HUNGRY GERALD

HG is very fond of French restaurants but hates over rich, over composed, exuberantly expensive haute cuisine. HG despises tasting menus that turn meals into marathons and leave HG feeling stuffed and queasy. In France, HG likes simple bourgeois cooking (Found, alas, in a diminishing number of bistros) and brasserie staples like oysters and grillades. (HG/BSK loved the seafood at Le Bocal and Boulingrin during a recent visit to Rheims. In Paris, Le Stella remains a favorite for plateau de fruits de mer and racks of lamb). HG recalls with nostalgia New York of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s when there were numerous very cheap and very satisfying French bistros. HG was inaugurated into French dining during the World War Two years when HG’s late, beloved sister Beulah Naomi would lunch with adolescent HG at Larre’s in the West 50’s. Very cheap. Fifty cents bought a four course meal (Plus salad). Tables were filled with French teachers and Francophone refugees. HG later learned that a distinguished trio of artists–Marcel Duchamp, Robert Motherwell and Andre Breton–dined there daily. HG and his sister would also eat at the modestly priced Charles a la Pommes Souffle. As the name indicates, the restaurant specialized in delicious crisp and airy potato puffs. They are no longer on New York menus and in very few Paris restaurants. They demand total attention while cooking and are labor intensive. The West 40’s in the Theater District had numerous French bistros. Only one, Chez Napoleon, remains. Happily, it offers true grand mere cuisine including one of HG’s favorite dishes, Cervelles Meuniere–calf brains sautéed in brown butter with capers. During HG’s college days (CCNY–1946-1950) and journalist days (1950-1955) HG confined French dining to the very cheap, very robust bistros on 10th and 11th Avenues in the West 50’s. The ocean liners were still docking on the West Side Piers and these restaurants catered to French, English and Dutch crews. A big meal cost about three dollars and featured lots of innards like liver, kidneys, hearts, gizzards and tete de veau. It was in these rough and ready joints that HG cultivated a taste for dishes not favored by mainstream America. As HG’s finances improved in the mid-’50s and the ’60s, HG favored the delightful (Long closed) Fleur de Lis on West 69th Street (It was here on a hot summer night in 1963 that HG and BSK dined on their wedding night. The temperature was soaring and HG finished dinner smelling like a large garlic clove. Made BSK question her marital choice). During their residency on the Upper West Side, HG/BSK ate frequently (when not consuming Chinese food) at Fleur de LIs. HG’s favorite meal–a dozen escargots, frog legs meuniefre, camembert, creme caramel, red wine–cost about ten dollars. Once a month, HG lunched at what HG considered (and still does) the best French restaurant in the world, Le Pavillon. Curiously, for many years the two best French restaurants were not in France–Le Pavillon in New York and the Connaught Restaurant in London. Henri Soule ran Le Pavillon with Napoleonic imperiousness and rigorous attention to detail. HG’s dining companion was often the late Theodore Kheel, the distinguished lawyer and labor arbitrator. Soule opened the restaurant in 1941. He died in 1966. The restaurant closed in 1971 but it was only a shadow of itself after his death. One of HG’s regrets is that due to pregnancy and other circumstances, BSK never dined at Le Pavillon with HG. Dining at Soule’s with the love of HG’s life would have been a sublime experience.

Nice article in the current Bon Appetit on La Grenouille, last of the Old Guard of Manhattan East Side French restaurants (Le Pavillon, La Cote Basque, Lutece, La Caravelle: All gone along with their white tablecloths, deft waiters and distinguished maitres d’s). La Grenouille isn’t giving the food away: The three course prix fixe is $98. After wine, tax, service (and some supplements) dinner for two can easily escalate to $500. HG gathers that some tax loophole guys and their much younger lady escorts eat there four or five times a week. To the barricades, citizens!!

In years past, HG ate at Pavillon once a month (all HG could afford). Food was superb (not over elaborate). There some affordable bottles of wine. Henri Soule ran the room with imperious snap. It was like dining with Napoleon.

For the most part, HG’s French venues during his younger years were the rough and ready bistros on Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. They catered to the crews of the SS Ile De France and other French ocean liners. They were also popular with the dining staffs of the English and Dutch liners. For about three bucks you got an appetizer (celeriac remoulade, mushrooms a la Grecque, leeks vinaigrette, pickled herring); main dish (various vinous and garlicky meat stews, matelote of stewed eel, garlic sausage with white beans, hache parmentier); dessert (rice pudding or creme caramel). Plus a pitcher of house red wine and plenty of not so bad bread. If feeling flush, HG added a cheese course of Camembert and Roquefort. At the end of the meal, HG and his current lady friend puffed Gitanes and felt like compatriots of Malraux, Camus and the Free French General LeClerc.

Henri Soule’s Le Pavillon on 57th and Park in New York was the best restaurant in the world and HG has never seen it surpassed. The combination of Soule’s imperious attention to every detail, the great (and relatively simple) food, the comforting lighting, the glamorous crowd, the gentle and efficient service—-all created a joyous experience.

Some memorable dishes: Fillets of smoked eel topped with whipped cream infused with freshly grated horseradish. Duck with olives. Lump crab meat gratin. Souffle potatoes. Steak au poivre. Sweetbreads in puff pastry. Spring asparagus with Hollandaise. A simple grilled ribsteak with a cornucopia of wild mushrooms. Poule a Pot (which HG shared at lunch with labor mediator Theodore Kheel). Marrons au Mont Blanc (a mini mountain of pureed candied chestnuts topped with sweet, whipped cream).

Must stop. HG has tears in his eyes.

HG and BSK lunched today at Shibumi Ramenya in downtown Santa Fe (Johnson and Chapelle, to be precise). Perfection in every detail — decor (Japanese rustic); service (suave); food (sophisticated but earthy). There’s spicy pork gyoza, some creative Japanese vegetable tapas (burdock root, black seaweed, sesame spinach and bunapi mushroom). And, there’s the little bistro’s raison d’etre: Ramen with four distinct broth styles: Tonkotsu ramen with roasted korobuta pork; Torigara with roasted chicken; Kaisen with shrimp and Yasai with vegetables. HG and BSK had the Tonkotsu Ramen and it had flavors in depth — a powerful and multi-layered broth, perfect noodles (excelling in both spring and smooth mouth feel) and roasted pork slices that seemed a marriage between belly and loin. The cutlery, spoons with long wooden handles and a capacious bowl married aesthetics with function. Prices are moderate. The cash policy (no credit cards) helps keep it that way. The proprietor is Eric Stapelman. He also owns Trattoria Nostrani, an adjacent Italian restaurant. Nostrani’s menu is superb and HG/BSK will be dining there soon and posting a report.

Stapelman has the reputation of not tolerating disrespect for his food, personnel, or restaurant. And, he won’t have perfumed folk. Good. HG’s kind of guy. All of my favorite restaurant men (Henri Soule at Pavillon in New York or Sidney Kaye at Russian Tea Room, also in New York, behaved that way). Viva Stapelman, Don’t change.

SJ reminded me that Shibumi by Trevanian (a one name author) is the title of one of our favorite good/bad novels (“Godfather” tops that category). The protagonist of “Shibumi” is a assassin/stud named Nicolai Hel (he can kill in a hundred ways including a method using the edge of a playing card). So powerful is his sexual magnetism that he and his beautiful girl friend achieve simultaneous orgasm simply by looking at each other in an intense manner. Commented SJ: “Wow. What would happen if they actually did it?”

Enjoy more conventional (but intense) pleasures at Stapelman’s “Shibumi.”

Say the word “eels” and you will usually get a grimace of disgust. The words “slithery” and “slimy” are often used in connection with eels. They got very bad PR in the movie The Tin Drum where there is a graphic scene of an eel fisherman landing his catch using a rotten, decapitated horse’s head as bait. As any press agent would tell you: when trying to appeal to the public, avoid slithering out of the mouth of a dead horse.

Nevertheless. HG states, with conviction, eels are delicious. HG has posted on the splendor of unagi as well as posting a lyrical memory about the smoked eel at the late Henri Soule’s Pavillon Restaurant. HG also has vivid memories of Matelote d’Anguille (eel and red wine stew). It was a staple at cheap, French bistros on New York’s midtown (on the west side).

Londoners, for many years, were passionate about consuming eels. East London, in particular, had scores of eel-and-pie restaurants. They served stewed eels, jellied eels and eel pie with mashed potatoes. All were served with “liquor”….a parsley sauce often spiced with chilies and vinegar. HG always looked askance at jellied eels until he realized that they were similar to gefilte fish which is properly served with an abundance of jelly, which is simply the jellied stock in which the fish is cooked. Alas, there aren’t many eel-and-pie shops left in London (there used to be 130). The most extraordinary, in terms of its ornate 1910 decor is F. Cooke’s. Find this noble establishment at 44 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, London E8. Blimey!!