Insatiable

by Gael Greene

  But witnessing the kitchen revolution abroad during his August vacance, he began to experiment. When Lutèce regulars raved about the specifics of a thrush mousse they had tasted at Troisgros, he nodded with interest. One week later, he served them tiny egg-shaped ovals of creamy pigeon mousse spiked with juniper berries gathered at his upstate retreat near the ski trails of Hunter. He had clearly succumbed to a taste epiphany at Frédy Girardet in 1979 and began to do what seemed like daring tricks for Lutèce. Just barely cooked rouget flown in fresh from the market of Rungis, outside Paris, appeared as the plat du jour. And French scallops with bright blushing coral still attached thrilled house loyalists. His new vegetable terrine was held together with its own juices, and there was a shocking presence of cilantro. But he was proud of thrifty improvisation, too. Every day at lunch, there was a different soup. “Try my chicken soup,” he urged. And when I complimented him, he confided triumphantly, “For this, the ingredients, it costs me ten cents to make it.”

  André started offering tasting dinners—a forty-five-dollar parade of hors d’oeuvre and entrées with a Gewurztraminer marc-doused lemon ice in between and then two desserts. He began cooking fish noticeably less, though he still nursed old-fashioned notions. I begged him to do my venison rare. Just the thought of it made him screw up his face in distaste. Even now he likes to tell people how misguided I was to demand my chicken “pink” when I am sure what I said was, “Less cooked, André.” It was the squab I wanted rare. He acquiesced, and it was the best squab I’d eaten to date (in 1980), faintly gamy, with threads of celery root and rather punky spatzle. He came by to watch my reaction and was skeptical: “It’s not too bloody?”

  He was almost sixty-one and complaining about his cartilage-ravaged knees the day in 1993 when I asked if he could do two tasting dinners for the four of us—a challenge for the finale of what I didn’t know would be my final review of André Soltner’s Lutèce. That evening’s new dishes were surprising in their complexity. And the simplicity of his mellow signature tarte flambé was stunning in its perfection. There were flaws and I listed them, too, of course.

  “My affair with Lutèce mirrors scenes from a long marriage,” I wrote at the end. “The first storm of passion. The deepening of love. Affectionate familiarity. A certain ennui. The seven-year-itch. Irritation at the other’s inability to be anything but what he is. And now, admiration and tenderness for exactly that.”

  How long could he fly down those stairs to the prep kitchen? I wondered. Who would take over? The Soltners were childless. He had told friends that Simone longed to go home to France. The staff was family (with pensions), and even the busboys had been there for twenty years. He could not simply leave them, he said. He’d brought in chef Pierre Schutz and a maître d’ for a six-month trial marriage, hoping they’d decide to buy the place. But Schutz found it an impossible dream. “Lutèce is André Soltner,” he told me. “No one can replace him.”

  The choice was painful. To let Lutèce survive without its soul or to sell the town house minus its name . . . and see the legend disappear forever. A year later, Michael Weinstein was thrilled to add Lutèce to the mostly pop-feeding ventures of Ark, and the Lutèce family of regulars went into mourning. André’s kitchen staff scattered. Eberhard Müller, the first chef de cuisine of Le Bernardin, took up the fallen whisk. André and Simone bought a retreat on the Riviera but decided to stay in New York, living above the store as always.

  “I always check the kitchen before we go to bed at night, to be sure the oven is off,” André reported. I thought that the compulsive workaholic would pine away in retirement. But he surprised us by joining the faculty at the French Culinary Institute and becoming a celebrity regular on the luxury-cruise circuit . . . seeing the world gratis in exchange for a few demonstrations. He would disappear for weeks at a time with the constantly radiant Simone smiling . . . yes, always smiling now. I like to think they float on gentle seas in a buttery pool on an endless honeymoon.

  48

  THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

  DANCING STOPPED. DISCOS LOST THEIR EDGE. PEOPLE STILL WENT TO clubs and there was music, a beat for stomping, but it didn’t seem to be about dancing. Sometimes preppy kids got up and swayed. Mostly, it seemed to me that people drank and stood around in aimless clots, staring at one another, just checking it out. Hanging out in the ladies’ room of the Tunnel one evening, watching the flirtatious moves of an adorable blond club kid who looked almost female on eight-inch platform sandals, I felt like an obsolete appendage. Not that graceful at just hanging loose. Alpha woman, A-type personality. Does anyone still dance? I wondered. AIDS had chilled the exuberance, certainly mine. When Steven was in Aspen, I found myself going to bed earlier and more prudently—alone.

  Just when Americans had every right to be celebrating the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Poland, then Czechoslovakia tossing aside Communist regimes, the joy was dimmed by a plague that wouldn’t go away. “That cutting edge of insanity and creativity has just lost its steam,” the Times quoted a major disco entrepreneur of the eighties as saying explaining why he’d decamped to Los Angeles in 1991. With the first George Bush in the White House, recession compounded by war in the Gulf made entrepreneurs nervous, and yet, as Food Arts reported in December 1990, “People are eating out in numbers that would have paralyzed our ancestors with disbelief.”

  Eating out had become a habit that no amount of upscale carryout could cure. Indeed, the perversity of dining trends in the nineties conspired to make New York dining more glorious than ever. Health issues, discoveries about trans fats, ever-evolving slimming regimes—low-fat, Dr. Atkins, low-carb diets—inspired a rush of new products onto the supermarket shelves, little stars signifying low-fat selections on a few menus, a small bubble of vegetarian sanctuaries, and a new respect for seafood.

  Could anyone claim they didn’t know the bad news about fat and cholesterol? Defying the odds was just another high-risk sport. Bistros and new American cooks thrived by selling Grandma’s fat-oozing short ribs, greasy pork shanks, and potatoes in every permutation. After a pious breakfast of non-fat yogurt and high-bran kibbles and bits, and a penitent lunch of undressed vegetables and salad greens, I blithely confronted the caramelized fatty crust of duck confit or the myriad sausages of a nicely crumbed cassoulet. Did I imagine my blood thickening just from inhaling the fumes? It’s my job, I told myself; someone had to do it.

  Steak houses multiplied in this town of celebrated sirloin. Ambitious chains from out of town invaded the city, to chauvinist jeers. Where once fifteen ounces of prime sirloin satisfied the raging carnivore, now unabashed meat lovers, in innocence or denial, favored the fattier rib eye or porterhouse, even a giant Fiorentina slicked with olive oil, or an outsize fifty-six-ounce haunch for two. Gallagher’s touted the General Schwarzkopf steak—a filet mignon stuffed with Roquefort. By the time Laurent Tourondel dreamed up BLT Steak in 2004, even health-savvy affluents would line up to rebel against dietary sanctions, seduced by the chef’s giveaway prologue of chicken liver mousse, imported charcuterie, and buttery popovers as big as a toddler’s head, before even getting to the beef, with a side of creamy truffled gnocchi—“for the table to share.” Armored with cholesterol blockers, it was arteries be damned.

  Just when most of us knew enough about wine to impress one another, even to the extent of being boring, cocktails came back, classics revisited, creations ever wilder and more exotic: martinis in every flavor—watermelon, green apple, passion fruit—mojitos and margaritas to lubricate the new Latino fusion craze. The very French cheese course before dessert that we early foodies adopted in the seventies, when we were trying to seem more French, had almost vanished as desserts got more ambitious and imperative. Stocking cheese for a dwindling few and watching it age was costly. But then Terrance Brennan at Picholine proved that a cheese sommelier pushing a trolley paved with manna of goat, cow, and sheep could lure us back to butterfat. Ambitious cheese wagons reappeared. Bon Appétit attribu
ted this denial of cardio-reality to a backlash against conflicting, confusing, and restrictive notions about health.

  I lived my life in two time zones. In New York, I kept up with the endlessly evolving restaurant scene, with its strange liaisons, its swift triumphs, the cruel washouts. I tracked the openings, waited for the buzz, gathered friends from a vast Rolodex of willing tasters to share my reviewing meals while my main man toiled in Aspen. The grandiose dreams of the eighties grand cafés had left a wake of wounded amateurs, but the survivors never seemed to stop scrambling. Once again, bistro, trattoria, rustic, and homey were the buzzwords. Each year, the culinary schools mustered a new crop of ambitious pups, along with eager grown-ups changing careers midlife. I kept my little spiral notebook tucked under the table—I can’t even guess how many hundreds I’ve filled with nearly unintelligible scratchings I would struggle to decipher and transcribe the next morning. I was swept along, thrilled by the richness and constant change. Each evening, I picked up the menu, full of the hope that I was about to discover the next wonder.

  Every few weeks, I’d fly out to the house Steven and I had rented in Aspen Meadows for a modest sum from the ready-to-wear manufacturer turned art collector Larry Aldrich—in exchange for Steven keeping watch all winter, shoveling, and, if necessary, repairing. I loved being with a man who could fix things and build stuff, steer a car calmly in a blizzard, walk up hills on cross-country skis, and do handsome graphics, too. It felt healthy to dip into outdoor life. Awkward, cogenitally unathletic, and full of unexpressed fears, I acted as if I weren’t the spoiled après-ski sybarite I certainly was. As a Bronx-born mountain man, Steven seemed to be a perfect blend of street smarts, intellect, and artistry. I was impressed that he did the Times crossword every day in ink. His friends—artists, museum people, and moneyed supporters—became part of my world. I introduced them to the potluck dinner concept I’d picked up in the Hamptons—just prepare one dish and be free to swim, ski, or work all day. We were hosts to wildly eclectic feasts of spicy tamales, scallops and shitake salads, bacon-topped meat loaf, a tofu-cashew-bean toss, and German chocolate cake.

  The writers among us read from our works in progress. I couldn’t look at Steven when I came to the erotic scenes in my porn-star novel. I didn’t have the courage to see if he felt exposed. But our time together was cozy. I loved his face, especially his sunny dimpled smile, and the fact that, with his mustache and broken nose, he looked like my father—although not enough to be spooky. It was clear then that we liked the same people, and agreed on those we could live without. We both had a passion for travel, and when we were home, the silence was pleasant, even soothing as he watched television and I cooked or read or clicked the typewriter keys.

  When I finally realized that the Prince of Porn novel needed a drastic makeover, I retreated from the challenge by writing a children’s book about a little girl named after Julia Child, who had to eat out every night because her mother was a restaurant critic. The first chapter, set at the Four Seasons, had the Aspen potluck crowd roaring. I had hoped it would be fun for grown-ups to read, too. I guess I’ll never know. No one was buying Juliette Noodles, either.

  Did my obsession with Citymeals stall my novel? Certainly it drained my energy as our annual budgets grew and we stretched to raise more money to feed the city’s fastest-growing population. There were constant crises, people to be wooed or offended, feelings to be soothed. I was not born to run a million-dollar enterprise. To say I was not exactly a diplomat was a mild way to put it. I was a bulldozer, a diva, as my friends on the board let me know. But New Yorkers who liked what we were doing jumped in.

  Our auction items were priceless (thanks to the persuasive power of my Parisian ami Yanou and her loyal French cronies, who seemed willing to donate whatever she asked). We never started the bidding till the crowd was tipsy. I was irreverent and outspoken at our board meetings, not at all boardlike, sharing the lead with renowned community leaders Lew Rudin and Bob Tisch after Jim Beard died.

  I was especially obsessed with our special events. If the staff didn’t follow up on my suggestions immediately, I did so myself. I drove them crazy, I was told. But what could they say? I was like a machine fueling public awareness. I started reading the “Business” section of the Times, tearing out the names of who was up and who was down and who might want to rehabilitate their name by becoming our benefactor. I documented our mission in New York and readers sent checks. I wrote fund-raising letters that conveyed the tragic reality of the ailing homebound elderly. I went on talk shows. I got friends in the press to tell our story.

  But the truth is, it wasn’t a tough sell. New Yorkers were deeply moved by the specter of the austere lives of our elderly homebound neighbors. Supporters liked knowing that every dollar they gave went only to deliver meals. They were generous, realizing that we were not asking them to finance a dream, for the dream was already a reality: Meals were going out every day, including weekends and holidays, on the street where they lived or just minutes away. I could say I didn’t write another novel because Citymeals chewed up so much time, creativity, and passion. But maybe it was plain old procrastination—that I lost myself in Citymeals to avoid rejection and the work of finding a way to tell a story no one seemed willing to publish.

  My mother had surgery for breast cancer, and I flew to Detroit to see her, though never often enough not to feel guilty. We spoke on the phone twice a day. “When you have some time between feeding all those old ladies in New York, you could come to see me,” she said, not that she wasn’t proud of what I’d done with Citymeals. Our executive director, Marcia Stein, flew her and my late sister’s oldest daughter, Dana, to New York as a surprise on the night I was honored at a CMOW benefit in the Rainbow Room—the dinner itself was a gift from Joe Baum and his partners at Rainbow. Robin Leach auctioned five minutes on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. We sold it for $55,000—twice. By the time Robin came to a reviewing dinner and breakfast in bed, served by Gael Greene, Joe Baum was so mellow, he kept his paddle in the air till the bid reached eleven thousand dollars.

  Saralee’s cancer had spread to her bones. She could no longer drive. In the suburbs outside Detroit, that was a major deprivation. She hated being dependent on everyone. What bothered her most, she admitted, was not being a redhead anymore. As a young woman, her hair had been a rich silken auburn. She covered the gray with henna, and as her hair grew white, the colorist gave it an I Love Lucy orange glow. Even as her hair thinned, she kept that teased copper halo. But the chemotherapy had left strange lesions on her face and scalp and she could no longer tolerate the dye.

  “I look in the mirror,” she said, “and I wonder, Who is that little old white-haired lady?”

  I realized in the middle of an evening call one day that my mother was coughing a lot.

  “Mom, you’re coughing,” I said. “You were coughing yesterday, too. And clearing your throat.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  I knew she saw her oncologist every few weeks. “What does the doctor say?”

  “He says it’s okay for me to buy green bananas.” It was her way to ask the terrible question without really demanding to know. On each visit, she would ask the doctor that same question and look into his eyes as he responded without cracking a smile.

  I worried about that cough. The next day, she boasted that she was losing weight.

  “But why are you losing weight?”

  She admitted she was having trouble swallowing. “Even lettuce. It makes me gag. I can’t seem to swallow it.”

  I called my brother, the doctor, in Chicago. “Something is wrong, Jim,” I said. “She’s coughing all the time, and now she says she has problems swallowing. Do you mind calling the oncologist? How could he have missed that cough? I’m too angry to call him. He’ll take your call before he’ll take mine.”

  She had cancer of the esophagus. No one was sure if it was a new cancer or metastasis from the breast cancer. But it didn’t really matter. The
re it was. The hospital put her first on one drug, then on another. When the disease reached her kidneys, she went into a coma. She died in the early hours of the morning in the king-size bed she’d shared with Daddy, surrounded by my sister’s children—one on the pillow sleeping beside her, the other two sleeping on the floor. My niece Dana came to tell me in the room next door, where I was sleeping. A hospice nurse had suggested not calling anyone right away when my mother stopped breathing, fearing the police might rush her to an emergency room, where they would try to revive her.

  “Do you think you could go back to sleep for a while?” I asked. My niece, her face streaked with tears, looked at me as if I were out of my mind. I was not crying. That surprised me, too. But I was grateful death had come quickly. I thought of all the pain, her terror, the terrible indignities. She had been peaceful, pale but pink-cheeked, as she lay there the night before. A few days earlier, she had frightened her caretaker by saying she saw people at the window.

  “Don’t you see those three people?” my mother had asked. “They’re waiting for us. They’re waiting to take us away.” I felt comforted thinking my mother believed she was just going away and would see Margie again. I thought about family reunions in a heaven I don’t believe in, wondering how old everyone would be. And I fell asleep. Two hours later, I woke and we called 911.

  At noon, men from the funeral home wheeled her body away through the hall outside my room. I saw them pass. There was a woman sitting at my portable typewriter, finishing the restaurant review that was due by fax at New York that very minute. I am not sure I know that woman.