When people question my dual career as a political consultant and food writer, my stock response is that even politicians gotta eat. Some suggest, with a Freudian smirk, that my passion–OK, obsession–with food must be rooted in my mother’s wonderful cooking.
Wrong.
The apex of her culinary endeavors was a six-layer Jello mold with all the colors of the spectrum except indigo. She didn’t know from indigo. Once she made a multicolored tower using fresh pineapple, which takes the jell out of Jello, and the whole quivering blob collapsed all over the mah-jongg table.
Otherwise, like most Jewish-American cooks of her era, she could boil a chicken down to Silly Putty and turn a slice of liver into particleboard with biblical deftness. On a more positive note, because she was raised in Texas, she learned to make guacamole, which she served alongside her mouth-puckering eggplant salad. (She never learned to salt an eggplant to draw out the bitterness.) I grew up thinking guacamole was a Jewish dish.
Actually, the reason there are so many Jewish food writers is, except for Mimi Sheraton (who adored Momma’s food), they are trying to escape their mothers’ cooking. Is that Freudian enough?
Still, I always loved to eat–copiously. I learned to cook in my late teens–probably in self-defense. Did a decent spinach souffle, which tasted fine even when it deflated into a mousse. Growing up here in Steak City, however, I still thought a rare T-bone was as good as it got. I was not against exotica. Egg rolls and sweet-and-sour pork made me feel worldly. My Uncle Joe from New Orleans took me to Antoine’s for the original oysters Rockefeller–but I was unmoved by the dish and remain so. However, at the Well of the Sea in the old Sherman Hotel, where the James R. Thompson Center now stands, I was entranced by shrimp remoulade. At the original Pump Room, a batch of lush crabmeat–slightly singed by the flames of the sword on which it was skewered–hinted there was another whole world of food out there.
The center of that universe, I would soon confirm, was Paris. My first wife, Carol, a poet, and I scrimped and saved to live there for a year or so in the spring of 1953. I was 22, a devout leftist and aspiring novelist, certain that the recent election of Dwight Eisenhower meant the second coming of the Spanish Inquisition. The alternative was to lose ourselves in the second coming of the Lost Generation.
We ensconced at the Hotel de Blois, right around the corner from the famed Cafe Select, which would become “our” cafe. Our $1-per-night room had a desk, a sink and a running-water bidet, though the john was down the hall. We immediately went to look up some friends of friends who were longtime expat writers, a guy named Smith and woman named Jones. They would give us the first of a long series of gastronomic epiphanies.
I can still taste it today. Pete poured a glass of what I would learn was Beaujolais. Lou took out this white round of cheese called Camembert–unlike anything by that name at home. As she sliced into it, there was this golden ooze and sudden pungent, almost fermented aroma. A quarter-inch line of white showed at the core, eclipsed quickly by the runny ambrosia. She tore off a chunk of baguette, spread a thin layer of pale, pale butter, nudged a wedge of the cheese on top, offered it to Carol, then repeated the process for me. This amazing thing happened in my mouth: There was a medley of buttery richness, salt and tang and creaminess against the bread’s crusty texture–layer upon layer of flavor. Then she told me to sip the wine.
An explosion of flavors! The fruity tartness of the wine blended in and escalated all the other things that were going on in my mouth. Bite after bite. Sip after sip. I had to restrain myself from gobbling. I was the honored guest at a wedding of food and wine.
The coming days saw a chain reaction of similar explosions. Smith and Jones introduced us to James Baldwin, the writer; Beauford Delaney, the painter; and others in the international crowd that gathered at the Select and its neighbors, the Dome and La Coupole. They in turn introduced us to more food. At the nearby Bonne Table, Jack Belden, author of a still-estimable history of the Chinese revolution, offered a taste of the satiny, herb-flecked, off-white sauce on his little steak: my first true bearnaise. It would have made shirt cardboard taste like truffles. I blew our budget by ordering onglet-bearnaise for $1.25.
At Le Corbeille, another local eatery, Jesse Hahn, who got to play the muscular American in a host of French movies, explained that his appetizer–a tubular, light green vegetable–was a leek, steamed to sweet tenderness and anointed with a mustardy vinaigrette. I still serve it today. He also introduced us to calf’s brains, crisply sauteed with a creamy interior, dressed with a lightly vinegary caper butter. A taste and texture revelation!
Late, late one night at the Ronde Pointe, where a young columnist for the Paris Herald Tribune named Art Buchwald was holding court, the bartender was mixing what seemed to be hamburger with all sorts of savories–but it was to be eaten raw. Extraordinary! Then it was off to Au Pied de Cochon in the old market area for our first baked onion soup or “gratin,” whose heady fragrance burst forth in a puff of steam as I cracked its crusty cap of bread and bubbling cheese.
In later weeks there would be bass roasted over fennel and a dozen varieties of oysters, plus wines with convoluted names. Dining became an event.
In later years there would be many more trips to Paris, the advent of nouvelle cuisine, restaurants with a galaxy of stars. Or just a simple Beaujolais and runny Camembert.
It’s still an event.
