Algernon Bastard

Grecian Dishes—Athens.

No one lives better than a well-to-do Greek outside his own country, and when he is in Greece his cook manages to do a great deal with comparatively slight material. A Greek cook can make a skewered pigeon quite palatable, and the number of ways he has of cooking quails, from the simple method of roasting them cased in bay leaves to all kinds of mysterious bakings after they have been soused in oil, are innumerable. There are pillaus without number in the Greek cuisine, chiefly of lamb, and it is safe to take for granted that anything À la Grec is likely to be something savoury, with a good deal of oil, a suspicion of onion, a flavour of parsley, and a good deal of rice with it. These, however, are some of the most distinctive dishes:—Coucouretzi, the entrails and liver of lamb, roasted on a spit; Bligouri, wheat coarsely ground, cooked in broth, and eaten with grated cheese; Argokalamara, a paste of flour and yolk of egg fried in butter with honey poured over it. All Greek cooking, as all Turkish is, should be done very slowly over a charcoal fire. A too great use of oil is the besetting sin of the indifferent Greek cook. The egg-plant is treated in half-a-dozen ways by the Greeks, stuffing them with some simple forced meat being the most common.

The food of the peasant is grain, rice, goat when he can get it, a skinny fowl as a great delicacy, milk, and strong cheese. A bunch of grapes and a piece of sour bread forms a feast for him.

The Grecian wines are not unpalatable but very light. They are mostly exported to Vienna, being fortified previous to their departure to enable them to stand the voyage, and again manipulated on their arrival, so that their original characteristics are considerably obliterated.

Athens

My trusted collaborateur A.B. went on a yachting tour in Grecian waters last spring, having a special intention of studying Greek restaurants. He wrote to me as to Athens, and his report was short and to the point: "Outside the hotels there is but one cafÉ, Solon's, principally used as a political rendezvous. Its attractions are of the most meagre description." A most grave littÉrateur to whom, as he had been lately travelling in Greece, and as I had not been there for ten years, I applied for supplementary information, applied the adjective "beastly" to all Greek restaurants, and added that the one great crying need of Greece and Athens is an American bar for the sale of cooling drinks in the Parthenon.

N.N.-D.