PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
T WAS reading the other day the memoirs of a former 1 American diplomatist. It was not an interesting book, since its author possessed little memory for, or insight into, serious things. But he did care about food. He wrote lovingly, in the manner of Colonel Newnham-Davis, of vanished restaurants in four continents. Fascinated as I am by all forms of human snobbishness, I find restaurant snobbishness one of the most subtle and entrancing. We all know the type of man who will talk with maddened dignity of Foyot or Voisin, of Larue or La Perouse, " as they used to be before they were discovered by the tourists." We know that other type who will dismiss those once famous establishments and will claim that the only place where one can get a decent meal in Paris is with Madame Aubert in her flat on the Boulevard Raspail—" only of course you must let her know in advance." We know the cosmopolitan who assures us that the bouillabaisse at Bregaillon is better than that at the Reserve; that nowhere in Paris can one obtain such food as at Dijon railway station; that for sucking pig one must go, not to the Casa de Botion in Madrid, but to the Eritana in Seville; and that the only place where any sensible or educated man can expect to enjoy his mousaka is at Tokatlian's (not at Stamboul, of course, but in the branch establishment at Therapia). To such a man the most un- provocative turbot at a London club will evoke memories of Glachi de Carpe at Capsa's; and the most honest partridge will tempt him to tell really tiresome and exhaust- ing stories about how, in Iran, they make fessinjan out of the little tihu of the desert flavoured with the juices of the walnut and the pomegranate.
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