Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-12-01
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FOOD FOR THE POOR
Il NC
Paris Does a Big Trade in Second
HAND YiGatuals.
LEFT OVER FROM THE HOTELS
Meats and Vegetables Sold at Very
Low Prices.
-+-s--4t-
B U YERS AND SELLERS
pecial Correspondence of The Evening Star.

"hoh all NE is second Inland. They live
IN secondhand houses, wear second-h hand
ciothes, cook and warm themselves with
secondhand fuel. smoke secondhand to-
| bacco and eat secondhand food. They are
not tramps or beggars, either Only the
temptation is great, and the habit grows.
In Paris, the dearest city in the world,
where every pound of eatables and drink
ables pays a high municipal entry tax.
poor parents with many children are glad
10 Nil the Understanding little mouths with
nourlshlng meat, procured however it may
be. Is it clean? I think So
We went to see. The establishment STYLED
"A fAzart de la Fourchaite, lei ron Dine
pour Tn Sou is, in the words of our newly
landed American friend, tough PROPOSE
ton. Being translated, it means, AT the
Hazard of the Fork. Here You Dine for
One Cent" The place is the revival of an
original which disappeared in 1910. Set
up again in the old beggars' rendezvous
around the Place Maubert, it does roys-
of degraded poor devils. maintained as
much by its phenomenally cheap absinthe
and rum as by the savory emanations of
the big pot and the warmth of the room.
Long, heavy tables, fanked with long,
heavy benches, form its only furniture At
these the purchase of a glass of strong
drink e cents carries the right to sit and
doZe throughout the day or late into the
be not too full of better paying customers.
The weary one sitting on the bench rests
his outstretched arms on the table and his
bowed head his arms. This is called
| Doing a short one" ... ....-. ''
Three Chances for a Sou.
Over a good fire in an old brick range
SINNERS the big black pot which holds all
the possibilities of "tha hazard of the fork"
| We paid for some poor fellows hazards.
| raid I'm a6 ba1
the right, considered liberal, to plunge the
| fork into the pot three times fat old
| woman hands out a long, two pronged iron
fork. 1T onght to have three prongs.'
grumbled an aged tramp in his gravy
| stained beard.
The madame lifts the lid off the bubbling
| pot and stands there to oppose rregulari-
ties "Pquez.' stick in.'' One of our
clients got for his first jab chicken neck
Whole boiled potato. Ills third was was an s ear
of what do NOT know. He was thought
to have had bad luck the things were hot
and savory. however, and each cent en-
the mass is boiling with plenty of scraps
of vegetables. Weo saw, various things come
up. Once it wassa BLACK radish or turnip
radishs Another time was a rind Of ba-
half a sleeps head was felicitated on his
| luck. An unhappy boy who fetched up an
empty musse1 shsll-the mussef had stayed
below-fought for another plunge and got
it. Mere la Fourchetts is not without a
bluff good-heartedness-
1T is certainly, q good place for vage-
bonds" said the French friend who had
ho Il hes aaS M arsf han p Seg
s laa q On a ib PEtf'SR st whfn fhsy are
h. 'osH here the stuff Comes FrOA.fa.
| p3NFnere does that food come ffoin?. we
asked 1t 1ed'tp discussion. '"Where does
it come from?" snorted madame, in her
proper pride. 1T comes from the greatest
hotels aud the finest restaurants of Paris
That IS all! Only that! At your service
messieurs" She was wounded
Madame told the truth. The broken meats
| and vegetables reboled in her black pot
came from these hotels and restaurants
I fresh every day. They go not only to the
| poor Hazard of the Fork" but to large.
| busy stalls in the best Paris markets. At
| the Halles Centrales there remain only
! three chief proprietors. who have absorbed
| the business Of the forty-three existing be-
| fore the war But others, like the "Marche
Nor' in the Fauborg Saint Antoine (.n-
| habited by all manner OF small artisans,
| many of them engaged in furniture manu-
| facture) and the "Marche des Patriarches''
! Rue Mouffetard. beyond the Latin Quar-
| ter, where anarchists have their printing
presses) have taken up the trade, so that,
| indeed, some of the most important specu-
lators. like Nine Nicollet-who. has tie
| leavngs of the Grand Hotel for example
| send their material directly to these less
fastidious markets. The Halles Centrales,
we found are Squeezing OUT the bijou-
tiers, they have been called for two hun
dred years. merchants of bijouS Gewelry)
| or arlequns harlequins), another word for
| the same broken victuals.
| Take the Grand Hotel which, after ALL Is
| one of the great caravanserais OF the world.
| I asked NJ. Casenaye, the director general,
| If he could not give me transcript from
| his reviewing book for one day. He kindly
| issued orders to have the memoranda pre-
| pared, pardonahly suggesting to the stew
| ard to select enc of the heaviest days of the
exposition, with the bread and all. The list
| ran: Meat, $343; butter. eggs and cheese,
s111; fish. ss7; extra chicken giblets ETC..
| SIT; vegetables and fruit, s64; milk. SIS; po-
| tatoes, $40: pork and chicken butchers ma
| tera $21; oysters, $27; ham, $eS; salt, 50;
| poultry and game, $l6S: groceries. sd; con-
fectionery. s223: bread and rolls. $57. In all
| it makes a total Of 81 OIL worth OF food ma
terial for single day.
| 1t Is obvious that from such daily masses
of material there must be large amount
| of broken victuals. "A French family could
| live on what an American family wastes
| Is an old saying.
| Coffee and Coffee.
NJ Casenave spoke first Of the coffee
| grounds. "They go to the good sisters"
| Now, there is more in coffee grounds than
| the light-minded would suspect. In Paris
coffee grounds play almost as important
role as does coffee itself. The Paris way of
making coffee, the best coffee. necessitates
| beginning the day before. The knowing
housewife has not thrown out yesterdays
coffee grounds. Had she done so she would
be obliged to proehrer some other for this
mornings coffee. Yesterday, after serving
the coffee, she poured more water on the
grounds and put the whole to stand in a
large earthenwarer jug, 1t gets black and
bitter This morning she will take it down
and strain it. She, takes fresh coffee ber-
ries. She roasts them herself, a process
that in small apartments sends whiffs Of
agreeable aroma from; the kitchen. When
she has roasted it, she grinds it, still hot.
One soup spoonful Of fresh ground coffee
for each cup is the moderate Paris recipe.
This is dumped into the upper part of the
universal enameled; earthenware coffee pot
composed of two parts. the pot proper and
the cylindrical filter that fits over 1t. Here
Is where the coffee. grounds of yesterday
come in Instead sof pouring plain water
over the fresh ground coffee in the filter the
Parisienne pours the strained coffee grounds
They are black and bitter although diluted.
Parisians rejoice In the black bitterness.
The liquid trickles over the fresh-ground
coffee. and. drop by drop. into the pot be-
low. through the holes in the bottom OF the
enameled earthenware filter This Is why
Paris coffee tastes different" to American