SOMETHING LIKE A MEAL

Shannon News, 9 April 1926, Page 2

SOMETHING LIKE A MEAL

HOW VANCOUVER DOES THINGS. DUTCH BABIES AND SNITZEL. If the New Orpheum Cafe, Vancouver, derives any profit from this publicity to the fare it was providing on June 19 last year, the writer makes it a present of his willing assistance. There is nothing one • likes so much as a square, meal, and, in these Lenten days, the contemplation of the Orpheum menu gives one a ready sympathy with the millionaire invalid who had his valet read out to him the recipes for all the savoury dishes in his, favourite cookery book.

This menu, which was shown to the writer by a sailorman, is nothing, extraordinary for the New Orpheum, and was not provided for a lumbermen's dinner, or anything like that. On any other day pf the year their fare is just &,s various. The menu card measures fourteen inches by nine, and the diner is invited to overdo himself by a highly decorative margin that gives pictorial, descriptions of many of the good things provided for him. There is a languid black cod who looks as though he would go quietly, there are sausages that look like bananas, and bananas, that look like sausages, a much under-clothed chicken (looking very immodest), and lots of other things like that. "Now, what will you have?" we can hear the waiter calling. "Steak, chops, and miscellaneous are of fifty-four kinds. These steaks, if you want 'em planked, will cost you 75 cents extra. The fifty-four includes little pig sausages, cornmeal mush, chipped beef in cream and Holstein snitzel. Sauces served with the above orders are sixteen, and include French peas in cream.' ' Potatoes are served ,in twenty-four different ways, ranging from the purely British mash (whose immortal association with the London kerbside sausage has done as much as the Two Universities in the building of our mankind) and candied sweet potatoes at 35 cents, to potatoes minced in cream. Eggs are presented in a multitude of disguises and there is a choice of twenty-four egg dishes. There are fourteen salads, nine cheeses and ten cereals. The cereals include bran and cornmeal mush, and all are served in pure cream. The varieties of toast are ten in number, and not the least exotic names among them are bowls of cream with bread, bowls of half-and-half with bread, and Zweiback. Nearly all of them are served with. cream. Those with dyspeptic ambitions now have a chance to put their feet on the first rung of the ladder, for there are hot cakes a-plenty. There are buckwheat cakes with little pig sausage, and there are Dutch babies, and fried mush and bacon, and hot cakes with two stripes of bacon and pure maple syrup. To those whose taste in sandwiches has been formed more or less by the formed art of the New Zealand railway buffet, oyster sandwiches, and caviare sandwiches will sound like mythical things, but they ; are only three of a' choice of twen-ty-one. With your saute of chicken livers you may have iced tea, or with your crab salad you may drink a "pot of English breakfast tea," or uncoloured Japan tea, or green tea, or a glass of pure cream, or a glass, of half-and-half. There ar e twentyfour other kinds of drinks if you want them. After a chicken ("fried to a golden brown, served on toast with bacon and country gravy"'),there* are nine kinds of fish, and nine kinds of clams and crabs, and eight preserves, and fourteen cold meats and seventeen vegetables with them, and seventeen relishes and seventeen kinds of pastry ("more iced buttermilk, waiter!"). Anyone worth his salt may now be reasonably presumed to be wanting something really solid. Try one of to-day's specials. To begin with casserole and chafing-dish specials, there is fresh crab's meat (Neuburg) server to one person with egg yolks, butter cream, and paprika; one order served to two persons will be 25 cents extra, thank you. Or there is crab's meat (southern style) with tomatoes,, minced ham, onions, green peppers, boiled rice and' mushrooms. There are eight other similar dishes. All that is on only one side of the menu, but there are one hundred and fifty-three special dishes on the other side, and ices and cream go with most of them. You may order a New England boiled dinner, or a boiled vegetarian dinner and noodles (we knew a boy at school called Noodles, and this sounds a bit cannibalistic). There is Sinaia Hooker sausage. and then a roast domestic duck with baked apple; cauliflower in cream and peas in dairy cream are only two of many veegtable specials, and you may'finish your meal with any one of thiity-two desserts and pies. The menu ends with a notice that the management will not be responsible for the personal effects of patrons; but after a dinner like that, who would really care very much?