The public has now taken Southern Comforts in its stride, and the Southern Comfort Company of St. Louis has dreamed up another bottled product, this time of much less disaster-day potentiality, called Coffee Southern and well worth your investigation as a really attractive and adult liqueur. The only coffee liqueur we have ever before encountered that was in any way notable was a Mexican distillate served in the home of Miss Dolores del Rio, the actress, outside of Mexico City. Coffee Southern is, we are informed, of a slightly higher proof than this product of Old Mexico, but has its essential qualities, being strong of coffee, sweet without stickiness or cloying flavor, and thin in its consistency, as any masculine drink should be. It could easily lend itself to blending with after-dinner coffee, and the particularly effective Latin trick of dipping the nonbusiness end of a cigar in it and inhaling the coffee flavor with the tobacco smoke is excellent. Probably the proprietors of Coffee Southern will see to it in their promotional material that potential users are instructed in a number of ways of making the best of their product. In the meantime, it may be remarked as an excellent thing for the complete sideboard along with the sweeter and more flowery liqueurs that are already established.
A few issues of GOURMET past, this department reported to its clients on the happy circumstance that Denver, a town of many excellences but one never notable as a shrine of gastronomy, was in possession at long last of a place of true gastronomic distinction, and we beg the liberty of confirming this report as of our most recent sojourn in the home town of all those Reeds, Verners, Boettchers, Penroses, Phippses, Browns, and Weckbaughs. The Tiffin is maintained by a pair of altogether admirable entrepreneurs named Jean and Paul Shank, who call themselves “architects of appetite,” and if you can surmount this initial hurdle, you will find their menu an imposing array of just about the best home-cooked food you will encounter anywhere between the Pump Room and the Palace.
To Easterners who are well-to-do enough to throw away their Lincoln town cars as soon as the ash trays are full and who make a practice of smoking two Belinda Fancy Tales at once, but still can no longer afford red cow meat, the Tiffin menu is a symposium of beefy wonderments: juicy, thick beef tender loins, boneless New York-cut sirloins, choice boneless club steaks, double-cut prime sirloins, and the house specialty, the Tiffin famous double filet, served for one with French-fried onion rings, ＄3.50. Read it and weep. For less spacious diners there is a profusion of double racks of spring lamb, broiled live Maine lobster that is flown to the Rockies daily, lamb chops averaging the size of a filet mignon in Manhattan, and baked ham with wild cherry sauce.
All these splendid things come to the table with such an assortment of relishes, hot breads, and beautiful Colorado vegetables as most folk haven't seen since they used to spend Christmas down on the farm with grandfather, and the Tiffin makes a point of a nice oldfashioned touch that has pretty well disappeared from commercial restaurants of serving a small portion of sherbet with its entrees.
The Tiffin is an old private residence in Ogden Street, one of Denver's more conservative faubourgs, and a pleasanter place to spend Sunday afternoon waiting for the sailing of the Burlington “Zephyr,” especially if you can secure a window table on the second floor, is difficult to imagine. The Tiffin has no license, but this minor lapse can be remedied by the forethoughtful patron by a quick sneak beforehand into the Ship Tavern of the celebrated Brown Palace or the magnificent Victorian saloon of the Cosmopolitan across the street. This department personally could do without the verses which adorn the menu of the Tiffin or the knowledge that the management likes in its fonder moments to think of itself as “architects of appetite,” but this is inconsequential, and our emphatic cup of tea, to scramble a phrase, is the Tiffin's double filet with French-fried onions. Boy! It is something!
A New York lady wag of proportions far more formidable, certain informed circles incline to believe, than the much-touted Miss Dorothy Parker, who eventually became a catchall for all unidentifiable witticisms of whatever caliber, is Miss Dawn Powell, the lady novelist. A short time ago Miss Powell arrived with her frequent companion, Miss Ann Honeycutt, unannounced and without reservations for dinner, at Jack Bleeck's Artists and Writers Restaurant in Fortieth Street, hard by the Herald Tribune.
In the absence of a table for the moment, the Misses Powell and Honeycutt were prevailed upon by Gene, the maitre d'bôtel, to have a quick one at the bar while waiting. Time passed; folk came and went, pausing for converse and just one with the ladies at the bar. The minutes rolled into hours. Home and loved ones were forgotten, let alone such small matters as dinner. Suddenly Gene approached and politely announced: “Miss Powell, your table is ready!”
Pinterest
