by Gael Greene
“I would never run a joint that way,” said Danny Lavezzo, who ran P. J. Clarke’s, often in absentia. “People aren’t even hungry. They just come in to find out how they rate. It runs you jagged.”
Jagged, Elaine would rip up checks. “Out. Out. Get the creep out,” she would say, exiling some real or imagined offender. When a waiter took pity on the actress Cloris Leachman standing famished at the bar during an extended wait and brought her a piece of bread, Elaine screamed insults too primitive to print in New York magazine. Leachman didn’t move. When Suni Agnelli’s kids wanted Cat Stevens’s autograph, Elaine closed in, snapping, “I won’t have my customers annoyed.” When Ben Gazzara left a ten-dollar tip on a one-hundred-dollar check, Elaine screamed, “How dare you stiff my waiters?” One by one, Gazzara’s drinking companions—Pete Hamill, Nick Pileggi, John Scanlan—got up, slipped behind Elaine, and disassociated themselves from Gazzara’s gaffe. “Her strength is everyone’s fear of the irrational mother,” theorized my New York colleague Anthony Haden-Guest.
But when Elaine aimed her ire at Women’s Wear editor in chief Michael Cody, he took his vengeance. Elaine’s ceased to exist in the gossipy “Eye” column of Women’s Wear. That was the summer of 1975. I tagged along with friends who loved Elaine’s—there to document the fallout. “Unless Patty Hearst is captured playing croquet on the White House Lawn or Golda Meir is trapped having breakfast in bed (bacon and eggs in a pita) with Anwar Sadat in a hot sheet motel on the Gaza Strip, it looks as if the summer of ’75 may come to be known for the Great Saloon War,” I wrote.
It was an argument over money that provoked Elaine’s majordomo and silent partner, Nick Spagnolo, to break away, moving into Nicola’s at what had been the Foresters Rendezvous at 146 East 84th, taking along her third chef, a waiter or two, a dishwasher, the name of her baker, and the formula for her squid salad. Women’s Wear—with a constituency the size of Ruritania, it somehow wielded the power of an H-bomb in those days—proclaimed Nicola’s the best “joint” in town, hailing it for “fast becoming the IN place to go.” Thus began the tug-of-war between literary Manhattan’s wet nurse and her right-hand man for the hearts and minds, floating bar tabs, and heartburn of Elaine faithfuls: the loitering literati, the filmflam, the commuting celebs and their heaps of Uriahs, the masochists, the gofers and hangers-on.
Irwin Shaw, Chanel mannequin-turned-designer Jackie Rogers, Lily and Douglas Auchincloss, Arthur Miller, Robert Altman, Larry King—WWD gave the roll call. Soon the scrubbed little rich kids and Bloomingdale’s overreachers were standing summer pink and beautiful at the bar as Nick fussed over defectors from Elaine’s: Rita Gam, Jules Feiffer, Nora Ephron and her husband-to-be, Carl Bernstein.
As if those betrayals weren’t cruel enough, it was Gay Talese, Elaine’s very special darling, who couldn’t help observing to David Halberstam, as I reported, “The food is really better here.”
Halberstam, choking slightly, pointed to a potted palm: “Shhhh. She may have the place wired.”
Elaine’s pets were pinned wiggling in the spotlight, as Suzy, the Ernie Pyle of frontline hometown war correspondents, filled her Daily News column with names. Dare one brave a veal chop at Nick’s for fear of exile from Elaine’s? Soon there were faint tracks in the sidewalk from Elaine’s flock skulking, swaggering between the two fueling stands. Spaghetti carbonara at Nick’s. Nightcaps at Elaine’s. Beef paillard at Elaine’s. Then Nick’s till a boozy 2:00 AM. Everyone wanted a decent beef paillard and Elaine’s devotion, too. Did Elaine know? Would she explode? Should one . . . confess? The journalistic titans of our time cowered and burped.
Certain passionate Elaineastes refused to cross Nick’s threshold. But a lot of the old true blues quite frankly liked Nick, too. “Elaine gave us a sense of community and Nick was part of that feeling,” I quoted Halberstam. He hesitated, pondering the boundaries of loyalty, remembering that Elaine herself had narrowed the turf during the bitterest moments of the Harper’s Magazine rebellion “when she seated that miserable son-of-a-bitch Lewis Lapham at the very next table.”
“Elaine’s is our club, but Nick’s is a restaurant,” saloon commuters cried. “Nick’s veal is spectacular,” one assured me. “His salad is fifty times better,” reported another. “I have been watching Elaine’s veal chop,” reported one of America’s most lauded investigative journalists. “It’s getting smaller.” Men of courage, women of conviction, brave journalists who had boldly taken on the president, the Pentagon, the Mafia, New York Post publisher Dorothy Schiff, and assorted other great American institutions, begged not to be quoted by name.
Now Nick’s was all booked, unless he happened to know you. Friends of the house got seated fast. Strangers held up the bar, eyes darting in paranoia as they watched socialite (later publisher) Carter Burden rushed to a vacant table. They screamed. Nick screamed back: “Go. Don’t wait. I told you it might be two hours.” He stalked away.
Had he not learned about the restaurant business at Elaine’s elbow? Nick had the Walter Cronkites, Muriel Resnik (Any Wednesday), Lee Radziwill, even Elaine’s very special darling, playwright Jack Richardson. And film director Frank Perry with writer/editor Barbara Goldsmith. Elaine had Kurt Vonnegut and his wife, photographer Jill Krementz, the Schuyler Chapins, Frankie Fitzgerald, and David Halberstam two nights in a row (with Burt Glinn Tuesday, with Tammy Grimes on Wednesday). Elaine had society’s design duo, Mica Ertegun and Chessy Raynor. And Suzy, breathlessly reporting the heroes and casualties of the nightly skirmish.
One night, Elaine bounced two guys and was moving back to her check-toting station at the bar, when one of them sneaked back in and kicked her in the derriere. Was it an act of isolated boldness? Was it the beginning of the end?
“Does the cosmic angst of this saloon ado escape you?” I asked my readers. “If your adrenaline is unspiked by minor masochism, if you’re not susceptible to narcissistic mortification, if you have never quite understood the need to escape from your wife, the seven drinks before supper, the fear of closing your eyes, the terror of intimacy, the horror of being alone, then it is difficult to explain the spiritual imperative of a refuge like Elaine’s.” “How amusing,” writer Michael Mooney mused (fortified by seeing the cover of his new book on the wall at both Nicola’s and Elaine’s. “That Elaine Kaufman should be the Madame de Maintenon of the age.”
Despite assorted seismic fissures now and then over the years, Elaine is still there in her saloon every night, bigger than life. She never really looked young, so she doesn’t look old. Three decades later, she indulges the survivors, mothering a new generation of press punksters and boldface parentheses, hosting their book parties and exclusive opening-night after parties, their new DVDs and Grammys, and now and then she’ll open in the afternoon for a wake, where we look around to see who’s alive, who’s a blonde now, who’s had a face-lift, who’s still eating out on somebody else’s check. It’s power beyond chic, beyond fashion, beyond generational divide. Mama knows.
As for Nick, well, Nicola’s is still there, but I can’t recall the last time anyone spoke of it.
24
NOBODY KNOWS THE TRUFFLES I’VE SEEN
PRESS JUNKETS AND FREE MEALS WERE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO NEW YORK magazine critics and contributing editors. But there was no way I could refuse the totally elegant hustle Yanou called to propose. Ten of America’s greatest writers would be invited to the grand bouffe of all bouffes, choreographed to show off one of her clients, La Grande Cuisine Française, a new collective of France’s star toques. The Young Turks, as they had been dubbed by Raymond Sokolow, Claiborne’s replacement at the Times, would soon become the shock troops of something called the nouvelle cuisine. We would crisscross France’s gourmand plains at harvest time in the two company jets of our hosts, Moët & Chandon.
It was 1973, the year of Watergate revelations, and heavy U.S. air strikes in Cambodia. Nixon’s secret tapings were no longer a secret and all my friends wanted to be on his enemies list. Editorial writers
were in a snit because France had ignored worldwide protests and exploded a nuclear device in the South Pacific. But serious eaters are notorious for not nursing grudges. And I could not imagine a richer way to do the gourmand truffle hop than among Yanou’s chosen flock. I also saw the excursion as a chance to escape from the gloom at home, where Don was either melancholy and clingy or melancholy and distant, and where my mother tried not to sound teary on the phone when she spoke of my sister, whose cancer had started to eat away at her bones.
Yanou told me she’d already invited Tom Wolfe and wanted to know whom else to ask. I gave her a wish list of the literary giants I’d most love to break bread with: Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Philip Roth, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal. I got goose bumps just thinking of the wit that would flow with our Dom Pérignon.
To protect my journalistic integrity, Clay Felker agreed that I should pay for the transatlantic flight and my hotel rooms. Yanou promised to ask each chef to give me a bill. Most of them understood the magazine’s rules, but a few just laughed. Pierre Laporte in Biarritz returned my check for thirty dollars with the amount crossed off and “thirty kisses” written in its place. The bills were a pitiful sham, to be quite honest. I would have had to mortgage our little church on the hill in Woodstock to pay for the private-jet hops and the avalanche of champagne, but expensing the magazine for what added up to a pittance made me feel less of a freeloader.
Why was I not shocked to learn that my nominees for a winged salon of great writers were otherwise occupied? Still I assumed similar greats had been gracefully substituted by Yanou. I was taken aback, on boarding the plane, to spy Al Goldstein, editor of the tawdry sex journal Screw, sipping champagne as if severely parched. “I’m not supposed to mention Screw on this trip,” he confided, noting that he was a recent graduate of the Four Seasons wine course, serious bona fides for this excursion. As his last act on earth, he had sent a copy of our itinerary to his Weight Watchers group leader. “I’m probably fourteenth choice,” Al said, brooding. “I’m probably a stand-in for Mailer. I’m Jewish. I’m from Brooklyn. Actually, though, I’ve never stabbed any of my wives.” Not that he couldn’t have, since he was carrying saccharin in an ejector pen.
Nora Ephron had come directly from covering “The battle of the sexes” in Houston, where tennis power Billy Jean King had routed Bobby Riggs in straight sets. New York magazine regular Jane O’Reilly was ostensibly aboard, eating for Ms., Gloria Steinem’s brand-new publication, which had yet to recognize the importance of anything as frivolous as food or wine. There was a very junior editor from House Beautiful; a bourbon-loving science expert, who was writing a book on why infinity isn’t; photographer Dan Wynn (the favorite food photographer of New York then), and Bob Guccione’s sister, who had a pretty serious Coke habit. At least New York’s wine writer, Alex Bespaloff, had serious credentials. Yanou informed us that a British wine journalist and Danny Kaye (“because he is so crazy about cooking”) would join our coven in Paris. To a generation that might only know the great comic artist from movies on late-night television, where he appeared as Hans Christian Andersen, I should note that Danny was a certified foodie, celebrated for his fine Chinese cooking. He kept three helpers slicing and chopping for his star-studded dinner parties in his professionally equipped eat-in kitchen in Beverly Hills. There, he presided over a giant wok with flamboyant gestures, as if he were conducting a symphony.
“This is like a ship of fools,” Goldstein observed, bright-eyed and eager. “No one is with his mate. Do you realize what potential there is for lust?”
I suggested he sublimate his lust and concentrate on this glorious exercise in gluttony—advice I was actually giving myself. All over France, the great chefs had been hoarding the fattest duck livers for us. Awash in a torrent of bubbly, we would jet from foie to foie, collapse on silken sheets in luxury hotel rooms, fighting the cholesterol rush, absently nibbling exquisite chocolates. Never quite sober on our seven-day mission, we groaned as the small corporate jet’s fridge was opened to reveal fresh bottles of Moët every morning before lunch . . . and drank it anyway. Each night, another Michelin-laureled chef would have us at his mercy. From the sound of the plans, I felt I would need a wheelbarrow to transport my own liver back home.
Bleary from jet lag that first morning, we were cheered on by Yanou with an oyster and champagne breakfast at Le Duc, a seafood spot run by the Minchelli brothers, whom Yanou was grooming for stardom. The panache of sea creatures was stunning, like nothing I’d seen before: giant Belons and sharply briny oysters from the Ile de Re. Crackling baby shrimp to eat shell, feelers, eyes, and all, brilliantly peppery. Outsize crab, sweet and tender, with full meaty stomachs and exquisite coral roe. Tiny snails, actually barnacles, with wormlike bodies, which had to be pulled from their shells with a straight pin. Tenderest langoustines steamed in a pepper- and fennel-scented broth. And for dessert, raspberry tart. “I was only going to eat two oysters,” I said, moaning over the Everest of shells on my plate.
Next morning, Yanou divided us up to board two small jets, each assigned over the next seven days to visit a different Michelin two-star spot for lunch and a three-star for dinner. I knew I had landed with the A team when I saw Yanou settling in next to Danny Kaye. Al Goldstein was not happy: “I can just see the headline if this plane goes down,” he complained. “DANNY KAYE KILLED IN PLANE CRASH. Five Others Perish with Full Stomachs.”
First stop, Tours, in the Loire Valley. Gastroholics making the cuisinary hajj in those days often overlooked Charles Barrier’s three stars in Tours. Not us. Barrier didn’t quite look like a chef, but like an ear, nose, and throat man, Danny suggested. And the place was done, done, done, but styleless. The chef’s mousse of fresh duck liver, a recipe he’d worked on for two years, Barrier confided, glowed rosy-pink in its large white china basin—bold, provocative . . . a triumph of voluptuousness in my mouth. I looked around, wanting to share my “Oh my God” sentiments with someone similarly struck. A few of America’s great writers were unwilling even to taste it. The problem was that it looked disturbingly raw.
“I promise you it’s delicious,” I whispered to Goldstein. “Incredibly sensuous.” He shrugged. “You should be ashamed. . . . Aren’t you considered a master of eating pussy?”
He brightened. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. It would help if you’d press down on the back of my head.”
After half a dozen courses—from electrifying to stultifying—lotus-tea sorbet in a big balloon goblet bobbed into view like a life raft afloat in a sea of butter. Looking across the table, I caught a glimpse of newsprint and a photo of a naked thigh. Yanou and our Moët escorts were leafing through an issue of Screw.
Al had been unable to bear anonymity another minute. “I expect to go to jail within a few months under the new obscenity laws,” he was confessing. “I want to go on a full stomach.” He started collecting addresses, promising to send subscriptions to everyone. “Do you realize smut spelled backward is Tums?” he marveled.
Not even Truman Capote could have defined the moment as tellingly.
In off-season Biarritz, we slid into a relaxed and warm welcome at Café de Paris, and fresh duck liver, of course, this time sautéed with apples. Guccione’s sister, Jackie, had developed a taste for Dom Pérignon by then. Well, it’s fizzy, after all, just like Coke. “They should send us a case of this when we get home,” she suggested, “so we can taper off gradually.” Rich rillettes of goose with fat cracklings were a challenge at breakfast the next morning. A challenge met.
The next night, after a long and impressive feast at Roger Vergé’s handsome stone-walled Moulin de Mougins, there was sweet wine to sip with the tiny petits fours, something movingly chocolate, and shockingly tart red currants. And an intoxicating pear liqueur.
“You could get pregnant just from drinking this poire,” Danny announced. Danny alternated between Mr. Congeniality and Rumpelstiltskin. His bawdy high jinks quickly disillusioned the young flower
from House Beautiful. She was shocked to realize that her childhood idol, Hans Christian Andersen, was actually a real man, a Hollywood actor, actively trying to bed her.
I found myself sleeping most of the time between meals. Perhaps foie gras was a soporific. And maybe foie-drugged sleep was a good way to escape memories. I felt Don like a ghost in so many of these rooms. We had made this same voyage of discovery together when everything was new and we were new. Increasingly, I felt woozy from sensory exhaustion. We were all eating like pigs, some of us piggier than others. Clearly, the great chefs of France were vying to stun our taste buds.
I must admit we were less than grateful to our benefactors at Moët & Chandon. There was champagne at every course. We were drowning in it. In rebellion, a few of us demanded red wine. Of course, champagne was James Beard’s prescribed cure for overindulgence. Jim never specified what to do if the overindulgence happened to be committed primarily in cascades of champagne.
“Everybody cover your head with a napkin,” Yanou cried as she demonstrated ortolan-eating etiquette at Troisgros in Roanne. These were the first ortolans of the season, plump little birds crisp-roasted but rare, to crunch and eat whole, everything but the beak. The napkin was to catch the flying juices. But in the isolation of his linen do-rag, Goldstein slipped the fat little creature into his trouser pocket, where the tattletale grease dribbled down his leg. (Later, when France outlawed eating the threatened bird, the napkin at forbidden ortolan feasts would also serve to hide the evidence.)
