Palm Beach is celebrating its 100th birthday (you’d be hiding under a rock if you didn’t know because there has long been fanfare about it) and local gourmet grocer and caterer C’est Si Bon is paying tribute with special weekly Centennial menus.
Every Wednesday starting this week, a Centennial menu at C’est Si Bon (280 Sunset Ave.) will feature items inspired by meals that might be typical of Palm Beach during a particular past decade.
This week’s focuses on 1910-1920, with a short primer that, among other things, mentions the haute French cuisine served at E.R. Bradley’s Beach Club, a dining and gambling establishment at the time.
The primer is brief because really, the menu is all about C’est Si Bon’s delicious offerings, but 1910-1920 was indeed an interesting time for dining in Palm Beach.
Palm Beach boasted a few lavish restaurants—a feat considering a couple of decades earlier, scrub brush and swamp prevailed until Standard Oil partner Henry Flagler rolled his railroad south and transformed the scene with two resort hotels.
Hundreds of waiters bustled about the 1,500-plus-seat dining room at Flagler’s 1894-built lakeside Hotel Royal Poinciana (razed in 1935), widely considered then to be the largest wooden structure in the world.
Just east, the dining room at The Breakers—the oceanfront hotel Flagler built in 1896 (it first was known as the Palm Beach Inn)—eventually morphed into a Florentine-detailed showpiece along the lines of the Davanzati palace, as one early 20th-century observer noted.
Arguably the finest cuisine at the time was served in the restaurant at Bradley’s Beach Club, the nation’s longest-running illegal gambling casino (1898-1945). The cuisine was so rich, it has been said C.W. Barron of Barron’s Weekly purchased five dinner coats of ever-increasing size in order to adjust to his growing girth during the winter season.
But we digress (a lot). My apologies to C’est Si Bon, although perhaps now we’re all hungrier than ever for a taste of Palm Beach’s past—or at least the notion of it. So back to C’est Si Bon’s Centennial menus.
This week’s doesn’t solely focus on French fare inspired by Bradley’s Beach Club. It includes a la carte lunch items, ranging from cream of celery soup to new-potato salad with tarragon-Dijon vinaigrette, cucumber salad, and chicken salad with grapes, almonds and dill.
Centennial dinners offered Wednesday—main course and dessert for $12.95—include duck l’orange with parsleyed egg noodles and peas, braised red cabbage and creme caramel; and beef bourguignon with parsleyed egg noodles and peas, French string beans, julienne carrots and creme caramel.
Important: It’s always a good idea to order in advance. Otherwise, there’s a chance C’est Si Bon may be sold out of a given day’s specials.
C’est Si Bon posts its daily menus at http://www.csbgourmet.com, where you can register to receive the menus via e-mail each week.
For more information and/or to place orders, call C’est Si Bon at 659-6503.
