The gourmet's guide to Europe

The little towns to the south of Boulogne, and within easy reach, I know better than I do those to the north. Wimereux, the nearest northerly town, has its two or three hotels all with restaurants, and Splendid Hotel, of these the Splendid seems the most Wimereux popular. There is a cafe in the Casino, and a theatre, but I do not remember a restaurant there. To the south of Boulogne, Mr. Whitley, Hotel des Mar- who made history as the organiser of mousets, Har- the first Earl’s Court exhibitions, delot- secures during the summer season a cook from one of the big London restaurants for the Hostelerie des Marmousets at Hardelot. The cookery at Le Touquet is quite good. M. Diette, who was at the Berkeley in London and afterwards at the Palais at Biarritz, is the lessee of three of the hotels, the Golf Hotel, the Atlantic, and the Hermitage, and he has good cooks at all of them, and gets all his meat and his fowls and most of his other pro- The Hotels of visions from Paris. Madame Mouston Le Touquet at the Regina, and the proprietor of the Hotel des Anglais follow suit. Though the golfers who come over from England to play on the links sometimes grumble at the Le Touquet prices, they rarely abuse the cookery. Le Touquet- Paris Plage, the town settlements, boasts two Casinos, one in the forest and the other on the sea front. Little horses, baccarat, and an entertainment of some kind in the theatre are to be found at both during the summer season. Montreuil-sur-Mer Any one interested in old France and old French customs and old French manners should go from French Provincial Towns 69 Boulogne by train or by motor-car to Montreuil-sur- Mer, and eat a mid-day meal at the Hotel de France. The hotel is just what an inn was in . « 11 1 Hotel u.6 1 ranee the days or plumed hats and long boots, . “ Miladi ” might look out of one of the upper windows at any moment, and one would not be in the least surprised to see Athos, Porthos, and D’Artagnan swagger down the rickety staircases. To breakfast on a sunny day in the courtyard where creepers form a canopy is an artistic pleasure, and the food prepared in the spotlessly clean kitchen is quite well cooked and palatable, though the service and napery are rough, and the cellar has no great pretensions. In the kitchen, through which visitors can pass at any time, the whole family of the proprietor is busy ; even the old grandmother will make a salad, in the mixing of which she is an adept, for a favoured guest. One of the daughters of the house married the patissier of the town who makes woodcock pates, the fame of which deserves a wider publicity than it has. Montreuil has a liqueur of its own distilled from the wild plums and other woodland fruits which grow in the moat of the old fortifications. Dieppe Dieppe has its own particular dish in the Sole Dieppoise , in which shrimps and mussels add their flavour to the white wine sauce; and Monies Marinieres and Coquilles St. Jacques it also claims as its own. Being a town of Normandy, it is a stronghold of such local dishes as Sole Normande and Faisan Normande , a pheasant cooked in a tureen with apples. In the little streams of the forest in the country behind the town swim trout, the flesh of which is exceedingly and pleasantly sweet. Dieppe has always been a town of good cookery, and in the days of the Second Empire Lafosse’s