Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-13
pressing similarity IN the types OF people
who sit at the tables.
Whore the New Yorker Lunches.

pressing similarity N the types or people
who sit at the tables.
Where the New Yorker Lunches.
To ind lunch crowds made UP practically
of New Workers. exclusively you must go
neither to the giittering restaurants in the
skyscrapers nor to those OF many types in
the hotels, the most conservative Of which
long ago added a-la-carte MONDAY eating
places to their plants. but to the less pre-
tentious places found on the side streets
mainly.
Scores of them have tiled floors and walls.
Haunting these expensively provided sani-
tary features in the face of every one who
Sits down at their highly polished little
tables. These are set In rows to simulate
long tables. are crowded together and wait
ed upon by young women, though the wait
resS is less In evidence in New York as
whole. than in almost any other city.
Much to the grief of the conservative, who
prefer home-lfke" places in which to eat
at midday, the glitter and catter type of
restaurant Is gradually driving out the
places with old-fashioned wooden floors,
with walls that do not reflect the light of
day or electric bulb or gas jet with bril-
lance that dazzles the eye Yet even the
old type restaurants are still to be found
If you look for them, away downtown in the
point of the island farther north in the
streets with names and even still further
north in the numbered streets though
diminishing in proportion after the flfties
are reached.
Perhaps the East Side restaurants will in
terest you most because of their novelty
Few of these-and there are hundreds of
them-are of the clatter and glitter type
and many of them aren't over clean. Their
cooking, like their lunchers might be called
polyglot without stretching the meaning of
the word, and. of course, no one need take
exception to this in a city whose "Ameri-
can" element Is less than % per cent Still
it does give you a little shock to find Hun
rsri 1nc,1 L.
italian spaghetti, Weiner schnitzel and
American mince pie on the same bill Of
fare
Foreign Eating Places. $
Don't imagine that there are no strictly
foreign" restaurants on Manhattan island.
There are, there are the Chinese chop-suey
places being most exploited, of course,
by those who show the town to their coun-
try cousins and others. In these places
for the most part dirty and squalid enough
not few Americans-at least they have
white skins-eat midday lunches as regu-
larry as the Chinese themselves, though
evenings, of course. Most of the Chinese
eating places are in the restricted Mott
street quarter" Of course, but as China
men are as free to live anywhere else as
on Mott street, If they choose to, chop-suey
joints are making their appearance in many
other localities, some of them far uptown
by the way.
Not a whit less out of the ordinary than
the Chinese eating places are the Syrian
restaurants most of which in Manhattan
are away down town on the lower west
side; you will be more interested in the
lunchers if you study them than in those
at the chop-suey joints, for they are far
more picturesque and colorful But. the
food, so over sweet and so over supplied
with condiments as to be both sickish and
biting" may bother you some in the
eating, and you'll not be received nearly so
Hospitality by the Syrians as by the Chi
neSe.
If you like to study the American woman
you will devote some time to the eating
places frequented by the shoppers. You'll
surely get a few new notions II you do
unless you are woman shopper yourself.
The best places in Manhattan to meet at
lunch the men who "do things in large
numbers are the lunch clubs of which
there are many, membership or invitation
by member being requisite to their study,
of course. They are to be found mostly on
the top floors of skyscrapers Most of the
club quarters are large, taking up the whole
floor, with excellent cooks and. happily,
without too much clatter and glitter, as a
rule.
Midday Crowds.
Wherever you lunch, and crowded as New
York's streets are at all hours of the day,
the augmentation of the throngs at II
o'clock, when the lunch hour begins, partic-
ularly in the narrow streets bordered by
tall skyscrapers like Nassau and Wall and
Ann streets, eis very great. Nowhere else
In the world are there such narrow streets
with such tall buildings. Chicago has tall
buildings, all right, but her streets are
nationally wide; they fit the tall buildings, so
to speak and when her skyscrappers
empty themselves at noon that the workers
in them may eat, the result isn't nearly so
big an apparent crowd in the streets. Only
Bostons lunch crowd seems as large as
New Yorks on the street; nearly all Of
Boston's streets are narrower even than
New York, and when Boston's buildings
empty themselves at j o'clock the jam is
well worth looking at
Curiously enough, though Broad street,
in the heart of the financial district, would
be called wide thorougfare in almost any
city. still it is of the most congested
streets in the whole town at noontime.
This. is because, crowded at all times by
reason of the curb brokers, the street en-
ploys an enormous number of messenger
boys and they mostly lunch at wagons
standing on the pave. Undoubtedly there
are few more interesting spots on Manhat-
tan Island at lunch time than on Broad
street south of Wall.