FullReads

“Of course, I have thought of it,” he answered. “It would be the greatest improvement that could be introduced into American hotel-keeping. No one knows better than I do how disastrous the present system is to all parties. Take as an example of the present way, the dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of Christmas. Glance over this menu. You will see that it enumerates every costly and delicate article of food possible to procure and a long list of other dishes, the greater part of which will not even be called for. As no number of chefs could possibly oversee the proper preparation of such a variety of meats and sauces, all will be carelessly cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.

“People who exact useless variety,” he added, “are sure in some way to be the sufferers; in their anxiety to try everything, they will get nothing worth eating. Yet that meal will cost me considerably more than my guests pay for their twenty-four hours’ board and lodging.”

“Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and because it will be an advertisement. These bills of fare will be sown broadcast over the country in letters to friends and kept as souvenirs. If, instead of all this senseless superfluity, I were allowed to give a table d’hote meal to-morrow, with the chef I have, I could provide an exquisite dinner, perfect in every detail, served at little tables as deftly and silently as in a private house. I could also discharge half of my waiters, and charge two dollars a day instead of five dollars, and the hotel would become (what it has never been yet) a paying investment, so great would he the saving.”

“Only this morning,” he continued, warming to his subject, “while standing in the dining room, I saw a young man order and then send away half the dishes on the menu. A chicken was broiled for him and rejected; a steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do you suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?”

“The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in hotels is, that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary, consisting principally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So little is known about the proper preparation of food that to-morrow’s dinner will appear to many as the ne plus ultra of delicate living. One of the charms of a hotel for people who live poorly at home, lies in this power to order expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their own tables.”

“To be served with a quantity of food that he has but little desire to eat is one of an American citizen’s dearest privileges, and a right he will most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as well as you and I do, that what he calls for will not be worth eating; that is of secondary importance, he has it before him, and is contented.”

“The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its guests to the extent of serving them a table d’hote dinner, would be emptied in a week.”

“A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to dine with friends, or at public functions, where the meal is invariably served a la russe (another name for a table d’hote), and on these occasions are only too glad to have their menu chosen for them. The present way, however, is a remnant of ‘old times’ and the average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is very conservative when it comes to his table.”

What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or two before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in vast steam closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own, and fifty other vapors.