramcar out to Scheveningen ; but in winter the Opera House, where opera and comedy alternate, and the Scala, a music hall, are open. Scheveningen All the hotels and the Kurhaus at the Dutch Brighton are controlled by one syndicate. The restaurants of the hotels differ somewhat in the quality of their cookery ; and a Dutch friend tells me that when he is at Scheveningen he dines at the restaurant of the Palace Hotel or that of the Kurhaus for choice, and he has a good word to say for the cookery at the Hotel d'Orange. I have eaten a simple but well-cooked meal at the Cafe de la Plage, which is below the Kurhaus Terrace, and which at all hours of the day and evening is full, during the season, of merry company of all classes. The principal club at Scheveningen has rooms at the Hotel d'Orange ; and there is a small but merry 172 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe club, the Deli, at which baccarat is played for low points. The golf course of nine holes is on the dunes. There is a club-house and links for ladies. AFTER DINNER When the season is at its height there are concerts at the Kurhaus, and a French company generally plays in the theatre. A circus and a variety theatre are also to be found in full swing. The Kurhaus Bar and cafes are the refuges for those who look on the small hours as reasonable bed-time. Amsterdam The Restaurant Riche is managed by a Frenchman, and the cuisine is French. It is necessary to order Cafe Riche, dinner in advance, and it is well to be 81 Rokin particular. Under these circumstances an excellent dinner is obtainable. There is a cellar of good wine, the burgundies being especially to be recommended. The Restaurant van Laar, in the Kalverstraat, Van Laar, 3 has a celebrity for its fish dinners, Kalverstraat ^^d excellent oyster suppers are to be had there. The Amstel Room in the Hotel de I'Europe is Amstel Room, well spoken of, and there are scores 2 Doelenstraat of cheap restaurants where the food is above the average of such places. AFTER DINNER In summer the large theatres close and the smaller houses are the only indoor places of amusement, for the larger variety theatres also close their doors. Holland 173 There are concerts in the Zoological Gardens, but on what nights it is well to inquire, for the days vary- according to the season of the year. In summer a band plays on Friday evenings in the Voridel Park. Rotterdam The Stroomberg is the restaurant at Rotterdam for which people who know the town stroomberg, 2 have a word of praise, and the restau- Westniewland rant on the first floor of the Hotel Hotel Coomans, Coomans is much frequented by the 12 Hoofdsteeg- Dutch themselves. From the Cafe-Restaurant Fritschy on the Noord- ereiland, the big island in mid-stream, Fritschy, a very fine view of the town is Noordereiland obtainable. AFTER DINNER The two principal theatres of Rotterdam are not open every night of the week, but on an average three evenings. There are three variety theatres, and the performances at these are generally good. There are concerts in summer on Tuesday and Friday evenings at the Zoological Gardens, and at the Officers' Club in the Park there are concerts on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. For these last- mentioned concerts it is necessary to obtain tickets of admission to the enclosure. VI GERMAN TOWNS The Cookery of the Country — The Rathskeller — Beer Cellars — Dresden — Munich — Nuremberg — Frankfort-on-Main — Diissel- dorf — The Rhine Valley — Homburg — ^^Wiesbaden — Baden- Baden— Ems — Aachen — Hamburg — Kiel. The Cookery of the Country A German housewife who is a good cook can do marvels with a goose, having half-a-dozen stuffings for it, and she knows many other ways of treating a hare than roasting it or "jugging" it. She also is cunning in the making of the bitter-sweet salads and purees which are eaten with the more tasteless kinds of meat ; but, unfortunately, the good German housewife does not as a rule control the hotel or restaurant that the travelling gourmet is likely to visit, but rules in her own comfortable home. The German Delikatessen which form the " snacks " a Teuton eats at any time to encourage his thirst, are excellent ; and the smoked sprats, and smoked and soused herrings, the various sausages and the pickled gurkins, are the best edible products of the Fatherland. The German meat, with the exception of the veal, is as a rule poor. The best beef and mutton in the north has generally been im- ported from Holland. A German housewife has soups in her recipe-book which we Anglo-Saxons have never tasted, Bier-suppe^ in which light beer is one 174 German l^owfjs 1 7 5 of the constituents, is in great favour, and, reversing its usual place in the menu, chocolate made very thin is sometimes served in soup-plates. A soup made of the livers of calves is a popular soup, and the sentimental side of the German feaster is sometimes stirred by a "rose-leaf" soup, in which ripe rose-pips well boiled float on the surface of a weak consomme^ flavoured with pounded pips. The German is a great eater of fresh-water fish — pike, carp, perch, salmon, and trout all being found on his menus, the trout being generally cooked au bleu. Zander^ the "Giant Perch," is esteemed a great delicacy. The crab is better cooked and served in Germany than anywhere else in the world. The cooks of Berlin are celebrated for the crab fricassee which is always a dish at civic banquets ; and when crabs with parsley sauce and new potatoes make their appearance on the bill of fare of German restaurants, summer may be said to have really arrived. Unfortunately crabs are becoming scarce, and their price is mounting. Most of the crabs now eaten in Germany come from Russia. Another dish which is a sure sign of the coming of sunshine is eels and cucumber salad. As a vegetable cook the ruler of the German kitchen does not shine. Potatoes cooked in their jackets and potatoes cooked with brown sauce form an occasional change from the eternal puree. Asparagus heads served with a sweet sauce is a Ger- man dish which may be commended, but a very usual manner of serving asparagus in cheap restaurants is to cut it into inch cubes and send it to table swimming in butter. Pickled asparagus forms a very popular dish. Both the potatoes and the asparagus in Ger- many are excellent, until they are cooked, for they grow well in the sandy soil. Kompots, sweet and sour, are served at, to an Englishman, unexpected periods during the repast ; but the Briton who is astonished to see a German eat preserved fruits or jams 176 T'he Gourmets Guide to Europe with his meats should not forget that he himself calls for apple sauce with a goose and currant jelly with his mutton. The Sauerkraut, red or white, which has been boiled in soup and vinegar makes its appearance at the close of the feast to complete the cook's victory. The black and brovv-n breads of Germany deserve a word. The Hamburger Schwarzbrot is the best bread in the world to eat with cheese, and the Pumpernickel from Westphalia forms with raw ham a sandwich much relished in Germany. The cookery in the big hotels on much-frequented routes in Germany is now almost universally a rather heavy version of the French art, with perhaps a kompot with the veal to give local colour. In the small hotels in little provincial towns the meals are served at the times that the middle-class German of the north usually eats them, and are an inferior copy of what he gets in his own home. I give what any enterprising traveller looking for the food of the country from the kitchen of a country inn of the better class may expect : — Coffee at 7 or 8 a.m. with rolls, Kaffe Brddchen^ and butter, and this meal he will be expected to descend *to the dining-room to eat. The Zweites Friihstuck comes at 10 a.m., at which the German equivalent for a sandwich, a Brodchen cut and buttered, with a slice of uncooked ham or cheese between the halves, makes its appearance, and a glass of beer or wine is drunk. People with work to do generally take a sandwich with them to their shops or offices. Dinner (Mittagessen) is announced between noon and 2 o'clock, and is a long meal consisting of soup, which in a poor inn often is the water in which the beef has been boiled, or perhaps Eintropfen, a soup thickened with biscuit flour and with egg in it, or a lentil soup, with Zwiebach as an accompaniment ; fish ; a messy entree, probably of Frankfurt sausage ; the German T^owns 177 beef boiled to rags with a kompot of plums or whortle- berries and mashed apples, or if it is a roast brisket, served with a garnish of vegetables. Hasenhraten^ a hare roasted, is a favourite dish, and at the better-class inns Sauerbratteriy meat soaked in spiced vinegar before it is roasted, and served with potato balls and ginger- bread, is popular. The Roast-beef Garniert, if served at one of the better-class restaurants, is brought to table in a large dish which has compartments for apricot jam, plum jam, stewed cherries, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, rice, and spinach. Cream puddings, pancakes, or open tarts with cream, are the usual dishes for the last course. Black coffee and fruit make their appear- ance in company. Coffee is served at 4 p.m. with Kaffee Kuchen^ its attendant cakes, flavoured with nuts, peaches, cheese, or honey ; and at supper (Abendessen) one hot dish, generally veal, is given with a choice of cold viands or sausages in thin slices — Leberwurst^ Gottinger- wursty hot Frankfurter in pairs, Zervatelwursty of pork and raw ham, and black pudding or grated pumper- nickel and cream. If the above list does not warn the over-zealous inquirer, his indigestion be on his own head. In the south the cookery, though still indifferent, approximates more nearly to the French bourgeois cookery. The apple dumplings of South Germany are world-famous. A dinner party at a private house of well-to-do German people is always a very long feast, lasting at least two hours. The cookery, though good, is heavy and rich, and too many sauces accompany the meats. Many of the dishes are not carved at the serving table, but are brought round in order that one may help one's self. Just as one is struggling into conversation in defective German, a pike's head ob- trudes itself over the left shoulder, and it is necessary M 178 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Europe ^^m to twist in one's seat and go through a gymnastic * performance to take a helping. Except in large cities the German gentry are not given to feeding at restaurants. A golden rule, which may be held to apply all over Germany, is that it is safe to take ladies wherever officers go in uniform. The Rathskeller In most German towns where there is a Rathhaus (a town hall) one finds the Rathskeller, where beers or wine, according to the part of the country, are the principal attraction, simple dishes, cutlets, steaks, cold meats, oysters, caviare being served more as an adjunct to the drink than as an orthodox meal. The most noted of these Rathskeller are at Bremen, Old Liibeck, and New Hamburg, and that at Bremen is first in im- portance. It is a mediaeval Gothic hall, built 1405- 1410, andjt holds the finest stock of Rhine and Moselle wine in the world. The wine is kept in very old casks. One of the cellars is of particular interest as being the " Rose " one, where the magistrates used to sit in secret conclave, sub rosa^ beneath the great rose carved upon the ceiling. The German Emperor generally pays a visit to the Rathskeller when he visits Bremen. In the Liibeck Rathskeller, which contains many excellent bins of the finest Bordeaux, is the " admiral's table," said to be made from a plank of the ship of the last Admiral of Liibeck, who flourished in 1570 ; and even more interesting than the Rathskeller is the SchifFergesellschaft, with its strange motto and its even stranger sign. German T'owns 179 Beer-Cellars Throughout Germany one meets in every town the large establishments, Bierkeller in the south, Bier- restaurant or Biergarten in the north, beautifully decorated in the " Old German " style, of the various beer companies, most of which are Munich ones, the Lowenbriiu, the Pschorrbrau, the Miinchener Hof- brau, and others. In South Germany the beer is tapped ice-cold without a carbonic apparatus. Be careful to close the metal top of your Schopps if you are drinking with German companions, for if you do not they have the right, by the custom of the country, to place their mugs on the top of the open one and demand another " round." If when you have emptied your mug, you leave it with the lid open, the waiter, without asking any questions, takes it away and refills it. Dresden Dresden is not exactly an epicure's paradise, but there is one restaurant which may be safely recom- mended as an establishment of the first order. I refer to the Englischer Garten, which is EngUscher Garten, managed by its proprietor, Herr Curt Waisenhausstrasse Roething. The principal entrance is through a rather dingy looking archway in the Waisenhausstrasse, nearly opposite the Victoria Salon Music Hall. The prin- cipal public rooms are on the ground floor, and are pleasant and bright in their way. There are also some rooms on the first floor which are generally used for private parties. The atmosphere in the winter is apt to be rather too sultry for English tastes, but it is perhaps less close than in most other i8o T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe Dresden restaurants. At the back, there is an open space dignified by the name of a garden, running down to a wide street, and here in the summer a number of tables are laid. The attendance is well above the Dresden average, and the waiters there invariably clean and civil. The German waiter at his best is not often one of the highest polished specimens of humanity, although some compensation may be found in the almost paternal interest he takes in habitues or customers who have succeeded in winning his good graces. In the middle of the day a huge dinner is served for 3.50 marks on week-days, and 4 marks on Sundays. A deduction is made if only certain dishes on the bill of fare are taken. In the evening everything is a la carte^ and is almost as dear as the set meal in the middle of the day is cheap. There is a large bill of fare, and it comprises all the ordinary dishes, and also Delikatessen such as oysters, caviare, fresh truffles, peaches, &c., all of the best. Game, especially par- tridge and woodcock, is well cooked at the Englischer Garten. Live trout and other fresh-water fish are kept in a tank, and you may generally rely on finding the soles and turbot fresh as well. As regards price, unless you are an habitue or make special terms, a little simple dinner will average out at los. a head, exclusive of wine. It is well to order dinner beforehand, as the culinary arrangements are not very expeditious. In the evening the cuisine is by way of being first-class French art, but it just lacks the lightness of touch which is characteristic of the best French cookery. Wine is rather dear, but the higher-priced brands of hock, Moselle, or claret are excellent. There is s®me particularly good Pilsen beer in the cellars, which is served very highly iced. Being a wine res- taurant, you are not expected to drink beer except as a supplement to your wine. An additional charge German 'Towns i8i of 6d. per head is made for the set mid-day meal if wine is not ordered. The clientele is by way of being "smart" in the evening, and there is generally a fair sprinkling of officers of the two crack Saxon cavalry regiments. Evening clothes, or, better still, a dress jacket and a black tie, are advisable, but not de rigueur. In the middle of the day the company is more bourgeois ; and on Sundays, and occasionally on Satur- days, the place is apt to be unpleasantly crowded. In the evening, except on race nights, there is always plenty of room. The Belvedere is an old-established and very popular institution, delightfully situated on the Briihlsche Terrasse, with a charming t>^i„^^^^« » to Belvedere, view over the iLlbe and the town. Briihlsche It is essentially a place for the summer, Terrasse when one can take one's meals out of doors on its terraces and balconies. There is a beer and a wine restaurant, and in the former an excellent band plays ; but it is difficult to secure a table within earshot, as there is always a great crowd. The attendance is in- different, and the cuisine only fair and wholesome, though no doubt you could get a good dinner if you took a little trouble to order it. The public dinners which take place there in the large banqueting-hall are quite creditable pro- ductions, and the position, view, and fresh air all combine to render it a very pleasant hot-weather resort. The Stadt Gotha is another institution of the town. It advertises an "English dinner" in its wine restaurant after 5 p.m., but this gtadt Gotha is probably only served during the 11 Schloss- tourist season. Its beer restaurant is strasse large and very popular. Its wine restaurant is small and quaintly decorated. It is very popular with the 1 82 'The Gourmet's Guide to Europe ^^ upper and middle classes and extremely respectable. Its^*| cuisine is very fair, set meals, which, especially supper after the play, are very inexpensive. The 1.50 mark midday table (Thote meal in the beer restaurant is a v\^onderfully good meal for the price, and the 5-mark set supper in the wine restaurant only errs on the side . of heaviness. If you order a la carte^ like most other places, it is rather dear. Tiedemann and Grahl's, in the Seestrasse, is a typical German Weinstube with a large clientele of Tiedemann habitues^ mostly men, but ladies can go and Grahl, there. The owners being large wine 9 Seestrasse merchants, have some first-rate wine at prices averaging rather lower than the Eng- lischer Garten. But there is a very extensive list, and the quality is not altogether uniform, so if you can suborn a friendly waiter he will help you considerably. Excellent oysters and smoked salmon are to be had here, but the place is apt to be rather crowded and noisy. The appointments are of the simplest and most unpretentious kind. Prices, moder- ately high — about two-thirds those of the Englischer Garten. Set meals are served, but a la carte is more usual. The waiters, being institutions like most of the guests, are inclined to be a little ojBT-hand and familiar, and there is altogether a free and easy and homely tone about the place, but it is perfectly respectable. Neues Palais de Saxe, on the Neumarkt, is owned and managed by Herr Muller. Very fair cuisine ; Neues Palais good set meals; a la carte Y2.ther more de Saxe, Neu- expensive ; specialty made of oysters markt ^^^ ecrevisses^ which latter are served in all sorts of fascinating ways. Not at all a bad place for supper after the theatre, but perhaps a trifle dull. Kneist, a beer restaurant in a little street off the German 'T'owns 183 Altmarkt, called the Grosse Brudergasse, is managed by the proprietor whose name it bears. It is much frequented by officers and officials. Here you find good plain fare served in the simplest xneist's of fashions. Meals are a la carte 2 Grosse Brii- and quite inexpensive ; cuisine purely dergasse German,, homely and wholesome, with excellent beer, especially Erlanger. The atmosphere is usually hot, thick, and stuffy, but the clientele does not seem to mind it. In a little back room the principal dignitaries of the Saxon Court, State, and Army are wont to forgather every morning for their Friihschoppen, — a kind of early, largely liquid, lunch, at which, if rumour can be trusted, a good deal of important business is informally discussed and settled. The Kaiserpalast and the Victoriahaus are other large establishments. The Bierstall in a little street off the Altmarkt is celebrated for its Pilsen beer ; but the atmosphere of the rooms is stifling. Good Munich beer is obtainable at the Zacherlbrau in the Konig Johannstrasse. The table cChote meals at the principal hotels are neither remarkably good nor remarkably indifferent. The Bellevue has a large verandah, overlooking the Elbe, which forms a pleasant dining-place in the hot weather. Dresden has a golf course of nine holes. AFTER DINNER The performances of opera at the Opera House, open eleven months in the year, are world-famed. The Schausprehaus, for comedy, is also a State under- taking. The Residenz Theater is for light fare, and there are two music halls in Waisenhausstrasse. 1 84 I'he Gourmet's Guide to Surope Leipsic The city of books and furs is well provided with restaurants. Historically the most interesting of Auerbach's these is the Auerbach's Keller, which Keller, 2 Grim- was one of Goethe's haunts. when he maischestrasse ^^^ ^ student at Leipsic, and which he uses as a background in his Faust, for the scene in which the devil draws various wines from a wooden table. The cellar, which is a wine restaurant, is decorated with mural paintings of the legend on which Faust was based. As these were painted in the sixteenth century, and Goethe was a student in Leipsic in the eighteenth century, it is more than probable that these paintings first suggested to him his great work. A restaurant which is also in Grimmaischestrasse, and has a reputation for good cookery, is Steinmann's, Steinmann's while at the corner of this street, which 32 Grimmaische- rivals the Market Place in the number strasse ^^ houses of refreshment it contains, is the Cafe Fran9ais, the best of the cafes of the town. Other restaurants of note are those of the New Theatre, which has a terrace, a plea- New Theatre 1-1 .u J -n 5 sant place m hot weather ; and raege s in the Market Place, with a reputation for good cookerv. The Panorama, in Rossplatz, has a garden attached to it. The Burgkeller, in Reichsstrasse, rivals the Auerbach's Keller in the matter of antiquity. In the Rosenthal, the park outside the city, there are " restaurations " at the Schweitzerhaus and at Bonorand, and also at the Zoological Garten, which is close to the park, and in the Palmen-Garten. There is a cafe at Connewitz in the woods to the south-west German 'Towns 185 of the city, and an excuse for a drive to Eutritzch may be found in the fact that Ghose, the beer of the locality, may be drunk with content in the gardens of the beer houses of that suburb. AFTER DINNER Leipsic is well provided with theatres and variety halls. The New Theatre, with its terrace overlooking the lake, the Old Theatre, and the Schauspielhaus, are all three generally open, playing opera, comedy, and operetta. Of the variety theatres, of which there are several, the Krystall Palast in Wintergartenstrasse, a large establishment, is the principal one. The Thursday evening concerts in the Gewandhaus have a world-wide fame. Visitors to Leipsic, if they cannot obtain seats for the Thursday evening concert, can generally find vacant places at the public rehearsal on Wednesday morning. Munich My recollections of dinners at Munich hotels are that they are all very much of a muchness, and that not very good. Men who know the town better than I do speak well of the Russischerhof, the Con- tinental, the Esplanade restaurant in the new Regina Palast Hotel, and the restaurant of the Vier Jahres- zeiten. Of the wine restaurants the Luitpold, which has a French restaurant and a cafe in its spacious building, is the best known in the town. Luitpold, A 2-mark dinner at this restaurant is a Briennerstrasse wonderful meal at the price. The house is at the end of the Maximilianplatz. Of Schleich's in the Briennerstrasse I hear varying opinions. There used to be a pleasant little restaurant on the i86 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe island of the Isar, but it has now become the museum of the Alpine Club. Munich is of course the headquarters of good German beer, and at the Hofbrauhaus in the Platzl, Hofbrauhaus, one of the sights of the town, as good a The Platzl glass of beer can be obtained as any man could wish for. Various kinds of beer are drunk in Munich at various seasons of the year. The Zacherl Keller has its own special brew for spring, and so has the Hofbrauhaus. The Hofbrauhaus is a fine typical specimen of a German bierhalle, very respectable and much frequented. After having had your first Schop- pen (for having once tasted you invariably want more) you rinse out your glass at a handy fountain before presenting it to be refilled. The person who takes your Schoppen along with several others in each hand, invariably, with unerring instinct, hands you back the same glass. As an appetiser for the beer, to which it is supposed to give an additional zest, the attendants place a large radish about the size of an apple in a sort of turnip-cutting machine, which ejects it in thin rings ; it is then washed and put into a saucer with a little salt and water, and eaten without any other accompaniment than the beer. It may be an acquired taste, but it appears to be very popular. The large breweries outside the gates, each with its restaurant, are worth a visit from any one whom beer interests. At the Oktober Fest all the breweries have great tents on the Fest ground. AFTER DINNER At the Prinz Regenten Theater performances of Wagner's operas are given in August and September, after the manner of Bayreuth. At the Hof Theater operas and serious plays are performed, and lighter fare is to be found in the Gartnerplatz Theater. There German Towns 187 is a summer theatre in the Park, and the gravity of the Prinz Regenten is balanced by four variety theatres. Nuremberg The most interesting of the hosteh'ies in Nuremberg, the town of good beer and little sausages, are the houses where the fare consists almost entirely of sausages, sauerkraut, and beer. The most celebrated of these is the Bratwurstglocklein, a curious Bratwurst- little tavern stuck like a wafer on to g-ldcklein, the back of the Moritzcapelle. It ctiockengasse looks more like a doll's house than a real building. It has a brown tiled roof, in which are many little windows with green and white shutters. Some of the tables and chairs seem to have overflowed from inside, and are set out on the cobble stones before its doors. Little oleander trees in pots give a pleasant touch of cool colour to the space before the building. The o:lass of the windows is that 2;lass which resembles the bottom of bottles. The interior is panelled with dark wood, which is almost covered by old prints and old pictures, all having some reference to the place or to the celebrities who used to be customers. The drinking-mugs of these celebrities, and fine old pewter tankards hung upside down, also form part of the decorations of this miniature eating house. The entrance to the eating room of the inn is through the kitchen, and the company sit at narrow tables eating little sausages, the pleasant smell of which comes pouring out through the open windows. In the tiny kitchen a buxom cook and her assistants cook pan after pan of the thoroughly German delicacy. The sausages are cooked all day long, and are made twice a day so as to ensure freshness. The sausage which is eaten in the evening had not come into existence before mid-day. The bell from which this "Httle 1 88 T^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe bell of the Roast Sausage " takes its name is hung on a wrought iron bracket on the stone buttress jutting from the chapel which forms one end of the diminutive tavern. The late Mr. Bastard, who was my collabo- rator in the first edition of this book, translated for me the doggerel rhyme which some unknown poet wrote in honour of the establishment. It runs thus — " Not many noble strangers Can possibly refrain, When once they've ate our sausages, From eating them again. And it usually strikes them, If they have not yet found it out, That these sausages are splendid When they're mixed with sauerkraut. The only thing they rail at, When they fain would criticise, Is to wish the little sausage Were a little larger size." Built about the year 1400, this tiny hostelry is one of the most ancient, if not the oldest, refreshment house in the world. Hans Sachs, Peter Vischer, Albrecht Durer, Wellebald Pirkheimer, Veit Stoss, and other celebrated men in Niiremberg's history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, all drank the beer and ate the sausages of the little inn. Hans Sachs seems to have been the best customer of this galaxy of great men, for his name is held in the greatest honour in the little house of the little sausage, where he is regarded as a tutelary saint. Two other houses there are entirely devoted to the cult of the sausage. One is the Brathwurst Roslein Brathwurst ^^ ^^^ goose market, and the other the Roslein, Brathwurst Herzle in the Herzgasse. Obstgasse Yj^g Brathwurst Roslein has panelled rooms, and its adornment is similar to the older estab- lishment in that there are rows of beautifully kept German Towns 189 pewter tankards all upside down, arranged as the ornamentation of the walls. Here the fare is exactly- similar to the little house behind the Moritzcapelle, but the surroundings are not so quaint, and it does not boast of any great celebrities of bygone days as having been its patrons. To the third house of the little sausage I have not made a pilgrimage, and have no special details concerning it. At the Volks Fest, held in September just outside the town, all the makers of sausages have booths, and all the breweries have gigantic tents serving as beer- halls, thus bringing together two of t^e staple products of the town. Of the taverns in Nuremberg at which general fare is served the Goldenes Posthorn, almost opposite the Brathwurst Glocklein, is the oldest and Goldenes most celebrated. It is almost as old as Posthorn, the little house across the way, and its CJlockengasse rooms and passages are so crowded with old clocks and old pictures, warming pans, tankards, and other precious rubbish, that it looks more like a museum than a wine restaurant. Its shutters are adorned with paintings, and the golden posthorn finds a place in much of the ornamentation. It was founded some time in the fifteenth century, and Adam Kraft is the special celebrity who used to be a customer, and who is honoured on its walls above all others. Another historical haunt is the cellar in the Nassauer Haus, the old building just across the way from the Church of St. Lawrence. To get to Nassauer Haus, the Nassauer Keller the descent of some Karolinen- precipitous stairs into the bowels of the ^^^^^se earth is necessary, and the ventilation of this old cellar is not of the best, but no doubt ventilation was not much considered by the architects of the thirteenth century, which was the period at which this part of the house was built. 190 T'he Gour?nefs Guide to Surope Of the modern restaurants, the Cafe Kusch, in the KaroHnenstrasse, is the most airy and the brightest. Cafe Kusch ^^ ^^^ white enamelled walls, with Karolinen- ' panelling of light oak to a man's height, strasse j^ l^^g^ -^^ ^}^g restaurant, a large balcony where men sit and drink their wine. It has a good wide staircase, the rails to which are in white metal shaped like branches of trees, and such ornamentation as there is on the white walls is in quite good taste. It seems to be always full of customers, and its break- fasts of the day at i mark 75 or 2.50 are well-cooked, very satisfying meals. This is a 2.50 breakfast taken at random from a number of menus : — Gemusewurfel Suppe. Salm kalt. See. Mayonaise. Nurnberger Bratwurstchen. Rinderbratea, Salat. Compot. Zwetschgenkuchen. The supper or dinner is usually ordered a la carte. The dishes of the day mostly vary in price from I mark to 1.50, but there is a set evening meal at 3 marks. The waiters are in dress clothes, and the little boys who serve the wine look clean and fresh in white jackets and white aprons. The Cafe Kusch has a branch establishment in the Forest outside the city, where a band plays, and w^hich is much resorted to in the summer. In the upper part of the town the great Rathhaus has in its cellars the usual wine restaurant. The Rathhaus rooms are partially lighted by stained Keller glass windows on a level with the street, the ceiling is painted, and the walls panelled. Herr Karl Giessing, the lessee, has brought these cellars into celebrity owing to the excellence of their wines. Ger?nan 'Towns 191 The cafe restaurant Kunstler is in a new building on the ramparts, opposite to the Grand Hotel. You go along a terrace ornamented with Kunstler, on little trees and flowers in pots to reach t^e ramparts this restaurant. The walls of the rooms are adorned with antlers' and stags' heads, and the food served there are the usual simple German dishes. Of the restaurants of the hotels, the Fottinger pottinger, has the interest of being very old. It Konigstrasse has a little terrace in front of it, sheltered from the street by creepers in boxes. Its rooms are panelled with wood painted green. The restaurant of the Rotter Hahn, which is in high favour with the towns- people, has a good deal of ornamentation on its walls, and its windows look out on to the Konigstrasse. The Wurtemburger Hof, in the Bahnhofplatz, has a little grove of trees in its inside court, wurtemburger which is a pleasant place in which to Hof, Balinhof- sit at tea or coflFee time. The Grand P^^*^ has a garden terrace, and the cuisine of all the hotels is much of a muchness. There are restaurants in the suburbs, both at the Rosenau and in the Stadt Park. At the latter the Cafe Maxfeldt, Maxfeldt, a large building with the usual wilder- stadt Park ness of chairs and tables and a bandstand before it, always has ready the sandwiches and cold meats which serve as supper for people with simple tastes, but if a hot meal is required it is well to order it beforehand by telephone. AFTER DINNER At the Stadt Theater you may expect to find grand opera, or opera comique, or classical comedy. At the Intimes Theater at the corner of Johannesgasse, the comedies are of a lighter order, and at the Apollo Theater, which is in the same building as the Hotel 192 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe Wittelsbach, variety and operetta seasons succeed each other throughout the year. A large Viennese cafe is in the same building as the Apollo. Stuttgart There is no town in Germany, Frankfurt excepted, through which more British travellers pass on their way to other places than Stuttgart. The acquaint- ance of most travellers with the restaurants of the town begins and ends as a rule with the supper room Hotel and the breakfast room in the Hotel Marquardt Marquardt. They might go further and fare worse. At mid-day, at which time all the people from the suburbs are in Stuttgart, the pleasant room at Marquardt's, looking out on to the Palace Square, is given over to those who lunch at separate tables, and who eat the very satisfying lunch of the day. At the room in the centre of the hotel, people who wish to lunch more cheaply sit cheek by jowl at six long tables, while in the centre of this room are small tables at which the overflow from the brighter room is accommodated. The room with a view is so much pleasanter than the interior hall that it is worth while securing a table beforehand. Meals a la carte can be had at mid-day, but they interfere with the business of the set lunch. For supper no choice of rooms is given, for that meal is served in the large interior hall at small tables, while the other room is being got ready for early breakfasters. It is pleasant, if one has to catch an early train, to go into a room where everything is clean, and fresh, and ready, and not to be in the midst of sweeping out and the laying of tables by sleepy waiters who look as if they had been up all night ; but there are more cheerful supper rooms in Stuttgart than that in the hotel. Stuttgart is a town of very large and very cheap restaurants. German T^owns 193 The large restaurant and cafe in the Olgar Ban, a great pile of buildings opposite the Palace, on the eround floor, is ornamented with ^ ^, ^ ®^ 1 LI 1 11 Cafe, Olga Bau statues and marble panels, and has a well-painted ceiling. In this restaurant is a raised terrace reached by two flights of stairs. It has, as is usual in Southern Germany, its fixed price mid-day meal, and it has also an evening meal at 2 and 3 marks, but the custom is to order supper from the bill of fare. Baked fillet of turbot, half a roast fowl, with kompot and French beans, and a bottle of Apollinaris, which was my supper at this restaurant, cost 4 marks 70. The band in this restaurant plays from 4 to 1 1 p.m. with intervals for rest. The room is very full at 5 o'clock, and again from 8.30 onwards to close on mid- night. The restaurant in the Wilhelm's Bau, a great building in the Konigstrasse, is perhaps wilhelm's Bau. the best of all these restaurants. At Konigstrasse mid-day it offers the choice of four meals at prices ranging between i mark and 3. Waitresses do the waiting at this big restaurant, and at night a band plays in the centre of the vast space of tables and chairs. In the Friedrich's Bau, in the priedrich's Schlosstrasse, there is a big restaurant Bau, Schios- of wide arches on the ground floor, and s^^^^se on the first floor a cafe and a variety theatre. It may be wise to sound a warning note not to try tea in any of the Stuttgart cafes. At two of them at which I was unwise enough to order tea in the afternoon instead of coffee, I got hot water which had in it a far-away taste of tea-leaves. The coffee at the cafes is good, and in summer time the ices and cakes are excellent. In the Konigs Bau, in the cafe Konias colonnade which looks on to the Schloss- Bau, Schloss- platz, is a very beautifully decorated P^^*^ little cafe ornamented with polished woods and old 2;old. Its customers are quiet and aristocratic, and I ♦ N 194 ^h^ Gourmefs Guide to Europe found it a pleasant place at which to drink coffee of an afternoon. It has at its back a second room, all white, which seems to be a favourite meeting-place for ladies. Any man interested in eccentric places of entertainment might look in at the Gasthaus Oetinger Gasthaus ^" ^^^ Bebenhauserstrasse. The house, Belbenhauser- a funny little old building, is adorned strasse with many paintings inside and outside, and has as its sign a stag's antlers. On the one occasion on which I was taken to this little house I found a concert in progress, in an atmosphere of much smoke, and beer, and joviality. A half-hour spent there I found amply sufficient. In the midst of Old Stuttgart, in the market-place, stands the fine new Rathhaus, and the restaurant in its The Rathhaus wine-cellars is fresh and new, like the Kellaren j-est of the building. There is one room of green and gold and another of white walls above a skirting of green panels. These cellars are better ventilated than most of their kind, and the simple food and the wine are both to be recommended. On one occasion, when I found Marquardt's too full to find me a room, I stayed at the Royal Hotel and lunched in its garden behind the house, finding nothing to complain of in my meal. A band plays in the evenings in the Stadt Gardens, „^ ,^ „ , and there 'is the usual " restauration " Stadt Gardens , • , • i i ^ • ^ there, with its cold meat and its sand- wiches, its coffee and its beer. In the suburbs of Stuttgart there are many little places of refreshment. There is one of these at the mineral baths at the entrance to Kannstadt, and another on the Neckarinsel, the island in the midst of the river, which is often an amusing place to visit on a fine afternoon. On the Hasenberg, whence the views are very fine, there is a restaurant at the Jager- haus and at Degerloch, which also boasts of its views, German T'owns 195 The Schweizer Haus and the Wilhelmshohe are two restaurants from the gardens of which one sees a fine panorama. AFTER DINNER At the Residenz Theater, the last time I was in Stuttgart, a German version of " Loute " was being played, which is a proof that that theatre does not depend entirely upon classical comedy. At the Wilhelm Theater an Austrian operetta was the piece of the evening, and the only German play at any of the theatres was a comedy at the Schauspiel Theater, a new building behind the Wilhelm's Bau. On the first floor of the Friedrich's Bau is a big variety theatre which, judging from the programme I have sat through on two occasions, has a marked partiality for British turns. Frankfort-on-Main Frankfort is the "jumping-off place" for so many of the fashionable " cure " towns and is such a sreat centre of the railway systems that travellers innume- rable with plenty of money to spend pass through it all the year round. The hotels accommodate them- selves to their cosmopolitan clientele^ and a very good dinner, French to all intents and purposes, is to be obtained in the restaurants of the half-dozen leading hotels. The Englischerhof, at the corner of Kaiser- strasse, is the old-established house of good feeding in Frankfort. Thence went Mons. Jules and founded the Furstenhof, opposite the theatre. Ritz, the Napoleon of the hotel and restaurant world, is, or was, a partner in the ownership of the Frankfurter- hof, in the Kaiserplatz, and he gave personal atten- tion to the organisation of the restaurant, where I 196 T'he Goiirmefs Guide to Surope have always found the cookery excellent, though it is as well to secure a table at a distance from the band. Mons. Autor, who was manager of the Carlton in London for some years, followed his chief's example, and going into partnership with Herr Boening of Baden-Baden, opened the Carlton Hotel, which, with its restaurant, grill-room, and palm-court, is a very close copy of its namesake in London. The Hotel Imperial, in the Opernplatz, an hotel with an aristocratic clientele^ profits by its closeness to the Opera House, and its restaurant has its full share of the suppers after the opera — though, be it said, Frankfort is a town of early hours. The Falstaff Restaurant in the Theaterplatz has always had a reputation for good sound German The Falstaff, cookery. It is now an annexe to Theaterplatz the new Westminster Hotel in the Goetheplatz, of which Herr Emil Kathe is proprietor. Buerose, on the first floor of No. 29 Goethestrasse, Buerose should be mentioned as a quiet res- 29 Goethe- taurant, where there are specialites of strasse ^^^^ (TcEUvre and excellent oysters. The Palmen Garten is a pleasant summer restaurant a little way out of the town, on the Bockenheimer- Palmen Garten, strasse. It^ has a fine dining-hall, and Bockenheimer- you may sit at little tables while the strasse regimental band discourses excellent music. The cooking is of the sound German cuisine. It is a very pleasant spot to visit on a hot day. Fire- works form part of the programme of amusements on fete days. The Rathskeller is a restaurant which is in the Romer, the group of houses which form the Town Hall buildings. Lovers of good beer will find at the Haus Alle- mania, Schillerplatz, if they ask for a Schoppen of the Miinchener Hofbrau, exactly v/hat they have German T'owns 197 been craving for ; aiid the Pilsener at the Kaiserhof Restaurant in the Goetheplatz is equally good. One has to sample several glasses of each before one can definitely make up one's mind as to which is the best. The Kaisergarten in the Operaplatz is a pleasant beer garden much frequented in summer. AFTER DINNER Frankfort prides itself on its Opera House. It has two other theatres, and there is generally a concert in the evening both at the Palm Garden and the Zoolo- gical Gardens. There is a restaurant attached to the former establishment, and a cafe. DiJSSELDORF The best restaurant in Diisseldorf is that of the Park Hotel on the Corneliusplatz. It is one of the best on the Rhine, and was opened in park Hotel, April 1902 on the occasion of the Corneliusplatz Diisseldorf Exhibition ; it is a fine building, and has pretty grounds and ornamental water adjoining it. It is frequented by the highest German nobility. Luncheons are served at 3 marks, dinners at 5 marks. Suppers for 3 marks are served at prix fixe^ or one can order a la carte. The Moselle wines are exceptionally good. The restaurant, handsomely decorated in the style of Louis XIV., is opposite the Opera House and overlooks the Hofgarten. At the Thiirnagel Restaurant, also in the Cor- neliusplatz, you are likely to find the artistic colony in session. The restaurant dates back Thiirnagel, to the year 1858. There is a good Corneliusplatz collection of wines in the cellars, and a word may be said in favour of its cookery. 198 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe AFTER DINNER Two theatres and a variety hall, the Apollo, are the choice Diisseldorf offers after dinner. The Apollo sometimes provides operettas. The Rhine Valley The Rhine valley is not a happy hunting ground for the gourmet. The excellent old-fashioned Hotel du Nord at Cologne has in summer its sheltered restaurant in the fresh air overlooking a charming garden. A little band plays, and the tinkle of a fountain joins with the music. The city also has its picturesque Gurzenich in which is a restaurant ; its inhabitants eat their oysters in the saloon in the Kleine Bugenstrasse, part of a restaurant there, and listen to the band at the Neuesstadt Theater or the Stapelhaus as they drink their wine. A Kempinski restaurant has lately been opened in the Hohestrasse. There are restaurants in the Stadtgarten, and the Flora and Zoological Gardens. Coblentz in summer has two or three terrace restaurants, the Monopol being the best, the great attractions of which are the views of Ehrenbreitstein and of the bridge of boats. A special word of commendation may be given to the balcony restaurant of the Hotel Mattern at Konigswinter. At every little town on either bank there are one or more taverns with a view where the usual rather messy food of provincial Germany is to be obtained, good beer always, and generally excellent wine made from the vineyards on the mountain side. Now and again some restaurant-keeper has a little pool of fresh water in front of his house, and one can select one's fish to be cooked for breakfast. The wines of the district are far better than its food. German 'Towns 199 Rudesheim, Schloss Johannisberg, the Steinberg Abbey above Hattenheim, are of course household words, and the man who said that travelling along the Rhine was like reading a restaurant wine-list had some justification for his Philistine speech. One does not expect to discover the real Steinberg Cabinet in a village inn, and the Johannisberg generally found in every hotel in Rhineland is a very inferior wine to that of the Schloss, and is grown in the vineyards round Dorf Johannisberg. I have memories of excellent bottles of wine at Ress's at Hattenheim, and at the Engel at Erbach ; but the fact that I was making a walking tour may have added to the delight of the draughts. The Marcobrunn vineyards lie between Hattenheim and Erbach. The Hotel Victoria at Bingen has its own vineyards, and makes a capital wine ; and in the valley of the river below Bingen almost every little town and hill — Lorch, Boppard, Horcheim, and the Kreuzberg — has its own par- ticular brand, generally excellent. Assmanhausen, which gives such an excellent red wine, is on the opposite bank to Bingen and a little below it. The Rhine boats have a very good assortment of wines on board, but it is wise to run the finger a little way down the list before ordering your bottle, for, though the steamboats keep capital cellars, the very cheap wines on the Rhine are, as is usual in all countries, of the thinnest description. Most of the British doctors on the Continent make the greater part of their living by attending their fellow-country- men who drink everywhere anything that is given them free, and who hold that the vin du pays must be drinkable because it is the wine of the country. Our compatriots often swallow the throat-cutting stuff which the farm labourers and stable hands drink, sooner than pay a little extra money for the sound wine of the district. The foreigner who came to 200 The Gourmets Guide to Europe Great Britain and drank our newest cider, our cheapest ale, and rawest whisky would go away with a poor impression of the liquors of our country. Drink the wine of the district where they make good wine, but do not grudge the extra shilling which makes all the difference in quality. I have been gently reproved for saying, in the first edition of this book, that the lunches on the big express boats of the Rhine are a scramble for food, and am told that the 3-mark meal in the middle of the day is a triumph of organisation. I bow to correction, and must have been unfortunate in my experiences. Perhaps I was unkind to the fast boats because I was once most kindly treated on an old-fashioned slow boat. I have a pleasant memory of an old head steward, a fatherly old gentleman in a silk cap shaped somewhat like an accordion, who provided the meals on a leisurely steamer which pottered up the Rhine, stopping at every village. He gave us local delicacies, took an interest in our appetites, and his cookery, though distinctively German, was also very good. In a land where all the big hotels fill once a day and empty once a day, and where the meals are a heavy-handed imitation of French cookery, that old man with his stews and roasts, and pickles, veal, and pork, sausages big and sausages small, strange cheeses, and Delikatessen of all kinds, was a good man to meet. HOMBURG The " Homburg Dinner" has become a household word, meaning that a certain number of men and women agree to dine together at one of the hotels, each one paying his or her own share in the expenses. During the past few years, owing to the desire to spend money shown by some millionaires, British and American, who are not happy unless they are giving German ^fowns 201 expensive dinners every night to a score of guests, this pretty old custom seems likely to die out. In no German town are there better hotels than at Homburg, and one dines on a warm day in very pleasant surroundings, for Ritter's has its world- famous terrace, where tables have been reserved at one time or another for most of the crowned heads of Europe, and some of the other hotels have very delightful open-air restaurants in their gardens. Sim- plicity, good plain food well cooked, is insisted on by the doctors at Homburg, and therefore a typical Homburg dinner is a very small affair compared to German feasts over which the doctors fitter's Kaiser do not have control. This is a dinner Friedricli Pro- of the day at Ritter's, taken haphazard ^e^^^® from a little pile of menus, and it may "be accepted as a typical Homburg dinner : — Potage Crecy au Riz. Truite de Lac. Sauce Genevoise. Pommes Natures. Longe de Veau a la Hongroise. Petits pois au Jambon. Chapons de Chalons rotis. Salade and Compots. Peches a la Cardinal. Fruits. Dessert. The hotels at Homburg are always quite full in the season. No hotel-keeper puts any pressure on his guests to dine at his hotel, and you may have your bedroom in one hotel and dine at* another every night of your life so far as the proprietors care. The restaurant at the Kurhaus goes up and down in public favour. The alterations made to the Kurhaus in 1907, which has given it new reading and writing, card, billiard, and smoking rooms, have made it once again fashionable to dine on the Kurhaus terrace. Herr Matthay, who is the director of the restaurant, has risen from the ranks, and remembers all the celeb- 202 T'he Gourmefs Guide to Bur ope rities who used to dine and sup at the Kurhaus in the old gaming days. All the world always goes to the terrace later in the evening to walk up and down while the band plays. The Golf Club has a course amongst the trees which has now been extended to eighteen holes. Golfers says that if you acquire a taste for the game on the Homburg links you appreciate its novelties immensely. Wiesbaden At Wiesbaden you generally dine where you sleep, in your hotel. I myself have generally stayed at the Kaiserhof, because I like to eat my supper on its creeper-hung terrace and look across the broad valley to the Taunus hills ; but there are half-a-dozen hotels in the town (the Nassauerhof in particular, which many people consider the best hotel in Germany) having capital restaurants, serving table (fhote meals, attached to them. The Rose has a little terrace, looking on to the gardens, which is a pleasant supping place. Herr Ruthe's Restaurant at the Kurhaus is the one quite first-class dining place not attached to an Ruthe's, Kur- hotel. In the winter, in the dining- ^^^s room and the glassed-in verandah, and in summer under the little trees, with the lake in full view, all the people who have grown weary of looking at the same faces in their hotel restaurants may be found eating their dinners. Herr Ruthe is always to be found somewhere in the establishment, and any diner who does not know the resources of the establishment cannot do better than consult him before ordering dinner. The Foyer Restaurant in the Royal Theatre is a quiet and pleasant place at which to take meals in the daytime. German Towns 203 The wine-house, the Rathskeller, is one of the sights of the place. Therein are quaint frescoes and furniture, there the usual German food is obtainable, and you have a choice of German wines such as is obtainable in few other wine-drinking places in Germany. Any one who likes the open tarts of apple and other fruits — a rather sticky delicacy it always seems to me — can eat them at ease of an afternoon looking at the beautiful view from the Neroberg or watching the Rhine from under the trees of the hotel gardens at Biebrich. AFTER DINNER The Royal Opera House is a very splendid one, and the Kaiser takes special interest in the perform- ances given there. The Residenz Theater has been rebuilt on a better site than the old one occupied. Walhalla is the variety theatre. Baden-Baden Baden-Baden is always a bright and cheerful watering-place, and it retains more of the dignity and the luxury of the old gambling days than any of the other German towns of baths, except perhaps Homburg. Baden has always attracted a great number of well-to-do French, and though the French element diminished for a time after the years of the war, the wounds of that dreadful time seem to have healed, and French is almost as much talked as English amongst the visitors in the Lichtentaler Allee, and on the broad gravel space before the Konversation Haus. As else- where in South Germany, it is the custom at Baden to eat a table crhote meal in the middle of the day, and those of the visitors who are not away on some excursion 204 ^'^^^ Gourf7Jefs Guide to Siirope generally eat this meal at their hotels or at the res- taurant of the Konversation Haus. The restaurants of the hotels are mostly good ones, those of the Stephanie, and of the Englischer Hof, in Hotel Mesmer particular being e;xcellent. The Mes- Konversation mer, which is quite close to the Kon- Haus Square versation Haus, is the hotel where the Emperor William I. and the Empress Augusta used to spend a month in the spring and one in the autumn every year, and its restaurant, though not as lively as those I have previously mentioned, is quite first- class. Supper at Baden-Baden is a light meal, but quite a gay one, for the ladies are all in evening toilettes and Stephanie wear their most beautiful hats. The Hotel, Lichten- Stephanie is a hotel to which most taler AUee people gravitate for this evening meal, and during the race fortnight and the lawn-tennis fortnight it is necessary to secure a table there in advance. The restaurant of the Stephanie is a great verandah enclosed in glass, and the hotel band plays in the lounge which is just outside the restaurant. Supper in this restaurant during the great weeks of the year brings together a most interesting cosmopolitan gathering, and the management is so good that the hundreds of supper-givers, each having ordered a different supper, are all served in reasonable time, and one hears no grumbling or complaints. After supper at the Stephanie people either go to the Konversation Haus to walk up and down on the wide promenade and to listen to the great orchestra, or sit in the Stephanie lounge for a while, the little band of the hotel making music for them. At ten o'clock on these occasions the great white ball-room of the Stephanie is thrown open, and the young people dance for an hour before bed-time. M. Autor, who was so well known to English and German l^owns 205 Americans as the manager of the London Carlton, is a partner of Herr Boeming at the Englischer Hof, Englischer Hof, which is also on the Lichtentaler Lichtentaler Allee, and the restaurant ^^^^^ of this hotel, though not perhaps as lively and amusing as is that of the Stephanie, has a celebrity for good cookery and good service. The terrace of the restaurant of the Konversation Haus is a pleasant place to sup or breakfast or to drink coffee in the afternoon. People Konversation who sup there sit on at their tables to ^^^^ listen to the band, and this supping in the open air is a pleasant change sometimes from the hotel res- taurants. In the afternoon, when the band plays, the tables on the terrace and on the gravel before the terrace are all occupied. Of the restaurants in the town, that of the Three Kings in the Langestrasse is much favoured in winter time. It is a pleasant old hostel, newly -nie Three renovated, and with an airy restaurant. Kings, Lange- The house has two hundred years of s^^^^^® history behind it. The Krokodil, which also looks out on to the Langestrasse, has a Krokodil, winter garden, and is also much fre- Langestrasse quented in winter, but is hardly so attractive as the Three Kings. There are restaurants at most of the points which serve as turning places in walks or drives from Baden. At " Fischculter," where the trout-breeding pools are, there is an inn which naturally makes trout its specialty. There is a restaurant on the top of the Staufenberg, and one at the ruins of Ebersteinbcrg, and another at the Geroldsauer waterfalls. But the most charming of these country restaurants is the one at the old castle on the shoulder of the mountain which towers above Baden-Baden. The restaurant is in a little courtyard outside the great walls of the 2o6 T'he Gourmef s Guide to Europe ruin, and its proprietor must be a lover of birds, for by the gateway is an aviary, and in the courtyard every available space on the walls is taken up by cages full of singing birds. The courtyard resounds with the twitterings and the trills of the birds, music which is a change from that of the bands down in the valley. The wines of the duchy, both red and white, are excellent, the Eberblut, grown on the slopes of the mountain on which is built Schloss Eberstein, having a special celebrity. Baden-Baden Clubs The International Club is very hospitable to properly introduced strangers. Its headquarters are at No. 4 Lichtentaler Allee. Temporary membership during race weeks carries admission to the course and to a special stand. The golf course is at Oos, and is quite close to the railway station there. The lawn-tennis pavilion and courts are in the Lichtentaler Allee. AFTER DINNER I have, I think, indicated the usual evening amuse- ments of visitors to Baden-Baden in the above notes, but there is also a theatre close to the Konversation Haus, where there is a performance of comedy or opera every night, and there are occasional concerts, very good ones, in the great rooms of the Konver- sation Haus, On Saturday evenings there is usually a ball at the Konversation Haus. Ems Ems has a restaurant in the Kursaal, near which the band plays in the evening, said to be good ; and also one in the Kurhaus, The Schaweitzerhaiischenj German T'owns 207 on the slope of the Malberg, and the Rottmannshohe, also on this hill, are two of the breakfast-places. There is a restaurant at the end of the Konig Wilhelm's Allee. Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) Henrion's Grand Hotel is the favourite dining- place of the Anglo-Saxon colony in Aachen. M. Intra, the proprietor, lays himself out Henrion's, to attract the English. 'The German Corneliusbath civil servants and the doctors have a club-table at which they dine, and they exact fines from the members of their club for drinking wine which costs more than a certain price, &c. &c., these fines being collected in a box and saved until they make a sum large enough to pay for a special dinner. Every member of this club is required to leave in his will a money legacy to the club to be expended in wine drunk to his memory. There are two table d'^hote meals, at 1.30 and at 7 p.m. At the first the dishes are cooked according to the German cuisine, at the second according to the French. Suppers are served in the restaurant at any hour. Lennertz's restaurant and oyster-saloon in the Klostergasse is a curious, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned house which, before Henrion's came Lennertz's, into favour, had most of the British Klostergasse patronage. Its cooking is excellent, and the German Hausfraus used to be sent to Lennertz's to study for their noble calling. The carte de jour has not many dishes on it. Everything has to be ordered a la carte^ but the prices are all reasonable, and it is possible to make a bargain that a dinner shall be given for a fixed price. The Omelettes Souffiees are a specialty of the house. The fish used in Lennertz's comes from Ostende, and the Dutch oysters are excellent. 2o8 T'he Gotirmefs Guide to Europe Some of the magnificent Moselle wine laid down by the late proprietor is still obtainable. A new restaurant, the Carlton, is a feature of the good old-fashioned Grand Monarque Hotel. Scheufen Kremer's Restaurant, opposite the theatre, has good cookery, but is expensive. Eulenspiegel is an establishment which is worth a visit. It is in Kramerstrass. The Alt-Bayern in Wirischsbongardstrasse is the beer-house which is most to be recommended ; and the Germania, in Friedrich-Williamplatz, is celebrated for its coffee. AFTER DINNER The large theatre is only open in the winter. The Eden, in Franzstrass, is the music hall of the town. Hamburg Hamburg is a town of good eating and good drinking. The restaurant above all others which Pfordte's ^^^ given it its celebrity in this respect Restaurant, is Pfordte's Restaurant, which used AnderAlster ^^ y^^ jj^ ^|^e Rathhaus Gardens, but which has now been moved to the Atlantic Hotel, An der Alster. Pfordte's Restaurant, in its different habitations, dates back to the year 1828, when it was established in one of the numerous cellars which are in the basements of many of the houses near the Alster and the Bourse. These cellars have as their specialties oysters, lobsters and other shell-fish, game and truffles, and they are much frequented by business men for luncheon and by playgoers for supper after the theatre. Herr Pfordte, who had become director of this cellar in i860, moved it to the street which runs from the Alster Dam to the Rathhaus Gardens, and there, at the corner of the gardens, established the German T'owns 209 restaurant which obtained fame all over the world, Herr Pfordte is a man of small stature, but of most courteous and polished manners, and he is no exception to the general rule that small men have usually great brains. His restaurant in the Rathhaus Gardens was a cosy, pleasant place, where the waiters talked all languages under the sun, and where excellent oysters, trout from the hill streams, partridges with apricots, and truffles en serviette were some of the most appreci- ated of the specialties. The special adornment of the hall in Pfordte's old restaurant was a picture painted for Herr Pfordte under rather unusual con- ditions. The painter wished to give a dinner to his club friends and consulted Herr Pfordte as to the price. Pfordte said that he would supply the dinner, and that as payment the artist should paint him a picture. The dinner was given, and was said at the time to have been the best dinner ever served in Germany, and the artist showed his appreciation of it by painting a masterpiece. Herr Pfordte is now to be found amidst new and far more luxurious surroundings than in his old res- taurant, but something of the charm, something of the cosiness, seems to have evaporated in the change. The excellent cellar of wines which Pfordte had collected in his old house has been moved without any accident to the cellars of the Atlantic, and the Bordeaux of numerous choice vintages which Pfordte collected taste as well on the banks of the Alster as they did at the edge of the gardens. But the present restaurant is far smarter than the old one, and whereas at the old Pfordte's the German gentlemen who frequented it did not as a rule wear dress clothes, at the new Pfordte's, if you wish to obtain a table in the big front room which looks on to the Alster, it is wise to go there in dress clothes. The big room of the new restaurant is panelled with light brown 210 The Gourmefs Guide to Europe wood, its windows have a view over the Alster, and there is always a profusion of flowers in its window- boxes. The other rooms are all well decorated, one with green walls and a green carpet having a sug- gestion of the snugness of the old Pfordte's. A string band plays during meals, the " Chasseurs " wear scarlet jackets, and all the surroundings are those of a modern up-to-date cosmopolitan restaurant. The price of the dinner of the day at the old Pfordte's used to be 6 marks, but at the new Pfordte's it has risen to 7 marks. The bill of fare in old days used to give a choice of four or five dishes in each course. Now a choice of two dishes in each course is considered sufficient. As a curiosity, more than as a guide to what may be expected at the present Pfordte's, I give the average menu of the dinner of the day at the old Pfordte's. The English celery distinguishes what we know as celery from celleriac or Dutch celery, which is largely used in salads in North Germany. The Junge Puter is a very young turkey poult. It is to the young turkey what the poussin is to the chicken. Potage a la Stuart. Potage creme d'orge a la Viennoise. Potage puree de concombres au cerfeuil. Consomme Xavier. Filets von Seezungen (soles) a la Joinville. Steinbutt (turbot) sauce moscovite. Rheinlachs kalt, sauce mayonnaise. Boeuf braise a I'alsacienne. Rehbriicken (venison) a la Conti. Lammviertel a la Provengale. Roast beef a la Clamart. Artischoken sauce hollandaise. Salat braisirt mit jungen Erbsen. Engl.' Sellerie mit Mark. Junge Flageolets a la Maitre. Spanishe PfefFerschoten farcirt. German 'Towns 211 Junge Ente (duckling). Rebhuhn (partridge). Junge Puter. Escarolle-Salat mit Tomaten. Erd-beer-Eiscreme panache Fruchttorte. Kase. Though I regret the passing of the old Pfordte's, with its cosiness and its plenitude of dishes, and its feeling that the master's eye was on everything, I must bear witness to the brightness and smartness and good cookery and good service of the new Pfordte's in the Atlantic. Another hotel restaurant quite of the first class is that attached to the Esplanade Hotel, the great hotel owned by the same company as the Carlton of London, and the restaurant of which is modelled on the same lines as the famous restaurant in Pall Mall. The Esplanade Hotel is close to the Botanical Gardens. Kempinski's on the Jungfernstieg is a typical German restaurant of a good class. On the ground floor is an American bar, screened off Kempinski's, from the hall, in which are many cane 24 Jungfernstieg easy chairs with bright pink cushions. On the first floor is a great room with a glassed-in balcony, over- looking the Kleine Alster, one of the waterways of this city of canals. The woodwork of this great room is mahogany, and the pillars are of green marble. There is a long list of dishes on the card of the day at Kempinski's, the highest priced of these being I mark 50 heller, while the soups and the vegetable dishes are priced in our money at fourpence. Special dishes, especially dishes of crab when in season, are in the biggest print. From 11.30 till 3 a luncheon of four courses is ready, and costs 2 marks, and a dinner of six courses is to be obtained from 3 p.m. to 8 P.M., and costs 3 marks. As I dined late at 212 T7z^ Gourmet's Guide to Surope Kempinski's, I did not risk a dinner which must have been partially prepared for some hours, and dined quite well a la carte. The Alster Pavilion, looking on to the smaller of the two lakes, the Binnen Alster, is a cafe more than Alster Pavilion, 3. restaurant. It has two great semi- Jungfernstieg- circles of windows overlooking the lake, and its red window-boxes, its red and green chairs, its little trees on the flat roof, its blue and white tiles and its gilding, make it as bright as a new penny piece. A legion of pigeons live on the roof, and come down to pick up the crumbs which are thrown to them from the people who sit at the tables. There is food of a simple kind to be obtained at this bright cafe and wine and beer house, and the pot of caviare which formed the basis of a supper I ate there was quite good. Its balconies and the space before its doors seem always to be filled by a good-natured crowd . of merry-makers ; there is music there at all hours, ' and it plays quite an important part in the life of Hamburg. The Ferry House at Eulenhorst, which juts out into the Aussen Alster, the bigger of the two lakes. The Ferry House, is some little distance from the central Eulenliorst p^rt of the town, and a pleasant way of reaching it is by steamer. On a sunny afternoon a large contingent of all Hamburg goes out there to drink coffee. A long white restaurant with a glassed-in balcony provides shelter should a shower of rain come on, and there are innumerable tables and chairs under the trees on the little promontory, all of which are occupied in fine weather. The Pavilion is made gay with boxes of bright flowers, and, like the Alster Pavilion, it is patronised by bright and merry people. At the Zoological Gardens there are two restaurants, with balconies overlooking the beer garden, in which a military band plays. German T'owns ^ 213 The Rathskeller of Hamburg is in the modern Rathhaus, and is finely decorated in " Altdeutsch " style, with frescoes and paintings by well-known artists. The Kaiser Keller is below Kempinski's, on a level with the water. The oyster cellars of Hamburg are noted for their excellent lunches. Bouillon, cutlets, steaks, caviare, lachs, and other viands are served, and English " porter," generally Combe's Stout, is much drunk. Another British production, '^ Chester " cheese, which is red Cheshire, is much in demand. At supper in these cellars, and also in Berlin, caviare is much in demand, the small Baltic variety, not the Russian, which is lighter in colour and larger in grain. A pot of it, large or small, according to the number of supperers, is put on the table in a bowl of crushed ice, and your Hamburger, who is a good judge of victuals as he is of drink, makes his supper of it. There is a British Club in Hamburg at 42 Grosse Bleichen, but of it I only know the particulars set down in Mr. Austen Leigh's Cluhs^ that it is for British subjects, and that the yearly subscription is ^i, lOS. AFTER DINNER My experience of the performances at the higher- class theatres of Hamburg is nil, for my visits to the port have always been paid in summer, when the Stadt Theater, the big house for opera and comedy, the Schauspiel, and the Thalia, have been closed ; but I have heard Austrian operettas well sung at the Carl Schultze, and have passed quite amusing evenings, spending a half-hour here and a half-hour there in the various music halls and shows in the amusement quarter of St. Pauli. Hagenbach's Menagerie is open all the year round, and so are most of the large variety houses. 214 ^^'^^ Gourmet's Guide to Bur ope Kiel The hotels and restaurants of Kiel are neither numerous nor recherche^ and, with the exception of the sailors' rendezvous, are mostly closed during the winter. The Seebade-Anstalt is about the best Seebade-Anstalt ^ . u -i^ u tj -u- restaurant ; it was built by Herr Krupp and is managed by an Englishman. Above it are the fine rooms of the Imperial Yacht Club. These, during the regatta week, which generally takes place at the end of June, are crowded with yachtsmen of all nationalities, to whom the Kaiser dispenses most gracious hospitality. When the extensive anchorage, surrounded by green and wooded hills, is full of every description of yacht, foremost among which is the Hohen%ollern and many German battleships, it forms a scene at once impressive and gay. The Hotel Germania has a very fair restaurant attached to it. The Rathskeller is well conducted, and was built by the municipal authorities. The Weinstuben, Paul Fritz, is a good refreshment place, but is mostly frequented by the students and officers. The Seegarten is a pretty little place overlooking the harbour, where German beer is the principal article of commerce. At the Miinchener Burgerbrau the beer is good but the surroundings dismal. There is a nine-hole golf course at Kitzeberg. VII BERLIN The Classic Restaurants — The Hotel Restaurants — Restaurants of the People — Military Restaurants — Cafes, Cabarets, and Bars —Open-air Restaurants — Clubs. Berlin is plentifully supplied with restaurants, for both the Kaiser and the Berlin Municipality give every encouragement to enterprising hotel-keepers and restaurateurs who build up-to-date restaurants. Every good German is anxious that Berlin should rival Paris as a city of pleasure and amusement, and the old staid Prussian capital has now become one of the most go-ahead cities in the world. Its small theatres and music-halls and cabarets are very lively, all its new restaurants are tremendously gorgeous, and Berlin now keeps hours which even Paris would con- sider late. The feeding in Berlin is in rather a mixed state, and all the restaurants which cater both for the Berliners and for the strangers who are within the city gates are compelled to serve meals all day and nearly all night long. Their German clients, after the coffee and rolls they have eaten very early in the morning, are ready for a " snack " of some kind or another and a glass of wine or a tumbler of beer at about 1 1 A.M. This enables them to postpone their mid-day meal till 2 o'clock, and lunch often fades like a dissolving view into afternoon tea, for Berlin has adopted with enthusiasm the English 5 o'clock meal. 215 liS The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Supper is the next and last meal a German requires, and this has to be ready for him when he comes back from his business, or from a theatre, or a concert, and is generally an a la carte meal. The American or Briton so far concedes to the ways of the Continent as to eat rolls and drink coffee as his first meal, but he wants his lunch at i p.m., and likes to dine before he goes to a theatre. At all the new restaurants attached to hotels, both sets of clients are conscientiously catered for. The Classic Restaurants Though Berlin has no restaurants which exactly correspond to the Cafe Anglais and Voisin's in Paris, there have always been some good, quiet restaurants where the cookery has been German, but not too ferociously Teutonic, where the service has been quiet, and which have had the dignity which is part of the atmosphere of a classic restaurant in any Borchardt's capital. Borchardt's, in the Franzosis- Franzdsischer- cherstrasse, I should take to be the strasse typical good old-fashioned Berlin res- staurant. It was at Borchardt's that the celebrated " round table dinners " took place, intimate feasts at which the Kaiser was present, and at which Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter, the " Man in the Yellow Waistcoat," the present Foreign Secretary, and Prince Philip zu Eulenberg, and Herr von Hostein, the diplomatist who shaped Germany's policy at the Algeciras Conference, were others of the guests. The public dining-room at Borchardt's is a room of crimson silk panels framed in dark wood. It has crimson portieres, and the general effect is of stately comfort. Little tables are set a good distance apart down either side of the room. The waiters all speak French if addressed in that language, and I fancy that 'Berlin 2 1 7 many of the patrons of the establishment are diplo- matists. The carte of the day is in German, and is an ample one. The dishes which are ready at a moment's notice are printed at the bottom of the menu. Those at mid-day, on one of the days I lunched at Borchardt's, were baked trout, beefsteak ci la Russr, and chicken and rice. At lunch time the cold buffet of the restaurant shows a great variety of dishes. The prices are not high, compared with a first-class restaurant in any other capital, but they are high for Berlin, which is a city of cheap feeding. This is a dinner I ate at Borchardt's one evening in solitary state : — Bortch of Crab. Cutlets of Venison, Chasseur. Coupe a la Diable, the latter dish with the diabolical name being of iced chocolate, two other kinds of ice, and brandy cherries. I drank a half bottle of excellent Lieb- fraumilch, a cup of coffee, and a liqueur of old Chartreuse, and my bill came to 13 marks. Borchardt's has a quite admirable cellar of wines, some vintages of champagnes which have long a2;o disappeared from British wine lists being still on its card, and it has some excellent old cognacs and a fine store of the Chartreuse made by the monks while they were still at their old home. Another quiet old-fashioned restaurant, smaller and more retiring than Borchardt's, is Ewest's in Behren- strasse. I had been told that Ewest's Ewest's, 26a was so conservative that strangers were Behrenstrasse not made very welcome there, but I was greeted by a portly butler in dress clothes as though I was an old friend, and no old client could have been better treated than I was. Going through an ante-room one comes to the dining-room, of three little rooms thrown into :2i8 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe one. The walls are of light green above a skirting of wood, the floors are of polished wood. Dark green velvet settees and chairs of black leather all tend to give the little room a quiet note. A portrait of one of the old Prussian kings and a portrait of the Kaiser in white tunic and a black cuirass adorn the walls. On the menu for lunch I found coquilles of salmon, lobster omelette, lobsters, herrings and beans, pork cutlets, a gulyas of veal, stuffed chicken, gosling, wild cherry open tart, and cream. I ate the omelette, a cutlet, and tart, drank a pint of Zeltinger and some Mattoni water, and paid a bill which came exactly to 5 marks. The cookery of the house is excellent and, as Julius Ewest is a wine merchant of the highest reputation, the wines in the cellar of his little res- taurant are admirable. The Restaurant Hiller at 62 Unter den Linden, and the Restaurant Dressel at 50 Unter den Linden, Dressers, 50 used to be two typical BerHn res- Unterden taurants, but fashion has rather passed ^""iw^" fio them by of late years. The Hiller still HiUer s, 62 , J r • 1 i i Unter den retams some or its old patrons, and Linden Louis Adlon, who is its proprietor, is hoflieferant to the Kaiser, and one of the firm which owns the great hotel near the Brandenburg Gate. The prices of meals at Dressel's are : dijeuners^ 2.50 marks ; dinners, 3.50 and 5.50 marks ; and suppers, 3 marks. A band plays till i p.m. At Killer's the dejeuner is 2.50 marks ; dinner, 5 marks ; and there is a " Theatre-Souper " at 5 marks, which is the most popular of all the meals at this restaurant. The Hotel Restaurants The Kaiserhof was the first hotel to give Berlin a restaurant and a palm lounge, such as the gourmet en voyage is accustomed to in Paris and in London, and Berlin 1 1 9 therefore let me accord it precedence in gossiping about the up-to-date restaurants attached to hotels in Berlin. The restaurant is lighted by windows Kaiserhof, which look out on to a back street, Wiihelmsplatz and is rather dark in the daytime, but at night, when lighted up, its pink carpet and crimson portieres give it a very comfortable appearance. The table d'hote prices for dinner are 6, 8, or 10 marks. The 6-mark dinner, which is also served in the grill-room, is an excellent, but not imaginative meal — soup, trout, beef, chicken, vegetables, sweets, it ran on the night I dined there. The palm lounge is a Teutonic reminis- cence of that of the London Carlton. It has the same bull's-eye windows, and has a raised platform with gilded rails on two sides of the room. The furniture in this lounge is heavy and gorgeous, but two large palms justify its title. A band plays in this lounge till i a.m. The grill-room of the Kaiserhof, white-papered and with grey and white marble columns, I found a cheerful place at which to lunch. It has a verandah looking down from about a man's height on to the square. This verandah is gay with flowers and creepers and hanging baskets, and Berlin life unfolds itself very pleasantly as one sits there and watches the comings and goings across the busy open space. A 5-mark theatre supper is served at the Kaiserhof, and it possesses an American bar. The Esplanade in Bellevuestrasse is one of the hotels controlled by the people who own the London Ritz and Carlton. Its dining-room is The Esplanade, almost a reproduction of that of the Bellevuestrasse Carlton — pink carpet, chairs upholstered in pink, and pink portieres. Its windows look out on to a garden. The Esplanade is rich in gardens. It has a large one and a small one where afternoon tea is served and where a band plays. The board-room of this hotel is a handsome panelled room, but has just a little too 220 T'he Gourmef s Guide to Europe much gilt about it. The lounge is also too gorgeous for Anglo-Saxon taste. The marble there is veined purple, and green trellis, and white marble statues, and gilt vases are in too violent contrast with each other. The banqueting hall, from one wall of which a portrait of the Kaiser looks down on the guests, is a fine room with a little stage at one end. As wedding feasts often last as long as five hours, little comedies played on this stage form a welcome relief on those occasions to too much eating and too many- speeches. Any habitue of the Ritz or Carlton finds himself at home at once at the Esplanade, for some of the maitres cPhotel at this restaurant have been at the other hotels of the same company, and recognise familiar faces very quickly. It pleased me to find that my liking for a table at the side in a quiet part of the room, and partiality for a short, light dinner, as well as my name, seemed to be familiar to everybody in the Esplanade restaurant as soon as I set foot inside it. Most of the meals at the Esplanade are a la carte^ and the carte du jour is in German on one side and French on the other. The German clientele of the restaurant insist on a table cPhote dinner, which is priced at 6 marks, and of which this is a fair specimen. I give it in German, but it is on the menu in both that language and French : — Portugische Kraftbriihe mit Reis. Esperancesuppe. Forelle Meuniere. Rehmignonette Forestiere. Selleriepuree. Neue Kartoffeln risoles. Poularde gebraten. Salat. Stangenspargel, Hollandische Sauce Erdbeeren-Halbgefrorenes. Feines Backwerk. Kase. Berlin 221 The Esplanade has a pleasant little grill-room, and no doubt somewhere in its great corridors there is an American bar. The restaurant of the Adlon Hotel, the windows of which look out on to the Pariserplatz, is mightily- gorgeous with marble and gilding. The jjotel Adlon hotel is owned by the well-known wine Unter den merchants, from whom it takes its i^in^^^n name. The great hall of the hotel looks like the museum of a millionaire, so many beautiful things have been collected there. There are some beautiful works of art from Japan, a wonderful clock, a wonder- ful staircase, cream marble pillars with bronze capitals, magnificent carpets, Venetian mosaics, fine furniture, a large bust of the Kaiser in coloured marbles, a magnificent fountain, but if there were fewer beauti- ful things and less magnificence it would be in better taste. The view of the little garden seen through the back entrance is, however, charming. It is the latest expression of the Teutonic desire to possess the most gorgeous hotels on the Continent, and it is just a little overdone. French grey is the colour of the liveries of the outdoor servants. The waiters in the restaurant press on Americans and Britons the carte (lu jour^ but there arc very good and cheap table cChote meals. Dejeuner s^ 3 marks ; dinners, 6 marks ; and suppers, 5 marks. The restaurant is all old gold and pink and white and green marble. The Kaiser took much interest in the building of this hotel, and in 1907 paid M. Bodart, the chef, the compliment of visiting his kitchen. The Adlon has a grill-room in tlie Raffael-Saal, and its orchestra plays during and after dinner. The Bristol Hotel is an excellent place at which to take a mid-day meal. The lunch costs Bristol, Unter 2.50 marks. Hors cTceuvre ?ixc i mark den Linden extra, and there is an extra charge for sweets. A 222 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe table cThote dinner is served for 6 marks, and supper, after 9 p.m., costs 5 marks. The younger members of the British Embassy generally breakfast at the Bristol, and I invariably find that the restaurant in every capital to which the younger members of the British Embassy go for their mid-day meal, is sure to be one to be recommended to the traveUing Anglo- Saxon. I have nothing but good to say of the restaurant of the Palast Hotel. This is the hotel at which I made The Palast "^7 ^^^X when I went to Berlin, and Hotel, Pots- in its restaurant, with walls of grey, damerplatz ^^^ marble pillars and large windows, and ceiling with arabesques of gold on it, I ate many a good dinner. The dinner of the day at 5 marks I invariably found quite satisfactory, and Herr Eduard Gutscher, the proprietor, gives the kitchen his personal superintendence. The following may be taken as a specimen of the usual dinner. There is also a very full a la carte card. Consomme Judith. Potage claire-Fontaine. Supreme de fogas a la Cecil. Sella de veau garnie a la Champigny. Sauce Tomate. . Cassolettes a la financiere. Caneton de Nantes. Salade. Compote. Choux fleurs, Sauce vierge. Riz a la Bizier. Patisserie. Paillettes. Fruits. The young princes, the sons of the Kaiser, often give their private dinner parties at the Palast. The restaurant of the Continental, managed by M. Klicks, a well-known restaurateur, is much fre- quented at supper-time. The charge continental, for supper is 4 marks, the lunch costs Neustadtiscke- 3 marks, and the dinner 6 marks. kirchestrasse The restaurant of the Central Hotel is rather more lively than most of the others, and has a pleasant savour of Bohemianism. A good Hun- The Central, garian band always plays there during Friedrichstrasse the evening from 7.30 to 12.30. This restaurant is pleasanter to dine or sup at than to lunch at. The dinner costs 5 marks, and the supper 4 marks. The restaurant of the Savoycan be recommended, and the prices there are : lunch 2.50 marks. The Savoy, dinner 5 marks, supper 3.50 marks. Friedrichstrasse The Monopol room of the Hotel - Restaurant L'Schaurte is a pleasant dining place. Its prices are : lunch 2.50 marks, dinner 5 marks. The Monopol, supper 3.50 marks. I append an every- Friedrichstrasse day dinner menu which ought to satisfy the most exacting customer. The second soup is a Consomme, with quenelles. The fish dishes are Sole Normande and Turbot au Gratin. Haringsfilet nach Daube. Mulligatawny-Suppe. Kraftbriihe mit Einlage. Seezungenfilet auf normannische Art. Steinbutt in Miischeln gratiniert. Eng. Roast-beef. Yorker Schinken in Burgunder. Spinat. Homard de Norvege. Sauce Ravigotte. Franzos. Poularde. Fasan. Salat. Kompot. Sellerie. Furst Piickler Bombe. Kase. Friichte. Nachtisch. 224 ^^'^^ Gourmefs Guide to Surope The above may be taken as a specimen of the 5-mark dinner at any good Berlin restaurant. It used to be the custom at the Monopal to charge guests who drank no wine i mark extra for their dinner. I do not know whether this is still done. TT«4.-.-i A^ -D^^no The Hotel de Rome has an excellent Hotel de Kome, Unter den restaurant, and many dmners or cere- Linden mony are given there. The Astoria Restaurant attached to the Carlton Hotel in Unter den Linden has become a popular Astoria, Unter resort. Lunch- costs 2.50 marks, dinner den Linden ^ marks, supper 4 marks. The cooking at this restaurant is excellent, but the cellar does not merit unstinted praise. The Restaurants of the People Kempinski's in the Leipzigerstrasse is a huge establishment, with dozens of rooms in it. The Kempinski's, management will kindly give you a plan Leipziger- of the establishment as you enter, so strasse \.\\?iX. you can find your way about the different floors. Its window, looking out on to the Leipzigerstrasse, draws a crowd, for there always is something sensational, or something amusing on show there. The last time I saw it, a little lawn of grow- ing grass was there with everything laid for a picnic, and rabbits, stuffed ones, popping out of burrows and looking at the preparations. There was also a bottle — out of the bottle water poured — suspended by a chain. There were no visible means by which the water found its way into the bottle. There is much brass about the entrance to Kempinski's, and it has a red marble face for two storeys. It has lamps of ground glass, and it is very gorgeous both inside and outside. On the ground floor the principal room is of light wood, elaborately carved, with veined marble above it^ and '^Berlin 225 has a vaulted roof. The first floor and the staircase leading to it are even more gorgeous than the ground floor. When Kempinski's was first built, it so de- lighted the Berliners that a song was made in its honour and sung in the music halls. Kempinski's is celebrated for its oysters, and for its excellent Holstein crayfish, and for its lobsters. The cook at this restau- rant has an excellent manner of cooking lobsters, Homard Chaud au Beurre Truffe, It consists of chopped truffles, worked up into best fresh butter, rolled out, and then laid on the hot lobster. My own experience of ordering a dinner at Kempinski's was not very happy. I took the longest dish I could find on the menu which had " Krebs " in it. What was brought me was a little metal dish with five depres- sions in it. In one of these was a little Tru'it eau bleuy in two others were the meat of crayfish, and in the remaining two were spinach with a baked sardine on the top of each heap of vegetable. It was a curious combination, and it decided me for the future to eat my trout without accessories of any kind. I ate, how- ever, an admirable crayfish salad, with eggs and points d^asperges and lettuce, which was decidedly better than the trout and baked sardine combination. Kem- pinski & Co. are wine merchants, and a vast amount of Kempinski's Grenz-Sect is drunk in the restaurant. As a rule, a portion of any dish on the bill of fare at Kempinski's costs i mark 25. As a proof that an excellent dinner is obtainable at Kempinski's for a small price, I subjoin a menu which was composed by a friend, who knew the ropes of the place, for a little feast to which'he'invited me. Hors d'oeuvre. Consomme double a la Moelle. Homard chaud au Beurre Truffe. Escaloppes de Veau. 2 26 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Choux de Bruxelles. Faisan Roti. Salade. Fromage, Celeri. Cafe, Cigare. I Bottle German Champagne. For two people, including the champagne, the total came to 12 marks 75 = 12s. gd. The German cham- pagne is not as bad as it is generally reported to be ; indeed, it is quite harmless, and rather pleasant. It is, however, rarely kept long enough in the cellars to give it a chance of maturing for the British taste. It has this advantage that it is what it pretends to be, whereas some of the bottles with French labels on them never saw Rheims. " Herb " does not guarantee what we in England understand by " Dry." The Rheingold in the Potsdamerstrasse looks from the outside like some great monastery, for it has very The Rheingold, high windows, which one might sup- Potsdamer- pose were built to give light to a chapel, strasse They give light instead to a great ban- queting hall. There are scores of different rooms in the Rheingold, decorated each in a diflferent manner. There are cellars with walls of Venetian inlay. There are rooms panelled with veined marble, and a great room on the ground floor which is of rare woods, lighted by what appear to be large candles, but which are really electric lamps, and there is a room of bas- reliefs, and another room with a ceiling of polished copper, and two vast halls, which would not be out of place in a palace. On the side which faces the Bellevuestrasse there is a garden, sheltered by trellis- work, where hundreds of little tables are set out, and there is another little garden in the centre of the build- ing. Two bands make music in this vast cluster of dining-rooms, which can seat 4000 people. People come and go quietly 5 the place is never empty and nernn 227 never full. There is no noise and no hurry, for there is no early closing in Berlin, but from 6 p.m. till the early hours of the morning the waiters are kept busy. It is a wonderful place, and, apart from its being a dining and supping centre, is quite one of the sights of Berlin. Another wonder of rooms decorated in various styles is the Kaiser Keller in Friedrichstrasse, where one wanders from room to room, each Kaiser Keller, 178 decorated after some well-known hall Friedrichstrasse '\n some German town. There is the Apostle Keller, with its carved figures of saints and elaborate dark woodwork, and there is a room where the ceiling is supported by a single column, and where the de- corations are of mediaeval saints painted on a gold background, and there is also a little garden where a fountain plays, and where palms give shelter to the tables. Another of the rooms is after the model of the Lubeck SchifFergesellschaft. Lovers of good wines should not miss the Restau- rant Lutter, at the corner of Charlotten and Franzc- sischestrasse. This is an historic old Letter tavern, which has been frequented by Franzo'sische- literary men and actors, as well as ^*^^^s® government officials, for the last hundred years. The walls are adorned with many interesting souvenirs of famous guests. Underneath the restaurant on the ground floor is a quaint old wine cellar. An inexpensive restaurant where the ^um Riides- simple German cookery is quite good, heimer, 178 and where there is a fixed-price dinner Friedrichstrasse for 3J marks, is the Rudesheimer. Its owes its cele- brity to its excellent cellar of Rhine wines. The Trocadero, a magnificent new restaurant in Unter den Linden, is at present closed owing to the failure of its proprietor. 22 8 T^he Gourmefs Guide to Europe Military Restaurants There are also two restaurants in which the mih- tary element predominates. These are Prinz Wilhelm, Toepfer's and the Prinz Wilhelm, both Dorotheen- in the Dorotheenstrasse. Here the officers usually lunch and use the res- taurants as clubs, often bringing their wives. Cafes, Cabarets, and Bars Bauer's in Unter den Linden is a well-known cafe, and is much frequented by the Berliners. It is Bauer's, Unter patronised by a large newspaper reading den Linden public, owing to the fact that there are few of the leading publications in all languages that you will fail to find there. This cafe is crowded in the afternoon and evening. Everything supplied there is of the best quality. The walls are decorated with paintings by Werner. Upstairs, between 5 and 6 p.m., one sees many of the people of the world of the theatres and music-halls. If you wish to see the rowdy student life of Berlin, the Bohemian festivity which corresponds to the life of Paris in the cabarets of Montmartre, and if you speak German, go to the Bauernschanke, which has obtained a celebrity for the violence and rudeness of its proprietor, who, as Lisbonne and Briiant used to do, and Alexander does, in the cabarets of the City of Light, insults his customers to the uttermost and turns out any one who objects. Die Rauberhole is an inferior imitation of Die Bauernschanke. A noted night restaurant is Der Zum Weissen Rossi, in which each room is decorated to represent some typical street in Berlin. This is a hostel much frequented by artists. '[Berlin 229 The Open Air Restaurants There are two or three cafe restaurants with shady gardens in the Thiergarten, of which one, the Cafe Gartner, on the river close to the „ ^. „ ^ ■P, ,, P> '. . , , Cafe Gartner isellevue station, is a pleasant place at which to drink afternoon coffee. The cafe and res- taurant in the Zoological Gardens are very popular. At either end of a little lake is a band-stand, and two military bands play alternately in these The Zoological band-stands during the late afternoon Gardens and evening. From band-stand to band-stand stretches a great semi-circle of tables for beer and coffee drinkers, and at the back of this half-moon of tables is a restau- rant with many terraces, where a fixed-price dinner is served from 6 p.m. onwards. When all the tables are occupied, as they are on fine afternoons and evenings, the mass of people eating and drinking and listening to the music is quite one of the sights of Berlin. Berlin Clubs One of the best clubs in Berlin is the Imperial German Automobile Club. The AutomoMle, Kaiser is a member and patron. The Leipzigerplatz club-house on the Leipzigerplatz was formerly the residence of the Berlin banker Bleichroeder, and is decorated in Louis XVI. style. The entrance fee is 250 marks, the annual subscription 200 marks. There is a club dinner every Wednesday evening in the winter to which guests can be introduced. There is one long table in the centre room and smaller tables for parties. Ladies are admitted as guests on Sunday nights. Members of the Royal Automobile Club of London can become temporarv members of the Berlin Club. 230 The Gourmefs Guide to' Europe One of the most exclusive clubs in Berlin is the Casino. The club-house is on the Pariserplatz. Casino, Pariser- The Kaiser is patron/)f this club. Most P^^*2 of the members are aristocrats or foreign diplomatists. No gambling games are al- lowed in this club. The Union Club in the Schadowstrasse is the Jockey Club of Germany. It is very exclusive, most Union, Schadow- of the members being aristocrats, but strasse some ^tw prominent financiers now belong to it. No gambling games are allowed in this club. The cookery at the Union is excellent. The " Club von Berlin," although not so exclusive, is one of the best clubs. The members belong to the better professional and commercial classes. It is interesting to lunch at this club between 12 and 2 o'clock. Another good club is the "Resource von 1794." The members are mostly wealthy bankers and merchants. ; The "Club von 1880" is a good club. The members are mostly drawn from the wealthy com- mercial class. The club is quiet during the daytime but lively in the evening, and there is a good deal of card-playing. The Schriftsteller Club is interesting on Tuesday evenings when guests are admitted. Representatives of the leading German newspapers, mostly of conser- vative and imperial tendencies, with a good sprinkling of pan-Germans, can be met here. The atmosphere is distinctly Bohemian. There is no English club, AFTER DINNER The best advice I can give to any Anglo- Saxon is not to trouble to buv his theatre tickets ^Berlin 231 himself, but to depute that duty to the hall porter of the hotel. There is, however, an agency in Unter den Linden. Prices vary at some of the houses according to whether the production is an expensive one or a cheap one. A seat m a box by no means assures comfort. As often as not it is only by craning forward that one can see a corner of the stage. A gala night at the Opera is a fine sight, and worth paying a large sum to see. All the smaller theatres play comedy, or farce, or operetta. The Lessing is supposed to be a comedy theatre, but I heard The Dollar Princess sung there. The Metropol Theatre is supposed to be a variety theatre, but a musical comedy was, on the last occasion T was in Berlin, enjoying a run there of many hundred nights. The Winter Garden is a vast hall with a stage in one of its long side walls. Two big " wings " fold back when the curtain goes up so that people at the ends of the hall may see something of the performance. As is the usual German custom, many of the people in the auditorium sup during the performance. VIII ITALY Italian Cookery — The Italian Lakes — Turin — Milan — Genoa — Venice — Bologna — Spezzia — Florence — Pisa — Leghorn — Lucca — Rome — Clubs of Rome — Naples — Palermo. Italian Cookery There is no cookery in Europe so often maligned without cause as that of Italy. People who are not sure of their facts often dismiss it contemptuously as being "all garlic and oil," whereas very little oil is used except at Genoa, where oil, and very good oil as a rule, takes the place of butter, and no more garlic than is necessary to give a slight flavour to the dishes in which it plays a part. If you have any fear of the cook being too liberal with the best of all digestives you have only to say ^''Senz' aglio'''' (without garlic), and your wish will very surely be taken notice of. An Italian cook fries better than one of any other nation- ality. In the north very good meat is obtainable, the boiled beef of Turin being almost equal to our own Silverside. Farther and farther south, as the climate becomes hotter, the meat becomes less and less the food of the people, various dishes of paste and fish taking its place, and as a compensation the fruit and the wine become more delicious. Really good pure olive oil is almost unknown out- side the boundaries of Italy. An Italian gentleman never eats salad when travelling in foreign countries, 232 Italy 233 for his palate, used to the finest oil, revolts against the liquid fit only for the lubrication of machinery he so often is offered in Germany, England, and France. The fowls and figs of Tuscany, the white truffles of Piedmont, the artichokes of Rome, the walnuts and grapes of Sorrento, might well stir a gourmet to poetic flights. The Italians are very fond of their Risotto^ the rice which they eat with various seasonings,,