If You Are Detained at Calais …

Appears in
Everything on the Table
Everything on the Table

By Colman Andrews

Published 1992

  • About

“Everything written before our time was written for our instruction. ...”

—ROMANS 15:4

“Tortoni’s Hotel Restaurant [In Le Havre]” begins a passage in my favorite restaurant guide, “must not be confounded with the Brasserie Tortoni quite close to it, which is a bachelor’s resort; and which I, as a bachelor, have found very amusing sometimes after dinner.” Another passage begins, “If you are detained at Calais (and every man at least once in his lifetime is detained at Calais)...”

Clearly this is not your Zagat or your Guide Michelin talking. This is an urbane, witty, highly evocative, information-packed little volume called The Gourmet’s Guide to Europe, by a man who signs himself simply Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis—a book devoted to the dining customs, menus, and after-dinner entertainments not just of Western Europe, but of Russia, the Balkan countries, even Turkey.