by Ruth Reichl
“Oh, a teacher.”
“Not exactly,” said Mr. Shapiro. “I’m a businessman. I manufacture educational equipment. Desks, blackboards, that kind of stuff. Most people have no idea how much profit there can be in schools.”
I winced. We were heading for a cliff, and it was up to me to change the topic, quickly, before Michael gleefully elicited all the sordid details. “I guess,” I said, trying to turn the wheel of this conversational vehicle, “those blackboards must buy you a lot of wonderful meals.”
“Exactly!” said David Shapiro. “All those blackboards allow me to live the life of a food warrior.”
We were still in dangerous territory. “What was the best meal you had on the trip with Bobby?” I asked, desperately trying again.
That did it. Mr. Shapiro now offered detailed descriptions of dinners devoured in the far corners of France. One by one the stars came out, and he polished each one in his collection.
“Robuchon,” he said, “you’ve been there?”
“Amazing,” I replied. “My friend Patricia Wells, who wrote his cookbook, made our reservation, so of course we had exceptional food. It was the only time in my life that I have eaten food of such technical complexity that I could not figure out how it had been made.”
“Exactly!” he said.
Michael and Sherry were both silent.
“And Ducasse?” he asked.
“Oh, I love his food,” I said. “I spent a few days interviewing him when he was in Los Angeles. Such an interesting man! It was a long time ago, and he was very concerned that the Japanese were stealing everything from the French. He thought there should be a quota on Japanese cooks in French kitchens. But I imagine he’s changed his tune.”
“He’s a master,” said Mr. Shapiro. “But did you ever meet Alain Chapel?” I told him about translating for the great chef, years ago, when he was cooking at Mondavi, and how we had scoured the coun tryside for the cock’s combs he needed for his meal. Mr. Shapiro seemed impressed. He mentioned the Auberge de l’Ill and I told about the time I’d gone there with Paula Wolfert and Jim Villas. Next he described the great meal he had eaten at L’Espérance, and I described the way Marc Meneau had fed me and my friend David everything on the menu in one glorious and terrible five-hour meal. “Some people think Meneau is no longer as great as he once was,” said Mr. Shapiro.
“Some people,” I said, “are wrong.”
He agreed and we continued on our journey, working our way south. Before long he was regretting the downhill trajectory of Roger Verge, and I was bragging about the time I’d spent in his kitchen.
“Are you in pain?” Mr. Shapiro asked suddenly.
I turned to look at Michael, who was holding the side of his face. “Wouldn’t you be if you were dining with you?” he muttered under his breath.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Shapiro.
“Yes,” said Michael, “my teeth hurt. I had oral surgery this morning and I guess the painkillers are wearing off.”
This was a complete fabrication. “Traitor!” I whispered. Michael did not even flinch.
“If you don’t mind,” he said softly, “I think I had better go home now.”
“Warm water and salt,” said Mr. Shapiro. “That’s what you need.”
“Yes,” said Michael. “And, I think, a couple of sleeping pills.”
And with that he escaped into the night.
Mr. Shapiro had not exaggerated when he said that he made it his practice to close restaurants. We worked our way through the whole foie gras, which was still too rich, and the pancakes, which were still too heavy. Mr. Shapiro gamely ate the squab cooked in salt. His wife and I shared the duck with kumquats, and then we went on to dessert. By then Mr. Shapiro and the sommelier were on a first-name basis. We had an ’83 Rieussec, which was maderized, so we went on to an ’85 followed by a Sémillon from Chalk Hill gloriously infected with noble rot. It was past 1 A.M. when the last guests departed, and Mr. Shapiro refused to even consider leaving before they did. When we finally rose from the table, we had been sitting for six hours and I was so stiff I could barely walk.
“The night is still young,” said Mr. Shapiro.
“Not for me,” I said, wondering what else the Food Warrior could possibly want.
We rode the elevator down in stomach-tumbling silence, and when the doors opened I fled into the echoing lobby, heading for the coat check.
“Ruth!” cried a voice behind me. Turning, I found Daniel Johnnes, author, winemaker, and wine director of restaurants like Montrachet and Nobu, waving wildly at me.
“Daniel!” said Mr. Shapiro, moving in front of me and holding out his hand.
“Yes?” said Daniel with a distantly polite do-I-know-you look. He accepted Mr. Shapiro’s hand, but he did so gingerly.
“I met you at Montrachet,” brayed Mr. Shapiro. “Don’t you remember? I brought a seventies vertical of La Tâche?”
“Oh, sure,” said Daniel, in such a noncommittal tone that I could not tell if his memory of Mr. Shapiro was negative or nonexistent.
“What are you doing here at this time of night?” I asked.
“We’re having a party for Nobu up in one of the private rooms,” he said. “Why don’t you join us?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I don’t go to parties with chefs.”
“We do!” said Mr. Shapiro. He grabbed Daniel’s arm and walked him back into the elevator, pulling his wife along. As they stepped in, Mr. Shapiro waved and shouted, “Good night. Good night. Thanks for dinner. Good night.” I caught a brief glimpse of Daniel’s face. He looked like a man caught in a nightmare. And then the doors closed.
How could you abandon me like that?” I raged at Michael the next day. “How could you go off and leave me with those people? Were they really so unbearable?”
“It wasn’t them,” he said quietly.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Michael touched my arm. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” he said, “but they weren’t the ones I couldn’t stand. It was you.”
“Me?” I said. “Me?”
“You,” he said. “I couldn’t stay and watch what you were doing. I hate it when you pretend to be that person.”
“What person?” I asked.
“The Restaurant Critic of the New York Times. The Princess of New York. Ms.-I-know-I-am-right-about-food-and-don’t-argue-with-me. Take your pick.”
“Was I that bad?” I whispered. My cheeks burned and I could feel the sweat prickling against my skin.
“Worse,” he said. “You were the person you used to make fun of.”
I felt sick. But Michael wasn’t finished. “You really enjoy food, and you’re able to translate that pleasure for others. But if you turn into a . . . what did Mr. Shapiro call it?”
“A food warrior,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “If you let yourself become that. . . .” He paused for a minute and then started again. “Last night this line from T. S. Eliot kept running through my head. It’s from the Four Quartets. ‘Garlic and sapphires in the mud . . .’ I remembered that when you got into this it was almost a spiritual thing with you. You love to eat, you love to write, you love the generosity of cooks and what happens around the table when a great meal is served. Nothing that went on last night had anything to do with that.”
“But I did it for charity,” I protested.
“There must be better ways to give,” he replied. “Don’t give yourself away.”
RESTAURANTS
by Ruth Reichl
“IS THIS A SPECIAL occasion?” our waiter asks. “Can we sing to you? Happy birthday? Happy anniversary? Anything?”
The new Windows on the World is as eager to please as a puppy dog. Smiling stewards in colorful costumes welcome passengers as they disembark from their vertical voyage by murmuring, “Will you be joining us for dinner?” Hostesses greet guests joyfully, as if they were long lost friends, and waiters describe the fo
od with enormous enthusiasm. “Look, there’s Yankee Stadium!” says one, pointing proprietarily out the window, as if the city—107 stories down—existed just to please his patrons. So much energy goes into all this niceness that quibbling about the food feels churlish.
Most people in New York know the story: Windows on the World was in decline when a bomb struck the World Trade Center in 1993. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the building’s owner, decided to close the restaurant and find someone new to run it. More than 30 restaurateurs wanted the job, among them David Bouley (Bouley), Alan Stillman (Smith & Wollensky and others) and Warner LeRoy (Tavern on the Green). Ultimately the honors went back to Joseph Baum, who developed the original Windows on the World, and his partners, Michael Whiteman and David Emil.
Many of us were thrilled when Mr. Baum was chosen. When I was growing up, he was busily reinvent ing the restaurants of New York, turning eating out into an adventure. His mark was everywhere, from high-end establishments like the Four Seasons and the Rainbow Room to inexpensive fast-food chains like Zum Zum. For this project, the partners brought in some high-powered talent: Georges Mas raff, the culinary director, has worked just about everywhere, and Philippe Feret, the chef, did a wonderful job at Cafe Centro. Expectations were high.
But when the restaurant opened in July my first sensation was disappointment. The architect, Hugh Hardy, and the designer, Milton Glaser, did their best to inject personality into a sterile space, but they made the room look remarkably like an airline lounge. Still, once I was seated, the comfortable chairs and pleasantly muted twilight colors combined with the view to create the illusion of being in an airliner hovering magically over Manhattan.
And the menu had the old Baum pizazz. Windows played it safe, serving an international menu that was little more than retooled Continental cuisine, but it was done with flair. The foie gras was a “celebration dish”; the squab was cooked in a crust of salt, “a flamboyant cooking method popular among chefs in Barcelona,” and vegetables “support local farmers.” The first meals were shaky, but I was sure things would improve.
They have, but only a little. Consider the shellfish extravaganza that the menu calls “a world view of seafood.” It arrives dripping with ice and loaded with clams, oysters, mussels and crabs. Shrimp hang over every edge. The service for two is so spectacularly enormous that I can’t imagine what arrives when you order for four. And yet we sent half the platter back to the kitchen: from the flat oysters to the tired shrimp and overmarinated tough scallops, everything was dreary.
The foie gras for three is also enormous, a whole lobe of cholesterol sweetly glazed in Sauternes and served with leaden potato pancakes. Most of that went back, too. Ravioli stuffed with asparagus and fresh morels were heavy and drenched in a brown sauce so gluey I had to look at the menu again to know what I was eating.
Scallops skewered with sugarcane and served in a curry sauce were far too salty. And a grilled lobster sausage one night, surrounded by fava beans and tomato, was so watery it drooped.
A few appetizers are respectable. I liked the marinated mahi-mahi with its seaweed salad very much, and the lobster chowder is delicious. Asian seafood broth with crab dumplings is nice too, when the kitchen manages to serve it warm. And foie gras “french toast,” sautéed foie gras on crisply toasted brioche, is delicious.
Salt has been a major problem. One night the whole squab (of the flamboyant cooking method) was too salty. Other nights, the mashed potatoes, spinach or risotto were too salty to eat. Spicing, on the other hand, can be timid; the lovely whole veal shank wrapped in parchment and rubbed with cumin, garlic and other spices could use more punch. I like the generous serving of seafood in ginger broth, too, and the rack of lamb. Grilled shrimp, in an aquavit-laced cream sauce topped with caviar, is unexciting but unobjectionable.
Venison is mild and pleasant, and the duck (served for two) is crisp if somewhat fatty. But almost everything else I’ve tried—a lobster grilled to dust, sadly overcooked vegetables, flavorless roasted fish—has been a disappointment.
Desserts aren’t much better. They keep changing, but the restaurant can’t seem to get them right. On my final visit, the giant plate of raspberries was the definite favorite.
But there are consolations. The wine list is extraordinary and very reasonably priced, and the sommelier, Ralph Hersom, is affable and enthusiastic, the sort of person who could make a wine lover out of anyone. And just this week the talented Hervé Poussot, who worked at Le Bernardin, arrived to take over the pastry department.
Still, if you want wine and dessert, you would be better off saving your money for a blowout meal at Cellar in the Sky, which opened two weeks ago and looks extremely promising. (It is also part of Windows on the World.) And if it is the view you’re after, you can get it for a lot less money in the bar, along with sushi, shabu shabu, raw seafood and live music.
WINDOWS ON THE WORLD
The Missionary of the Delicious
The moment the waiter appears with the chef’s standard offering, a little plate of toast topped with dull whipped pâté, it becomes clear that the meal is not going to be brilliant. And from the cottony bread to the dreary dessert, the kitchen rarely exceeds these expectations.”
That was Capsouto Frères.
At Palio, I reported, the gnocchetti were gummy, the lobster drowned in an excruciating sauce. Il Postino’s kichen door, I said, “bangs against the wall with such force and regularity it feels like an earthquake.” I complained about the restaurant’s prices, savaged the food, and ended the review like this: “It’s hard to smile when you feel like a sucker.”
“You’re certainly in a foul mood,” said Carol. “I can’t remember the last time you wrote something that made me want to go out to eat. Is it you or the restaurants? Suddenly you seem to hate everything.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said.
But it was not true. During the winter of 1997, as I ate my way through one forgettable restaurant after another, the woman in the mirror Michael had held up was very much on my mind. For the past few years I had been staring at the images of Molly, Brenda, Betty, and Chloe, but it had been a long time since I had taken a good look at myself. Now I began to wonder if the disguises had turned into more than merely part of my job. Was I pretending to be other people because I no longer liked the person I had become?
“I read you religiously,” strangers often said when I told them my name, and I’d smile modestly and murmur something polite. But when people flatter you constantly it is very tempting to think that you deserve it. I had started my career at the Times by insisting that there was no right or wrong in matters of taste. Did I still believe that, or had I turned into a fatuous food snob, one of those people who thought my own opinion was the truth?
Self-doubt may be healthy, but it is hell on critics. The more I thought these things, the more difficult my work became. I went to the office every day and sat at my computer, staring at the keyboard, willing the words to come. Stubbornly they stayed away. You could read it in my reviews: those that weren’t mean were dull.
Going home didn’t help. Michael had started working on a piece about the Rocky Flats weapons plant, and every night he came home with new information about nuclear nightmares. What if a suicide terrorist managed to enter the facility, barricade himself inside, and build a bomb? “It could take out a few states,” Michael said grimly. Three worried whistle blowers had called him, so concerned about security that they wanted someone to do something about the situation. I eavesdropped as Michael huddled over the phone late into the night, listening to doomsday scenarios. And then I listened some more as he practiced the dark art of the investigative reporter, convincing these men to act against their own best interests. They wanted to be anonymous, and Michael had to persuade them to go on national television and tell their story; if they wouldn’t do it, he said, the situation would continue unchecked. Night after night I listened as Michael slowly drew them into h
is confidence, talking them into doing the right thing.
“Will they lose their jobs when this airs?” I asked.
“Most likely,” he replied.
On the phone he sounded completely confident, but he tossed and turned in bed, waking us both up with his nightmares. Awake or asleep, at home or in the office, nothing seemed to be going right. If Jean-Georges Vongerichten had not chosen to open his restaurant at that precise moment, I don’t know what I would have done.
Vongerichten was a media darling. At Lafayette he had become famous for replacing butter and cream with concentrated fruit and vegetable juices. His Vong was New York’s first experiment in upscale Asian fusion, and his bistro Jo Jo, despite being too small, too expensive, and incredibly uncomfortable, was constantly packed. For my taste his newest venture had already garnered far too much advance press. Long before it opened, all of New York knew that he had employed a private forager to root out unusual wild herbs, and every aspect of Adam Tihany’s design had been written about in agonizing detail. Jean-Georges also had the misfortune to be located in the appalling Trump building, a peacock unashamedly spreading its flamboyant tail across the foot of Central Park. To say I did not expect to like the place would be an understatement.
“My first visit’s today at lunch,” I told Carol in late spring. “Want to come?”
“Some other time,” she said, “My stomach’s sort of bothering me.”
“You?” I said. “You’re never sick.”
“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” she replied. “But I’m going to the doctor. I’d feel so foolish if I had something and I’d ignored it.” She peered at my face and added, “Stop looking like that. It’s probably nothing. But if we learned nothing else from AIDS, it’s that when your body talks it’s wise to listen.”
“Oh well,” I said, going off to the ladies’ room to make a half-hearted attempt at disguising myself, “I doubt that you’re missing much.”
In the bathroom I pulled a nondescript ash-colored wig and a pair of glasses out of my briefcase. I put on a plain gray dress. “You don’t actually think you’re going to fool anyone in that getup?” said Carol when I emerged. “Any idiot can tell that you’re wearing a wig.”