Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/182

so well, or is more skilled in the science of the table than Mr Sala, and during the Exhibition of 1878 he made it his special business to go the round of the chief restaurants. He candidly acknowledges that, while prices have risen, the art of cookery has deteriorated, and that it is impossible in these days to dine well at any restaurant under 20 francs a-head, exclusive of wine. He specifies the Café Anglais, which was then, and is probably still, one of the best restaurants in Paris, as a place where the dinner was good and the prices “high but not extortionate.” But it must be confessed that the figures quoted by him—16 francs for a pheasant, 8 francs for a perdrix aux choux, and the same sum for a bottle of Pontet Canet—would be called dear even at the Bristol or Continental.

Mr Sala gives a pathetic description of the agonies he suffered during what he calls “the Diner Burnand” in the Palais Royal, which lasted an hour and a half, and was remarkable for its exceeding badness; but why he should give to such a repast the name of the genial editor of ‘Punch’ does not seem clear, until he explains to us that his first words on descending the staircase which led to the restaurant were those of the author of ‘Happy Thoughts,’—“Joy, joy, but never again with you, Robin!” And probably “never again” has been echoed by others of his countrymen who, in an evil hour, have been induced by the low price of the alluring menu chalked outside the restaurant to ascend some of those ill-omened staircases in the Palais Royal.

These cheap restaurants have, however, a large clientèle among English and German visitors, and it is interesting to watch the spirit and abandon with which young Englishmen, probably set down for the first time in a Paris restaurant, plunge into the heart of a menu which they can neither read nor understand, and with the utmost confidence order dish after dish, which they have never before seen or tasted. In this respect, if in no other, they certainly show themselves worthy descendants of the adventurous youths who made the grand tour in the last century—

Nothing comes amiss to these dauntless young epicures: they drink the sourest petit bleu as gaily as if it was the choicest Latfitte; they eat strange morsels of fish or poultry disguised in stranger sauces with apparent gusto and satisfaction; and their appetites and digestions are proof against unsavoury messes which have apparently come straight from the kitchen of Canidia. Only once have we seen one of these youths fairly baffled and disconcerted at the unexpected shape taken by what he supposed was a familiar dish. He had in his innocence ordered moules à la marinière; but instead of the red mullet he expected, there was brought to him an uncanny mess of shell-fish of all colours—black, yellow, and green—served in a silver basin. These mussels were too much even for his hardened appetite; his heart failed him, and the waiter was ordered to remove the dish.

Passing to the subject of English restaurants, it may be remarked that Mr Innes Shand, in his excellent account of the progress of England during the last half-century, has omitted what would have been a most interesting chapter—namely, “Dining-