The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1878-07-13
Our Letter from Europe,
The Paris Exposition.

I AheeJ cOO HuSA va G1CHCh lIlO Ill Luk
theatres, in the art galleries, in the
streets and in their public assemblies
but if you want to see it au aaturet
as Frenchman would say, yon must
see it in the restaurants. When an
Englishman eats he seeks a modest
seclusion the American does not
particularly care about making pub
lie exhibition of himself; the German
likes to ST. under the branches of a
shady tree, or anywhere with few
green leaves around him, that remind
him of the woods and the fields. Not
SO with the Frenchman give him a
| roll, q bottle of gia Ordinaire, set him
out in the middle of the street or on
the sidewalk, where thousands can see
him, and he is happy. There seems
to be no such a thing as privacy or
home life in Paris, as We understand
it in other lands.
There are great many time hon.
0red humbugs connected with French
/ cooking and French restaurants,
which ought to be exploded by some-
body. There are undoubtedly excel
lent French cooks, but like every
other good thing in France they are
exceedingly dear aud altogether out
of the reach of ordinary people. There
is not an Englishman or an American
in moderate circumstances but who,
in his own country, eats every day
better dinner than is eaten by ninety
nine-hundredths of the people who
come to Paris. There is not so dear
a city to live in, | believe, on the
face of the earth. Kid gloves may
possibly be trifie cheaper, butevery
thing else is enormously high and
growing worse every day. Before
you venture into restaurant feel in
your pockets and examine the state of
your treasury if it is light, do not go
in, for if you do yon viii find Yourself
on the stool of repentance for the
next six days. Everything is charged
| for, even the napkin with which you
wipe your lips; and after you have
settled your bill, the man for whose
service you have already paid expects
little something for himself; if he
has taken your umbrella, he charges
you for that; if he gives your hat
rub, another tritling charge when he
pulls your chair from behind you, he
holds ont his hands; and if yoa fail
to interpret his pantomime, he can
generally hunt up English enough to
make yOu understand that he wants
some argent. The restaurants are all
about the grounds, many of them
niagDificently fitted up and most of
them have peculiar, and some of them
excellent features. About the hour
of noon you can see them in all their
glory. This is the hour that the
FreDchman eats his breakfast, and
his English and American consins
who want to appear like Frenchmen
eat their breakfast ut the same time.
Everybody who can get out of doors
does so; cold draugllts, miserable
dust, drizzling rain, are nothing il
they can only exhibit themselves.
The breakfast is simply a respecta-
ble lunch, being taken as q general
thing without tea or coffee or any
thing else that would remind one of
home breakfast in England or Ameri-
ca. And one of the singular features
OF their restaurant business is that,
for many of their most important
things, they are dependents almost
entirely upon En- gland. Pickles, pre-
serves, condiments, seups, preserved
meats, potted hams and chickens, are
mostly furnished by the great firm of
Crosse, Blackwell g., Co., of Lordon
their signs meet you everywhere and
their goods are on every counter and
line every shelf. To look at their
catalogue, one would think they had |
taken a contract to provision, not |
only Paris, but the whole world.
Their case in the annex to the main |
building is new revelation of gas
tron0mic wonders and curiosities. 1t |
almost seems as if they had exhausted |
the science of the cuisine. Baked, |
boiled, fried, fixed and grilled, every |
thing that man ever did eat, or even |
expects to eat, it seems to me can be |
found there.
Sunday is one of the most popular
days in the week the number of en-
tries some times reaching one hun
dred and thirty or forty thousand. At |
breakfast and dinner, every body |
who is anybody drinks wine, and this
Is anather grand liumbug. The rea-
son given for drinking the wine is
that the water of Paris is had. Well,
it is not particularly good, but the
ordinary wine is worse and simply
execrable. | believe there is better
wine made to-day in America, with
some very few exceptions, than can
be found in all France. Who that
visited the Centennial at Philadelphia
two years ago, can forget the exhibi-
tion of American wines, equaling
everything to be found in the present
! am sorry that there
are not some of them here to show
them what can be done on the other