The restaurant is a prominent feature in the feeding economy of the country. The best are kept by foreigners, Germans, French, ItaHans; American restaurants are invariably second, third, or fourth rate. The typical American can keep a hotel such as no foreigner may hope to equal, but when it comes to restaurant-feeding, the tables are turned. The cause may be traced to the facts that the American hotel is an American institution, while the restaurant is as fully European.
In 1854 a Parisian rotisserie was set up on Kearny street, where fish, flesh, and fowl for the million might be roasted. In the fire-place, beneath a chimney six feet wide, and resting on an iron grating, was a long fire of wood, parallel to which, and about eight inches from it in front, were three iron rods, with numerous prongs upon which to hang meat to be roasted, and wheels rigged to turn it so as to cook it equally on every side. Meat and game to be roasted might be purchased there or elsewhere, or it might be bought there ready cooked, but it had to be taken away as soon as ready, for eating on the premises was not permitted. Half a dollar w^as charged for roasting a duck or chicken, and no frying, boiling, or broiling was done—nothing but roasting, and that for a specific consideration. Thus was the division of labor in this cosmopolitan city applied to the laudable art of cookery.
Bar-room boarders formed a class peculiar to the countr}^. They might be seen lounging about the court-house, the hotels, and the saloons without occupation or visible means of support. They were fat, sleek, well-dressed, with independent mien, with gold and silver jingling in their pockets, and contentment smiling in their faces. They were never known to work; how then did they live ? I see one with a gold-headed cane in well- fitting beaver coat and pants, with a glossy silk hat, pluming his well kept mustache and whiskers in front of a first-class boot-black establishment where an extra polish had just been given to
