Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1884 — The Cost of Dinners. [ARTICLE]

The Cost of Dinners.

It has been estimated by an American authority that a party of two persons can dine “moderately” at Delmonico’s for $5, —that is to say, for £1 sterling,—the entertainment including a bottle of claret, very drinkable, although the cheapest in the list of wines. At a first-rate Parisian restaurant a dinner for two which cost 25 francs, including a bottle of medium Bordeaux, would be a far from “modest” repast. Indeed, it would be a very plenteous repast, and Parisian restaurants are always expensive, owing, first, to the extravagant rents of houses on the fashionable boulevards; next to the enhancement, through the “octjpi” duties, of the price of provisions; and, thirdly, in consequence of the rapacity of the proprietors. There is no “octroi” in New York; the market prices for fish, meat, game, vegetables, and poultry would be considered wonderfully cheap by a London housekeeper; but house rent is as extravagantly high, and the rapacity of the fashionable New York restaurant-keeper is as insatiable as that of his congener on the Boulevard des Capucines. At the same time, it must be conceded that there are plenty of places in Manhattan where a dinner or luncheon of a varied and substantial and even of a semielegant kind can be obtained at a comparatively moderate tariff. Five • dollars a day is the maximum charge for full board at a first-class New York hotel, one, at least, that is conducted on the “American system;” and a guest, for his $5, is entitled, in addition to his sleeping accommodations, to four, and in some cases to five, meals a day, the bill of fare of each of which is as long as Leporello’s schedule of the gallantries of Don Giovanni. To be sure, at these colossal tables d’hote, considerably more attention is paid to quantity than to quality. But the visitor may eat and drink as much as he likes; he can be nearly always eating and drink- 1 ing if his taste lies in the direction of gormandizing; he is not expected to drink fermented liquors “for the good of the house;” there is no charge for service. Thus, for a total abstainer with a teetotal appetite—which is ordinarily a voracious one—the United States must be a kind of terrestrial paradise. The Elysium is said to be haunted by the demon of indigestion, but there is an abundance of drug stores where pepsin and liver pills can be purchased.— London Telegraph.