The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-12-02
What Dinners Should
 And Should Not Be
Mayor Smith Speaks Word For Municipal Officers-"Ban- quet of Today Not in Line With Desires of Busy Men,
(The Courant.)

l N1Hc COuIdnl.J
 If it were not for the fact that the l court or common pleas in this county ! Is concerned alone with civil cases, one might expect Mayor Edward l..
 Smlth, when he becmeS a judge next May, to sentence some offender in a
 fashion something like this:
 | The sentence of this court is that you eat two Cor not to exceed three) l ten-course dinners two Cor not to ex- | ceed three) nights in succession" l For, according to Mayor Smith, 1 that IS about as bad a form of pun | lshment as can be inflicted upon and | modern son of civilization. His Hon.
 or has his own ideas about banquets I-Whfch IS rather unusual-for the
 semi official duty' of any municipal
 official Is generally to ingratiate him.
 self into the habits of various organ
 izations by acting in a pleased man.
 ner over everything connected with
 sense and perfect frankness are char l acteristics to be admired-and they ! most certainly area vote of thanks 1 that will come from municipal officers | state if Mayor Smiths opinion, as | told yesterday to "Courant" man produces any definite reform" will De both unanimous and sincere.
 ! In short, hanging around loose in this old town there is record that | 10 Ldiliy DcSiuG lISEll WILL dIlAleLy lOI fear it will continue to be overlooked l as 1t has been for the past PTS years. It IS peculiar sort of record, and | is daily waiting for some deserving | organization to simply happen around and by snatching up the record have | its name set down in history as Pro | tector Extraordinary of the Diges- | tions of the Mayors of Hartford" The record, in brief, is the adoption of a platform declaring for simple dinners I to replace the two-hours-long, diges- l tion-killing banquets that come as an- nual celebrations or upon some like excuse for putting diners in ill-humor, quenching the fires of eloquence de- signed to burn on the toast list, and consuming five perfectly good hours Tn a newspaper mans busy evening.
 But let Mayor Smith tell the story: "The banquet habit,' says his honor ''has been fastened on the people of the United States so firmly that it may now almost be described as in veterate. The habit came undoubt-
 edly from the French, for the French for many centuries have been the
 leaders of fashion not only the fash
 ions of clothes, but the fashions of
 manners. So now French manners
 as regards eating are followed up
 and down the civilized world just as
 French fashions in millinery or wo
 mems clothing.
 "The course dinner has become sol
 idifed along French lines. Arrang-
 ed by an expert 1t is composed of ar
 ticles of food selected and cooked by
 other experts, served in quantities de-
 termined by experts on the question
 of quantity and delivered at the ta-
 ble by walters who are expert in their
 particular duties. If all these con
 ditions are perfectly followed out,
 the course dinner is a delightful af-
 fair. But when it is arranged by
 T
 in too great profusiOn or in too great
 variety or in too great haste or with
 not enough speed or with table service
 that does not correspond with the
 French idea of delicacy,- then the
 course dinner is an artistic failure.
 .'Men in the United States for rea- sons sometimes wholly social. some
 times commercial, sometimes frater- nal and beneficial, form themselves into groups. Once organized, with regular recurrence of an annual meeting for the election of officers a celebration develops. In nine cas- es out of ten, this celebration takes the form of a dinner. The dinner Is arranged and it involves generally the whole of the evening until II o'clock or midnight. In addition to the din- ner proper there is always arranged program of speaking that is quasi public, in which the old officers bid farewell to their official duties, in which the new officers take up their work, in which someone is appointed to speak for the municipality, some one-possibly the governor-for the state, and in which some state off, cial of the organization, if the organ ization is large enough, is invited to speak for outside members, Throughout the winter months din- ners of this character in town like Hartford occur very frequently. They are held at the hotels, the larger res taurantS and sometimes are served by caterers at places which are neither hotels nor restaurants. It is not an between October 1 and April 1 there are possibly four dinners of this kind held every week.
 ''Each one of these dinners is de- scribed with some fair accuracy as a dinner of the character mentioned above-a course from soup to coffee and cheese, varying, of course, ac- cording toN the price charged per plate, the importance of the function celebrated and the qualification and of the caterers. These din- ners, coming infrequently to the man who attends but a few, are not mo- ticed, but in the experience of one who has to attend more than one dur ing a season, the sameness becomes appalling, and at times the question may occur to nlIQ. w ny QOGS not some organization in honor of it's an- nual meeting decide to give a dinner that is plain and simple and substan- tial, by no means costly. and much more in line with the everyday exper- fence of busy men in this country:'
 For instance, instead of having ca Viar, oysters, soup, an entree, a roast, a punch, game, a salad, frozen pud ding, coffee and toasted crackers and cheese - which the best of service takes one and one-half or two hours to serve-why not have something like this: A plain soup, a well-cook ed piece of tenderloin steak, the sim plest kind of egetables-potatoes. corn, or turnips-and an abundance of brown buttered toast; a stein of beer for each man who cares for beer, hot coffee served in large cups as men are accustomed to drink coffee at home; a piece of real apple pie and cigars enough for any reason able man to use to deaden the effect of the speeches to which he is forced to listen.
 Such a plan, believe, would re- suit in shortening most dinners, it would be a great benefit to the ordin- ary mans digestion and I believe that it would cause some relief in the serv:- ing kitchen of the catered as we'll as cutting down the expenses of the or ganization giving the dinner. It is true it would not look like banquet.