The Gourmet's Guide to Europe Part 22

In the summer there are two good restaurants on the islands, a few miles from St. Petersburg, a sort of Richmond to St. Petersburg,--Felicien's, a dependence of Cubat's; and Ernest's, a branch of the Cafe de l'Ours, and managed by a brother of the proprietor. Both these have an excellent cuisine and cellar, but the charges, especially at Felicien's, are fairly extravagant. Bands of music and pretty gardens are features of these restaurants, and Felicien's has a terrace on the river opposite the Emperor's summer palace on the Island of Iliargin. They are both practically closed during the winter, excepting by arrangement or when sleighing parties make a rendezvous there.

There is also a German restaurant, Lemner's, at No. 18 Newsky Prospect, where a good, cheap German repast can be procured for 1 rouble and drink therewith, Russian pilsener or Munich beer.

Odessa

At the great port on the Black Sea the restaurant of the Hotel de Londres Yastchouk is one of the best in Russia. Yastchouk was the name of its late proprietor, who died in 1902, and was a real lover of good cookery, enjoying nothing more than to serve an exquisite meal to a real connoisseur. When any gourmet came to his restaurant, he would ask him whether he came from the north or the south. If from the north, he would suggest a real southern meal, with _Rougets a la Grec_ and the delicious _Agneau de lait_, un.o.btainable in St. Petersburg, and a ragout of _aubergines_ and tomatoes. If from the south, he would recommend a good _Bortch_ with _pet.i.ts pates_, or a slice of _Koulebiaka_, a great pot-pie full of all kinds of good things, or some milk-white sucking-pig covered with cream and horse-radish. Yastchouk has joined the majority, but his restaurant is carried on in the same spirit as when he was alive.

Warsaw

Bruhl's used to be the one good restaurant in the capital of Poland, but the restaurant of the Bristol, new, clean, smart, and cheap, with a French _maitre-d'hotel_ in command, is commended and recommended. When the Bristol restaurant at night has all its electric lights in full glow it looks like the magic cave into which Aladdin penetrated.

CHAPTER XV

TURKEY

Turkish dishes--Constantinople restaurants.

Constantinople

One of the hotels in the restaurant at which very good food is obtainable is the Pera Palace; but the hundreds of dogs that are allowed to infest the city for scavenging purposes, and who disgracefully neglect their business in order to bark and howl dismally all night, would ruin the best hotel in creation. Therefore, if in the summer, I should advise any man to go to the Summer Palace Hotel at Therapia, a few miles from the city, on the Bosphorus, which is perfectly delightful, and to run into Constantinople by river steamer to visit the mosques, bazaars, etc.--but this by the way.

The best restaurant in Constantinople is Tokatlian's, in the Rue de Pera; it is very good but expensive, for all wines, spirits, etc., coming into Turkey have to pay a heavy duty. There is a strong native wine of a sauterne character made in Turkey, also Duzico, a sort of k.u.mmel liqueur, not bad, and Mastic, another _cha.s.se_, especially nasty. You can obtain Turkish dishes at Tokatlian's. The Turkish _kahabs_ and _pilaffs_ of chicken are good, but their appearance is not appetising and they are too satisfying. A little rice and beef, rather aromatic in taste, is wrapped round with a thin vine leaf, in b.a.l.l.s the size of a walnut, and eaten either hot or cold. This is called _Yalandji Dolmas_. _Yaourt_ or _Lait Caille_ is a milk curd, rather like what is called _d.i.c.ke Milch_ in Germany. _Aubergines_ are eaten in every form; one method of cooking them, and that one not easily forgotten, is to smother a cold _aubergine_ in onion, garlic, salt, and oil; this is named _Ymam Bayldi_. _Keinfte_ are small meatb.a.l.l.s tasting strongly of onions. Plaki fish, eaten cold; Picti fish in aspic; small octopi stewed in oil; _Moussaka_, vegetable marrows sliced, with chopped meat between the slices and baked; _Yachni_, meat stewed with celery and other vegetables; _Kebap_, "kabobs" with a bay-leaf between each little bit of meat; _Kastanato_, roasted chestnuts stewed in honey, and quinces treated in the same manner; vermicelli stewed in honey; and preserves of rose leaves, orange flowers, and jessamine, all are to be found in the Turkish cuisine. The _Roti Kouzoum_ is lamb impaled whole on a spit like a sucking-pig, which it rather resembles in size, being very small. It is well over-roasted and sent up whole. I am informed on the best authority that when a host wishes to do you honour he tears pieces off it with his fingers and places them before you, and you have to devour them in the same manner.

When I was in Turkey last year I had the misfortune not to be introduced to the privacy of a Turkish family gathering, so I have to confess that I have not yet accomplished this feat myself.

There is a very good fish when in season in the summer, called _espadon_, or sword-fish, but the butcher's meat, unless you have good teeth, is not often eatable. The natives are mostly vegetarians; beans, small cuc.u.mbers, rice and what cheap fruits may be in season are their princ.i.p.al food; water, about which they are most particular, is the princ.i.p.al beverage of all Turks from the highest to the lowest cla.s.s.

I herewith give a typical Turkish dinner:--

Duzico.

Hors-d'oeuvre.

Yalandji Dolmas.

POTAGE.

Creme d'Orge.

POISSON.

Espadon. Sce. Anchois.

ENTReE.

Boughou Kebabs.

Carni Yanik.

RoTI.

Kouzoum.

LeGUMES.

Bahmieh a l'Orientale.

Ymam Bayldi.

ENTREMETS.

Yaourt et Fruits.

The charges in Turkey on the whole are moderate, but the Turkish coinage is somewhat confusing, and even a Scotch Jew, who had been brought up in New York, would find it a matter of difficulty to hold his own with the unspeakable Turk when it came to a question of small change.

Tokatlian has a branch establishment of a bourgeois description for business people just outside the big bazaar at Stamboul, the Restaurant Grand Bazaar, where there are plenty of good dishes, besides native experiments, which are worth trying. Here the charges are very moderate.

The food at the Royal and Bellevue Hotels and Dimitri's is also good, and for supper you can go to Yani's, which is open practically all night, but perhaps not so eminently respectable as the other restaurants I have mentioned.

A.B.

CHAPTER XVI

GREECE

Grecian Dishes--Athens.

No one lives better than a well-to-do Greek outside his own country, and when he is in Greece his cook manages to do a great deal with comparatively slight material. A Greek cook can make a skewered pigeon quite palatable, and the number of ways he has of cooking quails, from the simple method of roasting them cased in bay leaves to all kinds of mysterious bakings after they have been soused in oil, are innumerable.

There are _pillaus_ without number in the Greek cuisine, chiefly of lamb, and it is safe to take for granted that anything _a la Grec_ is likely to be something savoury, with a good deal of oil, a suspicion of onion, a flavour of parsley, and a good deal of rice with it. These, however, are some of the most distinctive dishes:--_Coucouretzi_, the entrails and liver of lamb, roasted on a spit; _Bligouri_, wheat coa.r.s.ely ground, cooked in broth, and eaten with grated cheese; _Argokalamara_, a paste of flour and yolk of egg fried in b.u.t.ter with honey poured over it. All Greek cooking, as all Turkish is, should be done very slowly over a charcoal fire. A too great use of oil is the besetting sin of the indifferent Greek cook. The egg-plant is treated in half-a-dozen ways by the Greeks, stuffing them with some simple forced meat being the most common.

The food of the peasant is grain, rice, goat when he can get it, a skinny fowl as a great delicacy, milk, and strong cheese. A bunch of grapes and a piece of sour bread forms a feast for him.

The Grecian wines are not unpalatable but very light. They are mostly exported to Vienna, being fortified previous to their departure to enable them to stand the voyage, and again manipulated on their arrival, so that their original characteristics are considerably obliterated.

Athens

My trusted _collaborateur_ A.B. went on a yachting tour in Grecian waters last spring, having a special intention of studying Greek restaurants. He wrote to me as to Athens, and his report was short and to the point: "Outside the hotels there is but one cafe, Solon's, princ.i.p.ally used as a political rendezvous. Its attractions are of the most meagre description." A most grave _litterateur_ to whom, as he had been lately travelling in Greece, and as I had not been there for ten years, I applied for supplementary information, applied the adjective "beastly" to all Greek restaurants, and added that the one great crying need of Greece and Athens is an American bar for the sale of cooling drinks in the Parthenon.

N.N.-D.