LUXURIOUS NEW YORK

Temuka Leader, Issue 2510, 1 June 1893, Page 3

LUXURIOUS NEW YORK

New York is becoming the centre of a luxury such as even Paris has hardly dreamed of. Even in gastronomy (writes the correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald) American ingenuity is begin ning to assert itself. Every man with a healthy appetite gratefully recognises the fact that within the present generation the qualitative merits of all the staples of foot! has made enormous progress. There is scarcely any vegetable or fruit which is more than three months out of season ; and in these, as in game or fish, we have many more than the European varieties. Chickens, geese, and turkeys are prepared for the market with extreme care, being fed exclusively for a couple of weeks before they are killed on broken rice and wheat and barley; and ducks, which are reared by pond-owners, many of whom have an average flock of 20,000 birds, are fattened with pounded crackers and various sorts of chopped aquatic weeds and grasses, and attain such marked degrees of excellence that the sellers brand them with a metal tag bearing their names. With all poultry, however, the main secret of success is to prevent the birds from feeding upon decaying animal matter for a couple of weeks before they are sent to market. Eggs, too, are immensely improved in flavor by similar methods. The laying hen is fed with the same care as for market, though a little boiled fresh meat is added to the farinaceous diet. Eggs thus produced are . tit least 25 per cent, heavier than those <jf the ordinary type, retain their freshness for a longer period, and have an altogether finer flavor. Of butters, there are dozens of famous brands, the best of all being the Darlington, which always brings Idol alb, or about five times the price of a fairly good article. The amounts squandered at dinner parties—-the most lavish of which are given as at Paris, not at home, but at the famous restaurants—recall the fabled extravagance of Roman epicures, and seem to prove that to some men there is a keen pleasure in mere limitless prodigality. Even in the West, banquets are devised of curiously original types, and one such has just achieved a national reputation. It was a game supper, with 600 guests, and on the board there was served at least one specimen of every feathered and four-footed creature in the union except the horse and mule. At the entrance to the dining hall there was a grand display of stufi'ed animals, with two black bears in a prize ring battling with boxing gloves for the championship of the Wild West, with a mountain lamb for time-keeper and two deer for bottleholders ; and an auditorium filled with all sorts of stuffed quadrupeds—squirrels, dogs, rats, ’possums, coons, and scores of others. The New York analogue to this is the annual dinner of the icthyophagi, who glory in eating such morsels as sand worms, squid, electric cels, cuttlefish, and other despised aquatic creatures as entremets to the noble denizens of the seas and lakes.