FOOD HABIT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 28, 5 January 1940, Page 43

FOOD HABIT

interesting. If you travel in one or another you are impressed by this and that difference-that meat and vegetables go together in England, for instance, but are served, in France, as a separate course, That in the matter of drink, certain tastes are outstanding -in England, beer; in Spain, wine; in America, coffee; in New Zealand, tea. 26 HE Food Habit of different countries is rather The famous Australian breakfast is steak or chops; the almost universal English one, bacon ahd eggs. Someone remarked once that our New Zealand national food was sponge cake. It’s true, I believe, that we eat far more of what is sweet and what is soft than other nations. Which no doubt accounts for another remark which I have heard often enough (and statistics prove it)-that " New Zealand is the dentist’s paradise." Another interesting point is the manner of service. An informal meal in England is set on a table or board at one side of the room and you, more or less, help yourself. Here we are the proud possessors of a tea-waggon or trolley which we wheel into the midst of the conversation, laden to the gun’wale. The stranger to our shores has found that rather startling.

Americans, on the other hand, or at least Californians, present a central table on which a positively astonishing variety of dishes is displayed. Guests are given a napkin and a huge plate. The rounds are made by the hostess with each dish in turn and you are expected to take not only what you wish at the moment but what you are likely to fancy later. There’s no second chance. Every country, also, likes to put a "patent" on one or another food invention and make it particularly its own. High among the American "national" dishes ranks the sandwich. Generally it attempts to be what it says-elaborated, perhaps, out of all recognition with layer upon layer of this and that -hot as well as cold-but nevertheless beginning and ending with a slice of bread. But this is not always interesting to even the most American customer who’ may, occasionally, revert to more plebeian tastes, This bothers nobody -except maybe the stranger. He may ask for a sandwich of a certain name on the menu and receive a meal as like his British one as he could wish for. A plate is brought with small compartments. In the centre one repose meat with gravy. In others two, or even three vegetables, and in yet another a sweet soufflé, triflle or slice of meringue pie. Only perhaps when all else is finished will you find any evidence of your " sandwich "-a small slice of gravysoaked bread at the bottom of your meat dish.