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The Cook's Decameron: a study in taste, containing over two hundred recipes for Italian dishes by Mrs. W. G. (William George) Waters
page 90 of 196 (45%)
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 piatio 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."
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