The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-08-02
CONFESSION OF A LUNCHROOM WAITER Warns Against Careless Order
 ing of Dishes TIE STOCK POT FOR SOUP Catches all the Leftover Scraps with Cigarette stumps and Ashes
 for the Next Days
 Menu Card.
THE STOCK POT FOR SOUP
.orn the Washington Post.

If you are addicted to the use or scrambled eggs, be fastidious In your choice of Washington restaurant. II you must eat meat this hot weather, se- lect any thing but hash or BrunsWiek stew. If you insist on finger boWl, have the man who serves you fill 1t in vour presence. If you drink water at meals, make a private arrangement with your waiter. And if you must nave buttered toast with your breakfast, don't read this story.
 man who has worked as waiter in more downtown restaurants and lunch rooms than he can count on the fingers of both hands was reading the lunch room scandal the other morning when Post reporter entered and ordered break fast. It needed but little discussion Of the lunchroom investigation to start him on a train of "reminiscences calcu- lated to shake the nerve of the most con firmed bachelor.
 of you knew as much about restau- rant kitchens as I do," he, .remarked' you'd pass up some of the dishes Ve seen you order. Do you ever call Tor soup? We'll don't. Most of the restau- rants in which I've worked have stock pot All the bones and scraps Of meat that are left on the plates are thrown into this pot The cook, generally col- ored man, wipes them into the pot With his greasy hand. Every day he takes out enough to make the soup, and what ever dirt and filth has gotten into the mass of bone and meat it is skinned on while the soup is boiling. For instance, when you scatter cigarette ashes over the remains of a steak and throw the butt in the plate, you can congratulate yourself on having helped to flavor the next days soup. Then you should see the cook leaning over the pot stirring the consomme while the precipitation drips from his face into the stuff he's stirring. He doesn't mind that as you can see by the way he dips up big la dleful to taste. Of course, he only sips about tablespoonful out of that ladle; the rest goes back into the pot. And it helps a little to know that in some res taurants the stock pot is only cleaned out about once a month.
 The Meat Question.
 "They raised a lot of excitement in Washington about a year ago on the meat question. Claimed some of it was dragged around on dirty floors. I saw an incident in one of the best known restaurants in town that has got that floor thing beat to death One day the scullion accidentally dropped big roll of steak into the garbage can. He let 1t stay there, but the manager came along and found it. He fished it out and. after swearing at the boy for his carelessness. told him to wash 1t and cut it up for use. Said it was perfectly good after 1t was cleaned up, and wanted to know what the boy meant by leaving it in the garbage can Of course 1 don't have to tell you the various kinds of filth that were in that can when the steak fell in it.
 Most of the kitchens I've worked in are overrun with flies and reaches. Nat urally they drop into the stuff that is cooking. That doesn't cut any ice with the cook. He just fishes them out with spoon and goes on with his work. And of course that spoon is used to handle some other stuff the range. If you find a fly in some dish you've ordered, you raise Cain and send it back to the kitchen. Do you get a new order? You do not. The waiter goes back to the kitchen, removes the fly, loafs around for half a minute, and comes back with the same order, minus the fly.
 Avoid Buttered Toast.
 Now, I've noticed you always order buttered toast with your eggs. Take my tip and make it dry toast and butter All the butter that the negro cook finds on the plates that come back from the din-
  ger Of his right hand into a dirty, old can that is never washed. That's his cooking butter. Well, when he gets an order, for a steak or buttered toast, he uses the contents of that tiIfie-worn can, after painstakiHgly removing the collec- tion of flies If it's buttered toast he dips brush into the can and paints the toast with the ex-butter. Sometimes the hairs from the brush get on the toast, which seems to irritate some guests. We had one patron who used to get stung that way quite often. Finally he got so he'd tell me to have the buttered toast shaved before serving.
 You'd probably Kick if you found a bit of dirt or fly speck on your plate, but believe me, it's often a good plan to take that plate. I know any number of walters who clean a plate like that by rubbing it with the tip of a napkin mostened with their saliva. Another trick often seen in restaurants is the use of napkins for wiping off plates that walters have just used to wipe the per- spiration off their forehead. In almost every restaurant In town the glasses you drink out of are seldom washed. After the man ahead of you has used it. the waiter puts it back on the shelf by the water cooler Half the time he doesn't bother to empty the water out that was left by the last guest! Just fills 1t up.
 
 bowls with the same water in them that served to cleanse the fingers of the man ahead of you. If you are particular about such matters, have the waiter bring you an empty fnger-bowl and fill 1t from the water bottle on the table.
 Talking about clean places you ought to see the dishes washed in the ayera pe restaurant. The water in which thev are carelessly plunged usually has about . quarter of an inch of greasy scum on its surface. And the towels are used to wipe precipitation off the faces of the cooks and walters before applying them to the plates and other dishes
 Hamburger Steak.
 You often hear people say they'd nev CT order a Hamburger steak In a cheap restaurant. Hamburgers, as a matter fact. are generally all right. The thing to dodge is the Brunswick stew and va rIous forms of hash. When the cook finds tainted spots in his meat, he cuts them out and uses the bad portions for stew and hash. By throwing in a lot of onions he can kill the flavor of the pu- trid meat. Onions a great help when you want to doctor food For instance when you have a spoiled fish you can boil it and serve with Italian sauce Broiled fish has to be fresh, but boiled fish with highly seasoned sauces is the last resort of the restaurant man who has a lot of spoiled trout or mackerel on hand
 And talking about spoiled things, you