Fifth Avenue Part 15

Ham, champagne sauce.

Vegetables.

Mashed Potatoes, Boiled Potatoes. Boiled Rice.

Baked Potatoes. Stewed Tomatoes. Squash.

Turnips. Cabbage. Beans.

Pastry.

Sponge Cake Pudding. Apple Pies.

Madeira Jelly. Peach Pies.

Peach Meringues. Squash Pies.

Gateaux Modernes. Cols de Cygne.

Dessert.

Raisins. Almonds. Peaches. English Walnuts.

Pecan Nuts. Filberts. Bartlett Pears.

Citron Melons. Water-melons.

Vanilla, lemon ice-cream.

Considering that this was not an exceptional dinner, but was a sample of the fare that was served every day one is inclined to envy Guzzle and to deplore the neglected opportunities of the Rev. Jones.

Below the Fifth Avenue Mine Host flourished yesterday. At the corner of Eighteenth Street there was the Logerot, sometime called Fleuret's.

There, as at the old Martin's, at University Place and Ninth Street, a little play of the imagination enabled the diner to hug the delusion that he was at Foyot's, and that the gentleman with the white goatee at the table opposite was a Senator of France from the near-by Palace of the Luxembourg. After he had eaten of the _moules marinieres_ and the _escargots_ it was no longer imagination, he felt sure of the fact. To stimulate through the palate such pleasant fancy was the idea of Richard de Croisac, Marquis de Logerot, who opened the place in 1892. When Logerot's pa.s.sed the setting was made to serve a purpose ignominious, though highly laudable. It became an incubator shop, and tiny coloured babies squirmed mysteriously where once the _ca.s.serole_ steamed.

The neighbourhood is rich in gastronomical memories. At the same corner for twenty years the chop-house of John Wallace flourished. In the eighties it was one of the few chop-houses uptown. There was a flavour of Bohemia about the clientele. Characters who were famous in their day but whose very names are now forgotten, congregated there for the steaks and kidneys and the ale drawn from the wood. There, so the story goes, was sown the seed of the Great Mince Pie Contest. An actor, dropping into Wallace's late one evening for the after-work rarebit, overheard fragments of ah argument about the relative merits of the mince pies of certain of the city's hotels and refectories. He was playing at the time in the dramatization of Mr. Tarkington's "Monsieur Beaucaire," and the next evening he brought up the subject for discussion with various ladies and gentlemen of the company. Had it been a matter of lobsters he might have had an apathetic response. But the homely mince pie roused to riotous enthusiasm. Each player protested that he or she knew of a place from which came a mince pie surpa.s.sing all others. So the contest was arranged and a jury of unimpeachable character selected, and two nights later the pies were brought proudly in and in turn sampled. Incidentally the winning pasty came from the old Ashland House at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, and its sponsor was Mr. A.G. (better known as "Bogey") Andrews.

There was a family hotel called the Glenham on the Avenue between Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets, and at the north-east corner of Twenty-second, where part of the base of the "Flatiron Building" now is, was the old c.u.mberland. There was one man, at least, who appreciated the c.u.mberland. In fact he liked it so well that, when the structure was to be demolished to make way for the new skysc.r.a.per, he refused to move out, and having a lease, could not be evicted. So he stayed there to the last, while the bricks came tumbling down about his ears. Then, just around the corner, where Broadway joins Madison Square, was the Bartholdi, celebrated by the patronage of Mr. Fitzsimmons, alias Ruby Robert, the Freckled One, the Kangaroo, and beyond, still standing, a memento of yesterday, Dorlon's, uptown heir to the glories of the old Fulton Market place, which boasted a history that goes back three-quarters of a century. A relic of the old establishment, a mahogany table round which Cornelius Vanderbilt and Judge Roosevelt (the grandfather of T.R.), and John Jacob Astor, and John Swan used to sit at their oyster dinner consisting of oysters raw, stewed, roasted in the sh.e.l.l, and broiled, is still preserved.

Perhaps, at night, the shades of famous dishes of the past come forth from remodelled walls or forgotten cupboards and meet in the Park to recall the glories that once were. For all about are memories. Beyond where the Fifth Avenue was was the Hoffman House where one went to dine as well as to feast the eyes on the twenty-five-thousand-dollar Bougereau of "Nymphs and Satyr," and "Pan and Bacchante." Then the Albermarle and Saint James, the Brunswick, and the famous south-west corner of the Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. The Brunswick had its adherents, who proclaimed its table the best in New York, and the land once rang with a Tammany dinner that was held there. But that south-west corner. It was famous as "Del's" and it was famous when it was Martin's.

Who that knew it will ever forget what was known as the "Broadway Room,"

and the special soup for every day of the week, and the _cuisine Russe_ with the _plats du jour_ for luncheon and dinner, and the vodka that one might have if one wished? And also, the chestnut soup!

If your palate of yesterday craved the exotic in the way of food there was the Indian Palace that once flourished at No. 325 Fifth Avenue. In 1900, a Prince Ranji Something or Other, who claimed to be a son of the Sultan of Sulu or Beloochistan, opened it, establis.h.i.+ng the first smoking room for women in the city. He brought the aspect of the East in the shape of Indians, and dancing girls, and jugglers, and Hindoo tango dancers, and flower girls, and cigarette girls, and music girls, all in their native costumes. There was prosperity for a time, and rich promise, until the Prince ran against the callous, unsympathetic Occident in the shape of the contract labour law.

On up the Avenue as far as the Plaza, where, as early as 1870, "Boss"

Tweed attempted to erect a hotel on the site of the present Netherlands, the gastronomical trail of the past may be followed. Five years ago it was said that New York had more good restaurants than any city in the world except Paris. Today there is no longer the exception. In the spirit that has long moved the people of Ma.r.s.eilles to the saying: "If Paris had a Cannebiere it would be a little Ma.r.s.eilles," an American city has said: "Paris might cook as well as New Orleans if it only had New Orleans's markets." To an even greater arrogance in its culinary past and present New York has a right. Turning over some of the menus of yesterday is recalling when the world was young. Lost youth is in the memory of "the wharves, and the slips, and the sea-tides tossing free; and the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, and the beauty and mystery of the s.h.i.+ps, and the magic of the sea." It is also in the memory of the flavour of certain delectable, never-to-be-forgotten repasts.