by Ruth Reichl
By now every vehicle in Manhattan was on the road, desperate to escape. Fighter jets screeched overhead. Sirens blared. Blinding sun glared off the roofs of the unmoving river of cars. The cats yowled. On an ordinary day, the trip to the Henry Hudson Bridge at Manhattan’s northern tip takes ten minutes; today it took four agonizing hours. But the bridge, when I reached it, was open.
On the other side the air grew clearer, the day stranger. The weather was radiant, and as I drove farther north through green countryside, watching cows placidly munch grass beneath a clear blue sky, it was hard to believe what lay behind me. An hour later, as I pulled into our driveway, I found Michael tossing a ball with a group of children.
“The school just let you take them?”
“They were happy for any option, glad to be able to tell parents their kids were safely out of the city. Nobody knows what’s coming next. We watched TV for a while when we got here, but the news was making the kids so nervous that I brought them all outside.”
For the rest of their lives, I thought, these kids will remember exactly where they were when the towers came down.
I made spaghetti, and we all listened for the ring of the phone as we ate. One by one the parents checked in, and by bedtime we knew that we were among the lucky ones: Nobody here had lost a relative.
We woke to another eerily radiant day. Parents arrived to claim their kids; our friend John, Julia’s dad, had rented a car in Chicago and driven through the night. He hugged his daughter to him and then tumbled gratefully into bed.
The news was terrible; we all knew people who had been in the Twin Towers, and we sat glued to the television, desperately hoping they had survived. But the immediate danger seemed to have passed; firefighters were pouring into the city, the bridges slowly being reopened. I wandered disconsolately around the house, spooked by this freakishly ordinary country day. Impulsively, I grabbed my car keys.
“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I’m going back.”
Nobody seemed to hear me.
“Back to the city.” I spoke louder. “They’re letting people in again. We’ve got eight kitchens at Gourmet. And somebody’s got to feed the firefighters.”
Michael didn’t miss a beat. “We’ll come too,” he said.
Memo to All Gourmet Staff
The magazine is closed until further notice. But our kitchens are standing idle….This is not a command performance, but I’m going to 4 Times Square to cook for the workers at Ground Zero, and you’re welcome to join me. Buy some groceries and meet me in the morning. It may not be much, but it’s what we can do.
Then I put in a call to Drew Nieporent, the largest personality in the restaurant world, figuring he’d have a plan. When Drew opened Montrachet in 1985, it was the first high-end restaurant in the area that would soon become Tribeca, and he now owned a handful of iconic restaurants that had once stood in the shadow of the Twin Towers: Nobu, Tribeca Grill, Zeppole. Yes, he said, of course he was planning on feeding the rescue workers. We agreed that my crew—whoever they turned out to be—would cook all day and then meet him downtown so we could distribute our food together.
My expectations were low; people were busy comforting their families, and I thought a mere handful of the staff would show up. But when I walked into the kitchens at 9:00 A.M., the place was packed. Word had gone out—Drew, of course—and people were desperate to help. A restaurant PR person showed up with her parents, an ad salesman from GQ came with his kids, and one of the sales reps brought his entire family. In this mad mix of food lovers, half were strangers.
I channeled my inner Larry: You should send everyone who’s not staff away. There are insurance issues. What if someone cuts off his finger? What if someone sues?
Then I silenced the voice: The regular rules did not apply. I cranked up the music, and as the kitchens filled with the scent of chili and chocolate, we began to dance, defiant in the face of disaster.
We all knew why we were there, knew it was as much for ourselves as for the firefighters, knew we were attempting to snatch hope from the rubble of our broken city. And food was the perfect way to do it.
Around five we packed great trays of chili, cornbread, lasagna, and brownies into coolers, loaded them into my van, and headed downtown. We passed a checkpoint at 23rd Street and another at 14th. Down here it was all dust and rubble, growing thicker with each passing block. By the time we reached Canal Street, the streets were no longer passable, and we abandoned the van, shouldered the chests of food, and headed to meet Drew at Montrachet.
We weren’t the only ones feeding the rescue workers; chefs from all over the city set up makeshift kitchens around the disaster. But we were the only ones who took our food right into the heart of Ground Zero, and although we’d seen it on television, nothing had prepared us for this horror. It was a bombed-out war zone, a zombie space that no longer resembled any New York I’d ever known.
Near what had once been Reade Street, a fireman handed out face masks, and we tied them on and marched in, tripping over hoses with our cases of food. Above us the surviving skyscrapers tilted at uncomfortable angles, staring vacantly down through blackened holes that had once been windows.
Lured by the scent of chili and cornbread, exhausted firefighters came stumbling out of the dust. Covered in white powder, they were like ghosts staggering through the smoke.
“Is that chili?” A man collapsed onto a broken beam and pulled off his respirator; his mouth gleamed beneath the ashen grime of his face as he fell upon the food.
It wasn’t much; it was a bowl of chili. But when the man looked up and said, “Thank you for this taste of home,” I looked around at the dust and smoke and chaos and began to cry.
I remembered that moment a week later, when I sat down to write the monthly Letter from the Editor.
“We were almost finished with this Thanksgiving issue,” I began, “when the world fell apart.” Then I stopped; it had been only seven days since the Twin Towers came down, and none of us knew what lay ahead. I was writing into a vacuum. “Because monthly magazines are written long before they actually appear on your doorstep, I have no idea what life will be like when you read these words.” It was the first time that I understood, really understood, that the world would never be the same.
I thought about my own Thanksgiving, wondering what it would be like this year. I heard the firefighter’s voice once again and realized that in the rubble of the World Trade Center I’d suddenly understood the true meaning of food. I knew, without any doubt, that as long as I lived, chili would be one of the ways in which I offer thanks.
Thanksgiving, of course, isn’t Thanksgiving without turkey. So my Thanksgiving chili is a turkey version based on a beloved Gourmet recipe. I made it in 2001, and since then our Thanksgiving table has never been without it. It reminds us, sadly, of the friends we lost on 9/11—and of the many reasons we have to be thankful.
THANKSGIVING TURKEY CHILI
•••
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
3 canned whole chipotle chilies in adobo
1 bottle dark beer
2 pounds tomatillos (husked, rinsed, and quartered)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 large onions (chopped)
½ cup fresh cilantro (chopped)
2 teaspoons fresh oregano (finely minced)
2 jalapeños (diced; if you don’t like heat, remove the seeds)
3½ pounds ground turkey
1½ cups chicken broth
8 large cloves of garlic (peeled but left whole)
Salt
1 bay leaf
2 cups cooked white beans
1 4-ounce can diced green chile peppers
Cream sherry
Balsamic vin
egar
Sour cream
Toast the cumin seeds in a dry skillet until they’re fragrant. Allow to cool, then grind to powder.
Puree the chipotle chilies with the adobo.
Put the beer into a medium-sized pot, add the tomatillos, bring to a boil, and turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook for about five minutes, until the tomatillos are soft. Strain the tomatillos (reserving liquid), and puree in a blender or food processor. Pour back into the pot with the beer.
Slick the bottom of a large casserole with a couple of tablespoons of oil, and sauté the onions until they’re translucent. Add the cilantro, oregano, jalapeños, and cumin and stir for a couple of minutes. Break the turkey into the mixture and stir until it just starts to lose its raw color. Add the pureed tomatillos and beer, the chipotle puree, the chicken broth, and the garlic, along with a couple of teaspoons of salt and the bay leaf, and simmer the mixture for about an hour and a half.
With a large spoon, smash the now-soft cloves of garlic and stir them into the chili. Add the white beans and diced chile peppers and taste for salt. At this point I like to start playing with the flavors, adding a few splashes of cream sherry, a bit of balsamic vinegar, or perhaps some soy or fish sauce. Heat for another 10 minutes.
Serve with sour cream.
Serves 8
ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 11, Michael Lomonaco, the chef of Windows on the World, broke his glasses during breakfast service. He took the long ride down from the 107th floor to have them repaired, stepping out of the elevator just as the first plane hit. He stood on the ground as the building crumbled and the seventy-nine cooks, waiters, and dishwashers he had just left vanished. As he painfully made his way uptown, he couldn’t stop thinking about the families his colleagues had left behind, and he determined to do something to help them. The whole food world pitched in, and within a month they’d raised twenty-three million dollars.
After the World Trade Center attacks, New Yorkers who survived asked a single question: How can we help? Everyone went into action, parties were canceled, and food people mobilized to feed the rescue workers who poured in from across the country.
We were proud of ourselves, but as the weather grew colder this constant mourning began to feel like defeat. We had to get back to normal life, if only to prove that the enemy had not won. At Gourmet we’d canceled our September gala celebrating the magazine’s sixtieth anniversary, but by December a party seemed not only welcome but necessary, a display of defiance.
The whole city was ready to dance, and people showed up at the Whitney Museum dressed to the nines in an almost desperate party mood. I stood in the middle of the swirling crowd, watching the guests eat and drink with the abandon of survivors. Maurie’s people had cajoled celebrities into coming, and they made sure I was photographed with each famous face; as the hours wore on, my own grew tight from smiling.
Around midnight, when the party ended, I stood outside, saying wistfully to Laurie, “I wish we didn’t have to go home. That was all business and now I’m ready for some fun.” Chef Daniel Boulud was standing nearby, and he whipped out his phone. Punching in numbers, he began pacing up and down on the sidewalk in front of the museum, issuing orders in rapid French. He stopped and put his hand over the receiver to ask, “Vous êtes combien de personnes?”
I looked around, embarrassed; the staff numbered sixty-five. And there were spouses. Friends. Chefs.
“Uh…” I hesitated. It was such a huge number.
Daniel looked impatient. “Je vous invite,” he said.
“A hundred people?” I whispered it reluctantly.
“Disons cent cinquante,” he said into the phone. I imagined what they must be thinking over at Restaurant Daniel. A party for one hundred fifty? At the end of service? On the spur of the moment? A party that would include every major chef and food writer in the city? This could not be welcome news.
But Daniel continued issuing orders into the phone. I heard, “Pâté. Saumon. Fromage. Patisserie.”
The Whitney Museum was less than a mile from Restaurant Daniel, but by the time we arrived, the tables in the private salon sported crisp white tablecloths and a vast buffet stretched across the back of the room. Waiters circulated with champagne.
The word had gone out, and with each hour more chefs showed up. Sometime in the early morning—was it three or four?—I looked around at all those people who’d pitched in when the city was in trouble. As a fledgling food writer for a small San Francisco magazine, I’d spent a lot of time with the young chefs who were creating an entirely new American profession, and now I realized how much I’d missed their company. Educated, articulate, and passionate about their craft, they were unlike the generation that had come before them, and during my tenure as a critic I’d missed their lively minds, their creativity, and their enormous generosity.
“This has given me an idea!” Karen Danick, Gourmet’s director of media relations, stood before me, flute of champagne in her hand. Karen could not have been more than thirty-five, but she was old-school, a traditional PR person out of central casting. A large woman, she arrived each morning in a dense cloud of perfume, sporting a perennial tan, very high heels, tight black Lycra dresses, and copious amounts of makeup. Her voice was never pitched at less than maximum volume, and she ended every sentence with an exclamation point.
“What if we threw a party like this every few months? After hours! Just for chefs! It would be a way of giving back to them!”
Karen’s chef parties became a Gourmet hallmark. They didn’t start till midnight and they went on until the last reveler—usually the sweet, younger, not-yet-famous Tony Bourdain—staggered into the dawn. Everyone came. People sang and talked and ate. People danced on the tables. People drank.
I loved every one of those parties, but the one I remember best is the one we threw just after Si made one of his rare visits to my office.
He’d sidled in the door, face slightly flushed with what I later understood was embarrassment, and lowered himself into the seat on the far side of my desk. Leaning over, he whispered, “You’re going to have a new publisher.”
I was too stunned to say anything—I’d had no warning—and Si shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We’re giving Gina a start-up.” He looked out the window, down at the desk, anywhere but in my direction. “Teen Vogue. She wants to build something from the ground up, something of her own. She’s earned that right.”
“Who’s coming to Gourmet?”
Again, he did not meet my eyes. “We’re bringing in Giulio Capua. He’s been the associate publisher of GQ for a long time, and he’s due for a promotion. But we had to give GQ to Ron Galotti, so we looked around for something else for Giulio.”
It was hardly an enthusiastic endorsement, but Florio, ever the consummate pitchman, followed up. Minutes after Si left my office, Steve was on the phone, selling me on my new publisher. “You’ll love Giulio!” he gushed. “He’s a real talent, and I know you two are going to do fantastic things together!
“Art Cooper,” he confided sotto voce, a secret for my ears alone, “is devastated to be losing Giulio.” He painted a picture of the legendary GQ editor in chief, begging not to be deprived of his beloved AP. “But this,” Florio finished triumphantly, “is Giulio’s chance, his shot at the big time, and he’s going to knock himself out to show us what he can do. And you’re going to get the benefit of all that energy!” He’d saved a final parting shot. “You’re a seasoned editor now, so you can mold him in whatever way you want. Wait and see; you’re going to be thrilled by this change.”
I had no idea what to expect; none of the Condé Nast publishers I’d met were cut from the same cloth. Some, like the legendary Ron Galotti (widely believed to be the model for Sex and the City’s Mr. Big), were as brash and flashy as Florio himself. The New Yorker’s David Carey was quietly brilliant, Vanity Fair’s Pete Hunsinger the e
pitome of a gentleman, and Men’s Vogue’s William Li the personification of hip elegance. When I met Giulio later that morning, he turned out to be different from all of them. Lithe and athletic, with strongly defined features and deep-black eyes, he was as striking as a figure on an ancient Roman coin. He introduced himself and immediately started talking about food.
“You cook?” I was incredulous. Gina was so uncomfortable in the kitchen that the one time she’d attempted to make dinner, she set the oven on fire. “I’d never used it before,” she said indignantly. “How was I supposed to know they’d leave the instruction book inside?”
“I’m Italian.” Giulio shrugged, as if that said it all, and continued discussing recipes. It was a savvy charm offensive, but it worked; delighted by the notion of a publisher who cooked, I said impulsively, “We’re having a party tonight. Why don’t you come to Chef’s Night Out?”
“I’d like that,” he said. “I’ve spent my business life among fashion people, and I’m curious about this new world I’m about to step into.”
This party was at Eleven Madison Park, and chef Kerry Heffernan had outdone himself. The food was interesting and inventive and the liquor flowed. Around three in the morning, Giulio came looking for me. By then we were all disheveled, but his suit was as neat as if he’d just removed it from the closet, and if he’d been drinking he could certainly hold his liquor.
His face, however, glowed. “My mind is blown!” He pointed across the room, where Mario Batali was standing with Daniel Boulud and Eric Ripert.
I didn’t understand.