The gourmet's guide to Europe

Filet de Sole Mornay , and Poularde A Ibuf era, which is really poor little Portugal’s one great addition to the book of cookery, are two of the dishes which the Anglais cooks better than any other restaurant in the world, and Pommes Anna may perhaps be added to this tiny list. The Gourmet's Guide to Europe May I pause here to tell you the tale of how the recette of the Poularde Albufera came to Paris. When in Peninsula days the French troops sacked the monastery of Albufera, the only thing of any value that they found was the book of recipes in the kitchen. Some of these were new to the French cooks, and one in especial of a chicken stuffed with rice proved so delectable that the recette was forwarded to headquarters at Paris, and duly took its place in the golden book of the haute cuisine. On the subject of the prices at the various restaurants I write at the close of this chapter. The payment of the addition — the word is slangy, but it is used even at the Anglais — is a disagreeable necessity, and a polite maitre d'hotel deplores its necessity as much as does a satisfied client ; so I tuck the details away out of sight till the last moment, and only say now that a man with any knowledge of how to order a dinner and with a louis in his pocket can walk into any restaurant in Paris as though he were an Emperor. I always chuckle over a tale of three young Englishmen who, coming to Paris for the first time, thought that they had discovered Voisin’s. They fancied that all the other English who had been to the French capital had overlooked this quiet restaurant with windows cloaked by lace curtains in the sleepy Rue St. Honore, and that they were likely to obtain a rough but well- cooked bourgeois meal there at quite a nominal price. The various stages of their disillusionment were amusing. Voisin’s, like the Cafe Anglais, a white restaurant inside ; but its whiteness is is relieved by the deep red of mahogany. It has a com- Restaurant fortable brown front on the ground floor. Voisin, 26 Rue Like the Anglais, it had quite humble St. Honore beginnings, the original Voisin of 1813 being a wine merchant in* a very small way of business. M. Bellanger, his head waiter, enlarged the [illustration: Paris 11] little restaurant, but it was not until the present proprietor, M. Braquesac, took possession, after the days of the Commune, that the restaurant rose to its greatest glory. When I first saw Voisin’s, it looked as unlike the house of to-day as can be imagined. I was in Paris immediately after the days of the Commune, and followed, with an old General, the line the troops had taken in the fight for the city. In the Rue St. Honore were some of the fiercest combats, for the regulars fought their way from house to house down this street to turn the positions the Communists took up in the Champs Elysees and the gardens of the Tuileries. The British Embassy had become a hospital, and all the houses which had not been burned looked as though they had stood a bombardment. There were bullet splashes on all the walls, and I remember that Voisin’s looked even more battered and hopeless than did most of its neighbours.