FOOD IN PARIS.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 July 1918, Page 3

FOOD IN PARIS.

PARIS, April 19. The first impression that the visitor to Paris receives is of the abundance and variety of food. The butchers’

shops aro amply stocked with beef, veal and mutton of very fine quality. There is plenty of butter and of fats of all kinds. Soft cheeses, to-day almost unknown in England, are as abundant and varied as ever—Gruyere and Camembert, Port’ gnlut and Roquefort. The two most strictly regulated articles aro bread and sugar. Broad" is rationed, the allowance being, about three-quarters of a pound a day. In many places the variety is poor. You , receive your throe daily tickets for . 100 grammes each (nearly 3£ ozs), and if you have forgotten your ticket you , can go without bread. Saccharin has almost wholly displaced sugar. Travelling from the Atlantic seaboard to the eastern borders or Lorraine I have only seen sugar twice. Once was when the landlady in a little town in Anjou brought me two knobs with my coffee. She pointed to them with prid,e nnu from her air she might have been giving me diamonds. Anyone can obtain as much meat or butter as he is able to pay for. An American commissariat officer in Brittany j told me that the farmers there supply \ him with 100 beasts a day without difficulty. Prices are high. In Paris, the best cut of beef i« 3/G per pound, and a good cut of veal 2s 6d. There are, of course much cheaper cuts than these.

Butter is from 3s to 3s Gel per pound. Some meats are very dear. A wellknown caterer near tho Opera asks 8/6 a pound for cooked ham. Everyone looks well fed and the children [ seem more thriving than ever. This applies not only to Paris but also to ovary country town that I know, and I have been in many. In Paris itself, the food regulations : have apparently been aimed specially at tlu» restaurants, as though the j authorities wish to drive the people to take their food at home, rather than in public. You cannot have milk in any form after nine o’clock in the morn-

ing in any public restaurants and you j cannot buy milk to drink in the crea- j meries. “Defendu,” says tho attend- ; ant when you ask. The “fiv’ o’clock” j has to he drunk with slices of lemon, j not milk. By one curious regulation j no restaurant or hotel is allowed to 1 serve butter, although you are free to bring a. packet of butter in with you, if you wish to eat it with your meal. Restaurant menus are as long as efVer, and although there are supposed to he certain limitations in tho number of dishes ordered there is sufficient margin for everybody. The soups are

as rich, the meat portions ns ample, and the vegetables as varied as ever. The epicure might note somo difference in the hors-d’oeuvres, which are now limited to four different varieties. You are not allowed to have choose if your bill is more than six francs, and there is a new luxury tax of 10 per cent, if your bill comes to over a franc. The hotelkeepers some time ago agreed to raise their prices by 15 per cent., so that living in Paris is certainly not cheap just now. The visitor to Paris misses two things most. Thei old-time dainty breakfast, with its coffee, fresh rolls, and creamy butter, has gone. This morning at my hotel I was given for my petit dejeuner a small pot of coffee and a single roll of stale, dark, not over-well bilked bread. For this I,was charged 2-J francs, plus lOper cent, or, say, roughly 2s 3d. The pastry shops, long so distinctive a feature of Paris, have completely disappeared. No pastry in any form is sold. There are [ very few sweets.. \ While the great restaurants are empty, the. more popular establishments such as the Duvals, seem more crowded than ever, and most of their customers have the same air of well-fed complacency ns in tlie old days. While Paris is not seeking to maintain its old epicurean reputation, there is no scarcity here. The German publicists who declare that France is starving would have a surprise if they could see France as it is. France is living more plainly but probably more wholesomely, than ever before.