Mencken, writing in 1948, three years after Dreiser's death, recalls how the novelist lived and ate modestly in his Greenwich Village neighborhood: "Many's the time I saw him glow with delight over a rôtisserie fowl, presumably a chicken, and a bottle of red wine from Hoboken, N.J".
Yet when they're on the other side of the table, even some chefs want to eat more modestly.
Looking back, he recalled: "The few of us who were in this industry ate in modestly priced restaurants and drank modestly priced wine and held our conferences in three-star hotels.
In a lounge area with a separate menu you can stay briefly, eat restrainedly, spend modestly and size up the kitchen's cooking without fully submitting to it.
The old rich may have lived in 21-room apartments, but they drove dinged-up cars, dressed modestly, ate indifferently.
She will have to eat only kosher food, dress modestly and observe the Sabbath in full (no travel, no work, no touching of pens or pencils, even no use of electricity).
But he also has a variety of cheaper chains, where ordinary Russians with modestly rising incomes can, he says, eat well for 500 roubles (about $20).
An equally underproduced speech by a burned-out English Pac-Man who can't be bothered to eat pellets is also winning, and comes in so modestly short you want to watch it a half-dozen times.
A lot of music-industry executives eat at this glossy, relaxed restaurant, with a good, mostly modestly priced wine list.
