A Model Modern Restaurant.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 282, 10 September 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Model Modern Restaurant.

The opening of a new restaurant opposite the Law Courts (London) is an event that calls for something more than a passing notice. It is a restaurant on the model of Duval’s, and at the mention of that name ten thousand humble British tourists will feel a glow of grateful elation. It brings back so freshly the precious fortnight spent in Paris, and the peculiar cosiness of those little dinners at the marble tables, with the myriad sights and sounds of the boulevard caught through the open window ; the cheerful light within; the white-capped waitresses flitting to and fro on their errands of mercy to the hungry traveller ; the gentleman who knew the language and who undertook to speak them fair on behalf of the entire party, with such disastrous results. It all seemed so very Parisian. They were modest dinners, but what did it matter? For the uncloyed appetites of that first foreign tour, Tronipette himself could hardly have improved upon the fare. It was such a delightful combination of opposites, a certain suggestion of mild revelry with an indubitable economy in the price of the meal, and this after all was only half an illusion. It was Parisian, it was gay at the very least; and, as prices rule in Paris, it was cheap. You may come out of an Etablisaement Duval hardly more than a couple of francs the worse in pocket for what the Americans would call a square meal of the ordinary wind. Your bread cost you a penny, your half bottle of wine only sixpence, or even the half of that if you care to halve your bottle again. Soup is at the same figure, from threepence upwards. Meat and fish range from fourpence toeighbpcnce; vegetables—and those vegetables French—with all the rest in proportion. The attraction of these establishments for the native is even more noteworthy than their charm for the foreigner. They are dotted all over Paris, and new ones are opened every year. They are, in fact, the typical restaurants of the largest section of the middle class. They owe their success to the purity of the articles supplied, to the cleanliness and promptitude of the service, and above all to the little card given to each customer as he comes inj on which the white-capped waitress marks each article as she brings it to his order. The card has had a magical effect. It enables a thrifty man to suit both his pocket aud his palate in the composition of his dinner. He knows the precise nature of his engagements to the uttermost farthing. The prices are all marked on the menu in plain figures. The raire au beurrenoir cost eo much, the veau Marengo will swell the total only by so much more, the choux Jleurs au grain, the compote to follow for dessert, will increase it by a few sous ; add two or three more for the waitress, and the sum is done. Before the dawn of this great invention the luckless diner could not always predict the financial future with certainty, or where he could, and the restaurant was undoubtedly cheap, it was too often nasty as well. He was sometimes expected to take things which he did not want, to begin with the soup and follow with the fish aud the entree , though he might have been disposed to make the roti his first and only dish. At Duval s you are not expected to take anything in particular. It would be quite possible to come out with credit on an expenditure jof seven sous for-a plate of bouillon and a lump of bread.

The founder of these establishments was a butcher, and, according to the custom of some French butchers, he supplied beef-tea and a few cooked meats at certain hours of the day. These things are usually bought for home consumption, but sometimes they are consumed on the premises at a rude table. Duval, seconded by a mostenterprising wife, converted_the table from wood into marble, removed his scales, his block, and his joints of raw meat to a separate shop, brought in the painter and decorator, and sometimes wood carver and the sculptor, to make the place look pretty; formed a brigade of waitresses in a neat uniform, invented the famous card, and the “Bouillon Duval” was opened to the world. He died, as the French phrase it, more than a triple millionnaire. His son inherited his fortune,' and in his haste to spend it became the talk of Paris. The youth who had begun in the butcher’s shop and the eatinghouse matured as the man about town, and laid lavish offerings at the feet of the English livery stablekeeper’s daughter who lately favoured the French public with her memoirs. This went on until the lady could endure him no longer, and gave him his conge, although there were still some millions left. He shot himself on her hearth-rug. Paris never was so much interested, until it learned that he had recovered from his wounds, repented, and taken an honest woman to wife, and then it forgot all about him. He resumed his apron, and did duty in one of hia own shops. But the thoroughness of his repentance seemed to give umbrage to the ungrate, ful fair for whoso sake he had made a fool of himself. It used to be her favourite diversion to dine at hia place with a party of dandies, supposed to be his more fortunate rivals, and to snigger at her victim during the meal. He bore it without a murmur, and took his revenge by excuting her orders with punctuality and despatch. There is nothing, says a high authority, that people are more mortified to spend in vain than their scorn. The penitent was soon left to himself, and he is now one of the chief shareholders in the company that has bought his immense business, white the lady pursues in a garret the avocations suited to her advancing age. The simple Hogarthian moral is sometimes the moral of real life. The English Duval's is of course an adaptation to English needs ; but, even in the bill of fare, some features are retained of the original French scheme. You may have a Chateaubriand with potatoes, a cauliflower au grantin, a macaroni with cheese, or an omelette, as well as chump chop, kidneys, or a rump steak. It is an entente cordiale of national viands. For other points of resemblance there arc the trim waitresses, the card given at the door, and the priced menu within. Among points of difference —and these entirely in favour of the new institution—there is a most comfortable smokingroom and wine shades below in a chamber which must of itself suggest moderation in the use o( the good things of this life by its marked resemblance to a cathedral crypt. All is tentative just now ; the managers have yet to see how far the English public will take to the French dishes, as distinct from the French style of service, and they prudently provided themselves with a strong English reserve of eatables to make good any disaster to their foreign levies. But the experiment is an interesting one ; and our impression is that the French menu will gradually prevail, and that we are on the eve of a quiet revolution in native cookery. Our upper classes have long since ceased to dine in a way that is distinctively British; but such revolutions do not come from above, and the verdict of the clerk, the shopkeeper, and the better kind of artisan can alone be decisive as to the spread of this latest enterprise. It will be difficult, one cannot but think, for some cherished articles of our oldfashioned bill of fare to hold out against the invader; and perhaps it is not venturing too far into the region of prophecy to say that the " plain boiled ” with greens and carrots, 405

on which our fathers won Waterloo, is not long for this world. French ingenuity in the treatment of those esculents must kill it. _ Of remoter prospects it is difficult to speak with out soaring into poetry ; but can heavy whet for ever hold against a quarter of a bottle of drinkable claret for id. in a decanter all to itself ? One day, perhaps, the sweet boon of real French bread may bo added to the others, and a gloomy structure of national build known ironically as French roll may be devoted to other and better uses—the crust, perhaps, to patent roofing, the spongy part to another variety of absorbent for the morning bath. A main feature of the new experiment is that the diner can take just as little as ho pleases without so much as the implication of reproach, and can come out for sd. or 55., just as it suits his pocket or his appetite. —Daily News,