HUNGRY GERALD

Santa Fe, of course, is landlocked and is world headquarters of green chile, tacos and (mostly terrible) sentimental Native American art plus other Southwestern kitsch items. Nevertheless. You can find some surprising food here. Even more surprising when it involves fish. Witness the sea food stew at the two Bumble Bee taco joints.
For $11.95 you get a stew (really a chowder) of shrimp, scallops, fish and squid. Slivers of vegetables. All in a delectable broth with hints of coconut milk, green chiles and more. Really good and the bowl is bottomless. I’ve yet to finish one and I am a man of capacity.  Accompanied by Bumble Bee’s freshly made tortilla chips you’re set for the day.

Customer: “How’s the brisket?” Waiter: “Too good for you.” Customer: “There’s a fly in my soup” Waiter: “So, how much can he drink?” There are a zillion Jewish waiter jokes.  It’s all in the past.  There are no Jewish waiters (certainly not of the traditional variety….flatfooted, bald, a facial expression that varied between bored and nasty).  Gone with all of those wonderful Manhattan institutions: Lindy’s, Reuben’s, Ratner’s, Rappaports, Tip Toe Inn, Steinberg’s, Moscowitz & Lupowitz….and so many others. Do I miss the restaurants? Indeed I do. Do I miss the waiters?   Not really.  Like many things in life they’re better in retrospect.

The phrase “Jewish Boy” is usually preceded by the adjective “Nice.” Well, in The Bronx of the 30’s and early 40’s Jewish boys weren’t so nice. In fact, we were thieves.Variety stores like Woolworth’s and Kresge’s were big targets. So were fruit and vegetable stores with their street front stands  (Here you had to be wary since they were owned by Italians. In Bronx lore, if you were caught stealing from an Italian or tampering with an Italian maiden, the aggrieved Italian would shoot off your penis. Then he would think about doing something bad to you). Our best scores were at appetizing stores  (There will be an upcoming HG post about this vanished part of New York).  In an inspired PR move, the Maxwell House Coffee Company would distribute Hagadahs  (the Hebrew book of prayer,narrative and song recited and chanted at the Seder, the celebratory Passover ceremonial meal).  Appetizing stores got a plentiful supply. My gang went into action. The best looking of us (usually me, of course)  approached the shopkeeper and asked for Hagadahs  “so we Jewish boys could study before the Seder.”  Overjoyed at this display of piety and Nice Jewish Boyishness, the man went to his storage area to get the books. Out of his sight,  we bad boys filled our pockets with nuts,  chocolates,  and hard candies….even sour pickles straight from the barrel. One of the deftest thieves was my pal, Willie, who later became a NYPD detective and died in a West Side drug bust gun fight.  All good..and bad…things must come to an end.  One Passover season we were recognized.   “Goniffs!! Momsers!! Bestids!! Ahm gunna call the cops!!”     End of my criminal career.  The world lost another Meyer Lansky.

My daughter, Lesley Riva, is the best all around home cook I know. She is a beautiful woman with a glowing complexion and  an exuberant,  very curly head of dark blond hair. Her energy is boundless. And, it has to be. She works in communications for a non-profit Academic Health System…facing all of the crises that hospitals are prone to….writing news releases, speeches, reports…most under very tight details. There’s a beautiful teen-age daughter and an equally beautiful daughter preparing for college (teen-age angst, romances, numerous social and athletic engagements, some distinct food antipathies). There’s a  large garden that needs attention. And, there’s the magnificent, maddening Massimo Riva.
Professor Riva is the Director of Italian Studies at Brown University, a member of many University academic committees, author of a number of scholarly books and a world leader in making Italian culture available through the internet. He is a Vittorio Gassman- look-alike and a former Italian tennis champion. Need I mention, that as an Italian, he takes powerful interest in food and wine ? I used the descriptive “maddening.” An explanation: Massimo often calls, on relatively short notice, and says: “The 11-man Italian delegation from the European Union is at the University and I’ve invited them for dinner. Tonight”…Or it may be a group of Senegalese poets, Hungarian authorities on medieval pornography …or whatever. Lesley is supposed to feed them. She does. And deliciously. So, what do you eat Chez Lesley and en famille? There are always starters like her crab and lobster salads ( I have been accused of gobbling up more than my share of these goodies. The accusations are justified.) There’s often prosciutto, mozzarella, peppers, kalamata olives,very good bread…and more. Then, there’s pasta. of course. Lesley is the lady of scores of improvised sauces….all dependent on whim,  the weather and the market. Yummy. (There’s very good parmigiana, a pepper mill and  chili pepper flakes  to accompany).
Often, she does seafood chowders of Rhode Island clams and mussels; stir fries of scallops; broiled fish with a special glaze. Her chicken sautes and her beef/lamb/pork stews and roasts are Italian, Provencal and sometimes, Jewish (not the pork roast,stupid).
There’s salad, fruit and cheese to end the meal. For HG there’s an abundance of Limoncello. Lesley also does sublime blinis, crepes, fruit crumbles, poppy seed cakes and many, many other tidbits. Back to Maddening Massimo: A liberated Italian male, he does the cleanup and is the unquestioned Maestro of dishwasher stacking and administration. I have had only two food quarrels with my adorable daughter. I believe lemon juice and vinegar are enemies of wine so I try to stay her hand when she makes a salad dressing. Also, one Christmas Lesley slow roasted rutabagas all night as I slept in an adjacent bedroom and I awakened smelling like a tuber. Have I mentioned that this very lovely dynamo is a contributor of witty food writing to the Atlantic Food Channel?  As I said: How does she do it ?

I was turned on to Israel’s secret weapon by my brother-in-law Yossi Martonovich (Israeli paratrooper,equestrian champion and teacher,musician,cantor,special educator). The secret weapon is chroog (this is phonetic spelling from the Hebrew). Chroog is a condiment, vaguely green-black in hue. It is hot. Powerfully, numbingly hot. Sneaked into the Iranian food supply it could give the entire nation heartburn in an hour. Just an idea, Mossad. .

Jackie and Roy. Say those words and get a wide smile from any hip person who loves jazz and musical elegance. Jackie Cain and Roy Kral….a vocal duo beloved by such folks as Lenny Bruce and Frank Sinatra. Long time Las Vegas lounge stars (where Sinatra came to listen whenever he was headlining in Vegas). TV performers on the Dave Garroway show and many others. King and Queen of the night at scores of jazz joints and supper clubs in the United States and Canada. Give yourself an ear treat and get some of their CD’s. Jackie was the girl vocalist with the Charley Ventura band in the early 50″s. Roy was the pianist and occasional arranger. Sparks. They married and stayed married until Roy’s death a few years ago. As a duo there was a lot of emphasis on Jackie’s solos (a voice as cool,pure and true as a mountain stream….phrasing and diction that honored a host of wonderful lyricists as diverse as Alec Wilder,Bobby Dorough and Bill Engvick). Roy arranged the music,accompanied deftly on the piano and joined in vocalese duets that are gems of the genre(Give a listen to their version of “Mountain Greenery”). Often Jackie and Roy were backed up by such outstanding musicians as bassist Ron Carter. I first heard Jackie and Roy in ’53 or ’54. Hungry Gerald was a New York journalist at the time but moonlighted as a night club press agent for establishments controlled by participants in organized crime. One such establishment was the Clique Club. Sammy Benskin,the jazz pianist,was leading a trio there and he alerted me that Jackie and Roy were going to make a guest appearance. Wow. They were spectacular. Usually, women jazz singers wore plunging neckline second skin clothes. Sultry.  (An African-American lady would be described as ‘Sepia, Sultry,Sexy Singer of Songs’). Back to Jackie. She was wearing a perfect tweed suit (Traina-Norell? Trigere? Ben Zuckerman? Jackie doesn’t remember.). Roy. Slim and handsome in conservative grey flannel. They performed for 20 minutes. I fell in love with Jackie and became a lifetime J and R fan. Segue to Fire Island, New York….circa ’67. The beautiful Sharon and I (plus kids) owned a dune house and Jackie and Roy rented a nearby place with the late, legendary Bradley Cunningham (proprietor of Bradley’s, the Greenwich Village bar and restaurant that was the venue of top jazz pianists and where a Sharon painting hung on the wall…Whitney Baillet did a worth reading profile of Bradley and Bradley’s in the New Yorker Magazine some years ago). We all became friends and remained so until death did us part. Okay. An August Sunday. Boiling. Hottest day of the summer. 99 or 100. Jackie, Roy and Bradley had a weekend guest, Rex Reed. Very prominent newspaper columnist,TV personality and entertainment critic of that time. A first rate wit. Rex said he was going to cook a down home Southern Sunday dinner for us. He’d cook at J and R’s and we’d dine at our place……watching the sun set over the Great South Bay.The menu would be a surprise. The day never cooled off but we were well reinforced by icy, steely martinis. Rex would dash over. Drink a martini. Do a deadly imitation of an English disc jockey introducing Miss Patti Page. Then back to the kitchen.The meal finally arrived. A huge,roasted- for- hours falling apart piece of beef swimming in a thick, almost back gravy. A mountain of buttery mashed potatoes. A loaf of Silvercup bread to soak up the extra gravy. A bowl of sweet gherkins. For dessert: A freshly baked lemon meringue pie. We were astonished. This is Rex’s idea of a hot day meal? He’s kidding.  It’s a sardonic gay joke. Then we dug in. Happy silence except for chewing murmurs. Meal ended. No leftovers. Not even a crumb of pie. We all nodded in agreement. Best meal we ever had.

It appears my nephew, Eric Martonovich, is in love. Eric is a world champion horse vaulter (he does somersaults, cartwheels and other impossible things atop a swiftly cantering horse) and an equestrian performer (Cirque du Soleil, Cavallia, Las Vegas extravaganzas etc.). He is a very powerful fellow (he makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a girlie man). Eric has found love. A beautiful Norwegian girl, also a champion equestrian. Eric is now in Norway and was recently the honored guest at a big family dinner (Eric’s Mom, Noel, gave me a full report). The big dish was a sheep and Eric was presented with a delicacy–the sheep’s eyeball.
Not to eat the wooly fellow’s orb would be insulting. So..my nephew speared the unattractive object. Dipped it in mustard and said: “Yummy.” Re-dipped the object and said: “Yummy.” Popped it in his mouth, Struggled, Finally swallowed. Gave his verdict: “Not so yummy.” Well, that’s Norwegians for you…eaters of lutefisk (a foul smelling fish dish) and, as I have just learned, fond of eyeballs. Otherwise a great and noble people.

Last time I was in NY had pastrami with son Jeremy at the legendary Katz’s Delicatessen. Was underwhelmed. (with the pastrami…not with Jeremy,the famed reggae entrepreneur and Brooklyn barbecue maestro). In fact,I haven’t liked any pastrami since Gitlitz on Broadway (between 78th and 79th) closed some years ago.May I digress? Gitlitz was next door to Daitch Dairy, home of the West Side’s best butter and cheeses. I was there one day to stock up on cream cheese and other goodies. It was jammed. As I gave a counterman my order a woman (who thought I had cut in front of her) pointed a finger and screamed: “You!! You!! You stole my next!!” Back to pastrami. In a recent New York Times interview,Nora Ephron.screenwriter,novelist,essayist and all around brilliant lady of letters, said that Langer’s in LA has the world’s best pastrami. If Ephron says it, I believe it. However,this does represent a shocking,seismic bicoastal shift in the cuisine of the Chosen People.

Elaine Kaufman is gone. Never liked the restaurant. Never liked the food. But, I liked Elaine. A Bronx product like HG, Elaine, as you know, made her restaurant, Elaine’s, a show biz and writer hangout. Never cared about looking at celebs (Two exceptions: Cary Grant at the Plaza Oak Room personifying joie d’vivre and style; Jackie Onassis at the Four Seasons,a lady who knew how to dress and how to walk). Certainly never wanted to talk to writers (Rather read ’em than meet ’em). My favorite writer is Philip Roth (And is there no justice..why doesn’t he have a Nobel?). Whenever I saw him in New York (At the Barney Greengrass sturgeon emporium) he looked as if he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown). I had to go to Elaine’s in my capacity as PR man for various real estate biggies including the late Sam LeFrak. Elaine graduated from Evander Childs High School (my late brother Bernard was a football star there). I once greeted her: “Ah,the shapely Evander alumna.” She replied: “Too goddam much shape,if you ask me.” Last time I saw Elaine was early this year in New York. I had just finished a Saturday lunch at Le Veau d’Or with my favorite dining companion,son Jeremy. Veau d’Or is frozen in time. Nothing has changed in 40 years. Same little bar at the entrance. Same faux leather banquettes. Same host/owner, the oldest Frenchman in New York. Menu is a list of golden oldies. As Jeremy left to take care of business Elaine walked in. She looked awful but was still full of brassy life. I sat down at her table and drank cognac for a few hours as we deflated some reputations and lamented the loss of favorite restaurants.We agreed that Veau d’Or was symbolic of a New York that had just about disappeared and it was our duty to keep the flickering flame alive. Okay,Elaine, I’ll be in New York in a few weeks and I’ll raise a few glasses in your memory.

The Italians say (and I paraphrase): Life is short.Bitter. Disappointing. So, in the meantime, let’s have a great meal. In that spirit I strongly suggest you fry potatoes in duck fat. Duck fat used to be hard to get but is now carried online by Williams-Sonoma.Okay, all together boys and girls, let’s clog those arteries.