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02/08/2007 Archived Entry: "Before My Hibernation"

I am emerging from winter hibernation. It dawned on me a couple of days ago – as I slaved over deadline writing projects and spent too-much time polishing silver and copper as a way to procrastinate from slaving over deadline projects – that I have been hibernating for a week to 10 days every winter for as long as I can remember.

Somehow, it comes mid to late January and, for one reason or another, I decide to not leave the house for a week. More or less not leave the house, and more or less a week. Or not leave someone else’s house. Many years ago, before I bought my own place in Cornwall, Connecticut, and hibernated there, I used to stay in Bert Greene’s house in Amagansett in late January. Bert, I hope you remember, was a marvelous food writer, playwright, and, most importantly, a wonderful person and a wonderful friend. Among his many accomplishments, he opened the first fancy take-out store in the Hamptons, maybe the first in the world. All the Hamptons celebrities went there. Lauren Bacall was a special customer to Bert, and she apparently loved him back. When I went to hibernate at Bert’s house, no one went to the Hamptons in the winter, so you can imagine how long ago that was. It was gorgeous with no one around. All I did during hibernation in those days was eat ice cream and pasta, read novels, and go to the totally empty East Hampton movie theater and eat candy bars.

In any case, I am over my winter absence from reality. Besides writing for ten hours a day, and polishing metal, I didn’t eat. That is an activity. Yes, not eating is an activity for me. It takes all my energy to not eat. I was on a near Slim Fast fast just to disengage myself totally from food. No cooking. No eating. My indulgences were occasional bowls of high-fiber breakfast cereal with 1% milk and a banana. Okay, two days in the week I ate sushi for lunch. But I also got to the gym everyday. I just needed to deflate.

I always eat more than I should, but, as if to prepare for hibernation, I really overdid it the week before. Actually, I meant to write to you immediately about The Waverly Inn. It’s the hottest ticket in town, and I got a reservation because of one of you. One of you is the mother of the manager, or “a” manager, and you wanted Arthur to experience the joint.

Before I got to report on it, however, while I was incommunicado, Frank Bruni did a very funny review of it in the New York Times. He wrote it as a funny letter to Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and one of the owners of the restaurant, as if he was someone from one of Graydon’s circle. Bruni gave the restaurant only one star. In the scope of what I would have to call “society” restaurants, I would give it a full four. It meets every expectation that Graydon’s crowd might want from such a place. It reminded me a lot of Mortimer’s, which, in the 1970s through the 1980s, was the place where the fashionistas, style journalists, and Park Avenue/Fifth Avenue crowds mingled over Senegalese soup (that’s curried chicken), Bill Blass’ meatloaf recipe, and profiteroles.

The primary requirement of this crowd is exclusivity. To that end, at Waverly Inn no one ever answers the phone. You must have the secret email address to get a reservation. And when you write to it, this is the response:

“Thank you for writing. As we continue to work on the restaurant we are only accepting reservations from friends, family and neighbors. Would you be kind enough to reply with a brief description of your relation to The Waverly? If we cannot accommodate you at this very moment, we will be certain to keep your email address on file and notify you when we open our doors early next year.”

Early next year is now, by the way, not 2008.

I don’t know what’s up with the reservations since the New York Times review, but I can tell you that this is a New York ploy that is as old as the hills: Deny the people admission and they will want to come even more. I was just reading about this in a 1919 New York guidebook.

To reinforce how lucky you should feel about being admitted, the word “preview” is stamped in red ink in large letters on the menu and the wine list. As first, I thought this was to escape the official criticism of official critics. But then the critics were not being suckered. A food writer for Time Out got a table by showing up and booking himself in as a neighbor.

Now, I think maybe the word “preview” is being used to fend off any judgments about the food or service; a disarming “we’re still working the kinks out” admission. But aside from the annoyingly blasé, haughty guys in suits who check the reservation book and guide you to your table – one could not possibly call them hosts -- I couldn’t find much fault. When we finally did get our table 20 minutes late, our waiter could not have been more charming, down to earth, and, most importantly, attentive and efficient.

I have to say that although I am far from part of this New York art, writing, publishing, modeling, creative social-climbing crowd, I did get a great kick out of observing it, and of being where all the action is. And the food was very good. It was simple, and that’s not a complaint. As Bruni said in the Times, the New England clam chowder is addictive. The salad of frisse with lardons of bacon and a poached egg was letter perfect. The cubes of beet with crumbled goat cheese was an extremely fine example of this salad that is so part of our culture now that it has even filtered down to coffee shops. The Dover sole was fresh and firm and perfectly cooked. The thick broiled pork chop was unusually moist. It is hard to ruin a boiled artichoke, but this one, with its stem still admirably attached, was cooked just so, and came with a good mayonnaise-based dipping sauce, and one of drawn butter. How you ruin drawn butter I don’t know, but it was one of the only two clinkers in the four dinners of three courses. The other was the pot pie, for which the old Waverly Inn was intermittently famous over its long history. This version is has a topper of soggy and tough puff pastry over a hum-drum mix of vegetables and chicken.

Dinner was $75 a person, including tip and probably too much drink. The cocktails and glasses of wine are expensive, about $14 a pop. The food prices are much fairer.

So, enough on the hottest table in town. Bottom line is I’d go back in a millisecond just for fun, not for the food, but I would enjoy the food.

On the other hand, I can’t think of a single reason to return to The Russian Tea Room, which just re-opened. There’s some kind of real estate deal here that I don’t understand, but what I did get was that whomever is paying the mortgage has decided that they might as well give the restaurant another shot. Warner Leroy, before he died in 2001, had just refurbished the place and it is still shiny new, dazzlingly red and gold, and beautifully silly, as only Warner Leroy could do it. Beyond that, however, I can’t figure out why it has a reason to be.

The food was okay. Needless to say, it was extremely expensive. But it’s not the food you want at the Russian Tea Room, and it is not good enough, accomplished enough. Okay, the borscht is very good. But nothing here is distinctive. Nothing goes with the given theme: The Russian Tea Room. What might be familiar and wonderful to eat again, the beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev, have been turned into unrecognizable dishes. Not bad, but not especially good, and … unrecognizable. And there is no buzz in the place at all, not even the negative of never-met expectations. On a Thursday night, the place was empty, and the service proved an oft observed point that the worst service is in empty restaurants. As we say in Brooklyn, fuhgetaboutit.

Also before I went on my no-food, no-communicating hibernation, a friend of mine read that I put Katz’s pastrami on my list of “100 Things to Eat Before You Die.”

“You say that only because you haven’t tasted the pastrami at Rub,” he said.

“Rub!?” (I am incredulous.) “You want me to take a barbeque joint’s pastrami seriously? Seriously over Katz’s!”

It ends up, shocker of all shockers, that my Manhattan-born Jewish friend, was given an Episcopalian education by his shiksa-wannabe mother. He knows volumes about food in general, but nothing -- not a thing -- about New York Jewish Food. And he is plenty old enough to have eaten in the classic Jewish restaurants and delicatessens of our youth. He didn’t admit it, but I am sure he never ate Katz’s pastrami before three weeks ago, or world-class pastrami anywhere. He says he used to frequent the Second Avenue Delicatessen. But the dirty secret about the Second Avenue Deli is that its pastrami hadn’t been good in 20 years. Sharon Lebewohl, Abe-the-founder’s daughter, used to go to Katz’s herself when she wanted great pastrami.

I know my friend knew bubkiss (that’s Yiddish for “shit”) about pastrami as soon as we sat down at Katz’s. We decided to eat Katz’s and Rub’s pastrami back to back in the same afternoon, and when we got our sandwiches at Katz’s, my friend wanted to know why I put mustard on pastrami.

Listen, a real New York Jewish guy doesn’t question mustard on pastrami. I know, I know: Pastrami has its own spicing that mustard can sometimes obscure. But mustard is still the Jewish New Yorker’s condiment of choice on pastrami. Do I need to say rye is the bread of choice? Except for those few who prefer “club,” a bread that is nothing more than soft-crusted “hero” loaf.

All I have to say is that I love Rub in general, but I wouldn’t go there specifically for pastrami. I’d eat the smoked brisket, especially smoked brisket end pieces. I’d actually eat anything and everything here very happily, but I am not giving them highest honors on pastrami. For one thing, they make it with brisket, not plate beef, also called navel beef, which is the traditional pastrami cut. It’s fattier and hence juicier than brisket, which is the traditional cut for corned beef.

For now, I think you’ve read enough of me. I have more to tell, but, to paraphrase Scarlet O’Hara, tomorrow is another day.