M. de Balzac, planning to entertain a Russian nobleman at the Restaurant de Paris, asked the management to "put its best foot forward" for the occasion. "Certainly, Monsieur," was the retort, "for the simple reason that it is what we are in the habit of doing every day." Old-time patrons of the Fourteenth Street corner will tell you that such a reply might have fittingly come from the maître d'hôtel of the "Del's" that was. But conceding the quality of the everyday service there were famous dinners that have stood out in the annals of the house. Here, for example, is the menu of what was known as the "Swan Dinner" held the evening of February 17, 1873.
Potages.
Consomme Imperial. Bisque aux crevettes.
Hor d'oeuvres.
Timbales a la Conde.
Poissons.
Red Snapper a la Venetienne.
Eperlan, sauce des gourmets.
Releve.
Filet de boeuf a la l'Egyptienne.
Entrees.
Ailes de canvas back, sauce bigurade.
Cotellettes de volaille Sevigne.
Asperges froide en branche.
Sorbet a l'Ermitage.
Rotis.
Chapon truffes. Selle de mouton.
Entremets.
Choufleurs, sauce creme. Carbons a la moelle.
Petits pois au beurre.
Poires a la Richelieu.
Gelee aux ananas. Gaufres Chantilly Sultanne.
Gateaux a la Reine. Coupole a l'Anglaise.
Pain de peche Marechale. Gelee au fruits.
Dessert.
Délicieux aux noisettes. Biscuit Tortoni.
Fruit glaces.
Petit fours. Bonbons.
Pieces montes.
The musty inn of mid-Europe will boast till the end of time of the two-hour visit within its walls of a certain Elector and his suite in the year sixteen hundred and something or seventeen hundred and something. There is not a hostelry in England dating back to Tudor times without a bed in which Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have slept. But for famous guests, authentically established, there is probably no other hotel in the world that is to be compared to the Fifth Avenue. When the boyish Prince of Wales played leap-frog in its corridors at the time of his visit to the United States in 1860, he began a distinguished procession. Every president of the nation from the day the hotel was opened until it closed at some time stayed there. That meant Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt. At the time of Grant's funeral in August, 1885, the immediate family, the relatives, President Cleveland, Vice-President Hendricks, former Presidents Hayes and Arthur, the members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, the Diplomatic Corps, and the Governors of the various States were all guests of the hotel. Not only did great men stay there, but they did things there. It was at the Peabody dinner at the Fifth Avenue that the movement to nominate Grant for President started. In 1880, after his nomination, Garfield, at the solicitation of Arthur, came all the way from Mentor to meet Roscoe Conkling. But the haughty and powerful Conkling would not see him. If the hotel had not been the recognized shelter of visiting Republican statesmen in New York it is reasonably certain that Tilden, instead of Hayes, would have occupied the White House from 1877 to 1881, for it was there that a rescue of the Republican candidate was set on foot in 1876 after he had been given up as lost. In one of the parlours of the hotel the ill-advised Dr. S. A. Burchard doomed Blaine to defeat when he said: "We are Republicans, and we do not intend to leave our party to identify ourselves with a party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."
Today it would be hard to find a hotel below Forty-second Street that still continues on what is known as the American plan. But when the Fifth Avenue was young that system of prices was supposed to embody the national spirit of democracy. Yet the idea had its wise critics, who found in it a certain injustice. For example there was an editorial on the subject, apropos of the Fifth Avenue, in the issue of October 1, 1859, soon after the hotel was opened, which ran, in part: "In the first place, what can be more preposterous than to establish a fixed rate of fare at hotels? Big, fat, bloated, blustering Guzzle goes to the Astor House for a week, and, in virtue of his standing and his paunch, gets a room near the dining saloon—a large, airy room looking on the Park, with lounge, arm-chairs, pier-glasses, Brussels carpet, and other furniture, all rich and luxurious; at dinner he eats paté de fois gras and woodcock, at supper he has elaborate little dishes which exercise an experienced cook for an hour or two, at breakfast he has salmon at fifty cents a pound, for all of which Guzzle pays two dollars and a half a day. The Rev. John Jones has a cup of weak tea for his breakfast, a slice of beef for his dinner, and a room under the tiles, and pays the same two dollars and a half." Perhaps there was a little exaggeration in the Harper editorial. But judge of Guzzle's opportunities from the following menu of the first dinner served by the Fifth Avenue, that of Tuesday, August 23, 1859.
Soups.
Green Turtle. Barley.
Fish.
Boiled Salmon, shrimp sauce. Baked Bass, wine sauce.
Boiled.
Leg of Mutton, caper sauce. Chicken, with pork.
Calf's Head, brain sauce. Beef tongue.
Turkey, oyster sauce. Corn Beef and Cabbage.
Cold Dishes.
Ham, Roast Beef, Pressed Corn Beef, Tongue, Ham.
Lobster Salad. Boned Turkey with truffles.
Entrees.
Fricasseed Chicken a la Chevaliere.
Macaroni, Parmesan.
Lamb cutlets, breaded.
Oysters, fried in crumbs.
Currie of Veal, in border of rice.
Queen Fritters.
Kidneys, champagne sauce.
Pigeons, en compote.
Sweetbreads, larded green peas.
Roasts.
Beef. Lamb, mint sauce.
Loin of Veal, stuffed. Goose.
Turkey. Chicken.
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 passed 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 casserole 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 clientèle. 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 surpassing 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 Cumberland. There was one man, at least, who appreciated the Cumberland. In fact he liked it so well that, when the structure was to be demolished to make way for the new skyscraper, 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 shell, 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!