The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Part 18

The Cafe de Fornos is also well spoken of by all who have experimented.

The restaurant at the Fornos is in the cafe on the ground floor. On the first floor are the private rooms. There are several of the restaurants with _cabinets particuliers_ where little suppers are given after the theatre, the Fornos being one; but the Madrilese dandy, wishing to sup _a deux_, generally chooses the Cafe Ingles, as the private rooms are very well decorated. The Perla is also well spoken of. All these restaurants profess the French cuisine, and at Lhardy's as good a dinner is obtainable as at the best restaurants of Barcelona.

Seville

At Seville you dine and breakfast at your hotel, whether it be the Madrid or the Paris, both very good hotels for Spain. There is a _table-d'hote_ dinner at each after the style of the meal of which I have given a menu under the heading of Madrid. At both hotels an extra charge is made to those aristocrats who will not sit at the long table which runs down the centre of the highly ornamented dining-room and are accommodated at little tables at the sides of the room. The great _patio_ of the Madrid, with its palm grove and creepers, is a delightful place to sit in after dinner.

The dinner-hour at Seville is seven o'clock. There is a Restaurant Suizo in the Calle de las Sierpes, and a little restaurant, the Eritana, with a pleasant garden, is to be found near the turning point of the drive that the beauty and fashion of Seville take on fine afternoons down the Paseo de las Delicias by the river. If you are tempted to try the Manzanilla wine with its proper accompaniment of snails or _langostinos_, visit the Taberna, opposite the Madrid Hotel; and if you are a bachelor, do not mind an atmosphere of smoke, can make yourself understood in Spanish, and like local colour, take your _cafe au lait_ of an evening in the Cafe Cantante of the Calle Sterpes. You will recognise the house by the little dancing-girl on the lamp.

Bobadilla

The junction of the lines to Seville, Granada, and Algeciras is Bobadilla, and there all trains wait for half an hour that the pa.s.sengers may feed. The meal is a very fair sample of Spanish cookery, and you are given soup or eggs, according to the time of day, an entree, a joint, and fish. I can still recall a Bobadillian meal, with the taste of garlic acting as a sort of _Leitmotiv_ in all the dishes, of omelette, stewed beef and beans, a ragout of veal, fried fish in b.u.t.ter, and cheese. Do not omit to cast an eye on the fair damsel behind the bar. She is a typical Andalusian beauty and is used to admiration.

Grenada

The hotels Siete Suclos and Washington Irving are the two princ.i.p.al hotels near the Alhambra, and are crowded with tourist-trippers of all nations, Americans and Germans predominating, during the tourist season.

At the Siete Suclos the cookery is said to be Spanish in character. My personal experience is confined to the Washington Irving, and on the first day of my stay, when I tried to order breakfast and the waiter, in answer to my query as to what dishes were ready, rolled out with great rapidity, "Beefsteeake, colfolanam, baconnegs, mutton-chops, mutton cotolettes," I thought that the local Spanish dishes sounded something like English ones. Englishmen who live in Spain tell me that they generally go to the Alhambra, which I take to be the Casa de Huespedes, 3 Alhambra, a lodging-house where I fancy only Spanish is spoken.

Cadiz and Jerez

At Cadiz the cooking at the Grand Hotel de Paris is Spanish and good of its kind. At Jerez the cooking at the Fondas de Los Cisnes and La Victoria is Spanish also. This is the menu of a dinner at the Hotel Los Cisnos:--

Consomme de Quenelles a la Royal.

Filetes de Tenguados a la Tutus.

Chuletas de Cordero a la Inglesa.

Pechugas de Pollos a la Suprema.

Perdices al jugo.

Ensalada Rusa.

Esparragos de Aranjuez, salsa blanca.

Mantecados de Vainilla y Fresa.

Postres variados.

Algeciras

The town on the Spanish side of the bay has redeemed Gibraltar from its ill fame as a place of entertainment. The late Ignacio Lersundi, under whose rule the Bristol in London--now converted into a ladies'

club--gave one of the best, if not the best, _table-d'hote_ dinners obtainable in the English capital, supervised the arrangements of the Hotel Reina Christina, and the _table-d'hote_ dinner there still is an excellent one.

Lisbon

There are good hotels to stay at in Lisbon and there are restaurants in plenty, but to try the cookery of some of the town eating-houses a gourmet requires to have his taste educated up to, or down to, the Portuguese standard.

At the Braganza, a little club of bachelor Britons have been in the habit of dining together and ordering their dinner in advance, and this is a fair sample of what the steady-going but very comfortable hostelry can do when it chooses:--

| POTAGES.

| _Madeira Riche._ | Queues de Boeuf. Creme Clamart.

| Pet.i.ts Souffles Desir.

_Johannisberger | Saumon Sauce Genevoise.

(Claus)._ | Selle de Presale a la Montpensier.

| Poularde a l'Amba.s.sadrice.

_Chateau Giscours._ | Pain de foies gras en Bellevue.

| Punch au Kirsch.

| Asperges Sauce Mousseuse.

_George Goulet, | Pintades Truffees.

1892 Vintage._ | Salade j.a.ponaise.

| Timbales a la Lyon d'Or.

_Porto 1815._ | Glaces a la Americaine.

| Pet.i.ts fours.

| Dessert.

_Liqueurs._ | CAFe.

A good _table-d'hote_ breakfast and dinner are served daily at 11 A.M.

and 7 P.M. and the price is moderate, being about 800 reis and 1.200 respectively. (It is well to remember that the exchange varies considerably, and it is therefore difficult to give the equivalents in sterling for the prices quoted, but 5500 to 6000 reis may be roughly taken at _1_ sterling.) The proprietor is M. Sasetti, who is ably supported by his manager and by a head waiter named Celestino, a most useful person in every way.

Wines, spirits, and liqueurs of foreign origin are expensive at the Braganza, as they are everywhere else, owing to the high custom tariff; but the local wines, amongst which may be cited Collares, Cadafaes, Collares Branco, Serradayres white and red, etc., are all good and cheap table wines.

The next restaurant as regards comfort, cleanliness, and cuisine is the Cafe Tavares, situated in the Rua Largo de S. Roque. It is essentially a cafe restaurant, and is open from breakfast time in the morning till 3 or 4 the following morning. Tavares is the princ.i.p.al rendezvous of the young bloods, both Portuguese and foreign, particularly so after the theatres and opera are over and suppers are in demand. The revel goes on from twelve o'clock until any hour of the morning, more especially as regards the _cabinets particuliers_, which are best entered from the back entrance situated in the Rua das Gaveas. A very good _table-d'hote_ lunch and dinner are served daily at the very moderate cost of 600 and 800 reis. The proprietor and manager is Snr. Caldeira, who is most attentive and obliging to his guests.

If any visitor to Lisbon is anxious to try the Portuguese cooking, he cannot do better than pay a visit to the Leo d'Ouro, situated in the Rua de Principe, adjoining the Central Railway Station. This formerly was, and to a great extent still is, the rendezvous of actors, authors, and professional men. The food is good and very cheap, served _a la carte_. Portuguese food may be called "highly seasoned," but for all that there are many good dishes, one speciality of the house being _Sopa de Camarao_, a _bisque_ of prawns, which in no way is to be despised.

With regard to wines at this restaurant it is advisable to drink those of the country.

Estoril

Estoril is a very picturesque and beautiful spot about three-quarters of an hour from Lisbon by rail. Here there has been lately established a high-cla.s.s hotel with _cuisine a la Francaise_ and good wines. The hotel is owned and managed by M. Estrade, who has had a long experience in this cla.s.s of business.

N.N.-D.

CHAPTER XI

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

Viennese restaurants and cafes--Baden--Carlsbad--Marienbad--Prague--Bad Gastein--Budapesth.

Vienna

The cuisine of the best of the Viennese restaurants, those attached to the big hotels, is French, though the Wiener Rostbraten and the Wiener Schnitzel are world-famous, and the typical Viennese dinner is a good French dinner with the addition of very delicious bread and pastry made with a lighter hand than any Gallic cook brings to his task. The wines of the country of Retz, Mailberg, Pfaffstadt, Gumpoldskirchen, Klosterneuberg, Nussberg, and Voslau should all be tasted, most of them being more than drinkable. Beer, however, is the real Viennese drink, and the very light liquid, ice cold, is a delightful beverage.

"Stay at what hotel you please, but dine at the Bristol," was the advice given me nigh a score of years ago when I first visited Vienna, and it holds good now; indeed of late the "smart set" of Vienna has taken it greatly into favour, and dines or sups there--the opera and plays begin at 7 and end at 10--constantly. The prices, _a la carte_, are high, but the cooking is good. Some specialities of the house are trout taken alive from the aquarium, _Huitres t.i.tania_, _Homard Cardinal_, _Poularde Wladimir_, _Souffle King Edward VII._, _Oranges a l'Infante_.

Sacher's, in the hotel of that name just behind the Opera House, is very well known and may be taken as the typical Viennese restaurant. It is expensive, as indeed all the best Viennese restaurants are. It is not quite so exclusively French in its cuisine as some of the other good restaurants, and one of its _plats de jour_ is always a national dish, as often as not a Hungarian one, so that by dining or breakfasting at Sacher's one obtains some idea of what the real cookery of the dual monarchy is like. Sacher's has a branch establishment in the Prater, which is always in high favour with the Viennese.