18 SEPTEMBER 1869, Page 3

The Daily News is a great authority on political questions,

but we must really decline to consider it even a respectable authority on the subject of dining. In its impression of yesterday it says, " We have certainly improved in London in the art of dining. Restaurants have sprang up in all quarters of the town, where even the most fastidious tastes may be gratified at a reasonable expense." Well, but what are fastidious tastes ? and what is a reasonable expense ? Is the Strand among the " quarters of the town " referred to ? Because our impression is that 3s. is a reasonable expense for meat and cheese and a pint of stout, and that it is not a very fastidious taste to desire meat of a certain fineness of grain for that price, and this, too, in moderate-sized instal- ments, and not stacked on your plate in a sort of meat haycock. Now our experience is that these moderate desires cannot be gratified for the sum named—and we believe we have tried all the restaurants within the quarter of the town referred to without success. The Daily News intimates that if a man only knows what each establishment is fatuous for—one for fish, another for soup, a third for game—he may get a capital dinner amongst them. But then every one has not time to trisect or quadrisect his dinner, and besides, all this is for connoisseurs. Why cannot a poor fellow who only wants good meat, and cheese, and stout, dine comfortably, as well as the connoisseur?