Evening star., 1924-09-13
MANHATTAN DAYS
AND NIGHTS
BY HERRERT COREY,

NEW iORk.-When you go driving
out of New York City YOU ride be-
tween lines of Long Island duck din
ners, $3.50, and chicken dinners $50
with occasionally an Italian dinner.
81, or French table d'hote, So.
Broadly speaking, they are all bad
But they are quite good enough for
New Workers. l would not ass s"rt that
there are no good restaurants in New
YORK, but l charge that there are
feWer good restaurants in New York
IN proportion to population than in
any other civilized city
The duck dinners are served in the
biological belt. The ambition of the
duck dinnerer is to combine a lively
business in pups with more or less
roasted duck. No doubt there is a
reason for this. Prehaps the police
dogs, the Pekinese, the Cairus, the
Chows. the other dogs which vicari-
ously serve the urge for parenthood
latent in the breast of the restau-
rateurs can be fed cheaply on the
debris of the ducks. But it Is in this
way that the patron catches hairs in
the spinach.
! cannot guess at the number of
roadhouses. tea houses, waffle stores,
duck dinner places and the like to
be found within 30-mile radius.
But an average of $4,000 vehicles
leave Manhattan each 12 hoursJ On
Saturdays and Sundays this number is
probably added to by half. One tolls
for miles in a fog of dust. gasoline
fumes, the reek of burning OIL
large part of the time on second speed
in funeral procession of despairing
pleasure seekers. One by one they
n Inn fr,fn ha -
dinner
Yet they are supericially candid
They run as true to pattern as bull
lets. queer soup,pa greasy duck,
soggy potatoes. a salad on which a
reddish, oleaginous mixture has been
spotted, and factory pie. With the
chicken dinners waff1es are obliga-
tory. A blind man might be fed for
nine months on end in a different
place each night and not know it.
Unless the waff1erers mixed their
dialects.
These reflections are prompted by
the fact that | have discovered two
places where eatables are served edi-
bly,. One is on the Merrick road
The proprietress bows down before
the waffle god, but her waffles really
IL
traordinary. The other is out Chap
paqua way, where an English wom-
an whose husband died in the war
Will admit but one party to dinner
That party may be two in number or
20, but no others can come on the lot
She also raises dogs. but one becomes
used to talking puppies over his pro-
Nender. Some of the curse is lifted
here because she has an immense
dog-one Pitou-which has hauled a
thousands pounds on the ice and once
saved drunken lumberman who had
broken through the ice.
X \
Doubtless there are other places in
which person who can digest horse
shoe nails, who is weakly good ma
tured and who will descend to brib-
cry to obtain good food may rise
from the table Satiated rather than
drugged. New Workers. do not de-
serve better. The most wholesome
aliment they get is the white tile
places, which have been undeserve
slated by our leading medical lights,
and the best is in the score or so of
very high priced places. Between
these extremes they run a horrible
gamut of table d'hotes. The dis
couraging element is that they aban-
don the perfectly clean. albeit crowd
ed and noisy tiles in favor of a
noisome course dinner when they seek
a gastronomic treat.
1--WE found a new restaurant" your
New York friends are continually
telling you. 1t is a New York COM
piex. They are forever finding new
restaurants.
r + +
cherish the memory of meals l
have eaten in the midd1e-price places
in Chicago. Quite by accident I fell
upon a restaurant in Boston in which
the chef had the soul of poet. Once
! had q 35-cent meal in a ferry town
in Idaho the memory OF which is a
benediction. Only in and around New
York, in my perhaps prejudiced judg-
ment, has the art of eating been de-
graded to a mere mechanical stoking.
No doubt one could live indefinitely
on New York food. People do, as a
matter Of fact. Only this morning
Mrs. Bessie Somebody, 102 years old,
had row. with her Son.in.laW Of IA