“SPRAT” HASH-HOUSES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 10, 28 August 1911, Page 8

“SPRAT” HASH-HOUSES.

HOW THEY ARE RUN. (By Frederic La Gallienne, in tlio “Sunday Sun.”) In the early part )f the week thousands of Sydney residents wore sbockcd to hear that a factory which supplied retail shops with meat pies was “paved” with horse manure. I propose in this article to take that large proportion of the community which dines at sixpenny restaurants into the kitchen where their “three-course” meal is prepared. Three courses for sixpence is very cheap. It is sometimes very nasty. There is an old proverb which says that what the eye does not sec the heart docs not grieve at. And what is true of the heart is equally true of that part of the anatomy known is polite society as “Little Mary.” The facts lam about to relate were gathered during my first few weeks in Sydney before I had “struck oil.” One morning 1 saw posted on the window of a sixpenny “buster” this notice: “Wanted, smart young' man, generally useful.” I stepped inside and had an interview with a fat greasy foreigner, who, having just breakfasted, was pleasantly occupied in picking his teeth with a fork. Ho eyed me up and down, and then said: “’Ow mooch wages you vant?” “£1 a week and ray food.” “Nonsense. I gif you plenty food, good bed, and 10s.” I was hard up, and I took the job. A bo-dragglcd waitress took mo to the kitchen and handed mo over to the tender mercies of the kitchenman. He was dressed in a pair of dungarees and a dirty singlet covered with grease, soot, and stove polish. Kis matted hair hung over his perspiring forehead, and his hands were black. He was peeling the vegetables for dinner! “Clean them knives!” ho said. I cleaned them on an old-fash-ioned knife-board, and was then given a sheet with which to polish them. 1 then cleaned the forks with whiting, and polished them on the sheet, too. Now, this sixpenny restaurant let beds at a shilling per night, and I found, during the day, that the sheet I had used for polishing knives and forks was a dirty sheet taken from the bed of a boarder who had gone away that morning! After one or two other odd jobs—dishwashing and so on—l was passed on to the cook. If possible, lie was in a dirtier condition than the kitchenman. He persistently chewed tobacco, dribbling at the mouth, and spitting all over the floor.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and then went on kneading the dough for the pastry! This man set mo to work pooling apples. As my hands were covered with a mixture of whiting and knife polish I was going to wash them,- when the cook stopped

“Hurry up with those apples, there’s no time to wash your hands here.” There was certainly a great deal to dop and very little time to do it. All morning the cook, the kitchenman, and myself were busy, and the stuffy little kitchen became as hot as a furnace as the contents of the pots and pans boiled and sizzled on the lire. At last 11.30 struck, and the cook donned a white coat and cap. His thirst for a clean appearance, however, did not go so far as a wash. And now, indeed, my eyes were opened to the ways of certain sixpenny restaurants.

All soups came out of the same pot. If you want pea soup the cook took a small handful of lentil flour from one of the jars in front of him and put it in the ladelful of greasy liquid. If the order happened to be tomato soup, he squeezed a tomato (with his dirty hand) into the liquid. It is scarcely necessary to point out that lamb and mutton are closely related, but it may not be generally known that boiled mutton, roast mutton, and

roast beef are very often cut from the same joint! The boiled mutton is covered with caper sauce. If roast mutton is ordered a thick slice of boiled mutton is served with “black-jack gravy,” and if roast beef is ordered the boiled mutton is cut very thin, and served with beef essence gravy, tlrilled steak is steak fried in the pan and afterwards marked with a redhot toasting fork. Steak pie is stewed steak served with a piece of the pastry crust which help the apple sauce to masquerade as apple pie. The sauce for the plum pudding is the caper sauce minus the capers and plus a little sugar. Stewed rabbit and rabbit pie come out of the same pot, and at the end of the dinner hour the scrapings from all the utensils go into the soup. In carving joints the “chef” despises the use of a fork. He seize i the joint with his dirty left hand, cut: a, slice, and places it with his hand i>. the plate. By the came means ho dishes nut the potatoes. As for the kitchen itself, the floor was of coloured tiles, very much worn, and very uneven. Ruddles of dirty water were common, and the cooking utensils were caked with accumulations of greasy matter. The plaster of the walls was broken, and they wore alive with cockroaches and other live stock. Yet, looking into the restaurant from the street, the casual observer would probably lie

struck by the general air of cleanliness pervading the dining room. Verily, they make clean the outside of the cun and the platter! Dumas the Elder once gave some excellent ad\i etol is son. I repeat it for the benefit of the too impatient diner at S;. dnoy sixpenny hash-houses: “Never quarrel with tee waiter or be may spit in your soup.” And in any case lie is absolutely certain to have had a dirty thumb in it.