The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Part 9

The Hague

At the Hague, the capital, the best restaurant is Van der Pyl's, in the centre of the town, situated on the Plaats, where the cuisine is French and excellent, and where there are admirable wines in the cellar. A good set luncheon is served at this restaurant for the very moderate price of one florin (1s. 8d.); but it is wise to order dinner _a la carte_, and to give them some hours' notice. The manager is M. Anjema. It is advisable to secure a table near the window, especially in summer. Some of the best wines are not put on the wine-list.

In former years the proprietor of Van der Pyl'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 _pet.i.t salon_ alone with his 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 _pet.i.t 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 particulier_ 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 doc.u.ment did make its appearance, some of the items were astonis.h.i.+ng. "You don't expect me to pay this bill?" said the astonished 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 Van der Pyl's makes a speciality of:--_Poule au pot Henri IV._, _Sole Normande_, _Cote de Boeuf a la Russe_, _Homards a l'Americaine_, _Poularde a la Parisienne_, _Perdreaux au choux_, _Omelette Siberienne_, _Souffle Palmyre_, _Poires Alaska_, most of them standard dishes of the usual _cuisine Francaise_, though the _Omelette Siberienne_ was invented to please a British diplomat who preferred a _soupcon_ of absinthe to either rum or k.u.mmel with his omelette. And this is a typical menu drawn up by M. Anjema, a menu which reads as though it were for a French banquet:--

Huitres de Zelande.

Caviar.

Consomme Diplomate.

Truite Saumonee a la Nantua.

Poularde a l'Imperiale.

Noisettes de Chevreuil a la St-Hubert.

Delice de foie gras au Champagne.

Beca.s.sines roties. Salade St-Clair.

Tartelettes aux Haricots Verts.

Mousse Antoinette.

Sandwiches au Parmesan.

Dessert.

The Cafe Royal, in the Vijberberg, with an American luncheon bar on the ground floor and a restaurant upstairs, is fairly good.

Of the hotels to which restaurants are attached, the Hotel des Indes and Hotel Vieux Doelen have a reputation for good cookery. The former was in olden times the town house of the Barons van Brienen, and 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, Mr. Haller, has been made a director of Claridge's Hotel in London, and divides his attention between the two hotels.

The following menu is a typical one of a dinner of ceremony at the Hotel des Indes; it was composed for a banquet given by Count Henri Sturgkh:--

Huitres.

Consomme Bagration.

Filets de Soles Joinville.

Carre de Mouton Nesselrode.

Parfait de foie gras de Strasbourg.

Fonds d'Artichauts a la Barigoule.

Grouse rotis sur Crotons.

Compote de Montreuil.

Coeurs de Laitues.

Creme au Chocolat et Vanille.

Paillettes au Fromage.

The Vieux Doelen has a beautiful old dining-room, and it is here that every year the smartest b.a.l.l.s in the capital take place, given by the Societe du Casino, and generally attended by Their Majesties and the Court.

Hock's fish shop in the market has a room where excellent oyster suppers are served, but this is not a place to which ladies should be taken at night, for it is then patronised by damsels who take the courtesy t.i.tle of actresses, and the students from Leiden.

Amsterdam

The Restaurant Riche is managed by a Frenchman, and the cuisine is French. It is necessary to order dinner in advance, and it is well to be particular. Under these circ.u.mstances 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, has a celebrity for its fish dinners, and excellent oyster suppers are to be had there.

Scheveningen

Curiously enough, this important seaside resort has no restaurant with any claim to celebrity. The dinners to be obtained in the hotels have to suffice for the wants of the visitors to the place.

Rotterdam

The Stroomberg here deserves a word of commendation, the food to be obtained there being excellent.

The Food of the People

The cuisine of the country, the food the people of the country eat, is not recommended to the experimenting gourmet; for the favourite dish is a sort of Kedjeree, in which dried stock-fish, rice, potatoes, b.u.t.ter, and anchovies all play their part. Sauerkraut and sausages, soused herrings and milk puddings also have claims to be considered the national dishes.

CHAPTER VI

GERMAN TOWNS

The cookery of the country--Rathskeller and beer-cellars-- Dresden--Munich--Nuremburg--Hanover--Leipsic--Frankfurt-- Dusseldorf--The Rhine valley--"Cure" places--Kiel--Hamburg.

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 innumerable pickles, are the best edible products of the Fatherland. The German meat is as a rule poor. The best beef and mutton in the north has generally been imported from Holland. 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 cooked _au bleu_. Zander, a fish which is partly of the pike, partly of the trout species, is considered a great dainty.

The vegetables are generally spoiled in the cooking, being converted into a _puree_ which might well earn the adjective "eternal." Even the asparagus is spoilt by the native cook, being cut into inch cubes and set afloat in melted b.u.t.ter. _Compotes_ sweet and sour, are served at strange times during the repast, and lastly, as a sort of "old guard,"

the much-beloved but deadly Sauerkraut, made from both red and white cabbage, is always brought up to complete the cook's victory. The potatoes in Germany are generally excellent, the sandy soil being suitable for their cultivation.

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 _compote_ 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-cla.s.s German of the north usually eats them, and are an inferior copy of what he gets in his own home. As a warning I give what any enterprising traveller looking for the food of the country from the kitchen of a little inn may expect:--

Coffee at 8 A.M. with rolls, _Kaffee Brodchen_, and b.u.t.ter, and this meal he will be expected to descend to the dining-room to eat.

A slight lunch at 11 A.M., at which the German equivalent for a sandwich, a Brodchen cut and b.u.t.tered, with a slice of uncooked ham, lachs, or cheese between the halves, makes its appearance, and a gla.s.s of beer or wine is drunk.

Dinner (Mittagessen) is announced between 1 and 2 o'clock, and is a long meal consisting of soup, which is the water in which the beef has been boiled; fish; a messy entree, probably of Frankfurt sausage; the beef boiled to rags with a _compote_ of plums or wortleberries and mashed apples; and, as the sweet, pancakes.

Coffee is served at 4 P.M. with _Kaffee Kuchen_, its attendant cake, and at supper (Abendessen) one hot dish, generally veal, is given with a choice of cold viands or sausages in thin slices--_leber Wurst, Gottinger Wurst_, hot _Frankfurter Wurst_, and black pudding.

If the above gruesome 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.

A dinner-party at a private house of well-to-do German people is always a very long feast, lasting at least two hours, and the cookery, though good, is heavy and rich, and too many sauces accompany the meats. Many of the dishes are not served _a la Russe_, 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 obtrudes itself over the left shoulder, and it is necessary to twist in one's seat and go through a gymnastic performance to take a helping.