A Gourmet Explores In Holiday Time

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 247, 18 October 1941, Page 13

A Gourmet Explores In Holiday Time

gTRANGE it is how on a holiday every one of acquaintances rushes you with food, as though for the preceding 12 months you have been on a rigorous and unsustaining diet. "My word! How thin she has got! I must feed her up a bit," their first glance says, and their j first "Let's have a cup of tea," echo that glance.

By Wheturangi If you call on them at the office their first action Is to rush you out to their favourite morning tea corner, to arrange a lunch or dinner. If you call upon them at their homes you'll find a sumptuous repast spread and you'll note that married life has at least improved your friends' culinary abilities—if it has failed to improve them otherwise! But to me far and away the best part of* a holiday is the food. No, I don't mean the long, rich, indigestible meals one goes leisurely through in some luxury tourist hotel; nor those plates of thickly cream-filled, heavily iced cakes your friends amass for afternoon teas when they hear of your arrival. One of the tastiest meals is that large triangle ham sandwich plentifully sprinkled with mustard and the large half cold cup of tea in a cup as thick as a soup tureen that after a day and a night's hard travel by boat and bus and train with never a break between, tastes like heavenly ambrosia.

It Tastes Different But all food away from home tastes deliciously different . . . even though it may be of a lower quality and far more expensive than the restaurants one patronises every day through those routined twelve months before that glorious fortnight's break. Time is free on a holiday and part of the fun of that freedom is your exploring of dark alleyways, of shops and streets, Earks and lanes that ordinarily you ave no chance to wander in. Even more intriguing in this period of unrationed time is the glorious escape from routine. Instead of rising from one's desk at 10.30 for a brief ten minutes' gossip and a gulped glass of milk, there is the delightful possibility of having coffee and hot scones at eleven, of lunching leisurely at two, and

finishing an afternoon's busy shopping at four with tea and cakes in some entrancing cafe, dimly lit and with an undertone of soft violin music. At four! When usually there is a frantic stampede to catch the final mail. . . . In Two Camps On holiday, when the subject of food crops.up, one finds the world divided Into two camps: those folk who take a visitor to the well-known tearooms and provide an afternoon tea of such startling proportions that even if you were breaking a week's fast it would be impossible to enjoy it, and those who hurry down a dingy alleyway, up steps, down a busy thoroughfare into a building where there Is the loveliest tearoom, flower-filled and dim, that at once excites your imagination and appetite. There was, for instance, at a little | sunny seaside spot, "The Cove," a deliciously unusual restaurant with a path of shells leading to the cavelike entrance, a twine of hempen rope and a rusty pirate's chest lying at the door. The light within was mysteriously, softly green and clear like deep sea water on a sunny day. . . . One almost expected to find the waitresses were mermaids! Another day we found the "ComeIn Kitchen," whose opprobrious name gave no hint of the cosy cushioned comfort within, nor of the tasty, spice-filled home-made scones and cakes. This was a place for a womanly gossip, for muted incredulous tones of naughty scandal, for the quiet beloved heart-to-heart chat over the tea cups that milk bars have done their best to abolish. Who could be intimate and friendly in the clatter and bang of cups being washed under your very nose, with the reflection of all the customers' faces staring brightly back at you from chromium pipings and mirrors? Similarly delightful was the Dutch Nook, a sparkling place with tulips in the little window boxes, polished wooden chairs and tables, and the floor covering patterned with giant black and white checks.

For Men This On* More brisk and business-like was the "Morning Coffee Sboppe," where managers and salesmen took their clients, where there was always a blue haze of smoke and the echo of a masculine guffaw. A place to transact contracts indeed, to plan politics and win the war in the way men love best. The American Salad Bar, too, had a distinct business air. This was the popular lunch room of smart, trim office girls, who drank their orange juice or milk from giant glasses patterned in coloured fruits ... ate their salads from china patterned in curved leaves, moulded as half-cut cucumbers or tomatoes, and poured their mayonnaise from bisected lemon boats, (And what enormous, quaintly mixed, unusual salads. . . . Their very names were enticingly fresh and good as an appetiser!) There is an enchantment about these small tearooms that is lost in the larger restaurant. Often tucked away in out-of-the-way streets, one has Tan explorer's thriirof the And when their fascination is discovered. Luxurious restaurants with their separated smoking rooms, cleverly furnished lounges and uppish wait, resses trade on their prestige rather than cultivate their individuality. In a strange town, the tearooms have a new and different character, and in the struggle to sample their infinite variety you find yourself growing perceptibly rounder, till arriving back home you are greeted with the cry: "My word, how well you look . . , 1"