Cafes of All Nations

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

Cafes of All Nations

By CHRISTINE COMBER

GEOGRAPHICALLY speaking, London is the capital of England; gastronomically speaking, it # is the capital of the world. For while in other countries the standard of cooking may be higher, there is none in which the foreigner is so well catered for Y 1 the viands of his own country. More than that, within a couple of hundred yards of Piccadilly Circus the Londoner may, between the buying of three per cents in the morning and/ their disposal in the afternoon, transport himself into any land he pleases without the formality of a consular vise or the expense of a steamer ticket. Soho, that .extraordinary foreign quarter set right in the centre of the West End shopping area, is famous the world over , for its foreign restaurants. It is as thoroughly cosmopolitan as Kensington is thoroughly English. Here you may see strange faces and hear strange tongues, and if you will, by crossing the threshold of any of the French, Italian, Hungarian, .Swiss, or Spanish cafes that issue their invitation in such cryptic foreign hieroglyphics, step right out of the familiar life of London into a strange and fascinating adventure. Though French cooking is a feature of almost every really first-class restaurant. yet if one wishes to be transported into a really French atmos-

phere, it is necessary to go to one of the cafes in Soho such as Old Compton Street. Church Street or Greek Street. Here, over the Jiorning coffee and brioche, you may read the Irench papers, and hear the comments on the news scintillating around you smoke French cigarettes, and learn that high school French is a French not spoken in France. In these haunts, you may sample frogs, snails and musselsunder various disguises, jugged hare, and all manner of fish and fowl, cookedL so deliciously that you have to pinch yourself to bo sure that you have not strayed into the gourmet's version or heaven. You may not know what they mean on the bill of fare, but you might almost pick a dish at random with a pin and be sure that it will be worth eating.

In the Dictator Lands Along Charlotte Street or Swallow Street, there are waiting for you all the characteristic dishes from the land of the Swastika. Unperturbed by Buch sublunary considerations as the Aryan test and your very trying Aunt Deborah who cannot be induced to drop her indiscreet habit of talking Yiddish, you may eat Sauerkraut, Wiener Schnitzel or Apfeltrudol, and drink German champagne or hock or laager. It you are wise or your German vocabu-

LONDON RESTAURANTS SPIN THE GLOBE

larv is limited, you will not risk marS a good meal by confiding to the P ntrvn oDoosito you at table your vulabouTffitlo/or the Sudeten, or the Great War. „u nna London abounds also in Italian shops ind cafes of all kinds. There are large fmpressive establishments like Pagam s and in Soho Italian eating-houses of all kinds, including the oldest restaurant representing this nation in (s ree k tha Restaurant d Italie m ureeK Street. In any of the narrow streets this congested quarter are Italian nsn ships! tea shops and cafes varying in pretentiousness, where for a trgi g sum vou may enter the land of 11 iJuce without a passport. It .. speculate, as you consume your ""j* strone, risotto or ravioli, whether the dark-eyed, sallow-faced men and »omen at the otter tables are oid London inhabitants, tourists Passing thr°uglh, or refugees from a land where their'P. tical views are not acceptable to present Government. Stranger still is the atmosphere of the Russian cafes, and stranger the food and drink. Here, in a delightfully friendly yet curiously mysterious atmosplfere—for since the who knows what aristocrat may be disguised beneath the coat of a plain workman? —you may vodk plae, potent and breath-taking, an sample any of the national dishes. Borshtch, a soup which seems to consist usually of cabbage, carrots, leeks, beet> root, 'celery and onions, often served with sour cream, should certainly be included in the dinner. Spain, too, is well catered for, and in the vicinity ofrPiccadilly Circus you may take your choice, subject, or course, to the limitations of your purse. Paella a la Valenciana is, of course, the dish to order —chicken, treated to a judicious admixture of such garnishings as chillies, rice and mussels; or you might try soup made from tomatoes, cucumber and olive oil, served cold with fragments of toast; or Spanish

] No Colours But Black and Red j I H. A. Vachell (novelist): "Oar { 1 more brilliant young novelists disdain j { charm. Some see red; too many see [ | black- We must leave it at that— | | regretfully." i

omelette, quince cheese or Spanish pastries. But whatever you order, you will find it prepared quite differently from anything else you have ever eaten containing the same ingredients. Greek Street can give you a taste of Swiss cooking, which has something of the best traits of both the French and the Italian brands; or you can go to Berkeley Square for Danish fare, very good and quite different from anything else vou have sampled so far. Again, beginning with hors d'oeuvres or smorgasbord, you might try a Swedish dinner; or if paprika and. the gay spirit of Hungary are to your liking, try any of the cafes of that ilk scattered about Soho. An Oriental Atmosphere And now you should visit the immemorial East, where Time stands still. London has an enormous number of Indians, and there are many cafes where they can have a breath of home over their Madras chicken curry, spiced omelettes, or mangusteeni. Silentfooted Indian waiters clothed in white with crimson sashes wait on you, and it is even said that in one of the more pretentious of these restaurants the diners are fanned in hot weather by a punkah-wallah. To dine in a Chinese atmosphere, it is not necessary to seek the neighbourhood of Limeliouse Causeway and the East India Docks, though, of course, that is the heart of London's Chinatown. There is a Chinese restaurant almost within a stone's throw of Piccadilly Circus, where a menu of a couple of hundred dishes awaits your consideration. You need not partake of birds' nest soup or sharks' fins to be thoroughly Oriental —these are only for plutocrats. At quite a moderate cost you may dine on bamboo or chicken liver soup, followed by pork, chicken or steamed fish served with boiled rice, or garnished with preserved pickles, ginger or bamboo shoots; or you can have chop suey or just plain rice. Around you will be a strangely assorted clientele of leisurely wealthy gourmets, visitors_ rather suspiciously investigating their food, and "regulars" who know what they want and require it in a hurry. China tea is served in little bowls, and ,the flavour is quite spoiled by the addition of sugar.

Among the Japanese you will try the famous Sukiyaki, cooking it to your own taste on a little spirit lamp that the waiter brings along and puts before you on the table. Sake, or rice wine, will doubtless be a little strange to your palate, but somehow, as you sit on a mat on the floor in front of a little table with very short legs, you gradually come to feel that sake is the only drink in the world. The familiar London, with its buses and fogs and Belislia beacons recedes farther and farther from this new atmosphere of cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums and delicate paintings and paper decorations.

Close to Piccadilly Circus, too, is a Kosher cafe, to which repair the sons and daughters of many nations, bound together by one religion. Jewish cooking does not appeal to every palate, but others, many of them not of the Chosen People, find it the most wholesome of all. The fare is easily distinguished from that of the various European countries, yet it is curiously reminiscent of them all. Neither milk nor butter is served with any dish containing meat, so that the coffee will be black and the tea either plain or relieved with a slice of lemon. But it is Whitechapel, or the vicinity of Petticoat Lane, that is the heart of London's unrestricted ghetto. Here the shops sell Jewish goods, their signs are in Hebraic characters, and the names over their doors speak of far-off lands —Silbcrstein, Moscovitch, Goldstein, Rothschild,' Cohen, Gottlieb. And here, at East End prices, you may lunch or dine on "Kosher" fare, puzzling your brain if you will as to the nationality of the men find women around you whose features are so different in detail, yet all so strangely alike.