Eating in Two or Three Languages

by Irvin S. Cobb

One reason for this plenitude lay in the fact that France, to a very great extent, is a self-contained, self-supporting land, which England distinctly is not; and another reason undoubtedly was that the French, being more frugal and careful than their British or their American brethren ever have been, make culinary use of a great deal of healthful provender which the English-speaking races throw away. Merely by glancing at the hors d'œuvres served at luncheon in a medium-priced café in Paris one can get a good general idea of what discriminating persons declined to eat at dinner the night before.

The Parisian garbage collector must work by the day and not by the job. On a piecework contract he would starve to death. And a third reason was that all through the country the peasants, by request of the Government, were slaughtering their surplus beeves and sheep and swine, so there might be more forage for the army horses and more grain available for the flour rations of the soldiers.

In Paris the bread was indifferently poor. An individual was restricted to one medium-sized roll of bread at a meal. Butter was not by any means abundant, and of sugar there was none to be had at all unless the traveller had bethought him to slip a supply into the country with him. The bulk of the milk supply was requisitioned for babies and invalids and disabled soldiers. Cakes or pastries in any form were absolutely prohibited in the public eating places, and, I think, in private homes as well. But of beef and mutton and veal and fowls, and the various products of the humble but widely versatile pig, there was no end, provided you had the inclination plus the price.

And so, though the lack of sugar in one's food gave one an almost constant craving for something sweet—and incidentally insured a host of friends for anybody who came along with a box of American candy under his arm or a few cakes of sweet chocolate in his pocket—one might take his choice of a wide diversity of fare at any restaurant of the first or second class, and keep well stayed.

In connection with the Paris restaurants I made a most interesting discovery, which was that when France called up her available man power at the time of the great mobilisation, the military heads somehow overlooked one group who, for their sins, should have been sent up where bullets and Huns were thickest. The slum gave up its Apache—and a magnificent fighter he is said to have made too! And the piratical cab drivers who formerly infested the boulevards must have answered the summons almost to a man, because only a few of them are left nowadays, and they mainly wear markings to prove they have served in the ranks; but by a most reprehensible error of somebody in authority the typical head waiters of the cafés were spared. I base this assertion upon the fact that all of them appeared to be on duty at the time of my latest visit. If there was a single absentee from the ranks I failed to miss him.

There they were, the same hawk-eyed banditti crew that one was constantly encountering in the old days; and up to all the same old tricks too—such as adding the date of the month and all the figures of the year into the bill; and such as invariably recommending the most expensive dishes to foreigners; and such as coming to one and bending over one and smiling upon one and murmuring to one: "An' wot will ze gentailman 'ave to-day?"—and then, before the gentailman can answer, jumping right in and telling him what he is going to have, always favouring at least three different kinds of meats for even the lightest meal, and never less than two vegetables, and never once failing to recommend a full bottle of the costliest wine on the premises.

Stress of war had not caused these gentry to forget or forgo a single one of the ancient wiles that for half a century their kind has practised upon American tourists and others who didn't care what else they did with their money so long as they were given a chance to spend it for something they didn't particularly want. Yep; those charged with the responsibility of calling up the reserves certainly made a big mistake back yonder in August of 1914. They practised discrimination in the wrong quarter altogether. If any favouritism was to be shown they should have taken the head waiters and left the Apaches at home.

Many's the hard battle that I had with these chaps in 1918. It never failed—not one single, solitary time did it fail—that the functionary who took my order first tried to tell me what my order was going to be, and then, after a struggle, reluctantly consented to bring me the things I wanted and insisted on having. Never once did he omit the ceremony of impressing it upon me that he would regard it as a deep favour if only I would be so good as to order a whole lobster. I do not think there was anything personal in this; he recommended the lobster because lobster was the most expensive thing he had in stock. If he could have thought of anything more expensive than lobster he would have recommended that.