Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (4 page)

Wjhatever gaps there may be in my famillial history, I was blessed to have had the opportunity to help my grandmother prepare one of her apple pies. And I cherish these precious memories, and my ability to resurrect and reconnect with them years later.

The primary difference between an American kid peeling apples for his grandmother’s celebrated Apple Pie and a French kid doing the same for a Tarte Tatin, was that our American elders did not always recognize and thus identify clearly for us the extraordinary value of those deep gastronomic experiences.  The culture that surrounds French youngsters is infused with gastronomy, and filled with a natural appreciation of fine food – which means that they do not need to be reminded that they were ingesting food made “from scratch,” often produced right on the grounds of the small family farm.  It was simply part and parcel of that rural life.  That I was blessed with a Grandmother whose table was above and beyond the typical middle-class fare of the day turned out to be a gift of enormous proportion. 

As a youngster, I also knew the meaning of home-grown vegetables, having helped my parents plant a garden – which for them was a normal practice, having grown up during the Great Depression of the 1930s. 
In a small, 20-by-20-foot patch of suburban soil, adjacent to an ancient Mulberry tree and a small patch of rhubarb, we grew basil, corn, cucumber, pepper, pumpkin, tomato, watermelon, and zucchini. 
During the Spring, Summer and Fall, my mother often sent me out to break off a few ears of corn for dinner, pull a fat tomato and cucumber for our salad, or some zucchini and peppers for a vegetable dish. 
In addition, composting food scraps from our kitchen table was a normal course of affairs.

Even in the odd, TV-land culture I grew up in, we had our share of important dining experiences.  There was a raw-shellfish-bar on Long Beach Road – Peter’s Clam Bar – near the border-line between Oceanside and Island Park, where I learned to slurp down littleneck clams and oysters on the half shell.  Opened in 1939, it was severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but was re-built, and re-opened in June 2014. And to this day I remain amazed that I had a palette that could handle such “grown-up” food.  Raw clams and oysters?  With cocktail sauce and prepared horseradish? 
At the age of twelve?

There was a creek adjacent to Peter’s, and just across the bridge over that creek was The Texas Ranger, a cowboy-themed burger joint that served one of the best broiled burgers of the 1950s.  Their secret?  First, the burgers were cooked over an open-flame grill, something that Burger King would market forty-years later as “flame-broiled”; and secondly, they put a half ounce of cole slaw on the burger, which I have since deemed to be indispensible to a great burger.  The Texas Ranger is long gone, but its legend lives on in our memories.

Nathan’s in Oceanside was another important icon, because it was one of Nathan Handwerker’s (1892-1974) many locations.  Handwerker emigrated from Poland to New York City in 1912, and after saving his earnings for four years, was able to open a nickel hot dog stand on Coney Island – at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues.  He made his first fortune from that stand, and Nathan’s – though only a regional brand today – is still alive and well in the New York Metropolitan area.  Nathan’s hotdogs are still made in the same Coney-Island-style, and they are still one of the best hotdogs around.  (Nathan’s “Coney Island” hot dogs are available in the processed meat section of most supermarkets.)

I worked at Nathan’s in Oceanside in 1962, bussing tables and sweeping floors.  My work-compatriots and I were given four bottle caps for our lunch break, and could trade each one for any single food item – a burger, a hotdog, a slice of pizza and a large coca-cola – the luncheon of champions. 

There was a Swedish Smörgåsbord restaurant in the town of Baldwin, and I remember the extraordinary bounty represented on the food-laden table inside.  As a young, budding youngster, my oral digestive juices flowed rather severely at the sight of all the fabulous food there.  On my second trip there, with mom, I brought with me a small sheet of wax-paper which I opened upon my knee, with the intention to surreptitiously appropriate some of the poached shrimp and sliced roast beef that called out to me.  When mom realized what I was up to, she confiscated the wax paper, quietly read me the riot act, and that was the end of that scheme.

Raay-Nor’s Cabin in Massapequa, though long-gone today, was famous for their fried chicken when I was a youngster.  As for their secret, my best guess was that it involved a marinade – probably buttermilk, sliced onions and salt for 48 hours – the traditional marinade for American-style Fried Chicken; then a coating consisting of two-parts flour with one-part crushed corn flakes, seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika.  At least that’s what my gastronomic memory tells me. 

And finally, there was the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens.  I took Candy Ruh there, a sweet, smart, sassy little firecracker who was worth every moment and every dollar I spent on her.  As I recall, our Saturday excursion to Queens cost me all of $40, which took us from Oceanside to Flushing via the Long Island Railroad, paid our entry fees, got us a couple of souvenirs, and at least one serious snack at the Belgian Pavilion – a 6-inch-square waffle, slogged with strawberries and whipped cream.  Oh my god!  Of all my adolescent gastronomic experiences, the Belgian Waffles at the 1964 New York World’s Fair remain the most memorable of the entire experience.

Later, after my parents divorced, and I spent one weekend per month in the city with my father, he took me out to restaurant dinners, which also imprinted upon me numerous gastronomic experiences.  One restaurant was
Lotus Eaters
, a very chic Japanese establishment on Lexington Avenue  in midtown Manhattan, featuring a dark, adult ambiance, and serious waiters dressed in tuxedos. 
We had a desert there one night, prepared at tableside, consisting of chunks of split banana sautéed in butter, dipped into sugar syrup, then into ice water, which solidified the sugar. 
The bananas were presented on some kind of green leaf on small dessert plates – each piece encased in a sugar shell, which when cracked open, gave access to a warm, buttery piece of banana. 
Oh my god, what a dessert that was.

I also remember the
Kalico Kitchen
, nothing fancy, but where as a youngster I feasted on Veal Parmagiana – accompanied by an abundant mound of spaghetti.  And of course all the table cloths were checkered red-and-white -calico.

Wienerwald
– German for "Vienna Woods" – was a chain of fast-food restaurants founded in 1955 by Friedrich Jahn in Munich, that became Europe's largest chain of fast-food restaurants.  They offered Rotisserie Chicken, a wide selection of German wursts and sausages, and beer.  You could buy a beer stein as well, with their trademark “W” fashioned out of four wieners.  By 1978 they had more than 1600 operations in Europe and the United States, but the subsequent debt and cash-flow problems forced them to close down many stores.  As of 2005 there were only 63 restaurants left in Germany and Austria.

Another popular eatery was
Tad’s
, a kind of short-order steak grill, where the menu consisted of a grilled
Sirloin Steak
,
Baked Potato
,
Garlic Bread
,
Salad
with Dressing, and all the A-1-brand steak sauce you could douse the steak with.  There was also an optional spoonful of Garbanzo beans for the salad – very exotic in the 1960s! – all for $1.09.  That price went up over the years, usually by 50-cents per year – but it was always an excellent bargain.  The ambiance created by the large circular grills in the front of the store, the red velvet wallpaper and fake Tiffany lamps at the eight operations in New York City and the twenty other sites outside of the city, was almost worth the trip alone.  (Donald Townsend, who founded the Tad's Steakhouse chain in 1957, died March 25, 2000 in a Reno, Nevada hospital at the age of 91.)

It would take another twenty-five years for me to gather up the legacy of those experiences and announce to the world that “Yes, I am an American guy, and yes my grandmother prepared heart-and-tummy-warming dishes with love and care …and yes, ah hailped.” 

Alas, the response of gullible Americans to the poses and pretentions of the Gerard’s of the world crystallized for me the French Chef Enigma.  And I would have no shortage of ammunition to fill my canons of outrage.  In 1978, I took over the kitchen of L’Orangerie, one of San Francisco’s most prestigious downtown dining establishments, serving a supposedly classical French cuisine to a supposedly discriminating “high-society” clientele. 
The previous chef, Jean Achitogaray, a Basquaise, had run the kitchen for four years, before walking out one night in a huff, never to return. 
Taking inventory of the storeroom, I was stunned to discover case after case of canned food and powdered mixes. 
These included a powdered soup base which, when boiled up with light cream, produced Potage Parisienne, also known as L’Orangerie
Potato and Leek Soup
; small cans of
Quenelles de Brochet
, containing beige-hued cylinders of ground pressed faux-Pike floating in gelatin, intended to be served with yet another abomination,
Sauce Cardinale
, made by boiling a spoonful of commercial lobster base with heavy cream; and a powdered demi-glaze – basic brown sauce – which when moistened with cheap Madeira wine, became the
Madeira Sauce
served with
Faisan Rôti
(Roast Pheasant). 
Just what the heck kind of a kitchen had this turkey been running?

When I learned from Hans Brandt, the ancient and venerable maître d’hôtel, that the former chef had been an auto mechanic in a Paris garage, I went from perplexed to stunned.  For four years this auto mechanic had played culinary hero in a venerable institution offering a San Franciscan brand of la grande cuisine française – and a good portion of it coming from cans and jars.  I could only imagine Auguste Escoffier turning over in his grave.

In defense of the
méchanique d’automobile Basquaise
, I suppose that if I found the populace of my country of immigration enthralled with my charming accent and convinced that all visitors from my country of origin were celebrated chefs, I probably would not have put up much of an argument either.  But at the same time, I decided I was not going to limp in the shadow of foreigners with charming accents, nor was I going to take lying down my own countrymen’s predilection for groveling before haute cuisine made from powdered mixes.  Hey, this was the kid who’d had the temerity to attempt to prepare
Egg Drop Soup
at the age of seven.  Dollars-to-doughnuts says I was the first seven-year-old who had the boldness to try to make a Cantonese soup that denoted action in its title; and Francs-to-Frangipane says Guerard and Vergé, Blanc and Ducasse were still sucking their thumbs when I experienced my first culinary disaster. 

The terrible truth of L’Orangerie’s storeroom aroused my curiosity as to the source of this misplaced American homage.  A bit of research suggested that its origins could be traced to a pair of our most venerated national heroes – Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.  Jefferson had made numerous trips to France during his tenure as United States minister to that nation (1785-1789), and though he remained officially aloof from the revolutionary movement there, he had sympathized with it and participated as an adviser.  The ever-curious Francophile Jefferson had also acquired numerous food items, sometimes sneaked out of France and into America inside diplomatic pouches.  In 1786, after a side trip to Milan, he returned with a small sack of Arborio rice, which he later attempted to grow on his Monticello plantation.  He is also credited with serving French fries and ice cream at his dining table in Monticello, inspiring countless billions of servings since. 

The equally curious and Francophile Ben Franklin also spent time as a diplomat in Paris, taking particular interest in Antoine Parmentier’s life-long effort to popularize potatoes. An economist, pharmacist and agronomist, Parmentier (1737-1817) had been taken prisoner in 1761 by the Hanoverian (Prussian) army during the Seven Years’ War. During his year in prison he subsisted solely on potatoes, a food that had been introduced from the new World in the early 16 th-century, but like corn, was considered fit only for livestock. Having discovered its nutritional value while imprisoned, Parmentier embarked upon a personal campaign to share the news. At a Versailles birthday reception for Louis XVI, on August 25, 1785, he presented a bouquet of purple potato flowers to the king.  The king slipped one flower into a button hole, held out another to Parmentier, and gave several to Marie-Antoinette to pin onto her corsage.  The next morning everyone at court sported a potato flower in their buttonholes. 

Parmentier later hosted a dinner at his home, offering a menu composed solely of twenty different potato dishes.  Franklin was a guest at that dinner, and may well have been the man who suggested to Parmentier that he try growing potatoes himself.  Parmentier planted his first crop in the open country around his home town of Sablons, hiring four retired soldiers from the imperial guard to watch over the field during the day.  In the evening, the field was left unguarded, which piqued the curiosity of the local residents.  They then slipped in after nightfall and stole potatoes for their own consumption – which was exactly what Parmentier had wanted them to do.

Meanwhile, back at home, the combined prestige of Jefferson and Franklin served to provoke early American culture with a craze for Francophile imports.  And from this early mystique, fueled by French cultural arrogance, we arrived two centuries later at a place where anyone speaking with a French accent and claiming to create French food would be embraced – no matter what their level of, or total lack of competence.

Of course there’s more involved than a dim-witted mystique.  We have a long and rich history of interaction with the French people and their culture, much of it mutually supportive and reciprocal.  This interplay can be seen in our language, which borrows many words from the French – a body of terminology I call
Franglais.
Consider: bain marie, baguette, béarnaise, bistro, bouillabaisse, café, châteaubriande, chef, commis, cuisine, eau de vie, éclair, farce, filet mignon, ganache, garde
manger, Madeleine, madrilène,
pâté, poivre, quenelle, quiche, ragoût, ramekin, restaurant, saucier, sauté, soufflé, sous chef, tagine, tart, tartelette, terrine, toque, and so on.  Many of these terms have been adopted into our American vernacular, and they add a…
je ne sais quoi
… to our cultural heritage.