A few years later and the prices were back to what was then held to be normal.  According to a Guide Book of the city issued in 1846, there were one hundred and twenty-three eating-houses in the town, besides the oyster-houses.  At the cheaper places the prices were six cents a plate of meats and three cents a plate of vegetables.  In the more pretentious restaurants the rates were of course considerably higher.  Chamberlain’s Saloon in Pearl Street was a famous restaurant in 1851.  Here is its advertised bill-of-fare.  Soups:  beef, mutton, chicken, six cents; roast pig, turkey, goose, chicken, duck, twelve and a half cents; beef, lamb, pork, mutton, six cents; beefsteak pie, lamb pie, mutton pie, clam pie, six cents; boiled beef, any kind, six cents.  Made dishes:  pork and beans, veal pie, six cents; oyster pie, chicken pot-pie, twelve and a half cents.

Philip Hone lived in a house on Broadway, facing City Hall Park.  When he wished to dine out he did not have to go far, for almost next door was the American Hotel, one of the most famous hostelries of the period.  Its cooking was as sturdily patriotic as its name, although the menu is flavoured with badly written French.  Here is a sample bill-of-fare, bearing the date of June 10, 1848.

Soup. 
Rice Soup. 
Fish. 
Blackfish. 
Boiled. 
Leg of Mutton. 
Fowl, oyster sauce. 
Corn beef. 
Ham, Tongue, Lobsters. 
Entrees. 
Fricassee of chicken, a la New York. 
Tete de Veau en Tortue. 
Cotellettes de mouton, saute aux pommes. 
Filet de veau, pique a la Macedoine. 
Tendon d’Agneau, puree au navets. 
Fois de volaille, sautee, a la Bordelaise. 
Croquettes de pommes de terre. 
Stewed oysters. 
Boeuf bouilli, sauce piquante. 
Macaroni a l’Itallienne. 
Roast. 
Beef, Veal, Lamb, mint sauce, Chicken, Duck. 
Vegetables. 
Mashed potatoes.  Asparagus. 
Spinach.  Rice. 
Turnips.  Pears. 
Pastry. 
Rice custard.  Roman punch. 
Pies.  Tarts, etc. 
Dessert. 
Strawberries and cream.  Almonds. 
Raisins.  Walnuts, etc.

The day came when the hotels farther downtown yielded the palm to the Metropolitan, opened in the middle fifties at Broadway and Prince Street.  The late Alfred Henry Lewis thus rhetorically pictured the Metropolitan, in the winter of 1857-58, when to dine there was the thing to do.  “Over near a window are Bayard Taylor, the poet Stoddard, and Boker, who wrote ‘Francesca da Rimini,’ which Miss Julia Dean is playing at Wallack’s.  Beyond them is Edmund Clarence Stedman, with lawyers David Dudley Field and Charles O’Connor.  The second table from the door is claimed by Sparrow Grass Cozzens and Fitz-James O’Brien, who have adjourned from Pfaff’s beer-cellar near Leonard Street, where, under the Broadway sidewalk, they were quaffing lager and getting up quite an appetite on