The gourmet's guide to Europe

On the borders of the Lake of Geneva there are many good hotels, though some of the best of them pick and choose their visitors, and writing before- hand does not mean that a room will be found for a bachelor who only intends to stay a few days. The better the hotel the better the restaurant, and if the haughty hotel porter at the station says u No ” very courteously when you look appealingly at him and ask if a room has been kept for you, the only way is to try the next best on your list. Any gour- met who happens to stay at the Palace Hotel at Montreux will find the restaurant of that hotel a place of good though simple cookery, and the Hotel Beaurivage at Ouchy, and the Grand Hotel at Territet, have good marks against them in my memory for well- cooked and well-served dinners. Fresh- water fish, of which Bondette is one of the best, fruit, cheese, honey, are all excellent by the lake, and the wines of the Rhone valley (Crossex-Grille, Clos du Rocher, Mont d’Or, Villeneuve, Lamarque, and others) are some of them excellent. At Lauzanne, Vevey, Montreux, Territet, the wines of the country are well worth tasting, for in the valley above Villeneuve there are a dozen vineyards, each producing an excellent wine ; and the vines imported from the Rhine valley, from the Bordeaux and Burgundy districts, give wine which is excellent to drink. Deralez and Neuchatel are both 3 1 8 "The Gourmet's Guide to Europe pleasant wines, and Yvorne is a very strong one. Always ask what the local cheese is. There are varieties of all kinds, and they afford a change from the eternal slab of Gruyere. St. Moritz St. Moritz is becoming a very fashionable winter sporting resort, and from the middle of January to the commencement of March there are more of the young Princes of Europe to be found there than, at any other time, in any other village — for it is only a village — in Europe. There is a cafe-restaurant just above the station, but the restaurants attached to the hotels are those at which most of the private dinners are given. That of the Savoy Hotel I found quite up to date, and some of the royalties who stay at the Kulm give their little dinner parties at the Savoy. As a proof of the comparatively poor material to be found in Switzerland, the manag- ing director of this hotel told me that when a parti- cularly recherche dinner was required he telegraphed to Paris for all the food in the raw to be sent to St. Moritz. The St. Moritz Club, which is practically the British Club, has rooms in the Savoy building. Its The St. Moritz reading and smoking room, a great Cluto comfortable lounge panelled with dark German oak, is one of the pleasantest club rooms I know anywhere. Davos In Elsener’s Restaurant Davos has a particularly good dining-place. Mons. Elsener was for a time , caterer to a battalion of the Coldstream Elsener s Guards, and he also was the manager of the restaurant of the Imperial Institute when that Switzerland 319 building competed with Earl’s Court. This is the menu of a dinner which I ate at Elsener’s one January, and for which I had nothing but commendation : — Hors d’ceuvre. Bortsh clair. Fruites en courtbouillon. Pommes. Sc. Holl. Filets Mignon Rossini. Pommes Soufflees. Celeris moelle. Cailles roti a l’Anglaise. Salade de Saison. Angels on Horseback. Dessert. XII AUSTRIA