Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, April 23, 1916, Page 26

Chinees Prasarvad Kgg 100 Yeare Ol and e ' Bame Opened y ldea of a erfect is Grace The Duke Manchester By the Duke of Manchester Written Especlally for this Newspaper. HAT is my idea of a perfect dinner? The more W 1 think of this question the less I am able to an- swer it, Such vast fields of gastronomic pleasure, which I believe is the polite name for greediness, open up, such memories of delicious dinners all over the world re- vive, each one clamoring for recognition as the perfect one, that I don’t know which to choose. After all, meals, like matrimonial laws, are governed by Iatitude and longitude, The right thing in one country is anathema in another, Some countries believe in one dish, others pin their faith to the many-course banquet. It may interest some greedy readers to hear about somo dinners partaken of in different parts of the world by one who has chased around a whole lot. T shan’t give a dis- sertation on the joys of ‘‘long pig,”” which is I believe, the technical term for cooked enemy in central Africa, nor harrow you with tales of seal blubber feasts in Arctic igloos. I shall. in fact, refer more to eating than feeding . throughout. The subject of gastronomics is a broad oue involving the barbarous feasts and drinking bouts of ancient times, the disgusting Roman institution of the vomitorium and, in modern times, freak dinners and the local relish for preserved eggs a century old, dried oysters and other del- icacies—~but all this I will leave to the students of gas- tronomies. i But where to begin and how to draw comparisons. The menu which made the mouth water at twenty makes one feel rather ill to contemplate at forty. Sup we imagine ourselves taking a tour eastward from g;.llnd. France first. O my ! The_omelettes, chicken and salads of the north and west of France, the croute au pot and the petite marmite, the sole dieppoise, with its luseious white wine sauce dotted with moules! These mussels by themselves too, done mariniere! The sedate and classic dishes of Touraine! How can one decide between the dinner of Mme. Poulard at Mont St. Michel, croute au pot moules mari- nieres, roast chicken with the skin so crisp it’s crackly, rissoleed new. potatoes, salad coeur de laitue and omelette soufflee, while the sun sinks behind the mount and the tide rushes in as fast as 2 man can run, across the great stretch of yellow sand, and the creme d’asperges, tur- botin, sauce Hollandaise, the vol-au-vent a la Toulouse, the tournedos Rossini, with its thick pink hat of pate de Perigord on top and its luscious brown sauce, the souffle potatoes and tiny new peas, with a Bavaroise au chocolat, with delicious coffee, that appeared magically in the hotel at Tours, although a recaleitrant motor brought us there at 10, instead of 71 Or the Provencal joy of Bouillabaisse, followed by Mostel a 1’Anglaise and Agneau de lait (bien croustillant Monseigneur!), with pommes Anna at the Reserve at Marseilles; and Negresco's! 1 rémember one dinner which stands out even at Ne- gresco's—Consomme Nicoise, with just that little taste of tomatoe, filets de sole Richeliou (with erayfish sauce), mousse de jambon froid, cailles aux raising, endive salad, strawberry ice, with fresh strawberries in February, and Negresco chocolate cake, remember something about '93 Pol Roger and 1820 brandy, and I very distinotly remember that I was a guest, and not the one who paid, Ciro's, at Monte Carlo—a vision of the Mostel au gratin and a tiny Baron de Pauillas stand out, even from among their uniformly delicious food, For me the gastronomic headquarters of Italy are at Bologna, The raw ham and white truffles alone are enough to make a town famous, and then the snipe and teal from the rice fleld reservoirs, the polenta, the ravioli, the camel loni-=yes, even the scampi of Venice cannot make head againat them, I have no good word to say for Greece in the food line, #od Turkey's excellont Kebabs Pilaw and Moussaka-—an Halian “Ball Butter™ Many Varlous Kin A O o expensive dish artfully compounded of mutton, veal, chicken and egg plant—bring back painful recollections of being forced to drink sweet champagne by one’s cour- teous hosts. ‘Russian dingers are delicious; I know they are because I've seen them and smelt them, and one of these days maybe I shall eat one, but up to the present I have no distinet recollection of ever getting into the dining room feeling like anything but a subway car in a rush hour. 'I'hey_luve things they call Zakouski beforehand, the moat irresistible form of free lunch effects you ever saw, the apotheosis of hors d’oeuvre, each thing more tempting than the one before, and I have invariably laid in about a week’s supply before dinner is thought of. India is the next country where they know how to eat, and one dinner stands out above all others I have eaten in India. It was in the marble paved court in the centre of the palace at Bikanir; the palace is Indo-saracenic, which means it is made of red-sandstone lace, behind which flitted and giggled mysterious sari-clad forms sil- houetted vaguely against the lights in the apartments within, The other illuminations consisted of candles that burnt without a flicker in the stillness and a moon of outrageous size. We had ‘‘Deshi Khana,”” real Hindu food prepared by *Grahmin cooks—silver tray after silver tray carried by two men, superintended as to each tray by flerce looking retainers with white beards brushed upward and with silver-topped staves in their hands; the trays were covered with little ham mered silver bowls, about the size of finger bowls, cach hold ing a different curry, rice or chutney; other trays held bis cnits thin as wafers, and dried fish, Curry! But curry such as you never dreamed of—mutton curries, shrimp, fish, vegetable fruit curries, hot curries, mild curries, How that poisonous running, yellow, peppery con coction of Europe and America ever got dignified with the name of curry I suppose will never be found out. It bears the same relation to curry that Chili vinegar does to vintage port, We sat and tasted and tasted, dish after dish, on the recommendation of the old re tainers, gravely asking of each “Gurrum hait" Is it & hot Oat Brond, Blaes Reindes A spectacular dinner given in London in a gondola with Venetian background, which included Caruso, Princess Tous- son, Prince Abdul Bey, Mme. Rejane, Edna May and others. The disgust- ing Roman custom known as the “vomitor- fum.” After the banquet was over howls were brought to the guests. When they had disposed of their dinner into these bowls another banquet was at once ! BraadCreseant Bhaped Turkiah Bread, Beandinayian Bioed Broad, Chinsse Pith Bread SRVPIERL ARIA By (ae Biar Company. Great Brivain Righis Resarved An attractive but not ostentatious one?) and being gravely answered with ‘‘Nai gurrum,’ or ‘““Ha gurrum hait’’ (Not hot, or yes, that's hot) as the case might be while from the shadows came weird Ori ental musie and the muffled beat of the tom tom. Maybe if I repent very hard for the rest of my life, I shall be a maharajah in my hext incarnation. I hope I shall be us charming a host, as enlightened a ruler, as loyal a friend, and as perfect a gentleman as some of the maharajahs I know, Burmah and Malaya, again different curries, and in Malaya a special dish of fresh sago and cocoanut juice. China and Japan have long and weird dinners; many of the dishes are excellent, but if T were sternly told that never again should I taste sharks’ fins, birds’ nest soup, raw mice dipped in honey, or hundred-year- old eggs, T should endeavor to plod through the rest of my life without repming. | And scarcely pausing to think of or freakish setting for a dinner. the joyous feasts of fish of your own spearing and roast sucking pig, on brilliant, balmy, phosphorescent nights on South Sea islands, we come to America | If T were sure there were not Americans present, I would admit that some the best dinners I have ever eaten were in Ameriea, and some of the dishes are of unap proachable excellence. Gumbo, clam broth and chowder in soups, shad, softshell crabs, terrapin, bluefish, red head and canvas back-—well I'd better stop, and, as a colored servant of a friend of mine once said when we vividly deseribed the joys of roast 'possum before him while he was serving dinner: “For Gawd's sake, stop, gentlemen, 'bout that "possum ; ma mouf’s w atering so I'se shure gwine ter drown,"' Next Week Another (nteresting Article by Mis Grace the Duke of Manchester, A Briak of Rusaian Tea on the Loty and, an the Right, Chiness Tes Commprasaad by the Bare Fast of Chinsss Girle /