Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

by Andy Rooney

  You’d have to say that of all the things we have built for ourselves to make life on earth more tolerable, the chair has been one of the most successful.

  Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner

  You see so many things that all of us have done badly that life can be depressing unless you look for some of the things we’ve done well. And there are some.

  Take something as basic as eating, for example.

  It’s absolutely necessary that we eat to survive, but we could do that by stuffing food in our mouths with our hands, so we can congratulate ourselves for having turned eating into a civilized and often very pleasant little ceremony called either breakfast, lunch or dinner.

  All of us enjoy the ceremony and one of the special treats we give ourselves once in a while is eating out in a restaurant.

  There are 400,000 restaurants in the United States and if you ate three meals a day in restaurants for seventy years, you could only eat in 76,000 of them.

  Obviously I haven’t gone to all 400,000 restaurants in the United States to make this report. Chances are I didn’t go to the one you like best or least. I didn’t even go to the one I like best.

  My job may seem good to some of you . . . but I’ve got a tough boss. Several months ago he gave me an order. “Travel anywhere you want in the United States,” he told me. “Eat in a lot of good restaurants on the company . . . and report back to me.”

  I took money, credit cards and a lot of bad advice from friends and set out across the country.

  ***

  People argue about where the best restaurants are in the United States. Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans have always had good

  places. Florida has had some for a long time. New York has a hundred

  that would be the best in town anywhere else. But there have been

  some changes for the better in places that didn’t used to have any good

  restaurants.

  Mr. Rooney goes to dinner

  The South is getting over Southern cooking, for instance. Places like Cincinnati, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, even South Bend, Indiana, have excellent restaurants. You can get a gourmet meal in Houston, Texas, or Phoenix, Arizona.

  There are a few places that puzzle me, though. For instance, I don’t suppose there’s a place in the whole world that grows as much good food as Iowa does. They brag about it. And yet a gourmet tour of Iowa would be a nonstop trip.

  The biggest trend is a leveling out that has taken place. It’s harder to find that great little undiscovered place in a small town, but more often than before you can find a restaurant that serves at least acceptable food. The Rotary Club usually meets there.

  There’s more dependable mediocrity than there used to be. It isn’t going to be very good, but it isn’t going to be very bad either. And because most of it’s frozen, it’s going to be the same in Maine as it is in Oklahoma. What’s happened to all the good and bad little independent restaurants, of course, is all the big chains and the fast-food places. Many independents have been driven out of business.

  There are the big steak chains, for instance. They often serve beef treated with tenderizer and are called something like the Beef and Bourbon or the Steak and Stein. They and the fast-food places bring in billions of dollars a year. Most are owned by big corporations with other interests: Pillsbury owns Burger King, for example.

  Hamburgers are the big seller, a lot more American than Mom’s apple pie now because Mom isn’t baking pies much these days. The chicken places have come up fast in the last ten years and there are pizza parlors everywhere. You don’t have to go to Mexico to get a taco.

  The biggest and most successful fast-food operation is, obviously, McDonald’s. There are 3,232 of them—and counting. They’ve driven thousands of individually owned diners and cafés out of business. The drive-ins have been victims in a lot of areas.

  A typical meal in McDonald’s costs about $ 1.75. The hamburger is good ground meat, the French fries are excellent and the shake is an imitation milkshake made with thickeners to give the impression it’s made with ice cream—which it isn’t.

  McDonald’s restaurants are probably a reflection of our national character. They’re fast . . . they’re efficient . . . they make money and they’re clean. If they’re loud and crowded and if the food is wastefully wrapped, packaged, boxed and bagged . . . let’s face it, Americans, that’s us.

  There’s nothing really distinctive about American cooking. “American cooking” isn’t even a phrase like “French cooking.” That accounts for why our best restaurants serve someone else’s native dishes.

  Italian restaurants are most popular. Thirty-six percent of all Americans who eat out eat in Italian restaurants at one time or another. Thirty-five percent, according to the National Restaurant Association, eat in Chinese restaurants. French restaurants are most popular with people who make more than $25,000 a year.

  But we have everything. In the last ten years there’s been a population explosion of Japanese restaurants. They serve steak, shrimp or chicken along with bean sprouts and onions—and it’s all cooked right there in front of you. The man doing the cooking is part chef . . . part show biz . . . and part Kamikaze pilot.

  One of the good things about these places is they never serve you a piece of anything you can’t eat . . . no bones, no fat. I’ve never been to Japan. For all I know, they don’t eat like this over there. Someone told me there’s a Benihana of New York in Tokyo.

  Part of the fun of eating out is doing something different. Japanese is different. How many times in the last few weeks have you come home from work to find your husband fixing sukiyaki for you?

  The other kind of Japanese restaurant is the sushi bar. Five years ago you couldn’t have told me I’d ever eat a piece of raw fish. Now I’m addicted to sushi. Sushi is carefully boned and carefully sliced raw fish . . . tuna . . . squid . . . mackerel . . . eel . . . octopus . . . served with cold rice wrapped in seaweed. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s always attractively served on a board. It looks like a Japanese painting.

  Scandinavian smorgasbord places are popular, too: Americans like the idea of helping themselves to all they want. It’s as if they were getting something free.

  I ate in one called the Copenhagen one day—with a friend. He’s a smorgasbord expert.

  Walter Cronkite: This is a Danish something.

  Rooney: Lingonberries.

  Cronkite: That’s right. That’s what it is. That’s the word I was

  groping . . .

  Rooney: You were grasping for.

  Cronkite: And they’re marvelous.

  Rooney: What is this pink stuff?

  Cronkite: That pink stuff is some very interesting . . . pink stuff there.

  I think it’s beets. I believe. I don’t know. I’m not sure what that is. I’ve never taken it. It looks repulsive, to tell you the truth. How about shrimp? Beautiful shrimp?

  Rooney: Yeah, I’ll have a shrimp. I notice they leave the shells on them, though. I figure that’s to make it hard so you don’t take too many.

  Cronkite: Any restaurant you go to where the dessert tray is brought in like this, every table the reaction is the same. People recoil. They’re obviously making the statement to their friends. “I . . . I shouldn’t. Oh, no, I shouldn’t. Take that away. I don’t want to even look at that.”

  Rooney: “But maybe I’ll just have a little bit.”

  Cronkite: But then they come back.

  Waitress: And these are special ones over here. They’re made of almond paste.

  Rooney: I really shouldn’t.

  Cronkite: No, I shouldn’t either . . . so have one.

  Rooney: Oh, thank you.

  Like everything else, there are trends in the restaurant business— fashions in what a restaurant looks like. Years ago, many good restaurants had those white tile floors with lots of mirrors around and waiters who worked there for a hundred years wearing white aprons that came to their ankles.

  In the past twe
nty years restaurants have gotten very conscious. Too conscious, probably. In the sixties, most new restaurants with any pretensions at all looked like this. As you came in, there was usually a coat of arms in the lobby. The dominant color was red, the lights were low and there was often a candle on the table held in one of those small bowls covered with white netting.

  The menu was predictable . . . steak, shrimp, chicken, filet of sole and South African lobster tail . . . meaning they didn’t really have a chef.

  They were pleasant enough and there are still a lot of them around— but there’s a new trend. In the trade it’s called “the theme restaurant.” Eating in one, according to the ads, is an adventure.

  If you want to start a theme restaurant, you can go to J.B.I. Industries in Compton, California. They can make the inside of your place look like anything from a submarine to a men’s locker room.

  Carolyn Steinbach is production manager.

  Rooney: How many of these do you do a year? How many restaurants do you design, roughly? Would you guess?

  Steinbach: Well, we did something like three hundred and fifty last year.

  Rooney: Could you show some of them to us?

  Steinbach: Certainly.

  Rooney: A pirate ship.

  Steinbach: A pirate ship.

  Rooney: Hey, what would it cost somebody to come up with a pirate ship in a restaurant like that?

  Steinbach: Our pirate ship runs somewhere around six thousand dollars.

  Rooney: Gosh, I’ll be darned.

  Steinbach: This is our tin goose . . . seating on both wings, seating behind the engine and then down the center of the—

  Rooney: The kids get a kick out of this?

  Steinbach: Right. They really relate well to something like this.

  Out back, it looked like Santa Claus’s workshop. We talked to president Jay Buchbinder.

  Rooney: Well, now, wouldn’t something like that make kids stay longer in a restaurant so the restaurant would have a smaller turnover? I mean, is that a factor?

  Buchbinder : Well, it might even speed up the process of eating, because if you go in with little children, the children will want to play on the trains, so they might eat faster and then the parents will want to leave more quickly. We’ve even tried to get design involved in the restroom areas where people might say, “Well, gee, they have nice clean restrooms. We’ll stop there because the restrooms are nice and we’ll also buy our food.” So everything goes as a total package situation.

  Rooney: You don’t make any little engines for the restrooms or anything?

  Buchbinder: There can be little decors in the restroom areas, little train plaques or little car plaques. So when you go into a fast-food operation, it’s like going into a finer restaurant now. They’re giving you every courtesy that you might have in a better restaurant.

  Workmen were finishing a new plastic replica of an old airplane to ship to a McDonald’s opening in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. We were curious about how a hamburger would taste eaten in a plastic airplane, so a few weeks later, after it had been installed, we went to Glen Ellyn.

  Rooney (to cashier): Same price whether I eat it here or in the airplane?

  Cashier: Yes.

  Rooney: I guess I’ll eat it in the airplane.

  It seems as though everywhere you go they’re trying to take your mind off the food. It’s got so it’s almost as though they were embarrassed to look like a restaurant.

  The most successful theme chain is Victoria Station. Just five years ago three young Cornell Hotel School graduates started buying up old boxcars for a few thousand dollars each. Now they own 250 of them and they’re using them in 46 restaurants around the country. In five years, sales went from nothing to $47 million.

  The difference between this and the all-American diner is that Victoria Station serves mostly roast beef and steak. And, of course, for cooking steak and roast beef you don’t need a French chef; you need a smart American kid who can cook meat.

  They also have a help-yourself salad bar. They’ve become very popular in American restaurants too. You come along and just help yourself to as much of everything as you want. I suspect that people might take a little more lettuce than they’d get if the waiter gave it to them. On the other hand, lettuce is a lot cheaper than help. And it sure saves on the help.

  The food is pretty good at Victoria Station, but just as in most other gimmick restaurants, food takes second place.

  As a person who likes to eat, I am just vaguely worried about the food business being taken over by entrepreneurs rather than by restaurateurs but even if it isn’t the gourmet restaurants that are making the money, there are still a lot of impractical optimists who keep opening what they hope will be the perfect restaurant.

  ***

  I’m seated at a table at the most expensive restaurant in the United States, the Palace in New York City.

  Two of us just dined here. You don’t eat at the Palace; you dine. And I have the check . . . brought on a silver platter. For two people: dinner . . . $179.35.

  A lot of expensive restaurants are sneaky with their checks but there’s nothing sneaky about the Palace. They lay it right on the line. Two dinners, $100. Two cocktails at $5 each, $10. A bottle of wine, $25. That was the second cheapest bottle on the menu, by the way.Tax.That all comes to $145.80. Plus 23 percent for service. That’s $33.55 for tips, for a total of $179.35.

  Rooney: I thought maybe you could tell me what it was I had if I went over the menu.

  Frank Valenza, owner: The first appetizer you had was the salad de Palace, which is fresh lobster with truffles, walnut oil, artichoke bottoms and a vinaigrette dressing.

  Rooney: I thought it was pecan oil.

  Valenza: No.

  Rooney: Walnut oil, aha. Well, they fooled me there. And then I had— this is the gazpacho?

  Valenza: Gazpacho, very thin gazpacho, made with fresh vegetables and a little garniture on the side.

  Rooney: Made of what?

  Valenza: Tomato, garlic, peppers, onions, all your fresh vegetables. But just the essence of the vegetables.

  Rooney: Garlic seasoned with a little tomato?

  Valenza: Yes.

  Rooney: And . . . fish.

  Valenza: You had the fresh filet of sole filled with a mousse of salmon with a crayfish sauce. And then we had a little sherbet to cleanse the palate. Then, the main course, I believe you had the . . .

  Rooney: The rack of lamb.

  Valenza: Rack of lamb that was roasted with fresh aromatic herbs and naturel au jus. And for dessert, a little chocolate truffle. It’s ice cream mixed with pastry cream. It’s dipped in a very rich chocolate with little nuts and then we put it in the freezer.

  Rooney: Do you get people in here ever who are surprised at the cost?

  Valenza: Once in a while. Saturday night a lady came by and asked the price and I told her and she said, “I’m coming back with a boyfriend. I’m going to get a rich boyfriend to take me in.” They came down and made a reservation. They sat down. The gentleman opened the menu and there was the price and he jumped up.

  He said, “Well, I just ate dinner and I thought this was just an aftertheater snack.” And we said, “Thank you, maybe another day.” And the lady winked at me and she said, “Well, we’ll try again.”

  Rooney (to camera): The surprising thing about the Palace is how good it is. The food is excellent. As a matter of fact, I plan to come over here real often . . . and bring the kids.

  Two of the best lunches I ever had, I ate standing up . . . and within an hour of each other. Both places serve the same thing, oysters. Felix’s is on Iberville Street in New Orleans and the Acme Oyster House is right across from it.

  Every restaurant has its own way of doing things and if you don’t know what it is, it’s easy to look dumb the first time you go in a place.

  Rooney: What is the difference between the ones that are three dollars a dozen and the ones that are two-seventy-five?

  Man (cutting
oysters open): . . . table.

  Rooney: Oh, the table. If I eat them at the table, they’re more? Are some of them harder to open than others?

  Man: Some of them are hard, some of them’s easy.

  Rooney: But they’re alive until you open them, is that right?

  Man: Yes, sir.

  Rooney: You mean I just ate a dozen live oysters?

  It’s always hard to find a good place to eat when you’re driving in an unfamiliar part of the country, particularly if there are three or four people in the car who don’t agree where you’re going to eat. You get to one place and it looks fair but you decide to pass it up. You drive ten miles and you wish you’d stopped there, usually.

  The trouble with most country inns is the same thing that’s wrong with so many restaurants. They’re fake, an imitation of the real thing.

  The food in most country inns now comes from the city . . . frozen.

  Being good at picking a place to eat is a matter of experience . . . prejudice acquired over years of eating out. Deciding which restaurant not to go to is important. . . . There are little things you look for.

  I have as many as fifty little reasons for steering clear of certain places. Just for example:

  • I am very suspicious of a restaurant that says it is Polynesian and has flaming torches outside.

  • If a Chinese restaurant serves chop suey and chow mein, I assume that it isn’t very good . . . or very Chinese.

  • Cute names on restaurants, such as Dew Drop Inn, suggest that the owners aren’t very serious about their food. Watch out for places named after a new movie.

  • Places that advertise “Home Cooking” don’t interest me. If I want home cooking, I’ll eat at home.

  • And I’m put off if there’s a sign in the window saying “open.” Restaurants with open signs usually leave them there even when they’re closed.

  • I’m not attracted to an establishment that puts more emphasis on liquor than on food.

  • Usually I avoid a restaurant located in a shopping center.

  • And if a restaurant is connected with a bowling alley, it isn’t where I’m going to spend my money for food.