THE FINER THINGS

Plain Frenchmen don't care much for cocktails (rhymes, in France, with knock-wells), and even if they did they could not afford them at Paris' better saloons. But they watched with amusement as 18 of the capital's top bartenders gathered last week for a cocktail-mixing contest in Paris' Hotel Continental. As the competition went on the proceedings got somewhat out of hand, and befuddled professional interest became intense when one of the contestants tried mixing his ingredients directly in the consumer.

More serious Frenchmen also had their show last week. They flocked to view and sample the fat flitches of bacon, succulent sausages and juicy sides of pork on display at Paris' traditional Ham Fair, reopened for the first time since the war. One epicure, tasting an exhibit (below), demonstrated that there were at least some people left in the world who appreciated the importance of the finer things in life--the proper blending of spices and garlic in a sausage, for example.

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