Noonday Meal Changes Style

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 552, 3 January 1929, Page 4

Noonday Meal Changes Style

FRENCH EFFICIENC I '

English Move For Lighter Lunches

As we have tlie morning-tea habit, so does the Londoner seek his favourite tea-room for his morning coffee. There are those who criticise the practice as entailing a waste of time for office workers, but it is becoming so general that, except in those few offices where morning tea is served as a matter of routine, it will shortly become as firmly established as the daily rite of tea in the afternoon. It is perhaps due :o the fact that the Londoner thus sustains himself in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon that lunches for city workers are becoming shorter and lighter. The great majority of the middleclass English still make their lunch the principal meal of the day. dinner at night, except in the West End and such suburbs as Golders Green, being the exception rather than the rule. The day ends with a sort of supper or high tea, especially if the Englishman concerned is a family man. But, in cubic measurement he is undoubtedly consuming less food than he used to to. France Takes Notice This fact has had its - -cussion across the Channel. In France, a proposal, supported by Poincaire himself. has been made to curtail the usual two hours which the Frenchman takes for lunch. That is a part of his family life which he will not willingly abandon. The two-hours’ interval gives him an opportunity of seeing mamma and baby —and perhaps little Alphonse and Marius and Monique. It is therefore very doubtful whether any British innovation of the nature indicated can succeed, even in a

country which has adopted many English. habits, and a number of words which it fondly imagines are English —such as redingote (riding coat', rosbif (roast beef), blombouding tplum pudding), and smoking (dinner jacket). The attention that the Freutu luncheon “hour” should be curtailed -s at present receiving the attention ot the National Economic Council. It is contended that it entails waste of time and money in getting home and back again to tbe office in the middle of the dav, to say nothing of the boredom of travelling by ••metro'’ Minderground train), or "autobus Imported Customs In most cases, the domestic respite that can be enjoyed is of the shortest, and it is suggested that it would be much better to begin the office day at nine o’clock and end it at six, w ith | an interval of about I*> minutes for a light snack at a restaurant. This procedure is already known as “la journee anglaise”—but merely because it has been christened there is no guarantee ! that it will live to celebrate even its first birthday. Tbe French citizen will suit his own convenience —or his I wife will make him suit hers, which. ■in this case, amounts to the same thing. Though France has acclimatised • many importations from England, and ■ is trying to adopt others, they do not i take root unless the soil is prepared ito receive them. Football, tennis and golf, though France has produced I champions in each, are played by only a small proportion of the upper and I middle classes, and have not changed i the habits of the people as a whole. | The Saturday half-holiday and the I “week-end’’ (la semain anglaise”) are more general; but the latter has not grown to the proportions of a Friday-to-Tuesday interval, as it has widelydone in England.

Exclusive Family Life The long lunch “hour" will probably remain intact. Anyone who has travelled in France, with or without letters of introduction, is aware that French family life is far more exclusive than in England, which, in turn, ! is more exclusive in this respect than in Australia. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, a Frenchman’s is ! his fort. Further, a French family is a close partnership, and the long lunch affords an opportunity for an active familymeeting. In any case, the Frenchman, always a lover of good food, usually has a wife who is an amazing chef-de-cuisine. He dislikes restaurant cooking, and has no desire to waste his hard-earned and depreciated francs {the coin that was once worth ninepence and is now valued at twopence) on restaurant prices. It is the tourist who is the backbone of such excellent establishments as Prunier’s, with its fish and lobsters and shell-fish, and La Reine Pedauque, with its delicious “regional” cooking. Certainly, the restaurants round the Sorbonne, which are attractive and inexpensive, are well patronised by students and Bohemian Paris (largely young American) has its favourite resorts; but the married Frenchman is a domesticated animal, and as far as possible prefers to take his meals at home. He believes, too, that his health is best preserved by making his mid-day-meal the principal one of the day; but what, perhaps, has more than anything else to do with its health-giving qualities is the fresh green salad that invariably accompanies it.

As the Romans Do Moreover. France’s is a Latin civilisation; and the tradition of a mid-day rest is essentially a Latin, or at least a Mediterranean one, as all who have studied the Spanish siesta are aware It has been thus since before tbe Roman legions paused on their long marches for the noon halt. It will be interesting, if the shorter luncheon interval is adopted in France, to se what Mussolini, Europe’s foremost efficiency expert, will do about it. Already he is insisting that every constituent of the grain shall go to the making of macaroni so that there shall be no waste; and he is effecting other dietetic economies. But an Italian lunch is usually a long meal. Its component parts—mortadella, minestrone, rerioli, macaroni, gnoechi, spaghetti, fritto misto, ossa al buco, sabaione, and other delicacies whose names “are as melodies y-et”—form a rampart that will demand some escalading.