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The Tenth Day: Italian

Alas! Sir John did not find the right placefor there are "right places" amongst the Italian restaurants of London. He beat a hasty retreat from the first he entered, when the officious proprietor assured him that he would serve up a déjeûner in the best French style. At the second he chose a dish with an Italian name, but the name was the only Italian thing about it. The experiment had failed. It seemed as if Italian restaurateurs were sworn not to cook Italian dishes, and the next day he went to do as best he could at the club.

But before he reached the club door he recalled how, many years ago, he and other young bloods used to go for chops to Morton's, a queer little house at the back of St. James' Street, and towards Morton's he now turned As he entered it it seemed as if it his steps. was only yesterday that he was there. He beheld the waiter, with mouth all awry, through calling down the tube. The same old mahogany partitions to the boxes, and the same horse-hair benches. Sir John seated himself in a box, where there was one other luncher in the corner, deeply absorbed over a paper. This luncher raised his head and Sir John recognised Van der Roet. "My dear Vander, whatever brought you here, where nothing is to be had but chops? I didn't know you could eat a chop." "I didn't know it myself till to-day," said Van der Roet, with a hungry glance at the waiter, who rushed by with a plate of smoking chops in each hand. "The fact is, I've had a sort of hankering after an Italian lunch, and I went out to find one, but I didn't exactly hit on the right shop, so I came here, where I've been told you can get a chop properly cooked, if you don't mind waiting." "Ah! I see," said Sir John, laughing. "We've both been on the same quest, and have been equally unlucky. Well, we shall satisfy our hunger here at any rate, and not unpleasantly either." "I went to one place," said Van der Roet, "and before ordering I asked the waiter if there was any garlic in the dish I had ordered. 'Garlic, aglio, no, sir, never.' Whereupon I thought I would go somewhere else. Next I entered the establishment of Baldassare Romanelli. How could a man with such a name serve anything else than the purest Italian cookery, I reasoned, so I ordered, unquestioning, a piatto with an ideal Italian name, Manzo alla Terracina. Alas! the beef used in the composition thereof must have come in a refrigerating chamber from pastures more remote than those of Terracina, and the sauce served with it was simply fried onions.

In short, my dish was beefsteak and onions, and very bad at that. So in despair I fell back upon the trusty British chop."

As Van der Roet ceased speaking another guest entered the room, and he and Sir John listened attentively while the new-comer gave his order. There was no mistaking the Colonel's strident voice. "Now, look here! I want a chop underdone-underdone, you understand, with a potato, and a small glass of Scotch whiskyand I'll sit here." "The Colonel, by Jove," said Sir John; "I expect he's been restaurant-hunting too." "Hallo!" said the Colonel, as he recognised the other two, "I never thought I should meet you here: fact is, I've been reading about agricultural depression, and how it is the duty of everybody to eat chops so as to encourage the mutton trade, and that sort of thing." "Oh, Colonel, Colonel," said Van der Roet. "You know you've been hungering after the cookery of Italy, and trying to find a genuine Italian lunch, and have failed, just as Sir John and I failed, and have come here in despair. But never mind, just wait for a year or so, until the 'Cook's Decameron' has had a fair run for its money, and then you'll find you'll fare as well at the ordinary Italian restaurant as you did at the 'Laurestinas,' and that's saying a good deal."