by Unknown
“To my worst enemy I wouldn’t advise going out to eat on a Saturday night in the summer.”
On my first Saturday night, I visit the place most recommended to me by food critics: the Old Stove Pub. Run by a Greek family, this venerable steak house is located in a tired old home on farmland between Bridgehampton and East Hampton. The sign out front says: when you’re fed up with the chic, come to the greek. I’m told by three food writers that (1) “It’s the best steak I ever had, a real down-home place, but you’ll see Demi Moore there.” (2) “It serves the best lamb chop in America.” (3) “It has the best steak in the world.” I notice that the Zagat Tri-State Restaurant Survey gives the Old Stove Pub a mediocre rating.
Based on a dinner for three, here are my Zagat-style impressions of the place. Food: terrible. Decor: worse. Service: unfathomable. Cost: high.
The food brings to mind something Wolfgang Puck told me years ago, when he was reminiscing about his days as the grill cook at Maxim’s, in Paris. Puck said that the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis “used to eat a big fillet with a lot of fat, like eating barbecued grease.” The steaks here are thick, horrendously trimmed, gristly, and charred deep-black.
On my second Saturday night, I go to The Palm, which is so popular that one restaurateur has said to me, “The maître d’ there is the richest man in the Hamptons.” The steak is a thick, tender, beautifully trimmed sirloin. The lamb chops are even better. Compared to “the Greek,” this is the Parthenon.
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When I ask the maître d’, Tomas Romano, if tips from guests desperate for tables have made him the richest man in the Hamptons, he replies, “I think I am the most hated man in the Hamptons. On a Saturday night, after three hundred people are seated, there are another three hundred left out. Can you imagine how much they like me, these people who cannot get in?”
He tells me of the many famous people who come every weekend but inexplicably leaves out Billy Joel. I ask him why he is the only maître d’ in the Hamptons not to boast of his patronage.
“I do not have to say it,” he says. “He is here all the time, anyway.” A day later, I stop in at Cyril’s Fish House, located six miles east of my arbitrary Hamptons borderline, but worth a trip for its deep-fried fresh flounder coated with oregano-garlic breadcrumbs. Cyril says,
“He comes here a lot, Billy Joel. His secretary called an hour ago, looking for him.”
I’m sure that Christie Brinkley is a wonderful wife and mother, but I’m starting to suspect she’s not such a great cook.
a s t a t e m e n t f r o m b i l l y j o e l
“I am a year-rounder, and I like to sample all the local places. I’m afraid to praise one over another because they’ve all treated me so nicely. In truth, every restaurant I’ve been to has something unique and delicious to offer, from the lowest diner to the fanciest Tuscan restaurant. I am particularly partial to those places that remain open during the cold-weather months.”
Jerry Della Femina might be the most important man in the Hamptons. He has the most tables and chairs.
He is also vying for Joel’s loyalty. He opened Della Femina last August and kept it operating all winter. He opened East Hampton Point this past May with the intention of keeping it operating year-round. He is assured of stunning short-term success.
Della Femina immediately moved up alongside Nick & Toni’s in the race for maximum celebrity saturation. East Hampton Point, located 4 4
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in a slightly out-of-the-way spot overlooking Joel’s yacht, was only in business for a few days when I stopped by. Its desserts were already polished works of art, particularly the fruit tart and the chocolate truffle cake.
I can imagine nothing more blissful than sitting at one of the six window tables in the main dining room, eating dessert at sunset. I can think of nothing more awesome than the clout one will require to get one of those tables on a Saturday night.
One last place.
In the center of Amagansett is the Stephen Talkhouse bar, renowned for attracting rock stars of magnitude, the kind who fill football stadiums.
For years, Elwood of Elwood and Ettie’s Dixie Smoked Barbecue labored on a deck behind the bar. When I stop by, I’m told that Elwood will not be returning. He will be missed, of course, and I have no way of knowing whether his replacement will cook as well, but I am confident I can recommend the Stephen Talkhouse bar.
Billy Joel plays there.
GQ, august 1993
T H E S A U C I E R ’ S A P P R E N T I C E
Posing as a hapless student cook—an effortless subterfuge on my part—I have infiltrated the French culinary establishment. I am enrolled at Paul Bocuse’s École des Arts Culinaires et de l’Hôtellerie, a school dedicated to the advancement of the cuisine of Lyons, a city widely admired as the gastronomic capital of France.
Here, a simple lunch might include a veal hoof, a slice of extra-thick tripe, and a sausage made from pork innards. Add a soupçon of butter, a gravy boat of cream, and, voilà, simple home cooking is transformed into some of the world’s fanciest food. We Americans might find such cuisine unthinkable, to say nothing of unaffordable, but to most of the world this is the epitome of sophistication. If the awe one feels while consuming such profound creations is occasionally intermingled with indigestion, well, that’s the price one must pay for eating too well.
No other country has a table the equal of France’s, and no chef in France is as acclaimed as Bocuse. Here, at his own school, unbeknownst to his staff, I plan to investigate the mysteries of French food. I will peel away the veils of secrecy much as Bocuse peels away the layers of an oignon.
I will try to discover why the French are so different from us, why they are concerned only with pleasure, never with nourishment. Why is it, I have been wondering, that people in other countries gather together whatever meager provisions they can find in order to feed their families, 4 6
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whereas the French gather up their families in order to feed them at restaurants?
I will endeavor to learn how the French manage to eat so well in times of war or natural disaster—although I’ve heard that during famines they skip the petits fours. Why do Americans require Hamburger Helper to get by, while every Frenchman is entitled to a daily helping of steak tartare? I will attempt to find out why the French are guiltless where food is concerned. They believe eating veal is immoral only when it is tough.
I have five days to learn all of this, five days in a course called “Cuisine and Culture for French Food Lovers,” something I definitely was until my last trip to Paris, when none of my meals was any good. The course costs about $1,000, and consists of cooking lessons and demonstrations that start a 9:00 a.m. each day and go on until 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.
We are promised a chance to work on more than a dozen recipes in kitchens that gleam like Napoleon’s cavalry. We will observe top-notch professionals preparing classics, the kinds of dishes once reserved for noblemen in velvet pants. For an additional $250, we can even sleep on campus, although those lured to the school by photos of the headquarters, a lush nineteenth-century château, should be forewarned: the residence hall has aqua walls and yellow doors and looks as though it belongs on the campus of a cash-starved Sunbelt junior college. My class numbers about a dozen, all but one of us American, and includes an oboe player, a housewife, and a honeymooning couple who have taken advantage of the housing offer and are sleeping in twin beds.
My classmates and I are issued lab coats and funny little paper chef’s hats that must be stapled together before they are worn. The school’s hats look like galvanized stovepipes and denote status within the food community: the taller the hat, the more important the chef. Our instructor, Chef Antoine Fremont, is a Big Hat. His assistant, Hélène Rebour-seau, a first-year student in a two-year course, wears a hat only half as big.
Our first recipe is salmon medallions in a Beaujolais sauce w
ith bone marrow and grapes. As you can tell, we have already crossed the line that separates what the Lyonnaise consider good eatin’ from what everybody F O R K I T O V E R
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else considers good eatin’. Chef Antoine asks if anyone has any questions before we begin. One student asks if he could have another staple in his hat. Chef Antoine does not look pleased.
Lesson number one is how to blanch onions. Lesson number two is how to blanch salt pork. Already my mission is a success, for I have learned about this odd French addiction to blanching, a cooking technique that consists of plunging the ingredient in question into boiling water while exclaiming, “Voilà!”
When they are not blanching, the French seem always to be deglaz-ing. This is a fancy word for removing the cruddy stuff that sticks to the bottom of a roasting pan. Voilà! The cruddy stuff is the basis for all those rich sauces Americans pay so much for in restaurants, not realizing what they are made from. The French so admire the cruddy stuff that they even have a name for it, “le suc.” I’m not saying that American chefs don’t deglaze, but you’ve got to admit that giving the cruddy stuff its very own name demonstrates an unnatural degree of affection.
As we proceed with the salmon recipe, I learn all of the following: how to remove pits from whole grapes using a paper clip (a process not much different from removing wax from your ear using a paper clip), how to pop near-frozen marrow from a bone so it comes out in one conical piece (a really disgusting procedure you don’t want to know about), and how to make lardons. This last is an eye-opener. When Americans dine at cute little French bistros, they often order salads with lardons, thinking they’re getting something moderately healthy, a bunch of frizzy greens with a few chunks of bacon tossed in. Those chunks of bacon are lardons, cubes of pork fried in butter. The French really like fatty food fried in butter, especially if the fatty food is blanched first.
For our next dish, Chef Antoine instructs us in the preparation of salmon cutlets wrapped in smoked bacon. I raise my hand and ask Chef Antoine if the French feel cheated if they do not have pork with their fish. Chef Antoine does not look pleased. He tells us how to wrap a cutlet: encircle the salmon with a strip of bacon (much as a filet mignon is wrapped in American restaurants I try to avoid). Should the bacon 4 8
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be too large and require trimming, cut away the meaty parts. Real French chefs never waste pork fat.
Our salmon cutlets wrapped in the fattiest possible smoked bacon are to be served with broccoli butter, which causes some of my veggy-loving classmates to sigh with happiness. They have no idea. Should you wish to prepare broccoli butter, here is the recipe: Blanch a little broccoli. Place in a blender with lemon, salt, and pepper. Jam in a massive amount of butter, as though you were stuffing a sausage casing. Blend.
What comes out looks like green cookie dough but is far, far richer. To turn this faux cookie dough into a delicious vegetable sauce for the salmon, merely add a little cream.
Chef Antoine then shows us how to make jus, which is a light sauce of natural juices. He places a tomato peel in the jus, explaining that the acidity in the peel will clarify the jus. I studied chemistry once, and I find this fascinating.
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Because,” he replies.
Chef Antoine already seems to be tiring of me, and it is only our first day.
At lunchtime I chat with Patrick Huriet, the directeur général of the school. He tells me that many French students who secure cooking internships in the United States hope to return there to work after graduation because they are treated so well in American kitchens. “In France everybody is yelling. It is our way of showing strong authority,” he explains. “Part of our culture is to bully.” Actually, I already knew this.
I am hoping that Chef Antoine will teach me to curse like a real French chef.
Our lunch each day consists of what we prepare each day with our own French Food Lovers’ hands. Today it’s those two salmon-and-pork preparations, which settle on my stomach like a combo platter at a barbecue joint. Students not in our course are enjoying the school lunch of the day: brochettes of sausage and smoked pork fried in oil accompanied by stuffed baked potatoes. Their dessert is floating island—
meringue in a custard sauce.
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Also savoring the school lunch, even though it is much lighter than what they normally have at home, is a contingent of German students.
They have all won a day at the school as prizes in a recipe contest.
I ask one of the Germans for her winning recipe, for it is not often that the French find virtue in German cooking. She says she merely had to answer a question on a postcard, and while she doesn’t recall the question, she clearly remembers her prizewinning answer: “Putten a turkey from France.”
I am no linguist, so I want to make certain I have not misunder-stood.
“Putten a turkey from France?” I repeat.
“Yes,” she says, flapping her arms like a turkey. “Turkey, turkey.”
“Nein,” I say. “What means ‘putten’?”
“ ‘Putten’ means ‘putten,’ ” she says.
I ask Chef Antoine if he will be teaching us this prizewinning recipe.
He just rolls his eyes. As you might have guessed, Chef Antoine is a pretty patient guy for a French chef.
A highlight of our stay at the school is a personal appearance by Bocuse himself, who drives up in his Mercedes and parks it in an unau-thorized spot, the only person who dares to take such liberties. Bocuse is a combination of Julia Child, Charles de Gaulle, and Ronald McDonald—celebrity chef, Gallic symbol, promotional figure. He is the president of the school, as well as the proprietor of a three-star restaurant on the outskirts of Lyons.
Bocuse shows us how to make coq au vin, the first and only dish we are taught that I might possibly attempt at home. The catch is that his recipe calls for fresh chicken blood, which is pretty difficult to get in America unless you’re a Santeria priest. Blood aside, Bocuse’s coq au vin isn’t much different from what you find in French cookbooks, but the first step is a standout: cut off the chicken’s feet and blanch them.
We have one other memorable cooking session, a demonstration of how to assemble fillet of lamb in a pastry crust. Actually, that’s an oversimplification. It’s lamb encased in lamb mousse, wrapped in cabbage, and enrobed in a filigreed pastry crust. Three Big Hat chefs work 5 0
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for nearly three hours constructing the monumental work of meat, and they are able to finish that quickly only because the pastry dough was prepared in advance. I calculate that it would take me, working alone and starting from scratch, twenty-four hours straight to duplicate their efforts. Remember when you were a child and your mother said to you, as mothers always do, “Don’t eat so fast, that took me all day to make!” You never believed her, but now you know the dish she was talking about.
The week concludes with two days of pastry and dessert classes taught by Chef Alain Berne, who wears the red-white-and-blue collar of a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, which means he is about as good as it gets.
Chef Alain can chop a half of a canned peach into perfect one-eighth-inch-thick slices in four seconds, make a trout out of sugar, and a violin out of ice. I can make Toll House cookies using the recipe on the back of the bag. Chef Alain’s classes are a little over my head.
The world of the pastry chef is alien to me. It is a place where French meringue and Italian meringue and Swiss meringue are all different, where a biscuit is not a biscuit, and where ice-cold cream poured into caramelized sugar will explode. Every preparation requires enormous amounts of time, effort, and meringue. And yet the pastry chef suffers like no other man. His delicacies are either thoughtlessly popped in the mouth, as though they were Chiclets, or refused by overstuffed diners who have gorged on a tasting menu and decided to skip dessert. My final pastry humiliation occurs when Chef
Alain fires up a blowtorch and prepares to caramelize something. I failed shop when I was in junior high school and cannot imagine such a weapon in my hands.
My week at the school, I must say, has been as rich and filling as the lunchroom’s croquettes de pommes de terre—potatoes mashed with egg yolks and butter, then breaded and deep-fried. While I have not learned as much as I had hoped, Chef Antoine has taught me lessons about French cooking and culture that I will never forget: 1. Never lose control of your shallots. I have no idea what this means, but Chef Antoine warned us about this during classes and I pass it F O R K I T O V E R
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on. Losing control of your shallots is not to be confused with sweating your carrots, which is a good thing.
2. Washing your mushrooms is perfectly fine. I can’t tell you how happy I am about this. I never serve mushrooms when friends come over, because one of them will invariably launch into a diatribe when I wash my mushrooms instead of brushing each one with a dry cloth. Chef Antoine says wiping mushrooms is ridiculous. “You have time in the United States for things like that,” he says.
3. My final lesson comes from the cultural side of the curriculum. Chef Antoine says that a French chef never lies. When I ask him if he ever put frozen fish on his menu and sold it as fresh, he explains, “Yes, but that is business.”
GQ, june 1995
B O C U S E M U S T G O
Paul Bocuse has done more to glorify French cuisine than any other living restaurateur, and for this he has been suitably honored. He was named “chef of the century” by the Gault Millau restaurant guide and has been immortalized in statuary at the Musée Grevin in Paris. He created a prize, the Bocuse d’Or, that is coveted by cooks simply because his name is on it, and he is so cherished throughout his homeland that he has been known to drag massive cuts of well-marbled American beef through French customs while inspectors shrug and look the other way.