Such was Diamond Jim Brady’s immense, expansive and relentless appetite, the owner of Manhattan’s swankiest eatery, Delmonico’s, said, “Jim Brady was the best 25 customers I ever had”. Jim spent a lot of time in Saratoga Springs with his girlfriend, actress Lillian Russell, where for breakfast, he’d eat "vast quantities of hominy eggs, cornbread, muffins, flapjacks, chops, fried potatoes, beefsteak, washing it all down with a gallon of fresh orange juice". A mid-morning snack consisted of "two or three dozen clams or Lynnhaven oysters". Luncheon was "shellfish, two or three deviled crabs, a brace of boiled lobsters, a joint of beef and an enormous salad". He’d include a dessert of "several pieces of homemade pie" and more orange juice. Brady would take afternoon tea - "another platter of seafood, accompanied by two or three bottles of lemon soda". Dinner, the main meal, usually comprised "two or three dozens oysters, six crabs, and two bowls of green turtle soup. Then in sumptuous procession came six or seven lobsters, two canvasback ducks, a double portion of terrapin, sirloin steak, vegetables and for dessert a platter of French pastries”. Brady added two pounds of chocolate to top things off. Gamblers here bet on whether he'd drop dead before dessert. But, naturally enough, food wasn’t his only obsession.
© 2024 John Oliver
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