Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1898 — SAM’S BIG KITCHEN. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SAM’S BIG KITCHEN.

THERE IS NO FINER COOK-SHOP IN THE LAND. In It Is Prepared Food to Believe Senatorial Hunger—lt Coat a Lot of Money and Its Product* Are the Best. Where Statesmen Eat.

JNCLE SAM owns the costliest kitchen in the world, probably. It is not the largest. There is at least one hotel kitchk* en in the United m States which surK passes it in size. But B it is fittted out with B. every improvement SLAthat money can buy, WSand no show place at the capital is more ELI, interesting or less known. The public ptrcinever gets a chance Il I. 0 Bee G> e Senate kit--11 • chen, the marble bath

rooms of the House, or any of the other luxuries provided for the members of Congress. The Senate restaurant keeper occupies a peculiar position. It looks at first glance like a very enviable position; but if one can believe the statement of the man who has held the privilege for a dozen years, that idea is incorrect. T. L. Page of Maine has been the purveyor to the Senate under both Republican and Democratic rule, and he declares that the job is not profitable—this, too, in the face of the fact that he pays no rent for his

kitchens or his dining rooms, and gets his light and fuel free. The Senate kitchen is in the basement of the capitol. The only way in which a visitor could reach it would be by the elevators—and the elevator men are not encouraged to take people down stairs. That is because the engine rooms are in the basement, and the chief engineer does not want visitors fooling around the machinery. It takes a great deal of machin-

ery to run the Senate—more than one would think. Much of it is used in running the electric light plant and the elevators, and much more in the ventilation of the building. Huge fans pump fresh air into the Senate chamber and the committee rooms and other fans pump the foul air out. One of these is in the Senate kitchen, and the room is so perfectly ventilated that no suggestion of the odor of the cooking reaches any of the floors above. The main room of the kitchen is 100 feet long and 15 feet widft. It was remodeled three years ago at a cost of more than $50,000. It is white-tiled, above and below, and on all four sides, so that its cleanness forces itself on one’s attention. Opening- out from it are store rooms and refrigerating rooms and bakeries. One of these is the oyster room, where a man does nothing but open oysters all day long. The storeroom is about 15 feet square. It is filled with the non-perisha-bles—crackers and spices and potatoes, and all the other grocery goods which will stand an ordinary temperature for a reasonable length of time. There is fruit in this room, too—a lot of it; and the wine is kept here, because the Senators would not relish a wine room in the face of the regulation which prohibits the sale of intoxicating beverages in the capitol. There is no difficulty, however, about getting a supply of wine or of bottled beer. In the kitchen proper there are two big ranges. An ox could be roasted in either of them; the larger is 12 feet long.

There is a big soup kettle in one cornerone of the largest kettles in the worldused for keeping the beef stock, with which every restaurant kitchen is provided. Metal steam pipes run through this fettle and keep the stock warm. In another kettle are kept the sauces to be eaten with meats—apple sauce and cranberry sauce. They, too, are kept warm

by ate«jD. There is a steambox for steaming oysters; a grill big enough to Kroll a pig or a lamb, under which glows a fire of red-hot charcoal; and a patent turkey roaster, which performs mechanically the turning and basting of the bird, which, in the old days, absorbed the time and attention of two or three persons. There are steam tables in the kitchen, as well as in the steam room. It takes thirty servants to run the kitchen and its appurtenances. _ “Noon to 3 o'clock” explains the peculiarity which is probably responsible for the alleged unprofitableness of the Senate restaurant. There is no breakfast hour worth speaking of, and no dinner hour. Very few persons eat anything but luncheon at the capitol. The Senators breakfast at home and dine at home; and, besides, they are not the best patrons of the restaurant. The public breakfasts at a hotel and dines at a hotel or a res-

taurant down town. Yet the Senate restaurant has to keep as large a force of cooks and scullions and waiters as though business continued brisk through the whole day. There are many frequenters of the pie counter among the Senators. This counter surrounds the dumb-waiters, and is deoorated with cold turkeys, cold roasts of beef and salads, as well as many kinds of pie. There are no seats of any kind. It is a common sight for two or three Senators to be standing at this counter, with Senate pages and committee clerks and messengers and Washington correspondents on each side of them, drinking big tumblers of milk and eating pie. This and the oyster counter are in the public restaurant—a room divided into two parts by large columns. Two small doorways, one at each end of the pie counter, lead to the rooms which are sacred to “Senators only.” These rooms were once open to members of the House, but Senators complained of the lack of privacy, and now if one enters the inner sanctum it must be as a guest of a member of the Senate. The writer has eaten there, and he can assure the reader that the food is no better and the surroundings no more attractive than in the outer rooms. There is only this difference—that they serve a more liberal allowance of bread in the Senators’ rooms than they do in the public restaurant, and frugal Senators have been known to order a 15cent plate of soup and eat a whole loaf of bread with it. Sometimes there is a feast in the Senate restaurant, when a member from the

Northwest receives a huge salmon from Oregon, or one of the New England Senators has a shipment of game from his home. Then Caterer Page personally supervises the preparation of the viands, and there is a jolly dinner party, at which a dozen members of the Senate sit down. Occasionally the Senate gets into a snarl, which makes the presence of all the members a necessity, and the dinner party has to be postponed; but it is very unusual for any public business to interfere with the good times that the Senators have in the Senate restaurant.

HOBART LUNCHES IN HIS PRIVATE ROOM.

CHARACTERISTIC SCENES IN THE SENATE LUNCH ROOM.

MORRILL TAKES BREAD AND MILK.

NOTHING TOO GOOD FOR WOLCOTT.