Читать книгу The Personality of American Cities - Edward Hungerford - Страница 13

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Dinner is New York's real function of the day. And dinner in New York means five million hungry stomachs demanding to be filled. The New York dinner is as cosmopolitan as the folk who dwell on the narrow island of Manhattan and the two other islands that press closely to it. The restaurant and hotel dinners are as cosmopolitan as the others. Of course, for the sake of brevity, if for no other reason, you must eliminate the home dinners—and read "home" as quickly into the cold and heavy great houses of the avenue as into the little clusters of rooms in crowded East Side tenements where poverty is never far away and next week's meals a real problem. And remember, that to dine even in a reasonably complete list of New York's famous eating places—a new one every night—would take you more than a year. At the best your vision of them must be desultory.

Six o'clock sees the New York business army well on its way toward home—the seething crowds at the Brooklyn bridge terminal in Park Row, the overloaded subway straining to move its fearful burden, the ferry and the railroad terminals focal points of great attractiveness. To make a single instance: take that division of the army that dwells in Brooklyn. It begins its march dinnerward a little after four o'clock, becomes a pushing, jostling mob a little later and shows no sign of abatement until long after six. Within that time the railroad folk at the Park Row terminal of the old bridge have received, classified and despatched Brooklynward, more than one hundred and fifty thousand persons—the population of a city almost the size of Syracuse. And the famous old bridge is but one of four direct paths from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Six o'clock sees restaurants and cafés alight and ready for the two or three hours of their really brisk traffic of the day. There are even dinner restaurants downtown, remarkably good places withal and making especial appeal to those overworked souls who are forced to stay at the office at night. There are bright lights in Chinatown where innumerable "Tuxedos" and "Port Arthurs" are beginning to prepare the chop-suey in immaculate Mongolian kitchens. But the real restaurant district for the diner-out hardly begins south of Madison square. There are still a very few old hotels in Broadway south of that point—a lessening company each year—one or two in close proximity to Washington square. Two of these last make a specialty of French cooking—their table d'hôtes are really famous—and perhaps you may fairly say when you are done at them that you have eaten at the best restaurants in all New York. From them Fifth avenue runs a straight course to the newer hotels far to the north—a silent brilliantly lighted street as night comes "with the double row of steel-blue electric lamps resembling torch-bearing monks" one brilliant New York writer has put it. But before the newest of the new an intermediate era of hotels, the Holland, the nearby Imperial and the Waldorf-Astoria chief among these. The Waldorf has been from the day it first opened its doors—more than twenty years ago—New York's really representative hotel. Newer hostelries have tried to wrest that honor from it—but in vain. It has clung jealously to its reputation. The great dinners of the town are held in its wonderful banqueting halls, the well-known men of New York are constantly in its corridors. It is club and more than club—it is a clearing-house for all of the best clubs. It is the focal center for the hotel life of the town.

There is an important group of hotels in the rather spectacular neighborhood of Times square—the Astor, with its distinctly German flavor, and the Knickerbocker which whimsically likes to call itself "the country club on Forty-second street" distinctive among them. And ranging upon upper Fifth avenue, or close to it, are other important houses, the Belmont, the aristocratic Manhattan, the ultra-British Ritz-Carlton, the St. Regis, the Savoy, the Netherland, the Plaza, and the Gotham. In between these are those two impeccable restaurants—so distinctive of New York and so long wrapped up in its history—Sherry's and Delmonico's.

Over in the theatrical brilliancy of Broadway up and down from Times square are other restaurants—Shanley's, Churchill's, Murray's—the list is constantly changing. A fashionable restaurant in New York is either tremendously successful—or else, as we shall later see, they are telephoning for the sheriff. And the last outcome is apt more to follow than the first. For it is a tremendous undertaking to launch a restaurant in these days. The decorations of the great dining-rooms must rival those of a Versailles palace while the so-called minor appointments—silver, linen, china and the rest must be as faultless as in any great house upon Fifth avenue. The first cost is staggering, the upkeep a steady drain. There is but one opportunity for the proprietor—and that opportunity is in his charges. And when you come to dine in one of these showy uptown places you will find that he has not missed his opportunity.

All New York that dines out does not make for these great places or their fellows. There are little restaurants that cast a glamour over their poor food by thrusting out hints of a magic folk named Bohemians who dine night after night at their dirty tables. There are others who with a Persian name seek to allure the ill-informed, some stout German places giving the substantial cheer of the Fatherland, beyond them restaurants phrasing themselves in the national dishes and the cooking of every land in the world, save our own. For a real American restaurant is hard to find in New York—real American dishes treats of increasing rarity. A great hotel recently banished steaks from its bills-of-fare, another has placed the ban on pie; and as for strawberry short-cake—just ask for strawberry short-cake. The concoction that the waiter will set before you will leave you hesitating between tears and laughter—ridicule for the pitiful attempts of a French cook and tears for your thoughts of the tragedy that has overwhelmed an American institution. Some day some one is going to build a hotel with the American idea standing back of it right in the heart of New York. He is going to have the bravery or the patriotism to call it the American House or the United States Hotel or Congress Hall or some other title that means something quite removed from the aristocratic nomenclature that our modern generation of tavern-keepers have borrowed from Europe without the slightest sense of fitness; and to that man shall be given more than mere riches—the satisfaction that will come to him from having accomplished a real work.

The truth of the matter is that we have borrowed more than nomenclature from Europe. We have taken the so-called "European plan" with all of its disadvantages and none of its advantages. We have done away with the stuffy over-eating "American plan" and have made a rule of "pay-as-you-go" that is quite all right—and is not. For to the simple "European plan" has recently been added many complications. In other days the generosity of the portions in a New York hotel was famous. A single portion of any important dish was ample for two. Your smiling old-fashioned waiter told you that. The waiter in a New York restaurant today does not smile. He merely tells you that the food is served "per portion" which generally means that an unnecessary amount of food is prepared in the kitchen and sent from the table, uneaten, as waste. And a smart New York restauranteur recently made a "cover charge" of twenty-five cents for bread and butter and ice-water. Others followed. It will not be long before a smarter restauranteur will make the "cover charge" fifty cents, and then folk will begin streaming into his place. They don't complain. That's not the New York way.

They do not even complain of the hat-boys—bloodthirsty little brigands who snatch your hat and other wraps before you enter a restaurant. The brigands are skillfully chosen—lean, hungry little boys every time, never fat, sleek, well-fed looking little boys. They are employed by a trust, which rents the "hat-checking privilege" from the proprietor of the hotel or restaurant. The owner of the trust pays well for these privileges and the little boys must work hard to bring him back his rental fees and a fair profit beside.

Leave that to them. Emerge from a restaurant, well-fed and at peace with the world and deny that lean-looking, swarthy-faced, black-eyed boy a quarter if you can—or dare. A dime is out of the question. He might insult you, probably would. But a quarter buys your self-respect and the head of the trust a share in his new motor car. The lean-looking boy buys no motor cars. He works on a salary and there are no pockets in his uniform. There is a stern-visaged cicerone in the background and to the cicerone roll all the quarters, but the New Yorker does not complain—save when he reaches Los Angeles or Atlanta or some other fairly distant place and finds the same sort of highway brigandage in effect there.