by Ruth Reichl
It is, however, possible to improve your odds of getting a great meal at Sparks. I hereby offer these guidelines.• Dine on Saturday night. At Sparks, unlike other restaurants, Saturdays seem slow. You are more likely to be seated immediately, and you are unlikely to be seated next to a group of 13 drunken stockbrokers celebrating their bonuses, as I was one Wednesday night. “How much did they spend?” I asked our waiter when the table terrorizing us finally departed, “Oh, not much,” he said, flipping open his order pad. “They only had four double magnums and a bottle of port. Just a couple grand.”
• Don’t bring a crowd. Maybe it is just coincidence, but the best meal I had at Sparks was the night I took only one guest. Everything came out piping hot, and both the steak and the lobster were superb.
• Watch what others eat. You don’t see anyone around you eating hot seafood appetizers, and there is a reason for that. The baked clams are very bready and not very baked. You don’t see anyone eating melon either. The appetizers of choice are shrimp cocktail (served butterflied and flat on the plate), lump crabmeat, and a sliced tomato and onion salad. The cognoscenti, you will note, ask to have their tomato salads chopped and topped with Roquefort dressing, which makes a very American and curiously delicious treat. You will also find that many around you are eating asparagus vinaigrette. It is not on the menu, but it is very good.
• Stick to plain steak and chops. The menu is filled with froufrou food like medallions of beef in bordelaise sauce, steak fromage (topped with Roquefort cheese) and beef scalop pine (sliced filet with peppers and mushrooms). The kitchen seems to have utter contempt for someone wanting anything so effete, and neither the meat nor the sauce is on the same level as the straightforward dishes. Incidentally, the most reliable dish I have found is lamb chops, which are always delicious.
• It you want seafood, have lobster. Lobster at Sparks is usually reliable, although once it was so tough I wish I had sent it back. Fish are treated as if they were silly intruders, and those who order chunks of lobster meat and broiled shrimp in lemon butter sauce are going to get what they deserve. This is, after all, a steakhouse.
• Don’t be embarrassed to send it back. The steaks are prime and aged in a combination of wet and dry aging. The quality varies, and you can only pray you will get one of the great ones. But you don’t have to pray about the cooking; if it is not as you like it, ask the waiter to take it back to the kitchen. If you ordered rare meat, you shouldn’t have to eat it well done.
• Don’t expect much from the hash browns. Unfortunately, I have never had a great plate of hash browns at Sparks. They should be crisp on the outside, soft within and very hot. I wonder if the kitchen even knows how to make them? Buttered spinach, on the other hand, is bright green and delicious.
• Drink your dessert (unless you’re having cheesecake). Skip the tartufo, the berries and the ice cream, and note that there are terrific ports, Sauternes and late-harvest wines that would make a very sweet ending to the meal.
• Confirm your reservation. Sparks can be very casual when you call.
I once made a reservation for Sunday night only to show up and discover that the restaurant was closed. Sparks, it turns out, is never open on Sunday.
SPARKS STEAK HOUSE
Chloe
I liked the black satin suit the minute I saw it at Michael’s Resale. The jacket was simple, tight, cut low, with a little flare at the bottom. The skirt was short, with three tiers. It fit me perfectly—more than perfectly. It made me look elegant, thin, put together. Glancing in the mirror, I caught a flash of leg. Then my eyes moved upward and I witnessed an instant metamorphosis. What I saw was a woman who stood up very straight, so she appeared taller. Her hands had long red fingernails and her smooth, pale face was framed by silky, champagne-colored hair. As I watched, the person who belonged inside that suit invented herself. She even told me her name. When I took off the jacket, it said “Chloe.”
I went straight from Michael’s to the wig shop on Fifty-seventh Street. I’d never been inside, but I’d often walked past the elegant showroom, with its long spills of human hair, and I felt that Chloe deserved the best of everything.
Inside it was all sunshine and glass, with the smell of oranges and fresh wax wafting through the air. The wigs were artfully displayed on mannequins all around the room. Some wore jewelry and a few had lovely hats to set them off, but one was unadorned, long honey-color tresses that rippled in the light like liquid butterscotch. I reached to touch the soft strands, but before I could make contact a salesman sauntered purposefully toward me. He looked me over coldly, hooked his fingers into his belt loops, and said curtly, “That’s not for you.”
I stopped, my hand in midair, looking longingly at the wig. The man kept his eyes fixed on me as he removed his fingers from his belt and crossed his arms over his chest so that his entire body was a giant no. “Trust me,” he said, “you’d look ridiculous.” His lips curved downward into a sour smile as his cold gray eyes considered me. “Why is it that you girls with frizzy hair all dream of being blondes?” For a moment I was back in high school, a loser, watching the sleek blonde cheerleaders from the sidelines. I longed to try the butterscotch wig on, but I couldn’t seem to get the appropriate words out of my mouth.
The man knew exactly what I was thinking. “Believe me,” he said, and now his voice had changed and there was a glimmer of what might be sympathy in his eyes, “the silky one’s not for you.” His voice was gentler, and I thought perhaps we understood each other; the high school blondes had not been kind to him, either. “When your hair starts falling out,” he continued, “you’ll be much happier with a more natural look.”
I stared at him, nonplussed. As I began to apprehend his meaning, I wondered if I should take advantage of the mistake. But before I could say anything, he added, “I know, I know, you’re thinking that it sometimes grows back straight. I’m not saying it doesn’t occasionally happen, but you won’t know for a while, will you?”
He moved to his left and picked up a short black wig, its stick-straight hair cut into a Louise Brooks bob. “You could try something like this,” he said, looking dubiously down at the wig as he twirled it on the end of his finger, “but I don’t recommend it.”
I had yet to open my mouth, and now the freight of his assumptions had piled up until my skin was crawling with embarrassment. I went back to the butterscotch wig, caressed the glossy hair, and finally found some words. “I don’t have cancer,” I said. “I’m not about to undergo chemotherapy.”
The man’s face went slack and I watched all the compassion drain out, like water from a sink whose plug has just been pulled. “You’re not?” he said sullenly. “I just assumed.” He reached to touch my hair, fingered it, and announced, “Well, if you want to wear a wig, you’ll have to lose this one way or another. You can’t put a wig on top of a bush.”
“I’m not cutting my hair,” I said.
“Then you’re not getting a wig,” he replied. “At least,” he added, placing Louise Brooks firmly back on the bald mannequin, “you’re not getting one here.” And then he turned around and walked away. No longer a sympathy case, I had been dismissed.
I went outside and considered my next move. I could go down to the little cubbyhole on West Fourteenth Street where the transvestites shopped for hair. The Chinese couple who ran the crowded shop didn’t care what you tried on, so long as you bought a wig cap before you began. The shop was filled with hair in every imaginable hue and shape, but it was all so cheap that I was afraid the wigs would self-destruct as I ate, leaving the strands swimming in my soup.
And then I remembered what the paper’s gorgeous new fashion reporter had told me. Amy Spindler had stopped at my desk one day to say that I would look great in Romeo Gigli dresses. When I said I couldn’t afford designer fashions, she offered to take me shopping at a discount department store down by the World Trade Center. As we talked she absently stroked Molly’s wig, which was lying on my desk. “You c
an probably do better than this,” she said. “Have you tried the wig shops in the thirties?”
This was my chance.
The garment district was laced with hair emporiums, and I walked up one block and down another, peering into their windows. The uptown experience had made me skittish, but all the windows here were caked with grime and filled with dusty wigs perched on Styrofoam heads, and one looked so much like another that it was impossible to choose between them. When I got to Thirty-seventh Street I took a breath and just walked into the nearest shop.
The door groaned as I pushed it open, and one of those old-fashioned bells rang out. The place looked weary, the unvarnished wooden floors exuding an odor of dust and age. A counter ran along the right wall, and behind it sat a large and amiable-looking woman, her girth spread across two stools. She smiled widely at me, displaying a gap between her front teeth. “In the market for a wig, dearie?” she asked, grinning like an enormous toad. She gave me a pitying look, touched her tongue noisily to her teeth, and said, “Oh, look at your head. What a shame to lose all those curls!”
I debated for a moment, reluctant to lose her goodwill. But it is unwise to tempt fate. “I don’t have cancer,” I said, and waited for the smile to fade.
Instead, it grew. “I’m glad to hear that,” said the woman. “Forgive me—these days when I see a new customer, I assume she’s come from the oncologist. So many recommend us. I’m happy to know that you’re here for another reason. Do you care to tell me what it is?”
Her smile was so warm, so encouraging, that I blurted out, “I want to be a blonde.”
“Don’t we all, dearie, don’t we all. What color did you have in mind?”
“Champagne?” I asked hesitantly. “Unless you have a better idea?”
She lumbered down from her stool and reached for a drawer behind her. “Let’s just start out and see where the hair takes us,” she replied. She pulled the drawer open. “I’m Shirley. I hope you’re not in a hurry? It might take a while to find the right wig. But believe me, we will.”
Shirley filled her arms, spilling hair in a dozen different shades of blond until it looked as if she were holding a bizarre pet. “You just have to keep trying,” she said. “You’ll know right off when you find the one. Try this.” She held out a hank of yellow hair that looked as if it had been worn by Marilyn Monroe on the set of Some Like It Hot. “Synthetic,” she said, giving it a vigorous shake. “Inexpensive. Let’s just have a look.” With her other hand she held out a wig cap.
I had learned to divide my hair into sections and pin each one flat to my scalp before squeezing my head into the tight, flesh-colored stocking. Shirley watched as I did this, and I waited for her to comment on the volume of my hair. But she looked on impassively, silently spreading the wig with her hands, readying it. When the cap was finally in place, I bent forward and she eased Marilyn onto my head. I shook it as I looked up and faced the mirror.
The wig just sat there, making my features go pasty and flat. I was clearly not meant to be a blonde.
“Take it off, take it off,” cried Shirley, waving her arms. “Believe me, we’ll find one. But for sure that’s not it.” She laughed, and as the mirth spread across her broad nose and wide mouth, her plain face was transformed until she was almost pretty. “Don’t be discouraged,” she soothed, pawing through the pile on the desk. She held up a longer yellow model with big fat curls. “Let’s try Farah.”
That was even worse. Dolly made me look like a forlorn poodle, and Mia, a pale pixie cut, gave me the air of a jail warden in drag.
“No, no, and no,” said Shirley. She was enjoying herself. Her conviction that I would find something was encouraging, but as I tried on gold wigs and white ones, yellow ones and brass one, wigs with a faint strawberry tint and some that were almost pink, I began to despair. Shirley Temple, Alice in Wonderland, Faye Dunaway . . . they all looked terrible on me.
“Do you have a special occasion you want this for?” Shirley asked after a while. “It might help me if I knew.”
“I’m a restaurant critic,” I began.
“That’s a new one on me,” she said as my story came to a close. “And are you working on someplace special at the moment?”
“Lespinasse,” I said. “The chef is amazing. I keep going back and every time he just blows me away. I’ve been thinking about giving him four stars, but it’s not something I could do casually. Not only would it be my first four-star review, but it would also be the first time a hotel restaurant ever got four stars from the New York Times. I can’t make a mistake with this. And here’s the thing: I think they made me, even when I was there in disguise. Everything’s been just a little too perfect. So I’m trying to create a new disguise, one that is foolproof.”
“Gotcha,” said Shirley, moving to a deep, wide drawer, “I have an idea.” As she opened the drawer, her bulk blocked my view, so I couldn’t see what she was holding until she turned around with a cascade of hair the color of Dom Perignon spilling from her hands. As the wig caught the light, the color changed from pearl to buttercup. “Try this,” said Shirley.
The wig felt different in my hands—lighter, cooler—and when I put it on, the hair fell across my face as gently as silk. I squeezed my eyes tight, not wanting to look until it was seated right, holding my breath, wanting this to be the one. I could feel it settle into place, feel the soft strands graze my shoulders just below my ears.
“Wait!” said Shirley as I started to open my eyes, and she leaned forward and began tugging at the wig, adjusting it. She slid the hair on my left side behind my ear and pulled the hair on the right forward so that it fell across one eye. Her hand cradled the hair under my cheek, then let it fall. “Okay,” she said at last, “you can open your eyes now.”
The champagne blonde in the mirror did not seem to be wearing a wig. The hair looked real, as if it were growing out of the scalp. Even the dark eyebrows looked right, as if this woman had so much confidence, she didn’t care who knew that she dyed her hair. My mouth dropped open. “Oh!” I said stupidly. “Oh, my.”
In the mirror Shirley caught my eye. “I told you there was a right wig for everyone!” she said, but her face did not match her matter-of-fact tone. “You look absolutely fabulous!” she said, looking absolutely amazed.
I don’t think I would have recognized myself if we had met walking down the street, and I had yet to put on any makeup. Somehow this cut, this color, made my cheeks pink, my eyes almost violet, my lips seem red der than they had ever been.
“You were meant to be a blonde!” cried Shirley. And then, as I watched, her face fell.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She hesitated for a moment, and I was afraid she was going to tell me that the wig was already sold. “It’s real hair,” she whispered sadly, and I was so relieved I burst out laughing.
“Is that all?” I asked.
Then she told me the price. It was shocking, but even if Lespinasse had not been in my future, I could never have left without the wig. I felt new, glamorous, bursting with curiosity. What would life be like for the woman in the mirror?
“I wish I could let you have it for less,” said Shirley apologetically. “But it’s very good hair, and I’ve just quoted you the price that I paid.”
“I have a feeling it’s going to be worth every penny,” I said.
Shirley packed the wig into an old-fashioned hatbox and handed it to me. “You’ll come back and tell me what happens, won’t you?” she asked wistfully.
“You mean whether I fool the restaurant?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “that too. But what I mostly want to know is, when you’re a blonde, do you have more fun?”
Carrying the box very carefully, I went to Ricky’s, one of the cheap cosmetic shops that stands on every Manhattan corner holding out promises of instant beauty. I bought beige foundation, pink lipstick, brown eyeliner, and eyeshadow in various shades of pale. Then, eager to create Chloe, I went home.
“I haf time,” said the large woman behind the desk at the nail shop on Seventy-eighth Street, “I take you now.” Her nametag identified her as Rosa. Behind her sat a row of women with their hands buried in bowls of suds and their feet propped on the plump laps of polish-wielding women. Rosa filled a little bowl with soapy water and pushed my left hand into it. “Soak,” she said as she clucked over my right. “Such mess!” she scolded. “What is beautiful girl like you doing with dirt on hands? What do feet look like?”
“Worse,” I said.
“Pedicure,” she insisted. “Is must.”
While Rosa clipped and pushed and glued, she extracted Chloe’s life story. I was curious as well; Molly had been made up in a moment. I supposed Chloe could be too.
“My husband is a doctor,” I began, hesitantly. I faltered. “Or, rather, my husband was a doctor. He’s still a doctor; he’s just not my husband anymore.”
“Another voman,” said Rosa. It was not a question, and her voice vibrated with sympathy.
“Yes,” I said. Why not?
“Younger voman,” Rosa declared, her head moving back and forth as she contemplated the perfidy of men. “And doctor!” She sucked in her breath three times, sounding like an angry vacuum cleaner.
Yes, of course it was a younger woman. “She’s his nurse,” I said. “Well, she was his nurse. He won’t let her work anymore.” I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing the white blouse buttoned tight across big breasts, the slim skirt clinging to a small waist, the long legs. The nurse had pale stockings, and when I looked down, expecting sensible crepe-soled shoes, I saw that she was wearing pumps with very high heels. “She’s a real blonde,” I announced. “Dan likes blond hair. He made me dye mine when we met. Everywhere.” I gestured down.