Stockholm restaurants—Malmö—Storvik—Gothenburg—Christiana—Copenhagen—Elsinore.
Stockholm restaurants—Malmö—Storvik—Gothenburg—Christiana—Copenhagen—Elsinore.
Of all the restaurants in the capital of Sweden the Hasselbacken, in the Royal Djurgarten Park, is the most interesting to visit should it be open, which it is from the beginning of March till the end of September. During the early part of the season Tziganes play in one of the small rooms, whereas in summer a somewhat noisy orchestra plays in the garden. The price of dinner,à prix fixe, is 3 kronor 50 öre; this includes soup, fish, meat,relevé(generally a Swedish guinea-fowl calledhjärpe) and ice. Wine and coffee are of course extra.
The Hasselbacken is often used for the giving of banquets of ceremony, but the dinner at 3 kr. 50 öre is more likely to interest the stranger within the gates than the more extensive feasts, so I give a typical menu of this very reasonably priced repast:—
Purée à la Reine.Saumon fumé aux Epinards.Selle de Mouton aux Légumes.Gelinottes rôties. Salade.Soufflée au Citron.
Quite one of the best restaurants is in the Hôtel Continental opposite the Railway Station. The food here is excellent,tornedos(1 kr. 50 öre) andnässelkalsoppa, an excellent soup made from a sort of young nettle, being specialities. The prices are slightly cheaper than those of the Hasselbacken.
Operakällaren is a very good restaurant and one of the most popular. They serve here adéjeunerat 1 kr. 50 öre consisting of an excellent dish of eggs (a speciality of the place) and meat and cheese or so-called "sweet" (generally a very unwholesome stale cake with cream). Thetable-d'hôtedinners are excellent, one being at 3 kr. 50 öre and the other at 2 kr. 50 öre; the first consisting of soup (thick soups being a speciality of the place), fish, entrée, meat, andrelevé(generallyhjärpe), with acompoteof Swedish berries called lingon (a sort of cranberry) and an indifferent sweet or ice. Here, as in most Swedish eating-places, objection is taken to coffee being served in the restaurants, people being requested to take it in the café, which is generally the next room. Supper is served at the Operakällaren, and the restaurant is crowded for this meal. It costs 2 kronor and consists of asmörgasbordor copioushors-d'œuvre, an entrée, and meat.
The Grand Hotel is fairly popular, owing to thesmartness of the dining-room and the "swagger" way in which meals are served. The food is not as good as the decorations. The lunch costs 2 kr. 50 öre and the dinner 3 kr. 50 öre.
The Hôtel Rydberg is also most popular, and the food is good. A great feature is made here, as everywhere, of thesmörgasbord(literally "bread and butter") table, which has a room to itself and on which are a score or more of dishes, there being some wonderful combinations of smoked eels and other fish and eggs amongst them. There are from five to thirty of these dishes, all delicate and appetising. The guests eat them standing. In the same room is a huge plated spirit-stand containing a number of different spirits, white brandy called "Branvin," and other drinks resembling Vodka. The crayfish,krâftor, a little larger than the French ones, excellent in flavour and served in a terrine, thebisquesoup,caviarserved, as of course it should be, on a bed of ice are good at the Rydberg and the cook manages to make even a ptarmigan toothsome. It is a favourite place for people to sup at after the theatre. Thetable-d'hôtedinner costs 3 kr. 50 öre and the lunch 2 kr. 50 öre. Caloric punch is a favourite drink here, as elsewhere in Sweden, and two men think nothing of drinking a bottle between them after dinner or supper.
The Café du Nord is very crowded and very popular, although more bourgeois than the others. The food is good, meals being served mostlyà la carte. A goodfilet de bœufcosts about 90 öre. The business men who mostly patronisethis café dine from 3 to 4P.M.Many people sup there in the evening. There are some excellently painted pictures in black and gold, rather daring and French in subject, on the walls.
There are also the Café Anglais (fairly good) and the Hamburger Börs. The Berns' Salonger, the Blanch Café and Strömparterren are cafés where coffee, punch, liqueurs, and sandwiches may be had. The former is the only one open in summer and winter, the two latter being opened on 1st May without regard to the temperature, and closed on 30th September.
At Malmö, which is the landing place from Kiel, there is a good dinner or lunch obtainable at the big hotel with twin turrets which faces the statue to Gustavus Adolphus.
At Storvik, a station on the Storlieu line, there is a restaurant which is celebrated throughout Sweden. You are charged 2 kronor, which is the price of a meal at all railway refreshment rooms, and help yourself at a big central table, crayfish soup, fish, meat, poultry, game, and sweets all being included in the meal, and a glass of light beer.
The restaurant of the Haglund is a good one, and I give one of the menus of its dinner at 3 kronor:—
Soppa.Potage à la Parmentier.Fisk.Saumon grillée à la maître d'hôtel.Kötträtt.Langue de Bœuf Garni. Sauce aux Olives, ou Fricandeau de veau aux pois.Stek.Poulet à la Printanier. Compotes.Efterrätt.Bavaroise hollandaise ou Framboises.
There are very few Swedish national dishes, milk, cream, butter, and fish being, however, excellent. TheSmörgasbordis the great institution of the country.Plättar, or Swedish pancakes, are also good.
Norway is by no means a happy hunting ground for the gourmet. Salmon, halibut, and ptarmigan are the usual luxuries, and they pall on the palate after a time. The Hôtel Victoriaat Christiana is well spoken of in the matter of cooking, and the Brittania at Throndhjem is said to cater well considering the latitude it is situated in.
From the gourmet's point of view there is little to write as to the Copenhagen restaurants. That of the Hôtel d'Angleterre is good, and a good word can also be said for the cooking at the Hôtel Phœnix.
The Tivoli Gardens are the summer resort of Copenhagen, and all classes patronise them, rich and poor both being catered for. They are a magnified Earl's Court, with the Queen's Hall and the booths from a French fair added. There are restaurants of all kinds at the Tivoli, some being very popular and surprisingly cheap. One of these restaurants, the Danish one, is of interest and gives a very good national meal for 3 kronor.
The Café National is an excellent place at which to sup, cold poached eggs in aspic being one of the delicacies of the house.
All the world makes expeditions to Elsinore, or as the Danes, regardless of Shakespeare, call it, Helingsör. There in the Marienlyst you may see Hamlet's grave, which is so excellently built up that one would believe it to be really the burial place of a Viking, and you can lunch at the Kursaal, whence there is a delightful view across the Sound to Sweden. There is a second park at Elsinore where Ophelia's pool is shown.
The meals in Denmark are preceded by afeast of little delicacies, "sandwiches with the roof off" as they have been aptly described, which both men and ladies eat as they stand and chat before going into lunch or dinner, as is the custom in Sweden and Russia also.
N.N.-D.
Food of the country—Restaurants in Moscow—The dining places of St. Petersburg—Odessa—Warsaw.
Food of the country—Restaurants in Moscow—The dining places of St. Petersburg—Odessa—Warsaw.
The Russians are a nation of gourmands, for theZakouska, the potatoes and celery, spiced eels, stuffed crayfish, chillies stuffed with potato, olives, minced red cabbage, smoked goose-flesh, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon, raw herring, pickled mushrooms, radishes, caviar, and a score of other "appetisers," and thepetits patés, theRastegai(tiny pies of the lightest paste with a complicated fish stuffing and a little fresh caviar in the openings at the top), theTartelettes St-Hubert, any other little pasties of fish and flesh eaten with the soup, could only be consumed by vigorous eaters. Soups are the contribution of Russia to the cuisine of the world, and the moujik, when he first stirred some sour cream into his cabbage broth, little thought that from his raw idea the majesticBortchwould come into existence. The two cold soups of which salt cucumber juice forms the foundation arecurious. There are other admirable soups of Russian invention, one,Selianka, a fish soup made from the sterlet and sturgeon, being much liked when a taste for it has been acquired. The sturgeon of course comes into the menu of many Russian dinners, and also the sterlet, cooked in white wine and served with shrimp sauce. There is a fish pie of successive layers of rice, eggs, and fish, which is one of the native dishes and is much likeKedgeree. Boiled Moscow sucking pig, which in its short but happy life has tasted naught but cream, boiled and served with horse-radish sauce and sour cream is a dish for good angels, and roast mutton stuffed with buckwheat is not to be despised.Srazisare little rolled strips of mutton with forced meat inside, fried in butter. Moscow is especially celebrated for its cutlets of all kinds, chicken garnished with mushrooms and cream, and veal in especial.Nesselrode Puddingis frequently found on Russian menus. Some of the peasant soups, one for instance in which all the scraps of the kitchen are boiled with any grain and fruit which may be handy, are dreadful decoctions. Russia has its native wines, those of the Caucasus being very good imitations of French wine. There is a champagne of the Don which often finds its way into bottles with French labels on them. Polynnaïa, a wormwood whisky, is an excellent digestive.
I now let A.B. have his say.
There are three principal restaurants in Moscow—the Bolskoi Moscovski, the Ermitage,and the Slaviansky Bazaar; of these the Ermitage and the Bolskoi are probably the best for dinner.
The Ermitage in Trubnaia Plastchad has a great reputation in Moscow for its cuisine, and is the favourite restaurant and resort of the upper class; it has an imposing general luncheon and dining-hall, also separate saloons for private dinner-parties. Most of the official banquets are held here.
The cost of a luncheon, with choice of any two dishes from a list of fifteen or twenty, is 1 rouble.
Dinners can be had for—
1 rouble 25 kopeks (6 courses) or2 roubles 25 " (8 courses)
The restaurants are generally open till about 2A.M.
The numerous waiters are dressed in white on week days, on Sundays and feast days in coloured silk Tartar dresses. A large orchestrion plays from time to time during meals.
This restaurant has three headchefsand thirty-eightchefs, besidespâtissiersand all the smaller fry of the kitchen. The store-rooms for game, etc., form one of the sights of Moscow, and should be seen. There is a service of Sèvres china, which is very beautiful, and on which dinners are served on very special occasions. An extra charge, and a high one, is made for the use of this.
The Ermitage is unlike any other restaurant in the world in many respects. There is an admirable cellar of wines, and it is not a placefor a man to give a big dinner at unless he is prepared to encounter a very big bill.
In Russia there is, as you will see by the subjoined menu of a typical Ermitage dinner, a sort of intermediate course between the soup and the fish calledpetits pâtés, which rather takes the place of an entrée, and although counted as nothing when it is preceded by theSakouska(i.e.a preliminary "stand up" snack which waylays you at a separate buffet as you walk into dinner and consists of all sorts ofappétissantssuch as caviar, cunningly smoked fish, olives, etc., with Kümmel and other liqueurs as an accompaniment) the smallest dinner resolves itself into a formidable repast that perhaps only a Russian would be capable of doing full justice to.
Ermitage Restaurant.Menu.Consommé Bariatinsky.Petits Pâtés.Timbale Napolitaine.Vol-au-vent Rossini.Friands à la Reine.Tartelettes St-Hubert.Esturgeon en Vin de Champagne.Selle de Mouton d'Ecosse Nesselrode. PunchImperial.Bécasses.Cailles.Salade et Concombres Salés.Chouxfleurs. Sauce Polonaise.Bombe en Surprise.Dessert.
The Bolskoi Moscovski is opposite the town hall and has a spacious and fine central dining-hall. Here also the waiters are dressed in white, and an orchestrion discourses music during meal times. Its prices are practically the same as at the Ermitage.
Testoff's is another good restaurant where purely Russian dishes are served; it is therefore interesting and worth a visit, and gives a very good insight as to the national cuisine.
These restaurants are much frequented at lunch time, especially in summer, when families are out in Datchas or villas in the environs of Moscow, and the men have to lunch in town. In winter they are full until late in the evening.
One of the best lunch-places in Moscow is the Slaviansky Bazaar in Nikolski Street, Kitaigorod, situated in the city or business centre of Moscow. It is a mid-day resort of the business men and travellers staying at the hotel, but is more or less deserted afterwards. It has a spacious and lofty restaurant hall and takes in theTimesand English illustrated papers. It was formerly noted for its regular English table for members of the colony, who, however, subsequently deserted it to some extent for the three main restaurants.
Here luncheons can be had with excellent choiceà la carte. Dinners cost from 1 rouble 25 kopeks.
In addition to these regular restaurants there are several summer garden resorts of a gayer character with cafés, theatres, open-air stages,and various café-chantant amusements. These resorts are at their gayest in the early hours of the morning, till 4A.M., when the company becomes somewhat varied, and as the guide-books sagely remark, "Gentlemen had better leave their ladies at the hotel."
These places are prettily laid out, and in the afternoon and early part of the evening serve to pass a pleasant hour or two in the summer. Dress clothes are not generally worn when visiting them.
In the town the two best ones are the Aquarium and the Ermitage Sad (Sad is Russian for garden), not the same as the Ermitage Restaurant above mentioned. Admission to gardens, 50 kopeks.
The Yar and the Strelna are favourite restaurant late-evening resorts near the Petrovski Park, a short drive out. The Yar is open in the summer and winter, but the Strelna in the winter only.
St. Petersburg has nominally three first-class restaurants, viz., the Bear (L'Ours) on the Bolschaya Kononschaya; the Restaurant de Paris, known as Cubat's, on the Bolschaya Marskaya; and Donon's on the Moika Canal. All of them are good. Donon's has an excellent cellar and supplies a good dinner if ordered in advance. The price of the set meals is very reasonable, about 2 roubles or 4s. 4d. per head; but the profits are made on the wines, which are ridiculously expensive (owing to the enormousduties). For instance, a bottle ofvin ordinairecosts 4 roubles 50 kopeks, or 9s. 8d., and no bottle of dry champagne can be had for less than 10 roubles or 21s. 8d.; a whisky and soda is charged 1 rouble 50 kopeks, and in some places 2 roubles; a half bottle of wine is always charged 50 kopeks more than the actual half bottle price.
The Hôtel de France has a luncheon at 75 kopeks, or 1s. 6d., which is very popular with the business community of St. Petersburg, and it is crowded from 12.30 to 2 o'clock. The food is not high class but of a good bourgeois description, and the place is kept by a Belgian named Renault. It is one of the best hotels in St. Petersburg, and its situation is suited to the purpose; but, as a matter of fact, there is absolutely no first-class hotel either in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and sanitation is a factor that has not yet penetrated into the Russian intellect. A man who eats oysters in Russia, eats his own damnation, and at a high price in both senses; they are both costly and poisonous in a town where typhoid is easily contracted.
In the summer there are two good restaurants on the islands, a few miles from St. Petersburg, a sort of Richmond to St. Petersburg,—Felicien's, a dependence of Cubat's; and Ernest's, a branch of the Café de l'Ours, and managed by a brother of the proprietor. Both these have an excellent cuisine and cellar, but the charges, especially at Felicien's, are fairly extravagant. Bands of music and pretty gardens are features of these restaurants, and Felicien's has a terrace on theriver opposite the Emperor's summer palace on the Island of Iliargin. They are both practically closed during the winter, excepting by arrangement or when sleighing parties make a rendezvous there.
There is also a German restaurant, Lemner's, at No. 18 Newsky Prospect, where a good, cheap German repast can be procured for 1 rouble and drink therewith, Russian pilsener or Munich beer.
At the great port on the Black Sea the restaurant of the Hôtel de Londres Yastchouk is one of the best in Russia. Yastchouk was the name of its late proprietor, who died in 1902, and was a real lover of good cookery, enjoying nothing more than to serve an exquisite meal to a real connoisseur. When any gourmet came to his restaurant, he would ask him whether he came from the north or the south. If from the north, he would suggest a real southern meal, withRougets à la Grecand the deliciousAgneau de lait, unobtainable in St. Petersburg, and a ragout ofauberginesand tomatoes. If from the south, he would recommend a goodBortchwithpetits pâtés, or a slice ofKoulebiaka, a great pot-pie full of all kinds of good things, or some milk-white sucking-pig covered with cream and horse-radish. Yastchouk has joined the majority, but his restaurant is carried on in the same spirit as when he was alive.
Brühl's used to be the one good restaurant in the capital of Poland, but the restaurant of the Bristol, new, clean, smart, and cheap, with a Frenchmaître-d'hôtelin command, is commended and recommended. When the Bristol restaurant at night has all its electric lights in full glow it looks like the magic cave into which Aladdin penetrated.
Turkish dishes—Constantinople restaurants.
Turkish dishes—Constantinople restaurants.
One of the hotels in the restaurant at which very good food is obtainable is the Pera Palace; but the hundreds of dogs that are allowed to infest the city for scavenging purposes, and who disgracefully neglect their business in order to bark and howl dismally all night, would ruin the best hotel in creation. Therefore, if in the summer, I should advise any man to go to the Summer Palace Hotel at Therapia, a few miles from the city, on the Bosphorus, which is perfectly delightful, and to run into Constantinople by river steamer to visit the mosques, bazaars, etc.—but this by the way.
The best restaurant in Constantinople is Tokatlian's, in the Rue de Pera; it is very good but expensive, for all wines, spirits, etc., coming into Turkey have to pay a heavy duty. There is a strong native wine of a sauterne character made in Turkey, also Duzico, a sort of Kümmel liqueur, not bad, and Mastic, anotherchasse,especially nasty. You can obtain Turkish dishes at Tokatlian's. The Turkishkahabsandpilaffsof chicken are good, but their appearance is not appetising and they are too satisfying. A little rice and beef, rather aromatic in taste, is wrapped round with a thin vine leaf, in balls the size of a walnut, and eaten either hot or cold. This is calledYalandji Dolmas.YaourtorLait Cailléis a milk curd, rather like what is calledDicke Milchin Germany.Auberginesare eaten in every form; one method of cooking them, and that one not easily forgotten, is to smother a coldauberginein onion, garlic, salt, and oil; this is namedYmam Bayldi.Keinftéare small meatballs tasting strongly of onions. Plaki fish, eaten cold; Picti fish in aspic; small octopi stewed in oil;Moussaka, vegetable marrows sliced, with chopped meat between the slices and baked;Yachni, meat stewed with celery and other vegetables;Kebap, "kabobs" with a bay-leaf between each little bit of meat;Kastanato, roasted chestnuts stewed in honey, and quinces treated in the same manner; vermicelli stewed in honey; and preserves of rose leaves, orange flowers, and jessamine, all are to be found in the Turkish cuisine. TheRôti Kouzoumis lamb impaled whole on a spit like a sucking-pig, which it rather resembles in size, being very small. It is well over-roasted and sent up whole. I am informed on the best authority that when a host wishes to do you honour he tears pieces off it with his fingers and places them before you, and you have to devour them in the same manner.
When I was in Turkey last year I had themisfortune not to be introduced to the privacy of a Turkish family gathering, so I have to confess that I have not yet accomplished this feat myself.
There is a very good fish when in season in the summer, calledespadon, or sword-fish, but the butcher's meat, unless you have good teeth, is not often eatable. The natives are mostly vegetarians; beans, small cucumbers, rice and what cheap fruits may be in season are their principal food; water, about which they are most particular, is the principal beverage of all Turks from the highest to the lowest class.
I herewith give a typical Turkish dinner:—
Duzico.Hors-d'œuvre.Yalandji Dolmas.Potage.Crème d'Orge.Poisson.Espadon. Sce. Anchois.Entrée.Boughou Kebabs.Carni Yanik.Rôti.Kouzoum.Légumes.Bahmieh à l'Orientale.Ymam Bayldi.Entremets.Yaourt et Fruits.
The charges in Turkey on the whole are moderate, but the Turkish coinage is somewhat confusing, and even a Scotch Jew, who had been brought up in New York, would find it a matter of difficulty to hold his own with the unspeakable Turk when it came to a question of small change.
Tokatlian has a branch establishment of a bourgeois description for business people just outside the big bazaar at Stamboul, the Restaurant Grand Bazaar, where there are plenty of good dishes, besides native experiments, which are worth trying. Here the charges are very moderate.
The food at the Royal and Bellevue Hotels and Dimitri's is also good, and for supper you can go to Yani's, which is open practically all night, but perhaps not so eminently respectable as the other restaurants I have mentioned.
A.B.
Grecian Dishes—Athens.
Grecian Dishes—Athens.
No one lives better than a well-to-do Greek outside his own country, and when he is in Greece his cook manages to do a great deal with comparatively slight material. A Greek cook can make a skewered pigeon quite palatable, and the number of ways he has of cooking quails, from the simple method of roasting them cased in bay leaves to all kinds of mysterious bakings after they have been soused in oil, are innumerable. There arepillauswithout number in the Greek cuisine, chiefly of lamb, and it is safe to take for granted that anythingà la Grecis likely to be something savoury, with a good deal of oil, a suspicion of onion, a flavour of parsley, and a good deal of rice with it. These, however, are some of the most distinctive dishes:—Coucouretzi, the entrails and liver of lamb, roasted on a spit;Bligouri, wheat coarsely ground, cooked in broth, and eaten with grated cheese;Argokalamara, a paste of flour and yolk of egg fried in butter with honey poured over it. All Greek cooking, as all Turkish is, should be done very slowlyover a charcoal fire. A too great use of oil is the besetting sin of the indifferent Greek cook. The egg-plant is treated in half-a-dozen ways by the Greeks, stuffing them with some simple forced meat being the most common.
The food of the peasant is grain, rice, goat when he can get it, a skinny fowl as a great delicacy, milk, and strong cheese. A bunch of grapes and a piece of sour bread forms a feast for him.
The Grecian wines are not unpalatable but very light. They are mostly exported to Vienna, being fortified previous to their departure to enable them to stand the voyage, and again manipulated on their arrival, so that their original characteristics are considerably obliterated.
My trustedcollaborateurA.B. went on a yachting tour in Grecian waters last spring, having a special intention of studying Greek restaurants. He wrote to me as to Athens, and his report was short and to the point: "Outside the hotels there is but one café, Solon's, principally used as a political rendezvous. Its attractions are of the most meagre description." A most gravelittérateurto whom, as he had been lately travelling in Greece, and as I had not been there for ten years, I applied for supplementary information, applied the adjective "beastly" to all Greek restaurants, and added that the one great crying need of Greece and Athens is an American bar for the sale of cooling drinks in the Parthenon.
N.N.-D.