Chaud.
Consommé de Volaille.
Cailles Schnitten.
Poussin à la Richelieu.
Poulet grillé, Pommes soufflées.
Froid.
Petites Crabes. Homard. Truite au Bleu.
Poularde en Gelée.
Dindonneaux Hezedia.
Canard pressé en Parfait.
Bœuf et Agneau à la Mode.
Mousse de Jambon en Belle-Veu.
Asperges.
Fraises du Bois Monte Carlo.
Mélange de Fruits.
Pâtisserie.
Café Noir (à deux heures).
Grenouilles à la Lyonnaise.
Œufs pochés au Lard.
Rognons grillés.
Pilsener Lager Beer.
She has cooked dinners for the regiments of the Household Cavalry when they entertained a sovereign; when a good fellow, now dead, kept open-house for all his friends in the club-room during Warwick Races, Mrs Lewis undertook the difficult task of providing the best of lunches for an unknown number, and she has contracted for many of the feasts of the great Government Departments.
Mrs Lewis has the artist's appreciation of a critical judgment of her handiwork, but to cook a dinner for people who cannot understand its excellences is, in her opinion, like "feeding pigs on mushrooms." There is not one iota of jealousy in Mrs Lewis, for when I told her that in my opinion she held, as a woman ruler of the kitchen, a parallel position to that which M. Escoffier holds as a man, she told me how much she admires the great French Maître-Chef, not only as a great cook, but as a great gentleman.
Before I left the Cavendish Hotel Mrs Lewis showed me some of the rooms, and when I was loud in praise of the perfect taste and the happy combination she has achieved of keeping all the charm of the fine old chambers and yet adding to them all the modern conveniences, she laughed, told me that she had been her own architect, added that it was not an expensive education that had enabled her to do all this, and likened herself in her apprentice years to the little girl of fourteen whom we had seen down in the kitchen.
[L]
THE RÉUNION DES GASTRONOMES
Of clubs formed for the noble purpose of eating good dinners—clubs that have no club-houses—there are very many. Sometimes there is a literary tinge as an excuse for the dinners, sometimes a Bohemian, sometimes a Masonic. But there are two dining clubs that deserve especial recognition in a Gourmet's Guide, for they are clubs of professional gourmets whose business concerns the organisation of good feeding. One of these clubs, which held its annual dinner this year in the new banqueting-room of the Piccadilly Hotel, is the Réunion des Gastronomes. This association consists of proprietors, managing directors and managers of hotels, restaurants and clubs. It holds meetings to discuss and take action in all matters which concern the prosperity and welfare of the gastronomic art, and once a year its members and their guests banquet at one of the hotels or restaurants which are represented by members of the Réunion. I have been fortunate enough to be a guest of late years at many of these banquets, and look back with pleasure to the feasts held at the Hyde Park Hotel, at the Café Royal, at Prince's Restaurant, and other temples of gastronomy.