CHAPTER LIX
ANTOINE'S AND MARDI GRAS
Antoine's is to me one of the four or five most satisfactory restaurants in the United States,—two of the others being the Louisiane and Galatoire's. But one has one's slight preferences in these things; and just as I have a feeling that the cuisine of the Hotel St. Regis in New York surpasses, just a little bit, that of any other eating place in the city, I have a feeling about Antoine's in New Orleans. This is not, perhaps, with me, altogether a culinary matter, for whereas I remember delightful meals at the Louisiane and Galatoire's—meals which, indeed, could hardly be surpassed—I lived for a week at Antoine's, and felt at home there, and became peculiarly attached to the quaint, rambling old restaurant, up stairs and down.
Antoine's has never been "fixed up." The café makes one think of such old Parisian restaurants as the Boeuf à la Mode, or the Tour d'Argent. Far from being a showy place, it is utterly simple in its decorations and equipment, but if there is in this country a restaurant more French than Antoine's, I do not know where that restaurant is.
Antoine Alciatore, founder of the establishment, departed nearly forty years ago to the realms to which great chefs are ultimately taken. Coming from France as a young man he established himself in a small café opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his cooking speak for him. His dinde à la Talleyrand soon made him famous, and he prospered, moving before long to the present building. His sons, Jules and Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the best traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as apprentices in such establishments as the Maison d'Or and Brabant's. Jules is now proprietor of Antoine's, while Fernand is master of the Louisiane.
The two brothers are of somewhat different type. Fernand is, above all, a chef; I have never seen him outside his own kitchen. His son, Fernand Jr., superintends the front part of the Louisiane, which he has transformed into a place having the appearance of a New York restaurant. The young man has made a successful bid for the fashionable patronage of New Orleans, and there is dancing in the Louisiane in the evening. Jules, upon the other hand, is perhaps more the director than his brother Fernand—more the suave delightful host, less the man of cap and apron. Jules loves to give parties—to astonish his guests with a brilliant dinner and with his unrivaled grace as gérant. That he is able to do these things no one is better aware than my companion and I, for it was our good fortune to be accepted by Jules as friends and fellow artists.
Never while my companion and I lived at Antoine's did we escape the feeling that we were not in the United States, but in some foreign land. To go to his rooms he went upstairs, around a corner, down a few steps, past a pantry, and a back stairway by which savory smells ascended from the kitchen, along a latticed gallery overlooking a courtyard like that of some inn in Segovia, along another gallery running at right angles to the first and overlooking the same court, including the kitchen door and the laundry, and finally to a chamber with French doors, a canopied bed, and French windows opening upon a balcony that overlooked the side street. His room was called "The Creole Yacht," while mine was the "Maison Vert."
I remember a room in that curious little hotel opposite the Café du Dôme, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said Whistler stayed when he was a student), which almost exactly resembled my room at Antoine's, even to the dust which was under the bed—until 'Génie got to work with broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my room there was a bath which actually had a chaufbain to heat the water: one of those weird French machines resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops savagely when you light the gas beneath it, and which, as you are always expecting it to blow up and destroy you, converts the morning ablutions from a perfunctory duty into a great adventure.
Then too, there was Marie who has attended to the linge at Antoine's for the last fifty years, and who helped the gray-haired genial Eugénie to "make proper the rooms." Ever since 'Génie—as she is called, for short—came from her native Midi, she has been at Antoine's; and like François—the gentle, kindly, white-mustached old waiter who, when we were there, had just moved up to Antoine's after thirty-five years' service at the Louisiane—'Génie is always ready with a smile; yes, even in the rush of Mardi Gras!
Antoine's does not set up to be a regular hotel, and we stopped there because, during the carnival, all rooms in the large modern hotels across Canal Street were taken. The carnival rush made room-service at Antoine's a little slow, now and then; sometimes the bell would not be answered when we rang for breakfast; or again, our morning coffee and croissants would be forty minutes on the way; sometimes we became a little bit impatient—though we could never bring ourselves to say so to such amiable servitors. As a result, when we were leaving the city for a little trip, we determined to stay, on our return, at the Grunewald, a hotel like any one of a hundred others in the United States—marble lobbies, gold ceilings, rathskellers, cabaret shows, dancing, and page boys wandering through the corridors and dining-rooms, calling in nasal, sing-song voices: "Mis-ter Shoss-futt! Mis-ter Ahm-kaplopps! Mis-ter Praggle-fiss! Mis-ter Blahms!"