The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-02-11
DA1NT1Es FOR JOHN cH1NAMAN.
All Sin Revels' in Dishes Which Look
Curious to Occidental Eyes.
From the New York Herald.

It EOuu bl6 N6W OIk t16L4lu
Every day in New York you can see
score of pigtailed gentleman in the neigh
borhood of Mott street each carrying a
huge brown paper bag. If you could
open these MYSTERIOUS packages you
would find desiccated shrimps and
prawns, picked Annoy cabbage, delicate
little tubers known as natal bitter
cucumbers, dried devilfish, Awabi clans
from Japan, smoked oysters, preserved
sharks fins, pot of sweetmeats, funny
looking sausages and lots of dainties for
which there is no name in English. A
poor laundryman will spend
quarter or third of his income
upon these Injuries, and will devote
half a day of his precious time
to cooking them in approved Monaghan
style The table is a queer work of art.
The china and porcelain are superb, so
beautiful that in this land of collectors
they would be placed in cabinets. There
are no knives or forks. The Celestial
mind regards cutting and carving a labor
unworthy of guest and relegates it to a
cook. In lieu of forks are chopsticks-
long, slender bars of ivory tipped with
silver or gold. The spoons are films of
porcelain; the wine glasses, cups like
those in children's doll houses Your plate
is a saucer and your napkin a silk towel
held by a servant. The ia BILE is handsome
nevertheless 1t is nearly covered with
dainty plates containing hors d'oeuvres
piled up in slender pyramids. One pile con
sists of peeled bananas, cut into little
drums another of pineapple, carved into
tiny bars, like miniatures of laundry
soap, a third of crystallized dwarf
oranges, moistened in honey; fourth of
fine onion sprouts and fifth preserved
eggs, dark green and suggesting cucum-
bers. Other plates contained sliced sau-
Sages, picked cocks combs, hard boiled
pigeons eggs, sweet picked shredded gin
ger, sliced water chestnuts, dried fish
segments, desiccated prawns. smoked fish
roe, and score of other and equally in
congrous dainties.
You help yourself to any of these, both
before and during the banquet. In the
meantime the waiter or the "sing-song
girl has filled your teacup with fragrant
Oolong and your winecup with boiling
wine. From this point neither cup is
permitted to remain empty nor grow old
If it stand longer than the time allotted
by Monaghan etiquette it is removed and
replaced by hot one. After few min
utes of nibbling and slipping the courses
begin to arrive and continue to arrive as
| long as there is a soul at the board Soups
| and stews, omelettes and entrees, roasts
| and boiled, ragouts and fricassees.
croquettes and vol au vents, sweet
| dishes and sour follow one an
| other without apparent rhyme or reason.
| At the end of every half hour you take a
| recess of from five to fifteen minutes
| Everyone lights a cigarette or puffs a
water pipe A few retire to one of the
| hunks and smoke pipe of opium The
'sing song girls perform a brief concert,
vocal and instrumental, and again the
meal proceeds. 1t is poor dinner that
has less than twenty courses. Some have
| forty and fifty, and few pass the hun
| bred mark. You eat what you please
and IS much as you please. Scarcely any
! dish is simple; some contain twenty
ingredients. The average banquet
uses pork, fresh, salt and smoked !;
pigs brains, liver and kidney, chicken,
duck pigeon, quail and goose; fish, fresh,
dried, salt and smoked; eggs of a least
four kinds, rice, pastry, beans, peas, cab
bage, mlllet, lentils, onions, garlic, leek,
cucumber, squash, melon, gourd, potatoes,
white and sweet; yam, natal, bean,
sprouts, spinach, turnip, parsnip, carrot,
devil fish, dragon fish, fish roe, clans,
eyeters, crabs, sea weed, mushroom and
tree mushrooms, bird s nests sharks fms
chilliss, orange peel, ginger, cocoanut,
macaroni, and heavens knows what not.