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Dining-room of the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, c. 1910.
It must be clarified at this point that nineteenth-century inns and hotels
in the treaty ports, following the European example, provided meal service
for their guests and often operated restaurants that catered for customers
who did not stay for the night. Increasingly, the hotels’ reputation depended
on the quality of meals served in their dining-rooms as much as on other
facilities and services. 15 Praise of the Oriental Hotel in Kobe and its proprietor,
Monsieur Begeux, by one of his guests serves as a case in point:
His is a house where you can dine. He does not merely feed
you. His coffee is the coffee of the beautiful France. For tea he
gives you Peliti cakes (but better) and the vin ordinaire which
is compris, is good. Excellent Monsieur and Madame Begeux! If
the Pioneer were a medium for puffs, I would write a leading
article upon your potato salad, your beefsteaks, your fried
fish, and your staff of highly trained Japanese servants in
blue tights . . . 16
By the 1870s establishments that provided the comforts of a Western diet
for the treaty-port residents were thriving. Clubs, taverns, restaurants,
bakeries, grocers, breweries, butchers and dairies were set up and managed
by fellow Westerners. Adventurers who risked a journey to a far land to
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