STRANGE FOOD IN STRANGE PLACES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23016, 20 October 1936, Page 14

STRANGE FOOD IN STRANGE PLACES

If, on your travels, you always book in at the best hotels, where the language is English and the cuisine is French, no matter what the country may be. you have very little chance of sampling the food that is typical of the place, and you miss much of the spice of your adventure. But, wander into the byways, where the cook is a native, and you will find something with a difference which everyone with the true wanderlust craves. I thought that my eyes deceived me in Cairo when the Arab brought what looked like a slice of luscious watermelon slowly melting away (says an exchange). The “flesh” proved to be a pink water ice, with a passion fruit seed thrown in. here and there, to complete the illusion. Outside came a layer of white ice cream, and the “ skin ” was a fine covering of pale green ice. This was served at Grpppi’s, admittedly a tourist resort t but if you have an Egyptian friend in Cairo he will take you to a place that tourists know not of, and there you might taste real Egyptian fare. From a menu that meant nothing to me, because it was all dots and dashes and half-moons, I once chose something that sounded like “ coos coos ’’ and looked like a thick slice of bread, soaked in honey, and piled high with goat’s cream. That was the most intensely sweet concoction that it has been my misfortune to meet, and I had to give up the struggle halfway through. Ahmm next took us to quench the thrist which the coos coos had developed. We found ourselves in a back street cabaret, where girls of almost every nationality danced while we dark, sometimes they sat at our table, juninvited, and, as they receive commission on everything that you order while they are there, you can imagine that they are very charming to you., Two Egyptian Princes had a table there that night. They were alone, of course, for Egyptian gentlemen have a very convenient rule that the women of their household never dine in public. Incidentally, Ahmin conducted us back to our hotel in the early hours of the morning, but he said that he was returning to have a word with his princely friends. Paris, of course, has hundreds of eating places of charm. Montmartre of song and story is no longer popular, even with the artist colony, although the tourist still goes there to eat out of a coffin at the place which, being interpreted, spells r ‘nothingness.” and dances in a cellar at “The Rat,’ or at another evil-looking place called “ Heaven and Hell.”

If a Frenchman. takes you to supper it will be in Montparnasse, near the Latin quarter. Here, at one cafe, longhaired artists will come to your table and sketch you as you chatter with your friends, or, if you are lovely enough, will leave a permanent picture of you on the walls. In another cafe, beloved by the Bohemian, you will see some exotic women with purple lips to match a purple hat, or pale green eyelids to tone with a pale green frock. This is Le Dome, famous for its Cafe Liegoise. This is simply frozen creamy coffee, served in a tall glass, capped with thick whipped cream. It is eaten with a long-handled spoon. The glass stands in a saucer marked with the price. As you keep on watching the rest of the world go by; and keep on ordering, the waiter takes away your Masses, but leaves the pile of saucers, and your bill, to mount higher as night passes into day. Jerusalem you remember for the big blood oranges that you purchase near the Damascus gate, and Constantinople always recalls the indescribably delicious sweetmeats made from honey and sesame seeds that a niece of Russia’s ex-Czar brings to you in her own cafe. And Geneva you cannot forget for the*great peace that enveloped you as you dined at a pavement restaurant, watching the setting sun turn the snow on Mount Blanc a rosy pink.

If you are fond of curries, then you must find some curried fish in Canton. Even the effort of manipulating it with chopsticks is worth while. Eating with these is a fascinating business, anyhow. Once you can eat rice without spilling it ■Qown your neck you feel intensely proud of your prowess. An orange drink will always recall Rabaul, where a slim little “monkey, innocent of all clothing except a brief lap lap, administered to your needs on a wide, fern-hung bungalow verandah, and Manila you also remember for its drinks. Weirdly named these, and taken from a high stool in an American drug store. If vou happen on an old Spanish family in Manila, you are fortunate, for the flavour of their wines will linger long on your tongue and for ever in your mind I suppose that parched throats are always associated with the tropics, and so it is drink, rather than food, that you also remember in Sandakan. But, alas, the drinks of Borneo always tasted of soap, why, I never discovered, but many a glassful had to find its way into a fern tub. Italy’s cafes are very like those of France, but much experience of them gives you a passion for spaghetti, whereas after 1000 snails in France few people are convinced that they are worth the trouble o f extricating them from their shells. Once you have learnt to eat spaghetti as the natives do you enjoy it t” the full., They plunge their forks into the squirming mass, ■ twist them smartly, lift the forks intc their nouth, and bite off the straggling ends. It is that final snap with the teeth that enables you to eat spaghetti happily. In Rome, after you have had an audience with the Pope, you might sit at a cafe outside St. Peter’s and drink cool amber beer as the Romans do. Nice people drink beer in the streets of Europe, you know. But peasant folk in Italy wil l serve you wine. After you have shivere-Lwith fear and cold on the brink of the crater of Vesuvius, the quaint train that brings you back to Naples will stop halfway down the mountainside while you sip the famous wine of the locality. The Tears of Christ ” they call it. Outside Florence an old monk in the Carthusian monastery of Certosa will give you soft liqueurs made from the honey of his own bees. Near the ruins of Pompeii a swarthy Neopolitan will sing “ O Sole Mio ” to you while the fish you have selected in the raw are cooking, and, in Venice, you share your crumbs with the millions of pigeons that live in the church of San Marco. When you have climbed to the roof of Milan Cathedral you might refresh yourself on Italian fare from a buffet erected there. London’s West End cafes are too luxurious to have any real charm for the lover of the unusual, and Soho is only an imitation of the Continent. It is the rural inns of England that enthral you. Certainly, you go at least once to the Cheshire Cheese, off Fleet street, not one whit changed, so they insist, since the great Dr Johnson was a patron. ■ His favourite dishes ace still made from the same old recipes. There is sawdust on the floor, benches to eat from, and antique Windsor chairs to sit on. That is, unless you are prepared to pay for the privilege of sitting on Dr Johnson’s own chair, if an American has not got there before you. Out in the English country you dine in smoke-blackened rooms with oak rafters, and fresh-complexioned country lasses serve you bacon and eggs that taste different from any other bacon and eggs. Then there is Clovelly, beautiful little Clovelly, in Devon, a wee town with just one straggling street tumbling from cliff-top to sea. Cottages, washed in pink or cream, or blue, with boxes of flowers in their windows, and creepers hugging their walls, flank the cobbled way. and, if in the parlourwindow you see a huge dish of clotted cream and another of ripe red strawberries, that is an invitation to come inside and eat. In her tiny room the fisherman’s wife and daughter will wait upon you, and then regale you with strange stories about the village. In a million places you might eat and drink, but I really think that of them all you are sure to remember most lovingly those fisher cots at Clovelly.