Food and wines of the country—Barcelona—San Sebastian—Bilbao—Madrid—Seville— Bobadilla—Grenada—Jerez— Algeciras—Lisbon—Estoril.
Food and wines of the country—Barcelona—San Sebastian—Bilbao—Madrid—Seville— Bobadilla—Grenada—Jerez— Algeciras—Lisbon—Estoril.
A candid Frenchman, who had lived long in Spain, asked as to the cookery of Spain compared with that of other nations, replied, "It is worse even than that of the English, which is the next worst." That Frenchman was, however, rather ungrateful, for the Spaniards taught the French how to stuff turkeys with chestnuts. The Spanish cooks also first understood that an orange salad is the proper accompaniment to a wild duck, and the Spanish hams are excellent. The lower orders in Spain have too great a partiality forajoandaceitefor oil and garlic. Their oil, which they use greatly even with fish, is not the refined oil of Genoa or the south of France, but is a coarse liquid, the ill taste of which remains all day in one's mouth. Garlic is an excellent seasoning in its proper place and quantity, and the upper classes of the Spaniards have their meat lightly rubbed with it before being cooked,but the lower classes use it in the cooking to an intolerable extent. Capsicum is much eaten in Spain, being sometimes stuffed, but in any quantity it is very indigestible.
In the south of Spain the heat is tropical in the summer, and the only meat then available in any small town is generally goat. As in India, the chicken which you order for your lunch is running about the yard of the inn when the order is given. The principal dish of Spain isPuchero, which consists of beef, very savoury sausages, bacon, fowl, and plenty of the white haricot beans known asgarbanzos, some leeks, and a small onion, all put together into a pot to boil. The liquid is carefully skimmed before it actually boils, and as the scum stops forming hot water is added. The broth,Caldo, is used as soup; the remainder, which has had most of the sustaining quality boiled out of it, is the daily dish of the middle and upper classes, who call itCocido.Gazpacois a kind of cold soup much used in the southern and hotter parts of Spain. It is made of bread crumbs, bonito fish, onions, oil, vinegar, garlic, and cucumbers. All these are beaten into a pulp, then diluted, and bread broken into the mixture. The better classes drink this as we should afternoon tea.Bacalas, or dried cod, is one of the staple dishes of the poor in the north, and the English in Spain also often eat it. The favourite mode of preparation is to first soak out the salt, then let the cod simmer, but not boil, adding afterwardspimientas dulcesand chopped onion fried and pounded. The selection of a cod-fish is the first necessity in preparing this dish, for some of the cheaper kinds from Norway are so odoriferous as to make them impossible to most white men.
Spain is a country which is no happy hunting ground for a gourmet. The restaurants in Barcelona one can rely on, Madrid comes next in honour, and the rest, to use a sporting term, are "nowhere," the customarytable-d'hôtedinner at the restaurants of a small town consisting ofCaldo, then the universal stew, thenArroz à la Valencia, rice, chicken, and tomatoes, and finally quince marmalade.
Lisbon is the one city in Portugal where the cooking is worthy of any serious consideration.
The wines of Spain are the Valdepenàs, which is very strong and really requires eight or ten years in bottle to mature, a Rioja claret, which is a good wine when four years in bottle, and of course sherry in the south, of which all the leading brands are obtainable. In the north I have found Diamante a pleasant wine to drink. The Spanish brandy is, if a good brand is chosen, excellent.
The busy bustling capital of Catalonia is better off in the matter of restaurants than any town in Spain, the capital included. First in order comes Justin's, the longer title of which is the Restaurant de Francia, in the Plaza Real. It is an old-established house with a good cook, and excellent wines in its cellars. It is a restaurant that the French would describe asnon chiffré, for it does not mark the prices on itscard of the day, though they are not higher than at most of the other restaurants of Barcelona. There are some very pleasant private rooms at the restaurant, and a large room for banquets. The cuisine is almost entirely French. You can get a very fair dinner, wine and all, at Justin's for about 6s.; but if you are giving a dinner party, and are prepared to pay 30 pesetas or 18s. a head, Justin's will give you such a dinner as the menu I give below, wine and all:—
Huîtres de Marennes.Consommé Colbert.Hors-d'œuvre variés.Loup. Sauce Hollandaise.Côtelettes de Sanglier Venaison.Salmis de Bécasses.Chapon Truffé.Petits pois à la crème.Glace Napolitaine.Desserts assortis.Vins.Rioja blanco.Vinicola.Cliquot sec frappé.
The Rioja Blanco, Diamante, and Vinicola seem to be the wines most generally drunk at Justin's. MM. Marius and Gerina are the present proprietors.
In the central square, the Plaza Cataluna, is the new and gorgeous Restaurant Colon, attached to the newly finished hotel of that name. The decorations of the interior are artistic, and the building bears on its façade in gold and coloursthe arms of the principal European nations. Here, as at Justin's, the cookery is almost entirely of the French school. Thechefis M. Azcoaga, the manager Mons. Scatti. There is a good fixed priced lunch and dinner, specimen menus of which I give:—
5 Pts.Déjeuner.Hors-d'œuvre.Œufs pochés Princesse.Filets de Sole Waleska.Poulet Cocotte Bayaldy.Buffet froid.Filet grillé. Pommes fondantes.Biscuit glacé.Dessert.6 Pts.Dinner.Hors-d'œuvre.Consommé Duchesse.Crème Windsor.Turbot. Sauce Hollandaise.Carré d'Agneau Maintenon.Haricots verts Anglaise.Caille sur Canapé.Salade.Pêches Richelieu.Dessert.
The Continental and Martin's may be said to run a dead heat for third place. The former is in the Plaza Cataluna, and its cuisine is both foreign and of the country. On its bill of fare are always threeplats de jour, and that on one day,Raviolis Napolitaine,Escargots Bourguinonne, andFilet grille Bordelaisewere the three dishes, and on anotherŒufs Meyerbeer,Filet de veau froid aux Légumes, andRap Marinerashows the variety of the fare. The prices of these dishes are all between one and two pesetas. Under the heading offritures, all kinds ofconchasandEscalopitasandCroquettasare to be found, as well as theFrito Mixto; and the fish column gives an interesting selection of the sea denizens of the coast,Rap,Calamares,Merluza,Pouvine, and others. The banquets at the Continental are entirely French in character.
Martin's in the Rambla del Centro is almost in front of the Opera House, and has a number of snug little rooms for supper parties, of two or more, after the theatre. This is a dinner for a dozen given at Martin's. The position in the menu of game,hors-d'œuvre, and fish is in accordance with the usual Spanish custom, and is always adhered to in this establishment:—
M. Martin, who is the proprietor, will give you a dinner at any price from 4 pesetas upwards. He was caterer to the kings of Portugal and of Sweden when they were at Barcelona in 1888, and has furnished all the banquets given by the municipal council since 1881.Filet de sole Martin, one of the dishes of the house, proves that he has the Parisian ambition to give a name to a filleted sole.
The Maison Dorée which has lately been increased to double its original size, has as proprietors the MM. Pompidor, Frenchmen, who march with the times. It is in the Plaza Cataluna. It makes a speciality of aprix-fixebreakfast and dinner on Thursdays and Saturdays, and it serves tea dailyà l'Anglaisefrom 4 to 6.
There is a little restaurant at Port Bou, kept by Francisco Jaque, where you are likely, if you are making a stay to see the Pyrenees, to be better looked after than at the station on the French side of the frontier. There are rooms to be hired there.
Crossing the Spanish frontier on the western side from France, the first important town reached is San Sebastian. The great sea-bathing place of Spain is a town where one would expect to find some excellent restaurants, for the Queen-mother lives for a great part of the year in herpalace on the sea-shore, and the Court is with the King whenever he is in residence there, which is generally in summer and autumn. A large hotel, with a good restaurant and all the latest improvements, is projected, and no doubt San Sebastian will soon be as well catered for as any French watering-place; but in the meantime it is as well for the casual seeker for a meal to go to the Continental, which overlooks the bay, and where a very fair breakfast is to be obtained for 4 francs in the verandah whence all the life of the place can be watched.
The Casino has a restaurant with a wide verandah which should be a delightful place at which to take dinner. I had been warned that I should not be well served there, but one day I thought that the view of the town and the garden, with its picturesque crowd, would make amends for any dilatoriness. This was the menu of the dinner that I partook of, and, though wine was included in the repast, to conciliate the haughty Spaniard in dress-clothes who came and looked at me as though I were an "earth-man," I ordered a pint of Diamante:—
Hors-d'œuvre.Potages.Crème de volaille. Consommé Riche.Poisson.Langouste. Sauce Tartare.Entrée.Salmis de Perdreaux au Jerez.Légumes.Tomates farcies Provençale.Rôti.Filet de Bœuf Piqué Broche. Salade.Entremets.Arlequin. Dessert.
I do not think that I ever had a worse-served 7 francs worth of food. Once in my life, at a Chicago hotel, I saw a negro waiter shaking up the bottle of Burgundy I had ordered, just to amuse his brother "coons," and I felt a helpless exasperation as I watched him. The same feeling of voiceless anger was upon me as I watched the gentleman who was supposed at the San Sebastian Casino to keep me supplied with hot food, bring a dish from the interior of the café and then put it down on somebody else's table to cool while he strolled across the terrace to ask the military guardian at the gate how many people had paid for admission, or at what hour the band played, or what number had won the lottery.
Bourdette and the Urbana, both with French cookery, are the restaurants patronised by the Englishmen in San Sebastian who talk Spanish, and both are said to be fairly good.
It is curious that at the great northern town of Spain there should be no first-class restaurants. The two best in the town are the Antiguo, inthe Calle de Bidebarrieta, and the Moderno. Both of these boast what the Spaniards termCocina Francesa, which only means that if you make a request, as the English always do, the cook will fry your food with butter instead of oil.
At Portugalete, the port of Bilbao, there is a restaurant, good, as Spanish restaurants go, attached to the hotel of the place, the proprietor of which is Dn. Manuel Calvo. The cook and the staff of waiters come from Lhardy's, the best restaurant in Madrid, and spend their summer by the seaside. The prices at this restaurant are high. Portugalete is only a summer resort.
At Santander, a little further along the northern coast, the best food to be obtained is found at the Hôtel Europa; but the best is bad at Santander. At Burgos and at Zaragoza the two largest hotels in each place give the least indifferent food.
The capital of Spain cries aloud for a Carlton, or a Ritz, or a Savoy, and is, I believe, soon to have a really large hotel with a restaurant managed on the lines which we are accustomed to in all the important European capitals. The Hôtel de Paris, one of the two noisy and expensive hotels on the Puerta del Sol, has always had a reputation for its cookery, always remembering that the standard in Spain is not high. There is atable-d'hôtelunch and atable-d'hôtedinner, ofthe latter of which I append a menu which is a fair specimen:—
Consommé Julienne.Merlan Sauce aux Câpres.Filet de Bœuf Renaissance.Galantine Truffée à l'Aspic.Haricots Verts Sautés.Cailles au Cresson.Crème au Chocolat Glacée.Desserts assortis.
The cookery of the house is French, but Spanish dishes can be obtained by an order given in advance. There used to be a manager at the Paris who was known as Constantino—what his other name was no one knew. He was a universal provider, and the Englishmen who knew him and who used to stay at the Madrid, never hesitated to ask him for anything procurable in the capital, from a ticket for a bull-fight to a genuine Murillo, quite sure that next morning they would find in the office what they had asked for the previous evening.
Lhardy's, in the Curera de San Jerónimo, is the typical Madrid restaurant not attached to an hotel. The appearance of the ground floor is that of acharcutier'sand pastry-cook's combined. The restaurant you will find on the first floor, where atable-d'hôtedinner and lunch are served. The annexed menu shows what the daily lunch is like:—
Potage Tortue à l'Américaine.Turbot Garni. Sauce Crevettes.Filets de Bœuf à la Vatel.Bellevue de Perdreaux à l'Ecarlate.Dindonneaux rôtis au Cresson.Salade Russe.Glace Condé.Dessert.Vins.Jeréz.Bordeaux.Champagne Frappé.Café and Liqueurs.
The Café de Fornos is also well spoken of by all who have experimented. The restaurant at the Fornos is in the café on the ground floor. On the first floor are the private rooms. There are several of the restaurants withcabinets particulierswhere little suppers are given after the theatre, the Fornos being one; but the Madrilese dandy, wishing to supà deux, generally chooses the Café Inglés, as the private rooms are very well decorated. The Perla is also well spoken of. All these restaurants profess the French cuisine, and at Lhardy's as good a dinner is obtainable as at the best restaurants of Barcelona.
At Seville you dine and breakfast at your hotel, whether it be the Madrid or the Paris, both very good hotels for Spain. There is atable-d'hôtedinner at each after the style of the meal of which I have given a menu under the heading of Madrid. At both hotels an extra charge is made to those aristocrats who will notsit at the long table which runs down the centre of the highly ornamented dining-room and are accommodated at little tables at the sides of the room. The greatpatioof the Madrid, with its palm grove and creepers, is a delightful place to sit in after dinner.
The dinner-hour at Seville is seven o'clock. There is a Restaurant Suizo in the Calle de las Sierpes, and a little restaurant, the Eritana, with a pleasant garden, is to be found near the turning point of the drive that the beauty and fashion of Seville take on fine afternoons down the Paseo de las Delicias by the river. If you are tempted to try the Manzanilla wine with its proper accompaniment of snails orlangostinos, visit the Taberna, opposite the Madrid Hotel; and if you are a bachelor, do not mind an atmosphere of smoke, can make yourself understood in Spanish, and like local colour, take yourcafé au laitof an evening in the Café Cantante of the Calle Sterpes. You will recognise the house by the little dancing-girl on the lamp.
The junction of the lines to Seville, Granada, and Algeciras is Bobadilla, and there all trains wait for half an hour that the passengers may feed. The meal is a very fair sample of Spanish cookery, and you are given soup or eggs, according to the time of day, an entrée, a joint, and fish. I can still recall a Bobadillian meal, with the taste of garlic acting as a sort ofLeitmotivin all the dishes, of omelette, stewed beef and beans, aragout of veal, fried fish in butter, and cheese. Do not omit to cast an eye on the fair damsel behind the bar. She is a typical Andalusian beauty and is used to admiration.
The hotels Siete Suclos and Washington Irving are the two principal hotels near the Alhambra, and are crowded with tourist-trippers of all nations, Americans and Germans predominating, during the tourist season. At the Siete Suclos the cookery is said to be Spanish in character. My personal experience is confined to the Washington Irving, and on the first day of my stay, when I tried to order breakfast and the waiter, in answer to my query as to what dishes were ready, rolled out with great rapidity, "Beefsteeake, colfolanam, baconnegs, mutton-chops, mutton cotolettes," I thought that the local Spanish dishes sounded something like English ones. Englishmen who live in Spain tell me that they generally go to the Alhambra, which I take to be the Casa de Huespedes, 3 Alhambra, a lodging-house where I fancy only Spanish is spoken.
At Cadiz the cooking at the Grand Hôtel de Paris is Spanish and good of its kind. At Jerez the cooking at the Fondas de Los Cisnes and La Victoria is Spanish also. This is the menu of a dinner at the Hôtel Los Cisnos:—
Consommé de Quenelles á la Royal.Filetes de Tenguados á la Tutus.Chuletas de Cordero á la Inglesa.Pechugas de Pollos á la Suprema.Perdices al jugo.Ensalada Rusa.Espárragos de Aranjuez, salsa blanca.Mantecados de Vainilla y Fresa.Postres variados.
The town on the Spanish side of the bay has redeemed Gibraltar from its ill fame as a place of entertainment. The late Ignacio Lersundi, under whose rule the Bristol in London—now converted into a ladies' club—gave one of the best, if not the best,table-d'hôtedinners obtainable in the English capital, supervised the arrangements of the Hôtel Reina Christina, and thetable-d'hôtedinner there still is an excellent one.
There are good hotels to stay at in Lisbon and there are restaurants in plenty, but to try the cookery of some of the town eating-houses a gourmet requires to have his taste educated up to, or down to, the Portuguese standard.
At the Braganza, a little club of bachelor Britons have been in the habit of dining together and ordering their dinner in advance, and this is a fair sample of what the steady-going but very comfortable hostelry can do when it chooses:—
A goodtable-d'hôtebreakfast and dinner are served daily at 11A.M.and 7P.M. and the price is moderate, being about 800 réis and 1.200 respectively. (It is well to remember that the exchange varies considerably, and it is therefore difficult to give the equivalents in sterling for the prices quoted, but 5500 to 6000 réis may be roughly taken at£1sterling.) The proprietor is M. Sasetti, who is ably supported by his manager and by a head waiter named Celestino, a most useful person in every way.
Wines, spirits, and liqueurs of foreign origin are expensive at the Braganza, as they are everywhere else, owing to the high custom tariff; but the local wines, amongst which may be cited Collares, Cadafaes, Collares Branco, Serradayreswhite and red, etc., are all good and cheap table wines.
The next restaurant as regards comfort, cleanliness, and cuisine is the Café Tavares, situated in the Rua Largo de S. Roque. It is essentially a café restaurant, and is open from breakfast time in the morning till 3 or 4 the following morning. Tavares is the principal rendezvous of the young bloods, both Portuguese and foreign, particularly so after the theatres and opera are over and suppers are in demand. The revel goes on from twelve o'clock until any hour of the morning, more especially as regards thecabinets particuliers, which are best entered from the back entrance situated in the Rua das Gaveas. A very goodtable-d'hôtelunch and dinner are served daily at the very moderate cost of 600 and 800 reis. The proprietor and manager is Snr. Caldeira, who is most attentive and obliging to his guests.
If any visitor to Lisbon is anxious to try the Portuguese cooking, he cannot do better than pay a visit to the Leão d'Ouro, situated in the Rua de Principe, adjoining the Central Railway Station. This formerly was, and to a great extent still is, the rendezvous of actors, authors, and professional men. The food is good and very cheap, servedà la carte. Portuguese food may be called "highly seasoned," but for all that there are many good dishes, one speciality of the house beingSopa de Camarao, abisqueof prawns, which in no way is to be despised. With regard to wines at this restaurant it is advisable to drink those of the country.
Estoril is a very picturesque and beautiful spot about three-quarters of an hour from Lisbon by rail. Here there has been lately established a high-class hotel withcuisine à la Françaiseand good wines. The hotel is owned and managed by M. Estrade, who has had a long experience in this class of business.
N.N.-D.
Viennese restaurants and cafés—Baden—Carlsbad—Marienbad—Prague—Bad Gastein—Budapesth.
Viennese restaurants and cafés—Baden—Carlsbad—Marienbad—Prague—Bad Gastein—Budapesth.
The cuisine of the best of the Viennese restaurants, those attached to the big hotels, is French, though the Wiener Rostbraten and the Wiener Schnitzel are world-famous, and the typical Viennese dinner is a good French dinner with the addition of very delicious bread and pastry made with a lighter hand than any Gallic cook brings to his task. The wines of the country of Retz, Mailberg, Pfaffstadt, Gumpoldskirchen, Klosterneuberg, Nussberg, and Vöslau should all be tasted, most of them being more than drinkable. Beer, however, is the real Viennese drink, and the very light liquid, ice cold, is a delightful beverage.
"Stay at what hotel you please, but dine at the Bristol," was the advice given me nigh a score of years ago when I first visited Vienna, and it holds good now; indeed of late the "smartset" of Vienna has taken it greatly into favour, and dines or sups there—the opera and plays begin at 7 and end at 10—constantly. The prices,à la carte, are high, but the cooking is good. Some specialities of the house are trout taken alive from the aquarium,Huitres Titania,Homard Cardinal,Poularde Wladimir,Soufflé King Edward VII.,Oranges à l'Infante.
Sacher's, in the hotel of that name just behind the Opera House, is very well known and may be taken as the typical Viennese restaurant. It is expensive, as indeed all the best Viennese restaurants are. It is not quite so exclusively French in its cuisine as some of the other good restaurants, and one of itsplats de jouris always a national dish, as often as not a Hungarian one, so that by dining or breakfasting at Sacher's one obtains some idea of what the real cookery of the dual monarchy is like. Sacher's has a branch establishment in the Prater, which is always in high favour with the Viennese.
Hartmann's (Leidinger's successor) in the Ring, is an excellent restaurant to breakfast at. Here more of the national dishes—the pickled veal, smoked sucking pig, stewed beef of various kinds, Risi-Bisi, stewed pork—are to be found than at the restaurants mentioned above. It is rather Bohemian, but only pleasantly so.
A good word may be said for the cooking at Meissl and Schadn's, in the Kärnthenerstrass, and for that at the Reidhof.
The Stephan Keller (Café de l'Europe) in the Stephan Platz is a much frequented café. It was originally an underground resort in thevaults of St-Stephan, but it has risen to a higher sphere. This house is much used by the colony of artists who also are to be found at Hartmann's, Gause's, and the Rother Igel.
There are wine houses—Esterhazy Keller, for instance, where all classes go to drink the Hungarian wines from the estates of Prince Esterhazy—without number, and many of these have their speciality of Itrian or Dalmatian wines. The summer resorts are mostly for the people only; they are butterfly cafés opening in the summer and closing in the winter, and if theirclientèledeserts them there are only some painted boards, tables, and benches to be carted away and a hedge to be dug out; but in the Prater there are some more substantial establishments, Sacher's, mentioned before, and the Rondeau and Lusthaus, which are made the turning-points in the daily drives of the Viennese.
Vienna keeps very early hours, the cafés closing well before midnight, unless they are kept open for some specialfête.
In the environs of Vienna there are pleasant restaurants on the Kalenberg, up which a little railway runs, and at Klosterneuberg, where one can drink the excellent wine of the place at the Stiftskeller before one admires the view from the terrace or looks at the treasures of the abbey.
Baden bei Wien is a little watering-place sixteen miles from the capital, to which theViennese go for a "cure," and to which the Carlsbad and Marienbad doctors sometimes send their patients to begin an after cure. It is a pretty little place with shady parks and an unpretentious restaurant at the Kurhaus and another in the Weilburggasse, and the walk up the valley of the Schwechat has café-restaurants at several of the points of interest.
Probably twenty Englishmen go to Carlsbad for their liver's sake for every ten who go to Vienna to be amused, and the great Bohemian town in the valley where the hot spring gushes up is one of the resorts to which gourmets, who have eaten not wisely but too well, are most frequently sent. It is a town of good but very simple fare, for the doctors rule it absolutely, and nothing which can hurt a patient's digestion is allowed to appear on the bill of fare of any of the restaurants or hotels.
The life of the place, which chiefly is bound up in the consideration of where to eat the three simple meals allowed, is curious. In the morning, after the disagreeable necessity of drinking three or more glassfuls of the hot water, every man and every lady spends a half hour deciding where to breakfast and what kind of roll and what kind of ham they shall eat. The bakers' shops are crowded by people picking out the special rusk or special roll they prefer, and these are carried off in little pink bags. Two slices of ham are next bought from one of theshops where men in white clothes slice all day long at the lean Prague ham or the fatter Westphalian. No man is really a judge of ham until he has argued for a quarter of an hour every morning outside the shop in the Carlsbad High Street as to what breed of pig gives the most appetising slice. Bag in hand, ham in pocket, the man undergoing a cure walks to the Elephant in the Alte Wiese, or to one of the little restaurants which stud the valley and the hillsides, delightful little buildings with great glass shelters for rainy days and lawns and flower-beds and creepers, where neat waitresses in black, with their Christian names in white metal worn as a brooch, or great numbers pinned to their shoulders, receive you with laughing welcome, set a red-clothed table for you, and bring you the hot milk and boiled eggs which complete your repast. Be careful of which waitress you smile at on your first day, for she claims you as her especial property for the rest of your stay, and to ask another waitress to bring your eggs would be the deepest treason.
Dinner is a mid-day meal, and as you are not tied down to any particular hotel for your meals because you happen to be staying in it, the custom is to dine where your fancy pleases you. There is Pupp's with its verandah and its little grove of Noah's ark trees, patronised by all nations, and the Golden Shield and Anger's, and Wirchaupt's in the Alte Wiese, which since I have known Carlsbad has grown from a ham shop into a very smart little restaurant handsomely decorated. Wirchaupt's is small enough still for its patrons to have individual attention paid them, and if you are anhabituéyou will be told as you go in if anything especially good has been bought at market that morning, and little hints are given you as to the composition of your meal. Bohemian partridges and the trout andZanderfrom the Tepl and other mountain streams are the two great "stand-bys" of the man at Carlsbad who likes good food; but the big fowls which come, I fancy, from Styria, are excellent birds; the venison, the hares, the mutton, and the ever-present ham are all capital. The wines of the country are excellent. The cheapest form of the local wine is served in littlecaraffes, but here, as in most other places, it is wise to pay the extra shilling and drink the bottled wine. Besides the wine of the province there are obtainable the usual Austrian wines, and the Hungarian Erlauer and Offner and Carlowitz.
I have halted in the Alte Wiese to descant on the usual dinner of Carlsbad, which, orderedà la carte, never costs more than a few shillings. Up on the hill at the Bristol, from the terrace of which there is a fine view over the valley to the Keilberg, and at the Savoy Westend, where some Egyptian servants imported by Nuncovitch from the land of the Pharoahs wait upon you, and which has a great pavilion as its open-air dining-hall, you are likely to find most of the people, English and American, whose movements are recorded in the society papers, taking their mid-day meal. The American millionaire at Carlsbad,however, fares just as simply and just as cheaply as does any half-pay captain, for Dr. Krauss and Dr. London are no considerers of persons in their dieting.
In the afternoon, about five o'clock, all the world goes to one of the cafés in the valley to listen to a concert and to drink hot milk; and in the evening a meal, as simple as dinner has been, is eaten. This is the hour to see Pupp's at its best. In the little grove of trees before the house, where the big band-stand is, there is an array of tables, each with its lamp upon it. In the outside verandah of the great restaurant there are more tables, and inside the glazed verandah and in two long rooms, each rising a step above the other, are a host of people supping. The scene is like some great effect at a theatre, and I know nowhere where one can find any restaurant shining with light as Pupp's does on a summer night. The restaurant in the Stadtpark is always crowded when the band plays there, but the attendance is very hurried and casual, and contrasts badly with Pupp's and the other first-class restaurants. At the two Variety Theatres in the lower town one can, by booking a table in advance, sup fairly comfortably, and listen while one sups to a very good variety entertainment.
At Gieshübl, where Herr Mattoni makes a fortune by bottling the spring water, and which is little more than an hour's drive from Carlsbad, there is an excellent restaurant where the fare is the same as that found in Carlsbad.
All that I have written of Carlsbad, concerning its food and drink, applies to Marienbad. There is the same freedom as to dining-places, and on a sunny day a man will take his meal in one of the creeper-grown bowers which are erected on the edge of the park by the hotels which face it, or at the Kursaal garden. On a dull day he will dine at Klinger's, the house which has a special celebrity, but which, with its rather stuffy rooms and its much ornamented plate-glass windows, which never seem to open quite wide enough, is pleasanter on a cool day than a hot one; or at the New York, which has its rooms ornamented after the style the Parisians call "the New Art."
There are several good restaurants in the environs of Marienbad, at the Waldmühle and elsewhere, and the Egerländer Café is well worth a visit. It is a large café, with the usual grove before it, built on a commanding hill. The special characteristics of the place are that the rooms and the great hall are built and furnished after the fashion of Egerland, the most picturesque style that Austria boasts of. The girls who wait are all in the handsome Egerland costume, and the effect is very pretty. There is a restaurant at Egerland, and the proprietor, when I was at Marienbad in 1901, talked of adding sleeping apartments to the establishment and of making it a hotel as well as a restaurant and café.
The expedition to Prague generally forms part of a stay at Carlsbad or Marienbad. My personal experience, gained from two visits, is that if one stays either at the Saxe or the Blauer Stern, it is wiser to take one's meals in the restaurants of the hotels than to go further afield and fare worse. One traverses the hop-fields of Pilsen during the journey from Carlsbad, and an amateur of beer should find Prague a paradise second only to Munich.
There are several more or less pretentious hotels in Gastein, but perhaps the most reliable for feeding purposes is the Badeschloss; it is rather old-fashioned, but good of its kind. It was formerly the palace of the Cardinal Bishops. The hot-water springs, discovered inA.D.680, have their source close to the hotel.
The most distinctive feature of Hungarian cookery is the use ofpaprika, the national pepper. AGoulache, as it is usually written on menus, orGulyasas the Hungarians call it, is a ragout in which the pepper plays an important part. ThePaprikahuhnis a chicken stewed or baked with the pepper, which is very pleasant tasting. Porkserved with a sharp-tastingpuréein which cranberries play arolé, and other combinations of meat and fruit, brought together very much as we Britons take red current jelly with hare and mutton, are all part of the national cookery. The entrails of animals are used to make some of the dishes; pork, from the innocent sucking pig to the great wild boar, veal, pickled or fresh, and calves lungs in vinegar are all treated as national dishes.
The wines of the country are well known to all Anglo-Saxons for some of them, the red wines, Erlauer, Ofner, and Carlovicz, are exported in great quantities. The white wines, Ruster, Schomlayer, Szegszarder, and others are equally drinkable, while Tokay is of course a king amongst wines.
Of restaurants in Budapesth there are but few to be recommended to the wanderer. Both the Ungaria and the Koningen von England have restaurants where one can order a dinner which is expensive however simple it may be, and where one may listen to one of those gipsy bands which are now to be found in most of the London restaurants and in some of the Parisian ones. The best restaurant not attached to an hotel is Palkowitch's, the National Casino, which is the "smart" restaurant of the town. A Hungarian gentleman, wishing to give a friend a good dinner, takes him to the Casino Club, and this is the style of meal and wines that he will get. I am not responsible for the spelling of the menu, which is that of the club steward:—
There is a fairly good restaurant near the landing-place on the Margarethen Insel.
N.N.-D.
The dishes of the country—The restaurants of Bucarest.
The dishes of the country—The restaurants of Bucarest.
In Roumania you must never be astonished at the items set down in the bill of fare, and if "bear" happens to be one try it, for bruin does not make at all bad eating. The list of game is generally surprisingly large, and one learns in Roumania the difference there is in the venison which comes from the different breeds of deer. Caviar, being the produce of the country, is a splendid dish, and you are always asked which of the three varieties, easily distinguishable by their variety of colour, you will take. A caviarsaladeis a dish very frequently served. The following are some of the dishes of the country:—Ciulama, chicken with a sauce in which flour and butter are used;Scordolea, in which crawfish, garlic, minced nuts, and oil all play a part;Baclava, a cake of almonds served withsiropof roses. These three dishes, though now Roumanian, were originally introduced from Turkey.Ardei Ungeluteis a dish of green pepper, meat, and rice;Sarmaluteare vine leaves filled with meat and served with a preparation of milk;Militeiisminced beef fried on a grill in the shape of a sausage.CheslasandMamaliguzza, the food of the peasant, much resemble the ItalianPolentaand are eaten with cold milk.Ghiveci, a ragout with all kinds of vegetables mixed in it, is a great dish of the country.
When in Bucarest, as it should be spelt, go straight to Capsa's in the Calea Victorici, a first-rate restaurant. It is perhaps not quite equal to the best of the London and Paris establishments, but the cooking is really good, and certainly superior to anything you can find in Vienna. The Frenchchefwill provide you with arécherchédinner orderedà la carte. Fresh caviar is in perfection there, as also the sterlet or young sturgeon; the latter is caught in the Danube, and is a most dainty and much prized fish. The prices are fairly high,—about 2 francs 50 centimes for an ordinaryplat. The wines are all rather expensive, that of the country being perhaps best left alone, although the Dragasani is a wine which tastes strangely at first, but to which one becomes used. A liqueur tasting of carraway seeds is pleasant, but that made from the wild plum is not to be rashly ventured upon.
This is the menu of a little dinner for two eaten at Capsa's:—
Caviar.Ciorba de Poulet.Turbot à la Grec.Mousaka aux Courzes.Gâteaux.
And this a breakfast at the same establishment:—
Glachi de Carpe (froid).Œufs Polenta.Pilau.Aubergines aux Tomates.
There is also a confectioner's shop kept by Capsa, who was for some considerable time at Boissier's in Paris, afterwards returning to Bucarest and opening this establishment. It is as good as that of any Parisianconfiseur, with the result that all Bucarest are his customers, and his business is an extremely lucrative one.
A cheap dinner can be obtained,à la carte, at the Hôtel Continental in the Calea Victorici, opposite the Théâtre Nationale.
Jordachi's in the Strada Coatch, and Enesco's in the Strada Sfantu Tonica, also deserve mention; they are cheap, second-rate restaurants, but you get there the dishes of the country. In both these places a capital band of Tziganes play the music of the country. Enesco's is, perhaps, the better of the two. If you require anyspécialitésthe waiter will be sure to know what to advise; one dish, calledBrochettes de Filet, may be recommended. The waiters at Enesco's and Jordachi's are intelligible in German and Roumanian; at the Continental, and especially at Capsa's, they are mostly French.
If you pay a call in Bucarest you will be offeredDolceazza, a kind of sweetmeat, and a glass of water.