Yes - And, Waiter, Some Squash!" There Is No False
Delicacy In The Voice By Which This Order Is Given, No Desire For A
Gentle Whisper.
The dinner is ordered with the firm determination
of an American heroine; and in some five minutes' time all the
little dishes appear at once, and the lady is surrounded by her
banquet.
How I did learn to hate those little dishes and their greasy
contents! At a London eating-house things are often not very nice,
but your meat is put on a plate and comes before you in an edible
shape. At these hotels it is brought to you in horrid little oval
dishes, and swims in grease; gravy is not an institution in American
hotels, but grease has taken its place. It is palpable, undisguised
grease, floating in rivers - not grease caused by accidental bad
cookery, but grease on purpose. A beef-steak is not a beef-steak
unless a quarter of a pound of butter be added to it. Those horrid
little dishes! If one thinks of it, how could they have been made
to contain Christian food? Every article in that long list is
liable to the call of any number of guests for four hours. Under
such circumstances how can food be made eatable? Your roast mutton
is brought to you raw; if you object to that, you are supplied with
meat that has been four times brought before the public. At hotels
on the Continent of Europe different dinners are cooked at different
hours; but here the same dinner is kept always going.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 463 of 531
Words from 123940 to 124204
of 142339
