by Ruth Reichl
Slow down, my darling,” said Claudia as we walked out the door. “Take smaller steps. Remember, you are now Molly. Stay in character.” She winced when I hailed a taxi. “And do not shout.”
That part, at least, was not difficult. It was too hot for speed or noise. My sensible shoes were sticking to the sidewalk, and beneath the yellow pancake makeup my cheeks were flushed. Claudia, shrouded, despite the heat, in one of the shapeless black dresses she wore everywhere, seemed oblivious.
“I wonder what Molly likes to eat,” I said as we settled into the cab. “I wonder what she talks about?”
“That,” said Claudia, “is what you are about to find out.”
Le Cirque was cool but far from calm. The small, fussy room was crowded with women in shimmering dresses and men in elegant suits who perched on striped silk chairs that seemed too small for them. Huge bouquets of flowers nodded from the corners and little ceramic monkeys frolicked across the tables.
The maître d’ was hunched over the reservation book, and when he finally deigned to notice our presence he subjected us to a cool inspection. I found myself patting the wig as he looked me over, hoping no stray dark hairs were escaping.
“Do you have a reservation?” His tone indicated that he considered this a dubious possibility.
“Hollis,” I said. He did not acknowledge this, so I said more loudly, “Molly Hollis?” I was surprised to find that my voice had gotten flatter and slower, as if it too had undergone a makeover. The man ran his finger across his book, searching ostentatiously through the names. “Ah yes,” he said at last. “Here it is.” He sounded disappointed. “A non-smoking table. I’m afraid there’s nothing at the moment. You’ll have to wait in the bar.” With his head he indicated where that might be found.
It was lonely at the bar, and after we had ordered only water, lonelier still. The wig grew tighter on my head, and I fidgeted in my layers of clothing. The lack of attention was an unmistakable message.
“Do you suppose,” asked Claudia, “that they are laboring under the misapprehension that we are going to tire of the wait and go away?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I would not dream of granting them that satisfaction,” she said.
“Nor I,” I said, sticking a finger beneath the wig to scratch my itchy scalp.
Our designated table turned out to be very small, in the back of the dining room, and wreathed in the murk of the surrounding smokers. “But I asked for non-smoking!” I protested in my flat, quiet voice. The man shrugged and pointed around the restaurant as if to say, “Can’t you see they’re all taken?”
He doled out the menus and beat a hasty retreat. “A wine list?” I asked his departing back, but he was already gone. This, we soon learned, was not going to be a problem; the few inches of banquette to my left were apparently considered storage space, and waiters flung used menus onto it as they dashed past. It was not long before a wine list came flying toward me.
It was a thick tome and as I settled in to read it, I heard my newfound voice say to Claudia, “It is quite a lovely list.”
“Good,” she said. “I could do with an excellent Burgundy. Do you see one?”
“Pages and pages of them,” I replied.
But I had only reached page three when the captain reappeared and held out his hand, saying “I need that wine list” in peremptory tones.
I wavered for a moment, struggling with myself. Then I surrendered the list. “Bravo!” said Claudia. “You stayed in character. Molly is a lady.”
“I don’t think she’s all that happy about it either,” I said, noting with fury that my list was now in the hands of a man three tables down the banquette. I was inclined to march over and snatch it out of his hands, but I was determined to stay in character. So poor Molly fluttered her fingers at every passing waiter, saying in a pathetic little voice, “Do you think I might please have a wine list?” Given these timid tactics, it was a full twenty minutes before we were able to order wine.
“I’m going to learn a lot, being someone else,” I murmured to Claudia.
“Indeed,” she said. “Now when do you suppose that supercilious captain is going to allow us to order?”
Were we invisible because we were women? Or did we look too much like tourists to be worthy of recognition? Maybe the staff was simply overworked. But when the captain finally came to ask what we would like for dinner, he neglected to mention the special seasonal menu he had so lovingly described to the man sitting next to us.
I felt torn between Ruth and Molly. The former was gleeful; this terrible treatment was going to make very good copy. But Molly was wondering why anyone would subject herself to this. Molly was wishing she had stayed home in Birmingham, where ordinary people weren’t treated shabbily in restaurants. Molly was, in fact, furious.
And so she said, in her very nicest voice, “Did I hear you say something about a special menu to the gentleman over there?”
The captain said sullenly, “It’s quite a large meal.”
“That will be fine,” she said softly. “We’ll have that. And a bottle of the 1985 Chambolle-Musigny.”
Once the wine came, Claudia relaxed. She swirled the soft garnet liquid in her glass and smiled benevolently down at the sautéed foie gras, inhaling the fragrance of the white peach with which it was served.
“White peaches always remind me of Paris,” she said happily, and I had a sudden memory of my mother’s voice saying, “Poor Claudia,” in that tone she reserved for single women. “She did marry once, but her husband was hit by a truck in a freak accident and she never got over his death.”
As Claudia cooed over her curried tuna tartare, translucent ruby nuggets surrounded by overlapping circles of sliced radish, I thought how stunned she would be to know that my mother considered her an object of pity. After her husband died Claudia reinvented herself, created a character she could inhabit, and spent the rest of her life showing others how to do it. She was the only working friend my mother had, and she had obviously supported herself in style; by the third glass of Burgundy she was expounding on her favorite hotel in Beaune.
I listened politely, Molly’s best Junior League smile playing across my face. The food was good enough, but it was hard not to notice that everyone around us was receiving considerably more attention than we were.
Then things looked up. The captain came to announce that a table had just become available in the non-smoking section. Would we like to move? As we walked out of the smoke I saw that we were being led to a larger table, and I felt as if the unpleasant part of the meal had come to an end.
But there was no graciousness in the maneuver. The busboy sullenly ferried used water glasses and bread plates across the dining room, shoved our crumpled-up napkins into our hands, and took off. Watching him go, I found myself saying, “You’d think he’d at least refold the napkins!” in Molly’s subdued voice.
“Really my darling, what does it matter?” asked Claudia. The waiter had just set a plate of black bass in Barolo sauce before her, and she was looking down at it with a dreamy expression. The fish was wrapped in translucent slices of potato that hugged it like a second skin. She reached out with the tines of her fork and watched, rapt, as the crisp potato coat shattered to reveal the soft, creamy flesh underneath.
“Claudia!” said Molly sharply, “you, of all people, should understand the importance of theater. The food may be good, but the service has been so bad that the evening is destroyed.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Claudia, setting the fish resolutely aside. “You are quite right.”
“I did not come here simply to eat,” Molly went on in her slow, serious voice, “I came here for glamour. I am willing to pay for the privilege of feeling rich and important for a few small hours. Is that too much to ask? I have come here looking for a dream, and it has turned into a nightmare. I feel frumpy and powerless. I may be nobody, but I don’t like paying to be humiliated. It isn’t right.”
Claudia w
as looking at me with a kind of wonder. I was surprised myself. Where had that speech come from? Who was this woman? I found myself toying with the very brown food that was set before me, and when the chocolate soufflé cake arrived, I pushed it away after a few small bites. “I really shouldn’t eat dessert,” I heard myself saying. “I’d like to lose fifteen pounds.” And when I paid the check, I discovered that Molly’s signature looked nothing like mine.
Claudia was triumphant. “We did it!” she said when we were back on the sidewalk. “You absolutely fooled them. They had no idea who you were.”
“That,” I replied, “is certainly true. Even I did not know who I was.”
The King of Spain
Arms wide, mouth open, legs pumping, the owner of Le Cirque came bounding toward the table in full cry. “You’re Warren Hoge,” he wailed reproachfully at my guest.
“Yes,” Warren admitted ruefully.
“How could I have seated Warren Hoge here?” asked Mr. Maccioni. It was an accusation, as if this lapse were somehow our fault. “You must let me move you to a better table.”
Finished with our main courses and already halfway through dessert, we declined the offer. But Sirio Maccioni, stricken at having mistreated such an important person, was insistent. He looked at Michael. He looked at Warren’s wife. He looked at me. Failure to recognize a major player was a serious breach of his honor as a restaurateur, and he wanted to remedy the situation. At last he took no for an answer, but when he reluctantly moved off he left behind an army of waiters with strict instructions to bombard us with desserts.
The onslaught of sweets was ferocious. There was a miniature stove with little pots of chocolate, and a troupe of pulled-sugar clowns. There were fabulous cakes and adorably decorated candies. And there was something else. “Look,” I said. With my right hand I held up the raspberry tartlet that had just arrived; with my left I held up my old, half-eaten one.
Anyone with eyes could see it: the new raspberries were twice the size of the old ones.
“Do you suppose,” asked Michael, “that there is someone in the kitchen who does nothing but sort raspberries for high-status diners?”
“Welcome to New York,” I murmured under my breath.
Unaccustomed to the ways of my future employer, I had been charmed when Warren suggested that we meet during one of my trips east. In nine years at the Los Angeles Times, I had never gone to dinner with someone on the masthead. “It would be nice to get to know you better before you start the job,” he said. When I told him that Michael would also be in New York, working on a Whitewater-related story, he suggested that we include our spouses. “You choose the restaurant,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to waste a meal.”
I agonized over the choice, knowing that a minor meal would never do. “Le Cirque would be perfect,” I said to Michael, “but he must be known there.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” said Michael, who never beats around the bush. “Maybe they don’t know him.” Then he was struck by another possibility and abruptly changed the subject. “Are you planning to put on that costume for your first meal with your new boss?” he asked. “I don’t get the feeling that would be the best way to make a good impression.”
I admitted, a little sheepishly, that I was too embarrassed to be Molly for the occasion. “Besides,” I added, “Warren’s secretary told me that his wife is some sort of Czech countess—or something like that. I have a hard time envisioning Molly dining with royalty; she’s going to stay home.”
“Can I stay home too?” pleaded Michael. Not for nothing had I dubbed him The Reluctant Gourmet in my Los Angeles columns. “You know I hate that kind of evening: fancy food and polite chitchat. Can’t I just stay in the hotel and order room service with Nicky?”
“You don’t have to come if you really don’t want to,” I said unwillingly. “But I really wish you would. I need your support. The idea of dinner in some snooty restaurant with my new boss and his aristocratic wife is not exactly my idea of a jolly evening. Besides, you’re the one who got me into this in the first place.”
“Don’t worry,” said Michael, squeezing my hand. “I won’t abandon you. I’ll put on a tie. I’ll charm the countess. I’ll eat everything on my plate. I’ll even order something in cream sauce if that will make you happy.”
Warren assured me that we’d be safe at Le Cirque; he had not, he said, been there in years. It seemed to be true: when we arrived we were paraded past all the important people seated in the front to an ignominious table on the wrong side of the room. The seats were not stellar and the service was not special, but it was far better than what Molly had experienced on her two miserable visits to the restaurant.
Warren was witty and urbane, the countess was full of entertaining stories, and Michael held up our end with admirable fortitude while I concentrated on the food.
I had meanly ordered risotto, a dish few French chefs can master. This one, however, was a masterpiece. It tasted as if a chef had stood at the stove, stirring diligently as he coaxed each grain of rice into soaking up stock. As a finale he had strewn plump little morsels of lobster through the rice, giving it the taste of the ocean. There was rosemary too, just a subtle touch—a fresh wind blowing across the rice and imparting little hints of green fields and verdant forests.
I go silent when food is that good, and I looked up to find Warren watching me. It made me feel naked, as if I were somehow being derelict in my duties. Did he think I was enjoying the meal too much? Then I realized that his focus was not actually on me. He was looking at the veal he had ordered, an entire shank, which was being carried triumphantly into the dining room. As the captain carved, the meat fell from his knife in thin slices, like petals from a rose. The captain gathered up the slices, arranged them on the plate, sprinkled them with sea salt and pepper, and with all eyes in the dining room upon him, set the plate in front of Warren. He liked that.
But I think he liked being recognized even better. When the dessert offensive was finally over and the evening at an end, Warren asked Mr. Maccioni a question. “How did you know me?” he inquired.
“But you’re Warren Hoge!” Mr. Maccioni replied, as if the question were absurd. Warren pushed the compliment away modestly, but he looked satisfied. As he bowed us out the door, Mr. Maccioni bestowed his most glittering smile upon us. “I hope,” he said in his charmingly accented English, “that you will visit us soon again.”
It was a lovely evening and we stood on the sidewalk, saying our farewells, reluctant to part. “That was a very good meal,” said Warren.
“Yes,” I replied, wishing it had been a little less so. “But was it a great one?”
“That,” he said, “is for you to decide. I assume you’ll come back?”
“Oh yes,” I assured him. “This was only my third visit and I’ll be back a few more times before deciding on the stars.”
“I look forward to reading the review,” said Warren with a solemnity that implied that big things were expected of me.
At the New York Times, four stars are serious; they denote luxurious perfection. Bryan had anointed only five restaurants with the coveted quad. Le Cirque’s new chef was undeniably talented, but how could I possibly give top billing to the restaurant that Molly had attended? It seemed to be a completely different restaurant depending on who you were. The critics, who undoubtedly got the royal Hoge treatment, all raved about the place. Then the readers showed up and found themselves stuck in some dark corner and ignored. If only there were a way to write about that . . . Suddenly I saw that there was.
What if I simply showed up as me? When an ordinary man turned into Warren Hoge, his raspberries got bigger. Just think what might happen when an ordinary woman turned into the restaurant critic of the New York Times. All I would have to do was print two parallel reviews: Molly’s meal on one side, Ruth’s on the other. My hope was that, like the raspberries, they would speak for themselves.
You sure you don’t want to make the reservation in
your own name?” Michael asked when I told him my plan. “What if Maccioni doesn’t recognize you?”
“Then he’s not as smart as I think he is,” I said. “Besides, they’d never believe it if I made the reservation in my own name; the restaurant critic of the Times would never do that. And I’m pretty sure he must have figured out that Warren was with me that night. This is going to be the most amazing meal!”
A strange look came over Michael’s face, and I tried to decipher it. Then it hit me: he didn’t want to come.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “It would be such a waste! Just think of all the people who’d love to be there when the waiters start dancing around the table. I can think of about a thousand people who’d have a better time than I would.”
“Like who?” I asked.
“Like Johnny.”
It was an inspired idea. My twenty-something nephew was working on Wall Street. Young, handsome, and impeccably dressed, he would go anywhere and eat anything, no matter the hour. He was thrilled when I called and happily volunteered to make the reservation.
Johnny reported back that the earliest table he’d been able to get was at 9:45. “But let’s show up early,” he suggested. “I bet they won’t keep you waiting. This is going to be so much fun!”
We walked in around 9:00 to find a surging crowd pushing and jostling for position at the door. “Do something, Gerald,” a tight-faced woman was urging her escort. “Our reservation was half an hour ago.” The man gave a forlorn little gesture and soldiered reluctantly forward; this was clearly not his first attempt at procuring a table.
“The maître d’ says he’s doing his best,” Gerald was saying sadly when a little flutter went through the throng. Sirio Maccioni was coming through, beaming broadly. He was a majestic figure, gray-haired but still so handsome it was easy to see why Babe Paley once called him “the sexiest man in New York,” and the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. He was heading straight for me. Grasping my hand, he led me jubilantly forward. As the crowd made way for us, I felt like Cinderella with brand-new shoes.
