IN BERLIN HOTELS

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9692, 21 June 1917, Page 4

IN BERLIN HOTELS

STAGE FOOD PLAY OUTRAGED GUEST AT THE KAISERHOF. The main dining-room of tho Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin was brightly lighted an*', /airly well filled with the usual crowo of serious minded Gorman men and women intent; upon getting the last least particle of food which it was possible to obtain at one meal (wrote the former Berlin correspondent of thd ( Chicago ’Tribune”). Dining is no longer a matter to be taken lightly in Germany. It requires sober attention and receives it. You cannot take a meal in a public place in Berlin or any other German city with, out noticing the concentration with which the men apd womeii at the tables around you devote themselves to the business of the moment. There is absolutely no waste of food. One thing tho regulations for food control have accomplished, if nothing more. They have made it certain that what lood there is in Germany is eaten, and none of it thrown away. LAST DROP OP SOUP. It is quite the thing, for instance, and one sees it done repeatedly, to pick up tho emptied soup plate, and, holding it on edge. Jet the last remnant of the little portion of soup which had boon there drip slowly and carefully into the waiting spoon. X have scon well dressed women, and men in the uniform of tho German army and navy, do that repeatedly, utterly oblivious of the notice their action might attract from any- other quarter of the room. And after they have thus drained the last drop that would ruu out by itself I have seen the plate most carefully scrubbed clean by a sop of bread, especially if it happened to he a thick soup instead of the watery decoction called ‘draktbruhe, and purporting to he a beef extract, but suggesting to me the chemical laboratory rather than the butcher shop. Scrubbing the plate with bread' to get the last drop of sauce or gravy is a common thing in Germ,an restaurants nowadays. No one, thinks anything about it. Attention is much more quickly attracted to the folly and extravagance of any ouo who should permit a particle of such food to go back to the kitchen on his plate. That i is waste that is well-nigh criminal. It isn t done by the best jicople. . . I knew some people at the hotel in Berlin who having secured a liberal stock of butter from Copenhagen by virtue of being foreigners, used occasionally to be a little liberal with some of it m the dining room and deliberately leavo little portions on their plates, ihat always used to attract attention from other tables, and especially from the waiters, who used to watch with sharp eyes to see the one who w-aa fortunate enough to ho serving at that table get those little pieces of butter safely stowed where ho could put therd to the best use for himself when the opportunity came. “KICKED” ABbUT FOOD. But this is not telling what happened that evening in the mam diningroom ol the Kaiserhof. The Kaiserhof had among its guests that evening tho usual throng of army and navy officials,.together witu its sprinkling of Germane from, outside of Berlin, and hero and there the American or other foreigner. Suddenly, almost in tli<s centre of the great room, right under tho huge chandelier and in a spot where everybody else in the room could see, there arose an extraordinary clamour. In tones that carried 1 through tho whole diningroom the excited guest declared he had ordered roast beef —the only kind of meat on the' bill of faro that evening. , He had delivered to tie waiter meat card section® entitling him to 100 grams (about 3i ounces) of roastbeef. The waiter had brought, him one thin, skimpy little slice of meat, with all the blood and juice cooked out cf it—a slice that certainly did not weigh 100 grams or anything likoj it, It wan an outrage and a shame. Ho demanded redress and the rest of his 100 grams . of meat and he wanted them both then and there. Tho directors and tho managers and the head waiter and the waiter on duty at that table and six or eight or ten other waiters crowded around, and ill shouted at once, but the outraged, guest shouted the loudest. Obviously ho was going to win the engagement. And he did. WEIGHING THE MEAT, Presently the crowd about his, table untangled itself, and there emerged from it a procession, formed almost in military order, headed by the director end tho head waiter, which marched in solid column towards the kitchen. There was a moment or two of anxious suspense, while the other guests manifested in various -ways their sympathetic interest in him who had suffered this indignity. Then from the kitchen reappeared that procession of directors, head waiters, managers, and waiters from the rank and file, bearing with them a huge greatpair of scales, built out of brass on the first principle of the balance. There was a tall upright in the middle, sustaining the lopg arms from which, depended on slender chains tho- two wide-spreading brass pans, one for the weights and tho other for the'article to be weighed! The head waiter picked up the' 100 gram weight and duly . and solemnly placed it in one of the weighing pans. Instantly that side of the scales went down and the other up. Then, under the fascinated and unwinking gaze of that vast room full of observers* he selected a fork, picked up that innocent slice of roast beef, and dropped it gently and reverantlv into the other weighing pan. A distinctly audible sigh Trent up- from all around the room. “Ah,” the witnesses wore saying, half to themselves, “now we shall see!" They did. The 100 gram weight was not lifted. JUDGMENT OP SCALES. The dining-room of the Kaiserhof simply exploded. The outraged guest shoute<J louder than ever. Tho whole room talked and gesticulated and shouted with, him. The directors and the managers and the \ head waiter and the other waiters were overcome with chagrin and discomfiture. i This manifest triumph for the outraged guest presently soothed a little the excitement of- the other diners, who began to remember the imperative business for which they had come there, and resumed their table places. Then another procession came from the kitchen and headed, toward tho table of the outraged guest. In his hand the head waiter carried a plate, and on that plate there rested a slice of roaet beef. Was it a 100 gram slice? Never in all the world. It was a microscopic wafer, cut from the roast with all the skill and training of the most experienced cook in the Kaiserhof service, and it represented with almost mathematical accuracy the deficiency in the Other slice detected.by the gastronomic sleuth who had raised tho outcrv of protest. . Thus justice was done and the majesty of tho food vindicated in the Kaiserhof hotel. ______________