Crossword-Solution: GOURMETS 8 letters, 6 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

The plate was rich to the extent that its age and quaintness alone saved it from being showy; there were interesting names signed in the corners of the pictures on the walls; the viands were of the kind that bring a shine into the eyes of gourmets.

They affected the shift regarding the eating of truffles from the sphere of the natural (the pigs that used to find them, and liked them probably as much as the gourmets, had to be replaced by specially trained dogs) to the realm of the cultural, where the interests of human beings prevail over anything else.

People who are obliged to diet can partake of their own slops at home, and yet mingle with the gourmets without awkwardness or the necessity of apology.

Everything is delicious; game, fish, birds, meat, vegetables, fruit, milk, and truffles--all are worthy of the table of the greatest gourmets, and the wines of the country yield to none.

Sturgeons from the river are, it may be, rather better than those from the sea; but these were welcomed warmly enough on board the “Albatross.” But the best catches were made with the drag-nets, which brought up at each haul carp, bream, salmon, saltwater pike, and a number of medium-sized sterlets, which wealthy gourmets have sent alive to Astrakhan, Moscow, and Petersburg, and which now passed direct from their natural element into the cook’s kettle without any charge for transport.