The gourmet's guide to Europe

of green and gold and another of white walls above a skirting of green panels. These cellars are better ventilated than most of their kind, and the simple food and the wine are both to be recommended. On one occasion, when I found Marquardt’s too full to find me a room, I stayed at the Royal Hotel and lunched in its garden behind the house, finding nothing to complain of in my meal. A band plays in the evenings in the Stadt Gardens, and there is the usual “ restauration ” Stadt Gardens , • , • , , , • , there, with its cold meat and its sand- wiches, its coffee and its beer. In the suburbs of Stuttgart there are many little places of refreshment. There is one of these at the mineral baths at the entrance to Kannstadt, and another on the Neckarinsel, the island in the midst of the river, which is often an amusing place to visit on a fine afternoon. On the Hasenberg, whence the views are very fine, there is a restaurant at the Jager- haus and at Degerloch, which also boasts of its views, German T^owns 195 The Schweizer Haus and the Wilhelmshohe are two restaurants from the gardens of which one sees a fine panorama. AFTER DINNER At the Residenz Theater, the last time I was in Stuttgart, a German version of “ Loute ” was being played, which is a proof that that theatre does not depend entirely upon classical comedy. At the Wilhelm Theater an Austrian operetta was the piece of the evening, and the only German play at any of the theatres was a comedy at the Schauspiel Theater, a new building behind the Wilhelm’s Bau. On the first floor of the Friedrich’s Bau is a big variety theatre which, judging from the programme I have sat through on two occasions, has a marked partiality for British turns. Frankfort-on-Main Frankfort is the “ jumping-off place” for so many of the fashionable “ cure ” towns and is such a great centre of the railway systems that travellers innume- rable with plenty of money to spend pass through it all the year round. The hotels accommodate them- selves to their cosmopolitan clientele , and a very good dinner, French to all intents and purposes, is to be obtained in the restaurants of the half-dozen leading hotels. The Englischerhof, at the corner of Kaiser- strasse, is the old-established house of good feeding in Frankfort. Thence went Mons. Jules and founded the Furstenhof, opposite the theatre. Ritz, the Napoleon of the hotel and restaurant world, is, or was, a partner in the ownership of the Frankfurter- hof, in the Kaiserplatz, and he gave personal atten- tion to the organisation of the restaurant, where I 196 T'he Gourmet's Guide to Europe have always found the cookery excellent, though it is as well to secure a table at a distance from the band. Mons. Autor, who was manager of the Carlton in London for some years, followed his chief’s example, and going into partnership with Herr Boening of Baden-Baden, opened the Carlton Hotel, which, with its restaurant, grill-room, and palm-court, is a very close copy of its namesake in London. The Hotel Imperial, in the Opernplatz, an hotel with an aristocratic clientele , profits by its closeness to the Opera House, and its restaurant has its full share of the suppers after the opera — though, be it said, Frankfort is a town of early hours.