February 1995: Stuart Levin

All of us lost track of him a few years back. He was incommunicado, confined to a wheelchair, suffering the hurts and pains of MS and the indignities of family that forgot about him. He had shut up.

He had an inkling that something was happening, that something was amiss, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. A couple of years before he shut up, he called to let me know that the loss of balance he was suffering now and again was due neither to an inner-ear infection nor a stroke, but something more serious. Months later, he told me of MS and the wheelchair. He said he was coping with it, understanding it, facing up to it. He said his wife left him. “She knocked me over and out of the wheelchair and left me there helpless.”

For a while after that, he taught classes on foodservice at a local high school; for a while, from his apartment on Central Park West, NYC, he would go next door to eat at Café des Artistes where he was welcomed and accommodated. He told me confidentially he even made up with des Artistes owner, George Lang with whom, over the years, he had serious differences about what a restaurant should be, the differences fueled by ego and arrogance that both had in abundance. And then he shut up. No one knew what happened to him. No one could find him. He refused to answer his phone. Or, ashamed (unlikely), didn’t want to.

Last year the Culinary Institute of America tossed a fund-raiser to honor NYC’s defunct Le Pavillon.  

Lots of people who worked at the restaurant were at the C.I.A. to reminisce about the good old days. They all gathered at the Danny Kaye Theater and as Ferdinand Metz, the C.I.A.’s president, cooked Le Pavillon specialties, they told stories about Le Pavillon. Pierre Franey, who was for a while Pavillon’s chef, told a story; Craig Claiborne told a story; a chef and a cook and a bartender and a waiter told stories. I sat there and listened to the stories and wondered why no one had anything to say about Stuart Levin who bought Le Pavillon from Henri Soulé in 1968 and closed it in 1972.

An hour or so before the restaurant celebration began, I sat with Metz drinking coffee in his office. I asked him if Stuart was going to be here. He said his office tried to contact him, but to no avail. I said I think we should try one more time. Metz tried, but Stuart did not answer. He had shut up.

At the Danny Kaye Theater, I had in my briefcase a copy of a cover story I wrote about Stuart. I had brought it with me because I wanted to read a passage from it—to honor Le Pavillon and, if Stuart couldn’t attend, to give him a voice in the celebration. I thought it the right thing to do, but because I wasn’t on the program, I didn’t do it. I should have. Here it is:

“My experiences at Pavillon were monumental,” said Stuart. “I gave of myself to the staff. I never fooled them. I never discussed a dish with the chef unless I knew more about it than he did. Joe Baum taught me that. He also taught me, because of his relationship with Albert Stockli, how important it is to develop and hold a close and warm relationship with your chef.

“I went to the kitchen and had lunch there at the family table. Dinner, too. I ate what they ate. I didn’t like many things, but I learned. They spoke French. I couldn’t. So I went to Berlitz and learned. They sat down with me and broke bread with me and listened to what I had to say. And they never put me down. They treated me like a gentleman because I treated them like gentlemen, and it was the most marvelous four years I can remember.”

I don’t know what the hell happened to Stuart. I do know who the hell he was.

He was a dear friend. Every time I went to New York, I’d make a point to call him ahead of time. If he had the time, we’d spend some together. If I needed help with a panel, a focus group—anything —I could always count on him. He gave eloquently and candidly of himself and his memories. He was outspoken and controversial. He dealt absolutely with absolutes; and you could, if you wished, contradict him, but you had better be ready to defend yourself clearly and precisely.

“I hate cant,” he told me. “I hate bullshit and hypocrisy.”

“The business grabs him, holds him,” I wrote in that cover story in 1980. “Not desperately. Passionately. There is no pulling Levin back from foodservice. It has massaged his libido, seduced him. He is in love with restaurateuring. He lusts after all of it. The perfect partner. The restaurant as mistress. The affair has been going on for 30 years. His ardor has not dimmed.

“Levin relishes success, moves effortlessly with it, glides easily through it, lets it slosh all over him. He wears it well. He is cresting always: like a skilled surfer forever riding the perfect wave he will do so, he assures me, until he wipes out.”

Stuart died Monday, December 19, 1994.