Appetite for America

by Stephen Fried

  Over four thousand pieces originally collected by Herman Schweizer and others—the very best of the Indian Museum textiles, pottery, and silver—were donated by the family trust to the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix, which features Native American art in an educational setting. While the Heard, a small gem of a museum, has the entire collection, at any given time you can see only those pieces culled from the private storerooms for the themed shows and placed in the ten handsome exhibition spaces. (Kitty’s art, including what she inherited from Ford and Freddy, is not part of the family collection: She donated most of it, along with some personal photos, to the small Museum of Northern Arizona, and a few other pieces to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.) The Heard also has a Harvey-esque little restaurant, the Arcadia Farms café, which has outdoor tables in a restful courtyard.

  It’s a four-hour drive from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, and we’re tempted to stop over in Sedona at our favorite hotel, Enchantment—the same kind of luxe oasis that the Harvey hotels were in their heyday. But we continue on. It’s highway driving up to Flagstaff, and then we get on Route 180, the main thoroughfare through the Coconino Forest to the canyon—and a road that may very well have inspired more utterances of “Are we there yet?” than any other in American tourism.

  While plenty of people do the canyon as a day trip, they are missing what Fred Harvey employees have always known is the best part—which is being at the canyon after all the day-trippers leave. This means staying over at least one night in one of the Fred Harvey hotels on the South Rim, which can generally be accomplished only with a good bit of advance planning—especially if you want a room at El Tovar (which, trust me, you do). At any time, El Tovar is taking reservations up to thirteen months in advance—so there are people who know to call precisely at 11:00 a.m. mountain time on the first day of the month, exactly thirteen months from when they want to go, because that’s when all the rooms for that month are released (including the three corner suites with canyon-view balconies, and all the other most desirable rooms). Many people plan entire southwestern or cross-country trips around room availability at El Tovar because space is so limited, the rooms are so surprisingly reasonable (the rates are controlled by the National Park Service, not the marketplace), and the experience is so worth the wait. You can also make dinner reservations at El Tovar up to six months in advance, and should. While the food can occasionally be a little too inventive for its own good, what they do well at El Tovar (steaks, fish, southwestern dishes) they do really well, and the room is redolent with history. In keeping with the Fred Harvey tradition, the best meal there is breakfast, for which they don’t take reservations: It’s first come, first served starting at 6:30 a.m., after the early birds like me have been out watching the sun rise over the canyon.

  Fred Harvey’s operation at the Grand Canyon is now run by a company with a name like an eco-friendly planet on Star Trek—Xanterra, which manages food and lodging for many western national parks. The company was created in the 1990s when Amfac, which bought out Fred Harvey, merged its South Rim holdings with a firm that controlled concessions at Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Mount Rushmore, and others. For years, Xanterra didn’t do much with its Fred Harvey heritage, much to the chagrin of Grand Canyon employees who still remembered the Harvey glory days. But Xanterra has recently started exploring its roots. The corporate Web site now boasts about the company’s “Fred Harvey Legacy.” And the signage around the South Rim now pays more homage to the founders of the feast—primarily to Fred Harvey himself (who didn’t live to see the hotel, but I have to believe visited the canyon in the 1890s) and to Mary Colter.

  At the canyon, we explore all the extraordinary Colter buildings. From El Tovar, it’s a short walk to Hopi House, Lookout Studio, and Bright Angel Lodge, where they have a fine little Fred Harvey museum in the lounge with Mary Colter’s famous geological fireplace. It’s an excellent collection of Harvey memorabilia, including obscure silver, plates, and stemware, menus, Harvey Girls outfits, and gold service pins. (See it while you can; I’ve heard from company officials that the room will become a coffee shop.)

  Hermit’s Rest and the Watchtower are both miles away, in opposite directions. We take the free bus the park service runs to Hermit’s Rest, where Colter’s marvelous live-in fireplace still elicits gasps (as do the squirrels around the building, which are so tame and accustomed to entertaining tourists that I was surprised they didn’t offer to take our picture). But we drive to Desert View to see the Watchtower, allowing us to stop at all the vistas along the way that, over the years, were named and made accessible by Fred Harvey and the park service. The main attraction is still the view from the Watchtower. We are lucky enough to arrive just as the weather is getting “bad”—Colter’s faux lookout point being one of the few tourist attractions on earth where you hope for thunderstorms, which swirl dramatically down the canyon, leaving in their wake miraculous rainbows.

  My wife is not what you’d call a “camper,” so I’m surprised one night when she announces that we should “sleep out”—until I realize that by “out” she means out on our spacious and very private canyon-view balcony. At bedtime, she pulls a couple of blankets and pillows off the cushy bed, wraps herself in the thirsty hotel robe, opens a bottle of room-service wine, and goes out on the balcony to nest on one of the chaise longues. We lie out there looking up at what appears to be every star in the universe—you can see the whole northern celestial hemisphere in panorama, like a planetarium, with no impediments or light pollution.

  Taking a sip of wine, Diane turns to me and says, “Now, this is my idea of camping!”

  After four days of such “camping,” we reluctantly leave the South Rim and drive back to Flagstaff to catch the Chief. When it arrives, many hours late, it’s nearly midnight, and the beds in our cabin have already been turned down. The train goes through the hottest part of California at night, so we miss the handful of cities where the old Fred Harvey/Santa Fe buildings are still in use. The one all the trainiacs are watching with great interest is El Garces in Needles, which Allan Affeldt, who did over La Posada, is helping restore. In Barstow, Casa del Desierto is now a museum and transportation station, and in San Bernardino, the restored Santa Fe depot also houses a police substation.*

  As the sun comes up, we are deep in Southern California, approaching Los Angeles Union Station, the last of the great American train depots. The interior of the station still looks like a 1940s movie set, but the only vestige of Fred Harvey’s large operation here is the empty side building Mary Colter designed. All her handmade wood restaurant furniture is gone, but Colter’s curved ceilings, her light fixtures, and that amazing faux-Navajo-rug tile floor are in immaculate condition, as are the circular red leather booths and the curved copper bar in the upstairs cocktail lounge. The space is no longer open to the public, but justifies its existence by being rented out for bar mitzvahs, weddings, and film shoots. (It was used as the police station set in Blade Runner.)

  Because the train arrives many hours late in Los Angeles, we are forced to dash through Union Station because we have a plane to catch. We get a cab to LAX and begin the cycle of rushed indignities that are modern air travel: the lines to get boarding passes, then the lines to get into the queue for security check, all so we can finally board the plane, take a crammed seat less comfortable than the one in the train “shoilet,” breathe pre-used air, and eat stale mini-pretzels from tiny, shiny bags.

  As we ascend, I attempt to recline my seat but am stopped by two large knees digging into my back. And I think to myself: It really is sad that Freddy wrecked his fancy new plane before he and his company had a chance to teach the fledgling airline industry how to set a Harvey standard for passenger care.

  How is it that we can travel faster than ever before, but when it comes to comfort, we are back to a time before Pullman, before Fred Harvey, when people were treated only slightly better than freight?

  I turn to my wife, who is only 5 ’1” but
is still smushed into her allotted seating space—a carry-on bag jammed where her feet would like to be. She looks up at me, with the plaintive eyes of a traveler who has just spent two weeks traversing half the country at a leisurely, life-affirming pace, only to be made weary by a flight that has barely reached cruising altitude.

  “I miss Fred,” she says.

  Me too.

  * There are several restored Santa Fe depots on the route from St. Louis south into Texas. Besides the gorgeous Art Nouveau St. Louis Union Station itself—now a hotel and shopping mall—there’s Waynoka, Oklahoma, and, in Texas, Gainesville, Brownwood, Temple, Slaton, and Galveston. See Appendix III for a complete list of the Harvey locations.

  APPENDIX II

  MEALS BY FRED HARVEY

  FRED HARVEY CHEFS WORKED FROM LARGE HANDMADE “COOKBOOKS” that assembled typed-out sheaves of recipes sent from the main office in Kansas City as well as their own swapped handwritten recipes, kept for years and handed down from cook to cook in each Harvey location. The recipes were generally in paragraph form, and included not only basic cooking instructions but also advice on presentation and occasional social commentary. Below are some of my favorite Fred Harvey recipes, many of them previously unpublished and copied directly, with all colloquialisms intact, from three actual “cookbooks”: one recovered from the family of dining car chef Roy Palmer Jr., who cooked on the Chicago to Kansas City train in the 1920s; another recovered from Otis Thomas, the manager of the Harvey House at the Galveston, which closed in the late 1930s; and a third, a cache of a year’s worth of menus and corresponding cooking instructions for the meals served at one Harvey restaurant in 1930, discovered mislabeled in the bowels of an archive. I’ve also included some of the best of the recipes that appeared in the Santa Fe employee magazine from 1910 to 1913, a few from pamphlets the company published, and a couple that Harvey chefs shared with local newspapers. All of them maintain the standard (even the Bull Frogs Provencal). And they start, as most Harvey meals did, with perfect coffee.

  HOW TO MAKE COFFEE

  It is a violation of our instructions to use less than eight ounces of ground coffee per gallon. Coffee should be ground medium fine, but not so fine as to contain a flour dust. Your water must be boiling hot, and the water urn should show evidence of the boiling by the steam popping off through the top. When you can see the steam coming out under pressure from the top of the water urn, that is a sign that the water is right for making coffee. If you make four gallons of coffee, pour four gallons of water over rapidly, keeping the urn covered between each pouring so as to retain all the heat. Let this four gallons of water percolate over and through the coffee thoroughly and when the entire four gallons of water have run through, then start to pour over again. If everything is right, at the end of the second pouring the coffee should be finished and be up to the standard. If you do not allow all the first pouring to run through before you start the second, you are very apt to spoil the coffee because when drawing off the second pouring, the stream comes out thin and gets cooled between the faucet and the vessel, with the result that the quality of coffee is immediately adversely affected.

  BREAKFAST DISHES

  …

  HARVEY GIRL SPECIAL LITTLE THIN ORANGE PANCAKES

  Combine one-quarter cup diced orange sections and juice (half an orange), one teaspoon grated orange peel (also from half an orange), one cup pancake mix, and about one cup orange juice. Bake small pancakes on hot griddle, using one tablespoon butter for each pancake. Serve with maple syrup, honey or jelly.

  FLANNEL CAKES

  Combine one pound flour, one quart water and one small yeast cake. Set to raise and work in three beaten eggs, one ounce melted butter, a pinch of salt and two ounces of maple syrup. Let raise again and cook very thin, flannel-like pancakes on hot griddle iron.

  RICE GRIDDLE CAKES

  Mix two and one-half cupfuls of flour, two tablespoons of sugar, four teaspoonfuls of baking powder and one-half teaspoonful of salt. Work in one-half cupful of cold cooked rice with the tips of the fingers, then add one and one-half cupfuls of milk, one egg well beaten and two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Drop mixture by spoonfuls on a hot griddle; by the time the last one is on the first one should be cooked on one side and ready to turn (when it should be puffed, full of bubbles and cooked on edges). Turn and cook the other side. By the time the last one is turned, if the work is done quickly, the first one is ready to remove and serve. Care must be taken if the finished products are to be regular in shape, of the same size and evenly browned. It must be remembered that the center of the griddle is usually the hottest part. A soapstone griddle needs only to be heated. The ordinary griddle or frying pan which is frequently used must be first heated and then rubbed over with the freshly cut part of half a raw turnip.

  FRENCH PANCAKES FILLED WITH APRICOT MARMALADE OR COTTAGE CHEESE

  Mix well two eggs, one-half cup cream, one tablespoon flour, one teaspoon of sugar, vanilla extract to taste and a pinch of salt, place small amount of dough in a hot buttered skillet and brown on both sides. Fill with marmalade or cottage cheese, roll and sprinkle lightly with sugar. Cottage cheese filling: Four ounces of dry cottage cheese pressed through a sieve and mixed with the yolk of one egg, one tablespoon sugar, a pinch of salt, a little grated lemon and vanilla. Work to a smooth paste and spread over pancakes.

  FRENCH TOAST À LA SANTA FE

  Place one-half cup cooking oil in skillet, heat to hot. Meanwhile, cut two slices white bread three-quarters of an inch thick diagonally to form four triangles, and set aside. In a small bowl, combine two eggs, one-half cup light cream, and salt. Beat well. Soak bread thoroughly in egg/cream mixture. Fry soaked bread in one-half cup hot cooking oil to a golden brown on both sides, about two minutes per side. Lift from skillet to clean paper towel and allow to absorb excess cooking oil. Transfer to baking sheet and place in oven. Bake four to six minutes, until bread slices have puffed up. Serve sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon and apple sauce, currant jelly, maple syrup, honey or preserves.

  OLD VIRGINIA SOUR MILK BISCUITS

  Stir into two cupfuls of loppered milk or buttermilk, a day old, one rounded teaspoonful of soda (no more). Whip into this with a few swift strokes one tablespoonful of melted (not hot) butter. Have ready in your mixing bowl one quart of flour twice sifted. Measure after sifting. Make a hole in the middle of this and pour in gradually but quickly the frothing milk, stirring the flour down into it with a wooden spoon. The dough should be very soft. Mix, roll, cut out very rapidly with as little handling as possible, and bake in a quick oven.

  HUEVOS RANCHEROS, LA FONDA

  Wash one cup pinto beans, cover with one-quarter cup cold water, and let soak overnight. In the morning, heat to boiling, reduce heat and let simmer, covered, until beans are tender—three or four hours. Cool. Add one tablespoon red chili powder, which may be obtained from Mexican grocery store, to the cold water and let soak one hour. Sauté four tablespoons minced onion and one-half to one tablespoon very finely minced green chili pepper in one teaspoon butter very slowly until tender but not browned. Add beans which have been broken up coarsely with a fork and heat through. Add one-quarter to one-half cup hot water if beans are too dry. Transfer heated beans to a well-buttered stirred egg or individual casserole. Make two depressions on top of beans using back of tablespoon, and drop an egg in each depression. Pour two tablespoons soaked red chili powder over the top and dot top of eggs with butter. Bake in a moderate oven (three-hundred-fifty degrees), twenty to twenty-five minutes or until eggs are set sufficiently. (This is one of many Americanized versions of classic Mexican recipes popularized by La Fonda chef Konrad Allgaier.)

  SOUPS

  …

  CREAM OF WISCONSIN CHEESE SOUP

  Place twelve saltine crackers in oven to warm. In a saucepan heat two cups of beef broth over medium heat. Add three cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese, stirring constantly as it melts. Add remaining quart of beef broth and simmer until smooth. M
eanwhile, in a small skillet over medium heat, make a roux with three tablespoons butter and three tablespoons all-purpose flour. When smooth, add to first mixture. Continue stirring as you slowly add one cup light cream, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, and one-quarter teaspoon white pepper. Stir constantly at simmer for fifteen minutes. Serve with toasted crackers. (This was a favorite of Harry Truman’s, originally at St. Louis Union Station and later at Kansas City Union Station.)

  ALBONDIGAS SOUP

  Cut up four onions and three or four seeded green peppers; put them on the fire in a copper pot with two ounces of lard or butter. (Mexicans do not use butter for cooking.) When onions are done or melted, add two gallons of white bouillon and let boil. Have one pound of mixed beef and veal passed through a meat chopper. Add two eggs, one soupspoonful of marjoram, parsley, one half-cupful of cornmeal and a little salt; mix well. Make some small meat balls about half an inch in diameter; drop them into the broth; let simmer for half an hour. (Mexican cooks will press the meat through their left hands over the simmering soup, using the forefingers of their right hand to give the albondigas the correct shape.) Skim off the fat, season if necessary, and serve. (This classic Mexican dish was recreated by a Harvey chef in Las Vegas, New Mexico—with cultural cooking observations.)

  VIENNAISE CHICKEN SOUP WITH HOME MADE NOODLES

  Boil one hen, four to five pounds, in one gallon of water with three branches celery, one bay leaf and two tablespoons of salt. When hen is done, strain broth, take four ounces of home made noodles (below) and cook in boiling broth. Before serving, add some finely chopped chives. Noodles: Mix two cups of flour, the yolks of two eggs, one ounce of cold water and a pinch of salt and work through for ten minutes. Cover with a dry cloth, and let rest for twenty minutes. Roll dough very thin, again rest until dry on both sides, cut into two-inch strips, place on top of each other and cut very fine, dry again and cook in boiling broth for five minutes.