The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-10-11
DINING AROUND THE |
WORLD
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BY GEORGE LYNCH.

This is the age of the restaurant.
Never before did people dine so much
out of their own homes. Dining out at
restaurants is unquestionably on the
increase, and most on the increase in
the most progressive countries. A trip
round the world provides opportunities
of contrasting all varieties of restau-
rants.
OF the different nations it might be
said, dine me at your restaurants and
I'll tell you what you are" The va
rious characteristics of a people can be
we'll studied in watching how they
pray, how they fight, how they play,
but best of all in how they dine. In
the clatter, hustle, and noise of a big
of high-pitched voices, the quick SER
vice, the band adding to the din, the
costly dresses of the ladies, the rest
lessness that gives their feeding some
thing of the suggestion of stocking ma
chinery-boilers, we get an apt reffec-
ton of their life-just as in the Jap
anese tea-house, with the deft and
noiseless service of fitting mesans,
smiling, attentive in the anticipation
of ones wants, and its verandas look
ing out on the garden with it's minia-
ture mountains and lakes, whose sur
face is rippled here and there by the
quiet whisk of a gold-fish's tail, one
feels that there is art in the air, that
these are an artistic people, and civil
lied in the highest sense of the word.
Feeding with them has no suggestion
of stocking; in it's repose and in the
harmonious elegance of it's surround
ings it might be religious rite OF
Buddhistic tranquility.
l happened to dine at the Carlton the
Sunday before I left England, and
dinner there is surely a microcosm of
English social life of today and its
tendencies. The average price paid for
each dinner works out at one pound
seventeen and siXpence per head. L
have heard a syndicate defined to be
"a body of men entirely surrounded by
money" and there is a suggestion of
that nature in the surroundings of the
habitues of the Carlton. There you
will see the City much in evidence,
and the members of the dollarocracy
who are visitors from the States, whose
wives have an opportunity of showing
their magnificent jewels and the op-
portunity, which is denied them in
New York, of displaying their arms
and shoulders, for it is not the thing
in America to wear low-necked gowns
when dining out at a restaurant
During the following week I was liv-
ing on the most excellent fare provided
by the Cunard Company on the dear
old, if venerable, Umbria. l wonder
why it is that on no steamship line in
the world you can get decent cup OF
tea. I can only recollect twice getting
good tea af1oat: once was on river
barge coming down the Peiho from
the late Ii Hung Chang. and the other
occasion was on the Erin, belonging TO
Sir Thomas Upton. 1 am sure that it
must have been on liner that man
said, on tasting the contents of cup
set before him, IF this is tea, bring me
coffee: if this is coffee, bring me a cup
of tea
The following Sunday found me din
ing at the Waldorf, New York-in
many ways the most wonderful hotel
in the world 1t was fortunate that 1
had engaged a room beforehand as l
found six hundred applications had
been refused during the previous three
days. The palm-room is the paradise
of New York diners during the week.
I have seen an elaborate dinner given
to seven hundred people in the great
ballroom upstairs without the least
noticeable delay in serving the hun
dreds of diners in the five other large
dining-rooms.
The music of Niagara coming across
the snow was the band that played for
us at dinner at the Cataract House,
Niagara. Dining on the cars of the
Sante Fe route, or at the stations, we
reached San Francisco, where my first
dinner was up in the Spreckels's build
ing, on the fifteenth floor, two hundred
and ten feet above the street.-a din
ner in the clouds they call it, and
charge only one dollar twenty-five
cents, and nothing extra for one of the
most wonderful views in the world.
A HONOLULU DINNER.
A fortnight afterwards 1 had at Ho-
nolulu what was probably the most
curious dinner of my trip Some hos
pitable friends gave a dinner for us
after the native style. Our host and
hostess were members of the late
Royal Family, so that we could feel
certain we should see what a genuine
''luau'' was like. There were about
fifteen in the party. We entered the
dining-room to find the table absolute
ly covered with foliage and flowers,
amongst which the plates and nu-
merous dishes were placed On the
back of every chair were long leis, or
garlands formed by the heads of flow