The gourmet's guide to Europe

Some Dishes of the Provinces — Calais — Boulogne — Wimereux— Hardelot — Le T ouquet — Montreuil-sur-Mer — Dieppe — Puys — Pourville— Etretat — Havre — St. Adresse — Gonneville — Duclair — Rouen — Honfleur — Trouville — Caen — Dives — Cherbourg— Granville — Mont St. Michel — St. Malo — Cancale — Dinard — Roscofif — Brest — Quimper — Pont Aven — Quimperle — Bordeaux — Arcachon — Biarritz — Marseilles — Cannes — Nice — Beaulieu — Monte Carlo — Mentone — The Pyrenees — Pau — Aix-les-Bains — Vichy. When I sat down to write for the first edition of this book a chapter on the cookery and restaurants of the big towns and bathing-places and summer towns ot France, I had no idea of the impossible task I had undertaken. I had, to use an expressive Americanism, bitten off more than I could chew. No chapter could possibly cover this wide subject ; only a large book would do it justice ; and that book is not likely to be compiled, for no Frenchman would have the patience to write it, no German the taste, and no Englishman the knowledge. Almost every town of any importance has some special dish or some special pate of its own, there are hundreds of good old inns where the cuisine is that of their province, and there are great tracks of country, which ought to be marked by some special colour on all guide-book maps, where the cookery is universally good. Do you know the Chapeau Rouge at Dunkerque, the good old inn with a cardinal’s hat as a crest, where the cookery 62 French Provincial Towns 63 is that of the northern provinces at its best, and where the Friday diner maigre is a good example of what good ecclesiastical cookery used to be ? At Lille there is a restaurant, the Divour, the entrance to which is up a passage leading from the main street, which should be included in any guide to good eating in France, and I am sorry not to discourse on this and the buffet at the station, which is in high favour with the townspeople. Do you know the Cloche at Dijon ? and the Univers at Perigueux ? and the Cambronne at Nantes ? and the Lion d’Or at Reims ? These which come to my mind as I write are but a few of the tens of hundreds of inns and taverns of big towns in France which deserve each a chapter, but which are beyond the scope I am going to allow myself. One exception I am making to my own rule, and that is, that I hope to include in other editions of this book some information as to the restaurants and diningplaces to be met with on favourite expeditions in the interior of France. I have made a beginning in this edition by giving attention to the tours of the Roman cities in Provence, and have written a few words about the towns of the Loire. It sometimes happens that a gourmet making a journey through some portion of France in search of the picturesque finds himself in a district of good cooks, and makes note of the fact and enjoys their handiwork. This occurs more often in the southern provinces than elsewhere. Leaving the Roman cities of Provence, and the Provencal cookery, the gourmet who has time to journey leisurely, and has an automobile at his command, may make a most pleasant journey of gastronomic exploration in the district between Montpellier and Toulouse, which is a cradle of great cooks, and where the traditions of the cookery of the Romans, brought by great soldiers and great administrators into Gaul, still linger. The land of 64 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe