"
"A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to dine with
friends, or at public functions, where the meal is invariably
served A LA RUSSE (another name for a TABLE D'HOTE), and on these
occasions are only too glad to have their MENU chosen for them.
The present way, however, is a remnant of 'old times' and the
average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is very
conservative when it comes to his table."
What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered
later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid
confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the
large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the
joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or two
before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in vast steam
closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own, and fifty
other vapors.
Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize that
with this system no viand can have any particular flavor, the
partridges having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef, which
in turn suggests the plum pudding it has been "chumming" with.
It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping after
the better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on the same
lines.
A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in reply to
a question regarding prices, that every kind of food was cheaper
here than abroad, but the prejudice against certain dishes was so
strong in this country that many of the best things in the markets
were never called for.
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