1st restaurant review

The first restaurant review to appear in the New York Times, with a byline “by the Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times” about the restaurant Delmonico.

“Very well,” replied the editor-in-chief. “Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, — from the Astor House Restaurant to the smallest description of dining saloon in the City, in order that you may furnish an account of all these places. The cashier will pay your expenses.”

His list of the types of American dinner to be found in New York, from most comfortable to least: 1. The Family dinner at home. 2. The Stetsonian dinner. 3. The Delmonican, or French dinner. 4. The Minor dinner of the Stetsonian principle. 5. The Eating-house dinner, so called. 6. The Second-class Eating-house dinner. 7. The Third-class Eating-house feed.

Once let Delmonico have your order, and you are safe. You may repose in peace up to the very moment when you sit down with your guests. No nobleman of England — no Marquis of the ancienne nobless — was ever better served or waited on in greater style that you will be in a private room at Delmonico’s. The lights will be brilliant, the waiters will be curled and perfumed and gloved, the dishes will be strictly en règle and the wines will come with precision of clock-work that has been duly wound up. If you “pay your money like a gentleman,” you will be fed like a gentleman, and no mistake… The cookery, however, will be superb, and the attendance will be good. If you make the ordinary mistakes of a untraveled man, and call for dishes in unusual progression, the waiter will perhaps sneer almost imperceptibly, but he will go no further, if you don’t try his feelings too harshly, or put your knife into your mouth.