Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  An elaborate ritual would ensue. The waiter had been standing motionless, watching his subordinates as they put the various plates on a small serving-table next to the guest’s table. Now the waiter would step forward, lift the cover off the silver plate, and perform the “presentation” of the meat. This was another mere motion, since the guest’s enthusiastic approval was a foregone conclusion. The waiter would serve the meat on a hot plate, place it on the table in front of the guest, make a step back, and glance at Heinrich. Then the guest, in turn, would glance at Heinrich.

  There followed a minute heavy with suspense. From his command post Heinrich would review the table, with a short, sweeping glance taking in the meat, the garniture, the accessories, the setting, the position of chair and table. It was hard to understand how he managed to see anything through the narrow slit of his almost closed eyelids; but see he did. He would give a slight nod of approval to the waiter, and to the guest. Only then would a genuine habitué start to eat.

  Words of ordinary prose have generally been held inadequate to express the delights of boiled beef at Meissl & Schadn. Many Austrian poets were moved to rhymed praise while they regaled themselves on a well-nigh perfect Hieferschwanzl. But poets, especially Austrian poets, are rarely given to tenacity of purpose, and somehow the poets didn’t bother to write down their poems after leaving the restaurant. Richard Strauss, an ardent devotee of the Beinfleisch, often considered writing a tone poem about his favorite dish, but after he finished his ballet Schlagobers (Whipped Cream), he thought that another major composition devoted to an Austrian food specialty might be misinterpreted by posterity and resented by his admirers in Germany, who, like most Germans, heartily disliked Vienna. Strauss, not unaware of his considerable German royalties, dropped the project.

  “Too bad he did,” a Viennese music-critic and Strauss-admirer said not long ago. “A tone poem on Beinfleisch might have surpassed even the transcendental beauty of Death and Transfiguration.”

  There was a reason for the excellence of the beef served at Meissl & Schadn. The restaurant owned herds of cattle that were kept inside a large sugar refinery in a village north of Vienna. There the steers were fed on molasses and sugar-beet mash, which gave their meat its extraordinary marble texture, taste, tenderness, and juice. The animals were slaughtered just at the right time, and the meat was kept in the refrigerators from one to two weeks.

  In Vienna, in those days, boiled beef was not a dish; it was a way of life. Citizens of the Danube capital, venturing into hostile, foreign lands where boiled beef was simply boiled beef, would take Viennese cookbooks along that contained the anatomical diagram of a steer, with numbered partitions and subdivisions indicating the Gustostückerln. This was a wise precaution. Even in German-speaking lands the technical expressions denoting various cuts of beef differ from land to land. Vienna’s Tafelspitz (brisket), for instance, is called Tafelstück by the Germans and Huft by the German-speaking Swiss. A Viennese Beinfleisch is called Zwerchried in Germany and plat-de-côte among the Swiss.

  Vienna’s boiled-beef-eaters are vehement chauvinists. They don’t recognize the American New England dinner, the French pot-au-feu, or the petite marmite.

  “The meat of the petite marmite is cooked in an earthenware stock-pot,” a Tafelspitz scholar explained to me. “And the necks and wings of fowl are added. Incredible!” He shuddered slightly.

  The Viennese experts take a dim view of bœuf saignant à la ficelle, rare beef with a string, a great French dish. A piece of fillet is tightly wrapped around with a string, roasted quickly in a very hot oven, and dipped for sixty seconds—not for fifty-eight or sixty-two, but for sixty—in boiling consommé, just before it is served. The juice is kept inside the pinkish meat by the trick of quick roasting and boiling.

  But the Viennese do recognize Tellerfleisch, another local specialty. Tellerfleisch (the name means “plate meat”) is eaten only between meals. It consists of a soup plate filled two thirds with clear beef soup, boiled carrots, split green onions, chopped parsley, with a piece of almost but not quite boiled beef and several slices of marrow, sprinkled with chopped chive.

  There were two schools of cooking beef in Vienna. People who cared more about a strong soup than about the meat put the raw meat into cold water and let it cook gently, for hours, on a slow fire. They would add parsley, carrots, green onions, celery, salt, and pepper. After an hour the white foam that had formed on top was skimmed off. Sometimes half an onion, fried on the open range plate, was put in to give the soup a dark color. Others, who wanted their beef juicy and tender, put it straight into boiling water and let it simmer. This would close the pores of the meat and keep the juices inside.

  The Meissl & Schadn was hit by American bombs in March 1945. A few weeks later, Red Army liberators tossed gasoline-soaked rags and gas cans into the half-destroyed building and set fire to it. The hotel burned down. But the tradition that had made Meissl & Schadn a great restaurant had come to an end long before. The restaurant was a creation of the Habsburg monarchy; its prosperity and decay reflected the greatness and decline of the Danube empire. With the help of Heinrich, it survived the hectic twenties, but when he died, the restaurant was doomed.

  “People would come in and ask for ‘boiled beef,’ ” an ex-habitué now remembers. “It was shocking.”

  Vienna’s butchers have forgotten the fine points of cutting up a steer, and the chefs don’t know how to slice a Tafelspitz. The small pieces at the pointed end of the triangular Tafelspitz are cut lengthwise, but the large, long, fibrous, upper end must be cut along its breadth.

  Today most Viennese restaurants serve Rindfleisch or Beinfleisch, without any specification. The cattle are raised, and the meat is cut and cooked without the loving care that made it such a treat. It is often tough and dry, and served by ignorant waiters who recommend to their customers expensive “outside” dishes, such as Styrian pullet or imported lobster. The waiters are more interested in the size of their tips than in the contentment of the guest’s palate. Restaurant-owners, operating on the get-rich-quick principle, no longer keep herds of cattle inside sugar refineries. It wouldn’t be profitable, they say; besides, many refineries are located in the Soviet Zone of Austria.

  —from Blue Trout and Black Truffles, 1948

  A. J. LIEBLING ON RESTAURANT MAILLABUAU IN PARIS

  In the twenties, the Rue Sainte-Anne, a narrow street running from near the Théâtre Français end of the Avenue de l’Opéra to the Rue Saint-Augustin and skirting the Square Louvois en passant, had been rendered illustrious by a man named Maillabuau, a gifted restaurateur but a losing horse-player who had no money to squander on décor. He turned his worn tablecloths into an asset by telling his customers that he wasted none of their contributions on frills—all went into the supreme quality of his materials and wines. A place with doormen in uniforms, he would say—a place with deep carpets and perhaps (here a note of horror would enter his voice) an orchestra—was ipso facto and prima facie a snare. He would then charge twice as much as any other restaurant in Paris. My memories of visits to Maillabuau’s—visits that I had enjoyed only by stratagem—were so pleasant that I had chosen the Hôtel Louvois in order to be near it.

  All during my year at the Sorbonne, the Guide du Gourmand à Paris had served as the Baedeker for my exploratory splurges when I had money enough to try restaurants off my usual beat. The author addressed his book to the gourmand, rather than to the gourmet, he said, because it was impossible to like food if you did not like a lot of it; “gourmet” was therefore a snob word, and a silly one. This predisposed me in his favor. But it was his subject matter that held me captive. The restaurants were categorized as “of great luxury,” “middling-priced,” “reasonable,” and “simple,” but all were warranted “good,” and there were about a hundred and twenty-five of them. At the head of the “luxury” group was a “first platoon” of six restaurants (of which today only one survives, and that scarcely worthy of mention). Maillabuau, despite the worn t
ablecloths, figured among the ten others in the “luxury” group. In my own forays, “reasonable” was my ceiling, but I liked to read about the others—those financially unattainable Princesses Lointaines. I knew the description of Maillabuau’s by heart:

  Sombre, almost lugubrious front. If the passerby is not warned, never will he suspect that behind that façade, having crossed that modest threshold, he can know the pure joys of gastronomy! How to know, if one is not a gourmand, that here the sole is divine, that the entrecôte Bercy has singular merits, that the pâté of venison is beyond equal, that the burgundies (especially the Chambertin) are of the year that they should be, and that the marc resembles embalmed gold? How to know that only here, in all Paris, are made ready the fat squab guinea-hens anointed with all the scents of the Midi? Staggering bill, which one never resents paying.

  I had no thought of crossing that modest threshold myself until one warm morning in the late spring of 1927, when it occurred to me that my father, mother, and sister would be arriving in Paris in a few weeks—they were waiting only for the beginning of the summer holiday at the Connecticut College for Women, where my sister was now a sophomore—and that in the natural course of events they would ask me, the local expert, where to dine. My mother and sister favored the kind of restaurant where they saw pretty dresses and where the plat du jour was likely to be called “Le Chicken Pie à l’Américaine,” but my father had always been a booster for low overhead and quality merchandise; they were the principles that had guided his career as a furrier. Russian sable and ermine—with baum or stone marten if a woman couldn’t afford anything better—had always been his idea of decent wear. His views on fur were a little like J. P. Morgan’s on yachts—people who had to worry about the cost shouldn’t have them. Foxes began and ended, for him, with natural blacks and natural silvers; the notion of a fox bred to specifications would have filled him with horror. Seal had to be Alaskan seal, not what was called Hudson seal, which meant muskrat. Persian lamb had to be unborn Persian lamb, not mutton.

  As I had anticipated, when my family arrived in Paris they did indeed consult me about the scene of our first dinner together. So Maillabuau’s it was. When we arrived before the somber, almost lugubrious front, my mother wanted to turn back. It looked like a store front, except for a bit of scrim behind the plate glass, through which the light from within filtered without éclat.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked.

  “It’s one of the best restaurants in the world,” I said, as if I ate there every day.

  My father was already captivated. “Don’t give you a lot of hoopla and ooh-la-la,” he said, with approval. “I’ll bet there are no Americans here.”

  We crossed the modest threshold. The interior was only half a jump from sordid, and there were perhaps fifteen tables. Old Maillabuau, rubicund and seedy, approached us, and I could sense that my mother was about to object to any table he proposed; she wanted some place like Fouquet’s (not in the Guide du Gourmand). But between her and Maillabuau I interposed a barrage of French that neither she nor my sister could possibly penetrate, though each chirped a few tentative notes. “I have brought my family here because I have been informed it is the most illustrious house of Paris,” I told him, and, throwing in a colloquialism I had learned in Rennes, a city a hundred years behind the times, I added, “We desire to knock the bell.”

  On hearing me, old Maillabuau, who may have thought for a moment that we were there by mistake and were about to order waffles, flashed a smile of avaricious relief. Father, meanwhile, regarding the convives of both sexes seated at the tables, was already convinced. The men, for the most part, showed tremendous devantures, which they balanced on their knees with difficulty as they ate, their wattles waving bravely with each bite. The women were shaped like demijohns and decanters, and they drank wine from glasses that must have reminded Father happily of beer schooners on the Bowery in 1890. “I don’t see a single American,” he said. He was a patriotic man at home, but he was convinced that in Paris the presence of Americans was a sign of a bunco joint.

  “Monsieur my father is the richest man in Baltimore,” I told Maillabuau, by way of encouragement. Father had nothing to do with Baltimore, but I figured that if I said New York, Maillabuau might not believe me. Maillabuau beamed and Father beamed back. His enthusiasms were rare but sudden, and this man—without suavity, without a tuxedo, who spoke no English, and whose customers were so patently overfed—appeared to him an honest merchant. Maillabuau showed us to a table; the cloth was diaphanous from wear except in the spots where it had been darned.

  A split-second refroidissement occurred when I asked for the carte du jour.

  “There is none,” Maillabuau said. “You will eat what I tell you. Tonight, I propose a soup, trout grenobloise, and poulet Henri IV—simple but exquisite. The classic cuisine française—nothing complicated but all of the best.”

  When I translated this to Father, he was in complete agreement. “Plain food,” he said. “No schmier.” I think that at bottom he agreed that the customer is sure to be wrong if left to his own devices. How often had the wives of personal friends come to him for a fur coat at the wholesale price, and declined his advice of an Alaskan seal—something that would last them for twenty years—in favor of some faddish fur that would show wear in six!

  The simplicity of the menu disappointed me; I asked Maillabuau about the pintadou, fat and anointed with fragrance. “Tomorrow,” he said, posing it as a condition that we eat his selection first. Mother’s upper lip quivered, for she was très gourmande of cream sauces, but she had no valid argument against the great man’s proposal, since one of the purposes of her annual trips to Europe was to lose weight at a spa. On the subject of wines, M. Maillabuau and I agreed better: the best in the cellar would do—a Montrachet to begin with, a Chambertin with the fowl.

  It was indeed the best soup—a simple garbure of vegetables—imaginable, the best trout possible, and the best boiled fowl of which one could conceive. The simple line of the meal brought out the glories of the wine, and the wine brought out the grandeur in my father’s soul. Presented with one of the most stupendous checks in history, he paid with gratitude, and said that he was going to take at least one meal a day chez Maillabuau during the rest of his stay. The dessert, served as a concession to my sister, was an omelette au kirsch, and Maillabuau stood us treat to the marc, like embalmed gold. Or at least he said he did; since only the total appeared on the check, we had to take his word for it. The omelette au kirsch was the sole dessert he ever permitted to be served, he said. He was against sweets on principle, since they were “not French,” but the omelette was light and healthy. It contained about two dozen eggs.

  The next day we had the pintadou, the day after that a pièce de bœuf du Charolais so remarkable that I never eat a steak without thinking how far short it falls. And never were the checks less than “staggering,” and never did my father complain. Those meals constituted a high spot in my gastronomic life, but before long my mother and sister mutinied. They wanted a restaurant where they could see some dresses and eat meringues glacées and homard au porto.

  So in 1939, on my first evening in wartime Paris, I went straight from the Louvois to the Rue Sainte-Anne. The Restaurant Maillabuau had vanished. I did not remember the street number, so I walked the whole length of the Rue Sainte-Anne twice to make sure. But there was no Maillabuau; the horses at Longchamp had eaten him.

  —from Between Meals, 1959

  M.F.K. FISHER ON MONSIEUR PAUL’S

  “Let me suggest,” she interrupted firmly, “our special dry sherry. It is chosen in Spain for Monsieur Paul.”

  And before I could agree she was gone, discreet and smooth.

  She’s a funny one, I thought, and waited in a pleasant warm tiredness for the wine.

  It was good. I smiled approval at her, and she lowered her eyes, and then looked searchingly at me again. I realized suddenly that in this land of trained nonchalant w
aiters I was to be served by a small waitress who took her duties seriously. I felt much amused, and matched her solemn searching gaze.

  “Today, Madame, you may eat shoulder of lamb in the English style, with baked potatoes, green beans, and a sweet.”

  My heart sank. I felt dismal, and hot and weary, and still grateful for the sherry.

  But she was almost grinning at me, her lips curved triumphantly, and her eyes less palely blue.

  “Oh, in that case a trout, of course—a truite au bleu as only Monsieur Paul can prepare it!”

  She glanced hurriedly at my face, and hastened on. “With the trout, one or two young potatoes—oh, very delicately boiled,” she added before I could protest, “very light.”

  I felt better. I agreed. “Perhaps a leaf or two of salad after the fish,” I suggested. She almost snapped at me. “Of course, of course! And naturally our hors d’oeuvres to commence.” She started away.

  “No!” I called, feeling that I must assert myself now or be forever lost. “No!”

  She turned back, and spoke to me very gently. “But Madame has never tasted our hors d’oeuvres. I am sure that Madame will be pleased. They are our specialty, made by Monsieur Paul himself. I am sure,” and she looked reproachfully at me, her mouth tender and sad, “I am sure that Madame would be very much pleased.”

  I smiled weakly at her, and she left. A little cloud of hurt gentleness seemed to hang in the air where she had last stood.

  I comforted myself with sherry, feeling increasing irritation with my own feeble self. Hell! I loathed hors d’oeuvres! I conjured disgusting visions of square glass plates of oily fish, of soggy vegetables glued together with cheap mayonnaise, or rank radishes and tasteless butter. No, Monsieur Paul or not, sad young pale-faced waitress or not, I hated hors d’oeuvres.