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Old And New Palace: California

OYSTER OMELET (For two): Take six eggs, one hundred California oysters, one small onion, one tablespoonful of butter, one tablespoonful of flour, salt and pepper to taste. Beat the eggs to a and stir in the onion chopped fine. Put the eggs into an omelet pan over a slow fire. Mix the flour and butter to a soft paste with a little cream, and stir in with the oysters, adding salt and pepper to taste. When the eggs begin to stiffen pour the oysters over and turn the omelet together. Serve on hot plate with a dash of paprika.

This is the recipe of Ernest Arbogast, the chef for many years of the old Palace. The slightly coppery taste of the California oysters gives a piquancy to the flavor of the omelet that can be obtained in no other way, and those who once ate of Arbogast's California oyster omelet, invariably called for it again and again.

We asked Jules Dauviller, the present chef of the Palace, for the recipe of what he considered the best dish now prepared at the Palace and he said he would give us two, as it was difficult to decide which was the best and most distinctive. These are the recipes as he wrote them for us:

Trim some select fillet mignon of beef, about four ounces of each, nicely. Saute these in a frying pan with clarified butter on a hot fire. Dress on a small round PLANKED FILLET MIGNON plank, about four and a half inches in diameter, decorated with a border of mashed potatoes. Over the fillet mignon pour stuffed pimentoes, covered with a sauce made of fresh mushrooms, sauteed sec over which has been poured a little chateaubriand sauce. Serve chateaubriand sauce in a bowl. The second is:

COLD FILLET OF SAND-DABS, PALACE Select six nice fresh sand-dabs. Raise the fillets from the bone, skin and pare nicely, and season with salt and paprika.