A Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár évkönyve 21. 1994 (Debrecen, 1994)
Tanulmányok - Szűcs Ernő: Debrecen 1900-1910 közötti vendéglátóiparáról
ABOUT THE CATERING TRADE OF DEBRECEN BETWEEN 1900 AND 1910 Part I Ernő Szűcs At the time of elaboration of the monograph of Debrecen became obvious that about the history of the catering trade of our town only one book (that is Sándor Balassi: The history of "Aranybika" of Debrecen) and not more than some articles of Lajos Zoltai can be found. That is why we decided to collect of materials of this topic. After several years of research work emerged that part of the catering trade of Debrecen between 1900 and 1910 which includes the materials of hotels, restaurants, pubs, gin palaces, slap-bang shops, eatinghouses nor the bathes. In our present work we present units working at the beginning of the century We describe their time of foundation, their working place , the founder and the later owners. We endeavoured to explore the particular features of the single units of hospitality while we pointed to the methods used by the owners for "catching guests". For example employing bands (gypsy or tambura bands), setting tables of billiards, employing singing companies, entering into contracts with music halls, art of cooking (abundant choice of Hungarian, French dishes made of games, fish or sausages) and the quality of drinks (home-made wines, wines grown on sandy soil, mountain wines, Hungarian and foreign beers) and the temperature of drinks. We also endeavoured to follow the change of names of the units. For example Beer-house of Vilmos - Home Coffee House - Industry Coffee House - Abbázia - Hoppe Coffee House. We also tried to flash the appearance and reappearance of the popular trade names (White Horse, Small Pipe). With the second part of the work titled "About the catering trade of Debrecen between 1900 and 1910" our aim is to recite the gener- alizable features of the firms introduced in the first part, so after the units mentioned we'd like to introduce the whole trade. 196
