At the time it seemed like a good idea. Get the interview and in getting it try to find out why a really nice foodservice tradition, so simple and down-to-earth, so comforting and comfortable, had been snubbed and scorned by foodies, writers and critics rushing hysterically to hug and asskiss something christened, by one of them, upscalelegant (pronounced, in the French manner, oop-skall-elli-gaunt) the latest and, some insisted, hottest dining-out fad since Puck and his designer pizzas.
I wanted answers because I had suddenly sensed an undercurrent of rebirth and revolt; of back to traditional values, basics and common sense and I needed to know who was behind it. Had the time come—at last, at last—for restaurants to jettison fads filled to the brim with impetuous imagination, affected impertinence, pompous ebullience, incantations and hocus pocus; to ditch upscalelegant?
After days of chasing blind leads, staking out dozens of fast food places and food courts in shopping malls, tearing up and down dark alleys and one-way streets, I finally caught up with Jimmy Sweetbreads (known to his intimates simply as “Sweets”), frightened and lonely in a grubby motel room, a half-open box of pepperoni-with-anchovies pizza on the bed next to him; a bratwurst, uneaten on a paper plate next to it.
Everything about the setting was reminiscent of what had led to his unmasking nearly a year ago. Sweets had not forgotten: “Please do not let anyone know where you found me.”
It had been well over a year since disciples of the organization he heads, The Five S (Society of Swank Swells and Swell Swilling), had stumbled upon him holed up frightened and lonely in a dingy, unlit room of a sleazy motel, guzzling Miller Lite, stroking a tumescent bratwurst and fondling a flaccid slice of pizza-with-everything; irrefutable evidence, disciples said, he had veered from the straight and narrow; or, as one of them (a food writer) ironically characterized it, “the sautéed and poached.”
“Talk to me, Sweets,” I said. “What really happened?” His clothes, stinking of anchovies and other pungent odors I had difficulty identifying (could it have been the bratwurst?), overpowered me and I backed off a bit.
“Be gentle, dear friend,” Sweets said. “I will tell you everything as best I can,” tears rolling down his chubby cheeks.
Between bites of something other than pizza (could it have been the bratwurst?), he began. No matter how hard he tried to muffle them, burps disturbed his confession and my sense of smell.
“Let me tell you how astray it is I have strayed, how tarnished it is my untarnishment, how soul-less my soul. Yes, I have sinned. I have sinned against Puck, Waters, and Waxman; against Fearing and Ogden; against Soltner and the memory of Beard. But I will tell you—as they are my witnesses: I did not eat that pizza. I swear it. I looked at it. I lusted after it; and, surely, I may have drooled. But I did not eat it. Here beside me there is proof: let this pizza be my witness as God is mine.” He held up a limp slice and flapped it at me.
Even though Sweets had bolted from the dominion of his master, Jimmy “The Baker” Baker, the so-called “Haute Priest of Haute Cross Buns,” Sweets’s Restaurant Nouvelle still remained the model for dozens of mostly flawed versions throughout the country, all owned, operated, and cash-flowed by a legion of disciples who, with an evangelical fervor bordering on the fanatical, insisted they never adulterated or swerved from Restaurant Nouvelle’s plates of righteousness.
Notwithstanding Sweets’s fall from grace, Restaurant Nouvelle was alive and well, one of upscalelegant’s most venerated icons, now supported and stoked by members of The Five S. Sweets no longer was engaged in its mission or the restaurant. Had he sinned, a sheep drifting (banished?)from the fold? I needed to know.
“You want dirt for your magazine? Unbleached grist for your mill? Want to know who pulled the trigger that sprayed pepperoni on the double cheese pizza with everything including anchovies I ordered that fateful night? Is that right?”
I nodded.
“It got to me after a while. It became a religion: thousands every week worshipping at Restaurant Nouvelle, my temple of haute cuisine. Everything fresh; everything made from scratch. Churned butter, ground flour, wheat from chaff. We bought nothing prepared. We were beholden only to the soil and the farm, the keeper of all things sustainable. No preservatives in the bread. Were you ever served bread with no preservatives? Forgive me if I sound hysterical. Just like that: one minute the bread is hot, the next like a rock. It was real food I was serving; and my customers loved it. Preservative-free rolls turned instantly crumbly and cold all because ‘The Baker’ taught me never to profane the staff of life.
“Nevertheless, in my garden—like it or not—I profaned: before they had a chance to mature, I aborted virginal carrots, delectable asparagus, lovable tomatoes, adorable ears of corn and served them, unincubated, to my customers who could not get enough. I could not keep up with their greed, their shameless willingness to pump into my coffers dollars and donations to keep Restaurant Nouvelle solvent. Yet, all was not well in my house. As God is my judge and Mother Nature my life force, I was miserable.
“I cannot tell you the number of times the voices of fast food called on me, beckoning me to their kitchens, tempting me to burn my toque, shred my clogs, and join their cult of heathens deep-fat-frying everything except their cole slaw.
“Get thee behind me, Ronald McDonald, I said. But no one was listening. The voices of The Five S kept calling, rising in tempo and sonority, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’
“From a plastic likeness of a real shrub afire with twinkle lights next to the jungle gym of Wendy’s came the voice of the Burger King exhorting me to forsake the single, the double, the triple and, for the love of God, eat a Whopper your way.
“I could not resist their pleas. It soon became crystal clear, unless I did something drastic—however meager my drasticulating might be—that all food everywhere was in danger of becoming nouvellized: forgettable, unsavory, and inedible. Needless to say, I had been epiphanized. I begged for exculpation.
“I took my crusade for memorable, savory, and edible food first to Kansas City where I saw thousands smiling seraphically as they waited to be seated at restaurants serving barbecue and ribs, most extraordinary among them, a place called Arthur Bryant’s, known to some as King Arthur’s. And while there, I heard Larry ‘Fats’ Goldberg extol the virtues of ice cream, but only if made with 30-percent or more butter fat.
“In New Orleans the masses consumed cornbread and shrimp etouffee and muffuletta sandwiches and foods dripping with essences of andouille sausage and okra and they laughed wondrously and chatted angelically.
“In Virginia, I walked the beaches and stopped periodically at kiosks to gorge (forgive me) on soft shell crabs.
“In New York, millions passed through the portals of the Carnegie and Stage Delis to eat corned beef on rye and flanken and bagels with lox and schmears of cream cheese already and they were not afraid. On a corner in the garment district a quartet of anti-PETA street performers, wearing nothing but fur coats and leather jackets, sang every verse of ‘Jimmy Foie Gras and I Don’t Care.’ Do you know it?”
“Once in Yountville, I heard Thomas Keller and his special guest, Charlie Trotter, sing it. Please go on,” I said.
“And in Chicago, through the gates of Ed Debevic’s and Ditka’s passed the unclean eating food piled high on plates until the very tables they were seated at groaned.
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| Chase (left), president with v.p., operations, Curtiss Gibson |
“Still, I did not understand. I was overcome. I was unconvinced. I was as a lamb, lost in a godless wilderness. What was to become of The Five S, of Restaurant Nouvelle? Of upscalelegant?
“In a moment of weakness as I tried valiantly to rekindle my calling, I took my message to television and demonstrated step-by-step (as time would allow) how to prepare food religiously with buerre blanc and radicchio and sauces pure, silky, and reduced and I offered recipes for next to nothing except postage and handling and thousands wrote in to box numbers and more befuddled I became.
“Back to Restaurant Nouvelle I retreated like the prodigal owner and knocked lost-sheepishly on the front door. They let me in overjoyed to see me as was I to see them. Still befuddled and still questioning my faith, I implored the chef to add angel hair pasta and monkfish to the menu but they had no taste at all. More befuddled I became. And so it came to pass that in the dark days after my fall from grace, we blackened everything and the food tasted not of their essences, but of cast iron and tree root rot. It was hopeless as was I. I was unblessed.
“The voices of Mr. Ditka and Mr. Chase became louder and louder and were joined by those of Mimi Sheraton and her ilk telling the world to ‘street eat.’ Diners sprung up everywhere as did bistros. Grandmothers donned hairnets and uncovered from between the pages of centuries-old cookbooks dog-eared recipes for meatloaf and lumpy mashed potatoes.
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