Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1903-05-30
NEW YORK A BIT OF PARIS.
The Hotel Where the Frenchiest of
French Cooking is Had.

The Frenchiest of French cooking in
New York is that of a tiny hotel and
restaurant not far from the French line
pier
A low, long, shabby house with two
street doors. one leading to the hotel
proper and usually locked, the other to
the barroom, is distinguished from its
fellows by the coarse lace curtains jeal-
ously covering all the windows both
above stairs and below. The dining
room has the single long, narrow table
characteristic of the cheaper French res
taurants.
Oilcloth takes the place of linen and
the chairs are of the cheapest. There is
nothing in the way of decoration to con-
ciliate the eye, and only the fact that
the kitchen, a small room in the rear, is
cleaner than the dining room, could re-
concile a fastidious person to taking a
meal in the place.
The aspect of the queer little restau-
rant has thus far prevented it from at
tracing the seekers after Bohemia, and
it remains amazingly like hundred
such restaurants and shabby hotels in
Paris and the other French cities. 1t is
in fact bit of Paris separated from the
rest of the French capital by the inter-
vening miles of land and water, for the
patrons of the place are largely persons
who come fresh from France, so that
the Partisan tradition has never been
lost.
When a ship of the French line comes
in the little hotel fills up with guests
the petty officers of the ship and the
humber passengers. The latt er sleep in
the tiny chambers on the seco ld floor be-
hind the closely-drawn coarse lace cur
tains and the former drink absinthe and
eau sucre at the bar.
All day and half the night the little
hotel resounds with the French tongue,
and the newly expatriated forget that
they are on an alien shore. Just a few
blocks away waves the tri-color at the
masthead, and the waters that wash the
shores of Manhattan island are the same
that lap the quays at Havre.
Familiar Partisan dishes help to make
the guests feel themselves at home.
Nothing has been spoiled to please the
palate of the curiosity hunting New
Yorker.
The poorest drink their cheap red wine
ut dinner and abundantly oil their sal
ad. Onions and chives and all the other
sharp or odorOus dishes that the French
palate loves are provided exactly as you
find them in the brasserieS of hundred
provincial towns of France and i'll the
crowded quarters Of Paris itself.
The bearded officers laugh and talk
over their meal, Slttlng shoulder TO shoul-
der with the newly arrived immigrant.
Some of the latter see here in the restau-
rant perhaps for the first time the faces
of colored people, for hither come occa-
sionally men OF color from the French
West Indies, well dressed, lively and in
telgent men, curiously unlike the native
colored people of the United States in at
titude and appearance, speakers of soft
French patois, such as is heard in the
islands from the descendants of former
slaves.
Few patrons of the house linCer long.
and each arriving ship sends in a fresh
batch with, of course, the recurent petty
officers. The previous arrivals have scat
tered, some TO the French quarter of this
city, others east, west and south. Be
tween ships the place has comparatively
few patrons, and an English speaking
visitor is rarity.-New York Sun.