GOLDSTEIN'S
Hors d'œuvre.
Smoked Salmon. Solomon Gundy.
Olives.
Soups.
Frimsell. Matsoklese.
Pease and beans.
Fish.
Brown stewed carp. White stewed gurnet.
Fried soles. Fried plaice.
Entrées.
Roast veal (white stew).
Filleted steak (brown stew).
Poultry.
Roast capon. Roast chicken.
Smoked beef. Tongue.
Vegetables.
Spinach. Sauerkraut.
Potatoes. Cucumbers.
Green salad.
Sweets.
Kugel. Stewed prunes.
Almond pudding.
Apple staffen.
When I looked at the above I groaned aloud. Was it possible, I thought, that any human being could eat a meal of such a length and yet live? I looked at my two companions, but they showed no signs of terror, so I took up knife and fork and bade the waiter do his duty.
The raison d'être of the dinner was this: Thinking of untried culinary experiences, I told one of the great lights of the Jewish community that I should like some day to eat a "kosher" dinner at a typical restaurant, and he said that the matter was easily enough arranged; and by telegram informed me that dinner was ordered for that evening at Goldstein's and that I was to call for him in the City at six.
When I and a gallant soul, who had sworn to accompany me through thick and thin, arrived at the office of the orderer of the dinner, we found a note of apology from him. The dinner would be ready for us, and his best friend would do the honours as master of the ceremonies, but he himself was seedy and had gone home.
On, in the pouring rain, we three devoted soldiers of the fork went, in a four-wheeler cab, to our fate. The cab pulled up at a narrow doorway, and we were at Goldstein's. Through a short passage we went towards a little staircase, and our master of the ceremonies pointed out on the post of a door that led into the public room of the restaurant a triangular piece of zinc, a Mazuza, the little case in which is placed a copy of the Ten Commandments. Upstairs we climbed into a small room with no distinctive features about it. A table was laid for six. There were roses in a tall glass vase in the middle of the table, and a buttonhole bouquet in each napkin. A piano, chairs covered with black leather, low cupboards with painted tea-trays and well-worn books on the top of them, an old-fashioned bell-rope, a mantelpiece with painted glass vases on it and a little clock, framed prints on the walls, two gas globes—these were the fittings of an everyday kind of apartment.
We took our places, and the waiter, in dress clothes, after a surprised inquiry as to whether we were the only guests at the feast, put the menu before us. It was then that, encouraged by the bold front shown by my two comrades, I, after a moment of tremor, told the waiter to do his duty.
I had asked to have everything explained to me, and before the hors d'œuvre were brought in the master of the ceremonies, taking a book from the top of one of the dwarf cupboards, showed me the Grace before meat, a solemn little prayer which is really beautiful in its simplicity. With the Grace comes the ceremony of the host breaking bread, dipping the broken pieces in salt, and handing them round to his guests, who sit with covered heads.
Of the hors d'œuvre, Solomon Gundy, which had a strange sound to me, was a form of pickled herring, excellently appetising.