The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Part 1

The Gourmet's Guide to Europe.

by Algernon b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

PREFACE

Often enough, staying in a hotel in a foreign town, I have wished to sally forth and to dine or breakfast at the typical restaurant of the place, should there be one. Almost invariably I have found great difficulty in obtaining any information regarding any such restaurant.

The proprietor of the caravanserai at which one is staying may admit vaguely that there are eating-houses in the town, but asks why one should be anxious to seek for second-cla.s.s establishments when the best restaurant in the country is to be found under his roof. The hall-porter has even less scruples, and stigmatises every feeding-place outside the hotel as a den of thieves, where the stranger foolishly venturing is certain to be poisoned and then robbed. This book is an attempt to help the man who finds himself in such a position. His guide-book may possibly give him the names of the restaurants, but it does no more. My co-author and myself attempt to give him some details--what his surroundings will be, what dishes are the specialities of the house, what wine a wise man will order, and what bill he is likely to be asked to pay.

Our ambition was to deal fully with the capitals of all the countries of Europe, the great seaports, the pleasure resorts, and the "show places."

The most acute critic will not be more fully aware how far we have fallen short of our ideal than we are, and no critic can have any idea of the difficulty of making such a book as we hope this will some day be when complete. At all events we have always gone to the best authorities where we had not the knowledge ourselves. Our publisher, Mr. Grant Richards, quite entered into the idea that no advertis.e.m.e.nts of any kind from hotels or restaurants should be allowed within the covers of the book; and though we have asked for information from all cla.s.ses of gourmets--from amba.s.sadors to the simple globe-trotter--we have not listened to any man interested directly or indirectly in any hotel or restaurant.

Hotels as places to live in we have not considered critically, and have only mentioned them when the restaurants attached to them are the dining-places patronised by the _bon-vivants_ of the town.

Over England we have not thrown our net, for _Dinners and Diners_ leaves me nothing new to write of London restaurants.

In conclusion I beg, on behalf of my co-author and myself, to return thanks to all the good fellows who have given us information; and I would earnestly beg any travelling gourmet, who finds any change in the restaurants we have mentioned, or who comes on treasure-trove in the shape of some delightful dining-place we know nothing of, to take pen and ink and write word of it to me, his humble servant, to the care of Mr. Grant Richards, Leicester Square. So shall he benefit, in future editions, all his own kind. We hear much of the kindness of the poor to the poor. This is an opportunity, if not for the rich to be kind to the rich, at least for those who deserve to be rich to benefit their fellows.

N. Newnham-Davis.

CHAPTER I

PARIS

The "Cuisine de Paris"--A little ancient history--Restaurants with a "past"--The restaurants of to-day--Over the river--Open-air restaurants--Supping-places--Miscellaneous.

Paris is the culinary centre of the world. All the great missionaries of good cookery have gone forth from it, and its cuisine was, is, and ever will be the supreme expression of one of the greatest arts in the world.

Most of the good cooks come from the south of France, most of the good food comes from the north. They meet at Paris, and thus the Paris cuisine, which is that of the nation and that of the civilised world, is created.

When the Channel has been crossed you are in the country of good soups, of good fowl, of good vegetables, of good sweets, of good wine. The _hors-d'oeuvre_ are a Russian innovation; but since the days when Henry IV. vowed that every peasant should have a fowl in his pot, soup from the simplest _bouillon_ to the most lordly _consommes_ and 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 Duglere achieved a place amongst the immortals, by his manipulation of the brill. The soles of the north 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 the tiny gudgeon and crayfish--can show as n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble profession. The British beef stands against all the world as the meat n.o.blest for the spit, though 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 English 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 contribution to the Paris kitchens. Veal is practically an unknown meat in London; and the calf 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, though the Norfolk turkey holds his own.

A vegetable dish, served by itself and not flung 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, or the homely _Perdrix au choux_, or the splendid _Faisan a la Financiere_ show that there are many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him; and the peasants of the south of France had crushed the bones of their ducks for a century before we in London ever heard of _Canard a la Presse_. The Parisian eats a score of little birds we are too proud to mention in our cookery books, and he knows the difference between a _mauviette_ and an _alouette_. Perhaps the greatest abas.e.m.e.nt 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 vineyards. An Austrian pastry-cook has a lighter hand than a French one, but the Parisian open tarts and cakes and the _friandises_ and the ice, or _coupe-jacque_ at the end of the Gallic repast are excellent.

Paris is strewn with the wrecks of restaurants, and many of the establishments with great names of our grandfathers' and fathers' days are now only _tavernes_ or cheap _table-d'hote_ restaurants. The Grand Vefour in the Palais Royal--where the patrons of the establishment in Louis Philippe's time used to eat off royal crockery, bought from the surplus stock of the palaces by M. Hamel, cook to the king, and proprietor of the restaurant--has lost its vogue in the world of fas.h.i.+on. The present Cafe de Paris has an excellent cook, and is the supper restaurant where the most s.h.i.+mmering lights of the _demi-monde_ may be seen; but the old Cafe de Paris, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, the house which M. Martin Guepet brought to such fame, and where the _Veau a la Ca.s.serole_ drew the warmest praise from our grandfathers, has vanished. Bignon's, which was a name known throughout the world, has fallen from its high estate; the Cafe Riche, though it retains a good restaurant, is not the old famous dining-place any longer; and the Marivaux, where Joseph flourished, has been transformed into a _bra.s.serie_. The Cafe Hardi, at one time a very celebrated restaurant, made place for the Maison d'Or, and the gilded glory of the latter has now pa.s.sed in its turn. The Cafe Veron, Philippe's, of the Rue Mont Orgueil, and the Rocher de Cancale in the Rue Mandar, where Borel, one of the cooks of Napoleon I., made gastronomic history, Beauvilliers's, the proprietor of which was a friend of all the field-marshals of Europe, and made and lost half-a-dozen fortunes, the Trois Freres Provenceaux, the Cafe Very, and D'Hortesio's are but memories.

The saddest disappearance of all, because the latest, is the Maison d'Or, which is to be converted, so it is said, into a _bra.s.serie_. The retirement of Casimir, one of the Verdier family, who was to the D'Or what Duglere was to the Anglais, precipitated the catastrophe, and in the autumn of 1902 the house gave its farewell luncheon, and closed with all the honours of war. Alas for the _Carpe a la Gelee_ and the _Sole au vin Rouge_ and the _Poularde Maison d'Or_! I shall never, I fear, eat their like again. There was much history attached to the little golden house; more, perhaps, than to any other restaurant in the world. From its doors Rigolboche, in the costume of Mother Eve, started for her run across the road to the Anglais. At the table by one of the windows looking out on to the boulevard Nestor Roqueplan, Fould, Salamanca, and Delahante used always to dine. Upstairs in "Le Grand 6," which was to the Maison d'Or what "Le Grand 16" is to the Anglais, Salamanca, who drew a vast revenue from a Spanish banking-house, used to give extraordinary suppers at which the lights of the _demi-monde_ of that day, Cora Pearl, Anna Deslions, Deveria, and others used to be present.

The amus.e.m.e.nt of the Spaniard used to be to spill the wax from a candle over the dresses, and then to pay royally for the damage. One evening he asked one of the MM. Verdier whether a very big bill would be presented to him if he burned the whole house down, and on being told that it was only a matter of two or three million francs he would have set light to the curtains if M. Verdier had not interfered to prevent him. The "beau Demidoff," the duelling Baron Espeleta, Princes Galitzin and Murat, Tolstoy, and the Duc de Rivoli gave their parties in the "Grand 6"; and down the narrow, steep flight of steps which led into the side street the Duke of Hamilton fell and broke his neck. The Maison d'Or was the meeting-place, in the sixty odd years of its existence, of many celebrities of literature. Dumas, Meilhac, Emmanuel Arene used to dine there before they went across the road for a game of cards at the Cercle des Deux Mondes, and later Oncle Sarcey was one of the _habitues_ of the house.

Two restaurants in particular seem to me to head the list of the cla.s.sic, quiet establishments, proud of having a long history, satisfied with their usual _clientele_, non-advertising, content to rest on their laurels. Those two are the Anglais and Voisin's, the former on the Boulevard des Italiens, the latter in the Rue St-Honore. The Cafe Anglais, the white-faced house at the corner of the Rue Marivaux, is the senior of the two, for it has a history of more than a hundred years. It was originally a little wine-merchant's shop, with its door leading into the Rue Marivaux, and was owned by a M. Chevereuil. The owners.h.i.+ps of MM. Ch.e.l.let 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 parted with it to its present proprietor. 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. The history of the Anglais has never been written because, as the proprietor 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 the long line of the boulevards, and if you are shown the treasure you will find in it records of dinners given by King Edward when he was Prince of Wales, by the Duc de Morny and by D'Orsay, by all the Grand Dukes who ever came out of Russia, by "Citron" 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 gla.s.s and silver in a cabinet in the pa.s.sage 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 light is 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, 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.

From a gourmet's point of view the great interest in the restaurant will lie, if he wishes to give a large dinner, in the Grand Seize or one of the other private rooms; if he is going to dine alone, or is going to take his wife out to dinner, in the triangular room on the ground floor with its curtains of lace, its white walls, its mirrors and its little gilt tripod in the centre of the floor. Duglere was the _chef_ who, above all others, made history at the Anglais, and the present proprietor, M. Burdel, was one of his pupils; and therefore the cookery of Duglere is the cookery still of the Anglais. _Potage Germiny_ is claimed by the Cafe Anglais as a dish invented by the house, but the Maison d'Or across the way also laid claim to it, and told an anecdote of its creation--how it was invented by Casimir for the Marquis de St-George. The various fish _a la Duglere_ there can be no question concerning, the _Barbue Duglere_ being the most celebrated; and the _Poularde Albufera_ and the _Filet de Sole Mornay_ (which was also claimed by the Grand Vefour) are both specialities of the house. You can order as expensive a dinner as you will for a great feast at the Anglais, and you can eat rich dishes if you desire it; but there is no reason that you should not dine there very well, and as cheaply as you can expect to get good material, good cooking, and good attendance anywhere in the world. The "dishes of the day" are always excellent, and I have dined off a plate of soup, a pint of Bordeaux, and some slices of a _gigot de sept heures_--one of the greatest achievements of cookery--for a very few francs. I always find that I can dine amply, and on food that even a German doctor could not object to, for less than a louis. For instance, a dinner at the Anglais of half-a-dozen Ostende Oysters, _Potage Laitues et Quenelles_, _Merlans Frits_, _Cuisse de Poularde de Rotie_, _Salade Romaine_, cheese, half a bottle of Graves 1e Cru, and a bottle of St-Galmier costs 18 francs.

Voisin's, in the Rue St-Honore, the corner house whose windows, curtained with lace, promise dignified quiet, is a restaurant which has a history, and has, and has had, great names amongst its _habitues_.

Many of these have been diplomats, and Voisin's knows that amba.s.sadors do not care to have their doings, when free from the cares of office, gossiped about. 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 Commune and followed, with an old General, the line the troops had taken in the fight for the city. In the Rue St-Honore were some of the fiercest combats, 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 Emba.s.sy had become a hospital, and all the houses which had not been burned looked as though they 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 diplomats have always had an affection for Voisin's, perhaps because of its nearness to the street of the Emba.s.sies; and in the "eighties"

the attaches of the British Emba.s.sy used to breakfast there every day.

Nowadays, the _clientele_ seems to me to be a mixture of the best type of the English and Americans pa.s.sing through Paris, and the more elderly amongst the statesmen, who were no doubt the das.h.i.+ng young blades of twenty-five years ago. The two comfortable ladies who sit near the door at the desk, and the little show-table of the finest fruit seem to me never to have changed, and there is still the same quiet-footed, unhurrying service which impressed me when first I made the acquaintance of the restaurant. It is one of the dining-places where one feels that to dine well and unhurriedly is the first great business of life, and that everything else must wait at the dinner-hour. The proprietor, grey-headed and distinguished-looking, goes from table to table saying a word or two to the _habitues_, and there is a sense of peace in the place--a reflection of the suns.h.i.+ne and calm of Provence, whence the founder of the restaurant came.

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 a.s.sertion that "The House of Voisin does not serve, has never served, and will never serve, plum-pudding" settled the matter.

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 is the type and parent of the present up-to-date restaurant. The white restaurant on the Boulevard des Italiens has kept at the top of the tree for many years, and 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 before he emigrated to London, came from Paillard's and so did Frederic of the Tour d'Argent, of whom I shall have something to say later on. 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_ as its princ.i.p.al component, has been eaten by a score of kings at one time or another, our own gracious Majesty 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 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--for Paillard's has moved with the time and now has a band of Tziganes, much to the grief of men like myself who prefer conversation to music as the accompaniment of a meal.

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 gla.s.s, is very handsome. M. Paillard, hair parted in the middle and with a small moustache, irreproachably attired, wearing a grey frock-coat by day, and a "smoking" and black tie in the evening, is generally to be seen superintending all arrangements, and there is a _maitre-d'hotel_ who speaks excellent English, and a head waiter with whiskers who deserted to Henri, but subsequently returned, who is also an accomplished linguist.

Amongst the specialities of the house are _Pomme Otero_ and _Pomme Georgette_, both created, I fancy, by Joseph when he was at Paillard's, _Homard Cardinal_, _Filet de Sole a la Russe_, _Sole Paillard_, _Filet de Sole Kotchoubey_, _Timbale de queues d'Ecrevisses Mantua_, _Cote de Boeuf braise Empire_, _Pommes Macaire_, _Filet Paillard_, _Supreme de Volaille Grand Duc_, _Rouennais Paillard_, _Baron d'agneau Henri IV._, _Poularde Archiduc_, _Poularde a la Derby_, _Poularde Wladimir_, _Filet de Selle Czarine_, _Beca.s.se au Fumet_, _Rouennais a la Presse_, _Terrine de Foie Gras a la gelee au Porto_, _Perdreau et Caille Paillard_.

Two menus of dinners M. Paillard has given me, one a very n.o.ble feast, to the length of which I am a conscientious objector but which I print, presently, in full, and the other a banquet of lesser grandeur with _Creme Germiny_, _Barbue Paillard_, _Ortolans en surprise_, _Salade Ideale_, and many other good things in it from which I select the following dishes as making a typical little Paillard feast for two, the price of which would not be a king's ransom:--

Caviar frais.

Consomme Viveur.

Filets de Sole Joinville.

Coeurs de Filet Rachel.

Pommes Anna.

Haricots Verts a la Touranquelle.

An Ice or some iced Fruits and some Coffee.

And this repast might well be washed down by a bottle of Montrachet 1885, with a gla.s.s of Fine Champagne Palais de St-Cloud to follow.

This is the menu of the banquet:--

| Le Caviar Imperial.

| Les Huitres de Burnham.

| ----- | Le Consomme Paillard.

| Pailles Parmesan.

| La Creme d'Aretin.

| ----- | Les Croustades a la Victoria.

_Eau-de-vie Russe._ | ----- | La Carpe a la Chambord.

_Chablis Moutonne._ | Le Turbot a l'Amiral.

| ----- _Johannisberg 1893._ | Le Baron de Pauillac persille.

| Les pommes Macaire.

_Mouton Rothschild | Le Veloute Favorite.

1875._ | ----- | Le Desir de Roi.

_Clos Vougeot 1858._ | ----- | Les Beca.s.ses au fumet.

_Moet brut 1884._ | La Salade Esperance.

| ----- _Fine Champagne des | Les Asperges d'Argenteuil Tuileries 1800._ | Sce Mousseline.

| ----- | La Pyramide a l'Ananas.

| Le Souffle aux Mandarines.

| Macarons et Gaufrettes | Chantilly.