THE DINING DECLINE.

THREE LITTLE WORDS often suffice to express much wisdom. How packed and pregnant, for example, was Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum". Kingsley Amis's "More means worse" has not been surpassed for predictive pith; he was speaking of universities, and the mad idea that "everyone" should have a full tertiary education. The degraded "degrees" now being dispensed by the money-grubbing academic slums all around the Commonwealth are horrifying testimony to his sharp and gloomy insight.

Happily the Amis doctrine ("Quantity expels quality") does not rule in all departments of life, and is very little in evidence when applied to restaurants and other eating places today. Their multiplication has been stupendous--bistros, bars, brasseries, coffee shops, curry kitchens, noodle nosheries, stir-fries, pizza joints, parisseries, pie-stalls and take-aways. Along some streets in Melbourne one can stroll for half a mile or more and find nothing but eateries, shoulder to shoulder. Most serve good and appetising food, many offering intriguing specialties of their own, We are a hundred times better catered for than we were twenty-five years ago, but how on earth do all those places make a profit?

The current passion for tables on the pavement, or shopfronts which fold open out of sight, makes the phenomenon even more conspicuous. No cafe really exists these days unless its frontage footpath flaps with tablecloths in the breeze. Any investor who ten years ago bought shares in companies making outdoor furniture must be doing handsomely.

Eating outside is not a passion I share. On a mild sunny day nothing is more delightful than to lunch al fresco in some secluded courtyard. There is, on the contrary, little charm in the blast of exhaust fumes on a main street, the deepening din of tramcars, raised dust, and someone's dog passing by to piddle on your chair leg. No matter-one can eat inside if one prefers.

Acknowledging the great culinary riches now available to us, it may be curmudgeonly to grumble. One can, however, acknowledge also, and regret a little, the decline in the higher refinements of truly great dining. Do you know of one restaurant today which boasts a regular uniformed doorman? one who has been at his post for years? who not merely opens the door, but who remembers your name? who not only takes your hat (your hat?!) but will (without the aid of any docket) return it to you when you leave ?

The even more important institution of a true head waiter seems also to be in decline. There once he hovered, near the door or stairhead, a majestic six foot or more of him, immaculate in full evening dress. Cyril Connolly, superb journalist and exponent of every form of selfindulgence, leaned perhaps a little towards overpraise of this functionary when he wrote: "The correct number of persons for a perfect dinner party is two: myself and a very good head waiter." Where the office survives at all, the incumbent seems increasingly to be called something which sounds like "maytra-dee", a pretension which adds nothing to a once-authentic dignity.

Tables in the grander restaurants are not so well appointed as they were. The fashion for spreading a sheet of butcher's paper over a linen tablecloth has crept upwards from the more informal (though excellent) bistros. However much the practice may save in laundry bills, it should be sent back to its lowly origins.