by Ruth Reichl
We had only two extravagances: Doug spent money on art supplies, and once a year we went out for a really great dinner.
It was always at the same restaurant: Chez Panisse. This tradition went back to our first weeks in Berkeley, when my parents came to inspect our commune. They were not thrilled to find themselves sleeping in a bedroom with a curtain in place of a door, but it was the food that finally drove them away. They endured three nights of brown rice, tofu, and lentils with a side order of anti-agribusiness theory, and then insisted on going out to eat. There was, it seemed, a new local restaurant Mom was eager to try. “It sounds so cute,” she said. “They serve just one meal every day.”
“What if you don’t like it?” I asked. This was not an opportunity I was prepared to squander.
“I wondered about that too,” said my mother. “You have nothing to worry about. If you don’t like the meal of the evening, you can ask for steak!”
When we got to Chez Panisse, Mom looked around the attractively rustic room and said, her voice dripping with disappointment, “This looks more like a house than a restaurant.” She surveyed the bare wood and burnished copper. She glared at the tangle of wildflowers in the middle of the dining room, daring it to turn into tulips or roses, or at the very least some respectable hothouse plant. She scrutinized the menu. “Wild mushrooms on toast,” she read. “Blanquette de veau. A salad of baby lettuces. Lemon tart.” She was calculating the cost. “I’ll have the steak,” she announced when she had finished.
Our waiter, a thin young man with an intellectual air, looked doubtful as he wrote the order down. Sure enough, the kitchen door had no sooner closed behind him than it reopened to allow the owner to come marching out.
Alice Waters was Berkeley’s latest claim to fame. She was a petite, pretty woman who swept through town trailing disappointed men in her wake. She had chestnut hair and a generous mouth that turned up at the corners. Her hazel eyes were framed by bangs, and when I saw her in the markets she was always wearing eccentric clothes that made me want to reach out and softly caress them.
I was awed by her—and a little jealous of her reputation. She seemed so formidable that I was taken aback by the sound of her whispery little voice. “I was afraid people would be worried about eating veal,” she said. We had to lean in to hear her. “But you see, these are not commercial animals.” Alice began telling my mother about the humane manner in which the calves had been raised. When she realized that wasn’t working, she tried a different tack.
“Have you been to France?” she asked.
“Yes,” my mother said. I winced, knowing exactly what was coming next. Mom could never resist an opportunity to say, “I got my Ph.D. at the Sorbonne.”
Alice beamed. “Wonderful!” she said. “Then you know how much better food tastes over there!” She smiled at my mother and said winningly, “Our vegetables taste the way they do in France. All the little carrots and onions in the blanquette were cultivated by people I know. They don’t use pesticides at all. I’ve adapted this recipe from Richard Olney. Do you know his book?”
Mom didn’t.
Alice warmed to her subject, going on about the people who grew the grapes that made the wine that went into the sauce. “We only use good wine for cooking,” she assured my mother. “I wouldn’t cook with a wine I wouldn’t drink.”
My mother remained unconvinced. Alice remained adamant. “The steak just isn’t as good as the blanquette,” she said. There was steel behind that sweet whispery voice. “I don’t want you to be disappointed with your meal.”
“I won’t be,” said Mom, whose voice also had a metallic ring. She was certain that the steak offered better value. She was determined to have it. In the end, Alice relinquished the duel, gave a defeated little shrug, and retreated to the kitchen. This, I would learn later, was completely uncharacteristic.
Mom did not regret her decision, even when my father held out a forkful of silken veal in a sauce made of thick, sweet cream. “Try this, darling,” he said. “It tastes like my childhood.” Lost in some nostalgic German reverie, he recited a line from Goethe under his breath.
“My steak is delicious too!” cried Mom. It wasn’t; I understood why Alice had not wanted to serve this mediocre meat, which must have come straight from the freezer. My mother didn’t care; filet mignon cost more than stewing veal and she was getting her money’s worth. A few months later, when Chez Panisse was reviewed in a national magazine, Mom’s triumph was complete. “I discovered it!” she bragged to her friends, and as the restaurant grew more famous Mom embellished Alice’s steak protest until it had turned into a meaningful conversation.
But although it pleased my mother, the national success of Chez Panisse did not impress the people of Berkeley. Sweet suckling pigs cooked over wood fires, ragouts of red wine and squid, and the best bread ever served in America might astonish others, but they were not what we loved best about Chez Panisse. The restaurant stood for pure products, small farms, and sustainable agriculture, and we went there because it was a place where you could eat fabulously without feeling apologetic. Their food was grown by people who cared for the earth and served by people who cared for one another. Even the dishwashers were well paid. In Berkeley, these things counted.
Over the years, Alice turned into a Berkeley icon. She became so famous that when my editor asked me to interview her, right after I became a critic, it took me days to work up the courage to call. I expected her to say no. Instead, she invited me to her house.
I was surprised to find that she lived in a small Victorian in the flatlands of Berkeley, within walking distance of Channing Way. The house seemed so modest, so unassuming, so ordinary.
And Alice seemed so friendly. “Oh,” she said when I knocked on the door, “it’s you.” She smiled winningly and I instantly understood her charm. “You worked at The Swallow. I know you.” Her arms were filled with fuzzy branches covered with the tiniest blue flowers. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she said. “Do you know borage? You eat the flowers. Here, taste.” She stuffed a blossom into my mouth. I chewed on it as I followed her through the dark living room and into the kitchen, thinking how very blue the flower tasted.
Alice’s kitchen was spotless, but it was far from fancy. The stove was an antique and the refrigerator looked like a relic from the Ice Age; it didn’t even have a freezer. “I saw it in the window of a junk shop,” she said, proudly patting the door. “It cost two hundred and twenty-five dollars.” She did not own a single modern appliance.
“Did you always know you wanted to run a restaurant?” I asked, looking around.
“Oh no,” she said. “I was a Montessori teacher. But I hated teaching because I didn’t have any patience. I found myself sort of biting the children.”
“You couldn’t have,” I said.
“No, really,” she said, “I did. There was this little kid who was biting everybody and I couldn’t figure out what to do, and it was just an impulsive thing and I bit him.” She still seemed shocked at her action, all these years later. “I hurt him,” she admitted. “And then I thought, I’ve got to get out of here.”
“And so you opened a restaurant? Just like that?”
“Well, I love feeding people. I need to have that kind of communion. When I was working at the Express Times, people came over every night, and I would put out food.”
“Sounds like my house,” I said.
As we chatted she washed lettuces, crushed garlic, and talked to her mother on the telephone. People kept showing up—before the afternoon was over, dinner for four had grown to dinner for a dozen. “What I always wanted in a restaurant,” she said, “was something like this. Just a place where my friends would come and hang out for hours.”
As Alice said that, her friend Pat put down her rolling pin and commented, “And look what you ended up with. A restaurant that none of your friends can afford.” There was a definite edge to her words.
“I know,” said Alice wistfully. “But the troubl
e is, once you’re successful at something, it just sort of follows you around and haunts you.”
* * *
Why was I remembering all that as I drove across the Bay Bridge? The sky was reflected in the dark water, and I looked down and watched an airplane pick its way delicately among the stars. And then I understood the connection: Success was following us around, haunting us. For the past year, Doug had been moving all around the country while I stayed home and reviewed restaurants. Our relationship seemed the same, but I had a prickly sense of change. Doug was going east while I went west, heading to a restaurant none of my friends could afford. I was suspended between Berkeley and San Francisco, and success was riding shotgun as I catapulted across the bridge.
Trader Vic’s turned out to be exactly what I had expected. I looked at the people milling expensively about the waiting room, angling for tables, and thought of the word Nick had used: “obscene.” He had a point. But there was one surprise: The wine writer was shy, earnest, and about my age. In his rumpled clothes and dirty sneakers, Phil Reich would have fit right into our Berkeley household. The maître d’hôtel seemed to think so too. He examined us both briefly and announced that there would be a wait. A long wait.
“He obviously hopes we’ll leave,” said Phil, introducing himself. “Wait until he sees who’s taking us to dinner. He’ll change his tune.”
“So you’ve met this food editor?” I asked.
“A few times,” he replied.
“What’s he like?” I asked.
Phil looked me up and down appraisingly, as if trying to decide how honest he could be. He took in my frizzy brown hair and worn velvet dress. “I don’t think he’s your sort of person,” he said finally. He looked over my shoulder and added, “See for yourself.”
A substantial man with thick black hair was bearing down on us, wearing a suit, a tie, and an air of extreme self-satisfaction. How old was he? I couldn’t tell, but he seemed very grown up—forty, at least—and he was so tall, so large, that the crowd seemed to part before him. As he got closer I could hear the maître d’hôtel gushing, “Oh, Mr. Andrews, how nice to have you with us again.” I squirmed resentfully; just by walking in the door he had taken control, and I was afraid that he would see right through me.
“See?” whispered Phil as the maître d’hôtel led us past the throng to our table; those with Colman Andrews did not wait. The food editor immediately summoned a wine list. It appeared, and the two men began speaking in tongues.
“Mayacamas Chard?” asked the food editor, raising his eyebrows as he peered down at the list.
“Hasn’t been through malolactic,” Phil replied.
“Francophile myself,” said the editor. “Preferably bone.”
“Caymus?” asked Phil.
“Malolactic?” the editor replied.
“Of course,” said Phil, nodding.
I listened, baffled, as the words rolled off their tongues. I had a moment of triumph when I translated “bone” to “Beaune,” but by then the men had moved on to a discussion of barrels. As they tossed facts about new oak and old redwood into the air, the sommelier hovered unhappily in the distance. Our glasses were still empty. When the men lurched into an argument about which year Hanzell stopped using white foil around the neck of the bottle, I knew I had to do something.
“I’m hungry,” I announced.
The food editor had very good manners. “Sorry,” he said, summoning the waiter. “Let’s start with the ’66 Krug,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”
“Mine too,” I said before I could stop myself. And then, what the hell, I threw myself into it and added, “Such a wonderful year for champagne.” Phil shot me an odd look, and I wondered if I had gotten it wrong. Wasn’t Krug champagne? Were there good years, or were they all the same? I could feel my cheeks getting hot.
Apparently I had not made a fool of myself because the editor said, “Too bad they don’t have any triple-zero beluga. It’s perfect with the Krug.”
Suddenly I heard myself saying, “If I can’t have triple-zero, I’d rather not eat caviar at all.” Phil looked rather stunned by this, but the editor smiled so warmly that I was soon disdaining black truffles. I had never actually eaten them, but I had once read an article by M. F. K. Fisher, who felt that they were vastly overrated. This stolen opinion earned me such a look of respect that I offered another: It was just a tragedy, I said, that the government kept all the real cheese from coming into the country. I waxed eloquent about the great cheeses made with the unpasteurized milk upon which the FDA frowned.
“But even in France,” said the editor, “the quality of cheese is starting to decline. I’m going to Paris next month, and my expectations are very low.”
“You have to get outside of Paris,” I said, grateful, finally, to be on solid ground. “You have to go into the countryside.” I told him about the cheese maker I had met when I had a summer job on the Île d’Oléron.
“You’ve eaten Oléron?” he asked. “I thought they weren’t making that anymore.” I wondered how he could possibly know such an obscure fact, but I did not let on. Acting utterly world-weary, I told him about my friend Marie, the last living creator of Oléron cheese. He was very impressed, and for a moment I almost liked him.
The food editor ordered for all of us. He ordered a lot. There were appetizers and a fish course. There was lamb from the Indonesian ovens. (“My father always ordered the lamb when he came to the Trader’s,” he said in a voice hinting at ancestral mansions and generations of family retainers. Under the table, Phil gave me a kick. Over the table, he raised his eyebrows. I giggled.)
Dinner went on for hours. Once we got past the competitive part, somewhere between the salad and the cheese course, it all got easier; and as we started on the third bottle of wine, it actually began to be fun.
Afterward we sipped cognac from big snifters that the sommelier warmed over candles. Wrapping my hands around the cozy chunk of glass, I watched the food editor push an unruly lock of curly black hair out of his eyes and realized that he wasn’t as old as he’d seemed. I began to wonder if the early pompousness had been an act too. Maybe he thought that was how food editors were supposed to behave.
“When was the last time you were in France?” he asked suddenly.
“It’s been years,” I said sadly. “I haven’t been able to afford a trip.”
“You should make an effort,” he said. “You’re a restaurant critic; you don’t want to seem provincial. Have you spent time in L.A.?”
“Almost none,” I replied like a true citizen of Berkeley. “I can’t stand the place.”
“You have to rise above that,” he said. “It’s not Paris, of course, but you ought to know what’s going on in the other part of the state. Los Angeles is starting to be a good restaurant town.”
“Are you offering to pay for a trip?” I asked, looking up at him.
“Why not?” he replied. “After all, I am your editor.”
* * *
When I went down to breakfast the next morning, the sour smell of spilled wine rose up and hit me like a fist. The kitchen table was littered with peanut shells and crumpled napkins; dirty plates were piled high in the sink. Used coffee grounds, looking horrifyingly like ants, spilled crazily across the counter. I was cleaning up the mess, still jabbing angrily at the dishes, when Nick bounced cheerfully into the room asking, “So how was dinner?”
“Fine,” I growled, muttering imprecations under my breath. Nick peered into the pan in which I was about to scramble eggs and said, “You aren’t planning to cook those in butter are you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Didn’t you read that article I left out for you yesterday?”
Actually, I had. Nick was constantly leaving me articles from worthy publications detailing all the reasons why I should not eat one or the other of my favorite foods. Butter was his most recent target; he was currently very big on soy.
“I won’t eat tofu on my toast!” I was pr
otesting when the phone rang. I picked it up and shouted, “Yes?”
“How was dinner?” It was Doug’s calm voice.
I tried to visualize him as he spoke, to see the clean curve of his body, his earnest good looks. I imagined him with the prairie behind him, his toolbox at his feet, leaning into the phone. I thought of my behavior of the night before, all that bluffing about food, and a wave of embarrassment swept over me.
“Fine,” I said. “How’s Omaha?”
“Great!” he replied. “They love my work. The people here are really terrific.”
He sounded so pleased with himself, so happy to be there, that I had a sudden thought that one of those terrific people might be a woman. But instead of posing that question, I asked for reassurance. “I’m really lonely without you,” I said. “I hope you’ll be home soon.”
Doug missed his cue. “This won’t be a short trip,” he said. “Probably have to stay here longer than I expected. We’ve started testing a structure that’s an ethereal tent. The strings stretch from a central pole so that they snatch music from the breeze. But it’s got to be in the right site, and it’ll take a while to find it.”
“I really miss you,” I said hopefully. Maybe I’d go out there for a few days. Maybe he’d ask me to.
“It’s good to be in a completely different environment,” he replied, bypassing yet another cue. “Omaha is surprisingly beautiful. I’m getting all kinds of new ideas.”
“Doug!” I suddenly felt like a pathetic little kid, jumping up and down for attention. But instead of simply saying that I wanted to go to Omaha, I said, “I think we need to talk about whether all this traveling is a good idea.”
“It’s probably not,” he said reasonably, “but as long as you’re doing that job and I’m doing this one, I don’t see that we have any choice.”
I persisted. “But we’re thirty-one years old and it’s time we started thinking about having a family.” Why couldn’t he understand what I was saying?
“We do need to talk about it,” he said, “but I think we should wait till we’re together.”
