THE initiated New Yorker knows half a dozen restaurants at the edge of the great Ghetto, where eating and drinking are a pleasure bought for a modest price, and where the fragrance of fine cigars mingles with that of better wine, and good fellowship reigns supreme. Some of these restaurants are splendidly furnished, and cater to the lucrative trade of those Americans who have had a taste of the social life of Southern Europe and who like to lapse into its mild sins every once in a while.
One of these places, now so fashionable that the real Hungarian rarely darkens its doors, where the popping of champagne corks is heard in the early morning hours, and where the oyster and lobster have almost entirely supplanted the native Gulyas,—is one of the pioneers among them, and in its early days served as a boarding house for the Hungarian Jews who, for one reason or another, had exiled themselves from the gay boulevards of Budapest. Here they tried to find consolation in food cooked Magyar fashion, and in playing for a few hours at “Clabrias,” their social game of cards, which could also occasionally degenerate into gambling. The keeper of the place whose Semitic name of Cohen had been changed into the Magyar, Koronyi, recovered the fortune which he had lost in the Old Country, but in spite of the fact that his bank account grew larger every day, he still kept the boarding house as he had always kept it, with his wife as the cook and himself as the waiter.
In stentorian voice he would call out: “Harom Lövös” (three soups) or “Harom Gulyas” (three Hungarian stews). Into the kitchen and out of it he would rush with full and empty plates, in evident enjoyment of his hard task.
The reputation of the place travelled as far as Broadway, and great was the day when rich clothing merchants came to eat his twenty-five cent dinner with evident relish; but still greater the day when their Gentile customers were brought thither to taste of the fleshpots of “Little Hungary.”
With increased speed he would run to the kitchen calling: “Harom Lövös,” returning with three plates of soup upon his outstretched arm, unburdened by a coat sleeve; and his bank account grew and his children also.
Two sons, boys still, helped the father call out the orders, until they came to a realization of the dignity of the business and the size of their father’s bank account. It was a sorry day for Simon Koronyi when bills of fare appeared upon his tables. They were there only after a bitter struggle which cost him many a sleepless night. With the bills of fare came waitresses, leaving the old man no occupation but to stand silently, and receive the quarters which were heaped in great piles in the till, while he grew daily more silent and morose.
The sons had caught the enterprising spirit of this country; they bought a lot on a street a few blocks nearer Broadway and built a house with a suggestion of Hungary in its style. The dining-room was frescoed in Hungarian scenes, with mottoes in the Magyar tongue, and was soon transformed into a fashionable resort.
Simon Koronyi, the founder of “Little Hungary,” moved into the house reluctantly. Stormy scenes followed the introduction of American dishes into the bill of fare, and when as a last straw a cash register appeared on the counter, the old man’s heart almost broke. Hesitatingly, his gentle old fingers moved over the keys of the machine, but he was pushed rudely aside by the hurrying hand of his younger son. Thus dishonoured in the sight of his guests, Simon Koronyi, tottering like a drunken man, went to his apartments up-stairs, and there remained until the “Chevra Kedisha,” the Jewish Funeral Society, carried him to his last resting place.
A few blocks north of these fashionable “Little Hungarys,” the real Hungary begins, and hither come the “Magyars” as the ruling race in Hungary is called. If you call them Slavs they will reject it as an insult.