Dining with a Book

Usually the lone diner in a restaurant is an object of pity--unless you have been one yourself and value the company of a good book: the perfect companion, who does all the talking so you don't have to talk while you chew, who provides food for thought while you nourish your belly. As a hungry teenager I used to get home in the afternoon and gobble through two bowls of Cheerios with raisins, a book in one hand and a spoon in the other. In college I often read the newspaper over breakfast, and now it's email on the screen illuminating my oatmeal.

Another variation on the book-at the-dinner-table is the long-enduring and lately re-popular trend of the Book Club (an estimated seven million people in America are involved in book clubs!). I meet with one group that focuses more on the food at our potluck brunches or dinners than on the content of the book--and this is no literary slouch. Last month, when discussing Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight about a settler family in southern Africa in the 1970's, we ate our masa meal and stew supper around a centerpiece including a Coke can from Botswana circa 1990. We had a honey tasting when we discussed The Secret Life of Bees and Middle Eastern food after reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, we dined at a local Burmese restaurant to discuss The Piano Tuner (though typically we meet at each other's homes).

We talked about making a Book Club Cook Book, featuring the recipes that appeared for the strkingly delicious meals associated with each book we read, but alas, there is already one on the market! Promoted as "Part cookbook, part celebration of the written word, the volume illustrates how books and ideas can bring people together," The Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp certainly did their research. Along with a brief summary of the listed book, they detail the context of the menu item and seem to include related quotations in addition to portraits of book clubs around the country.

Glancing through the table of contents, it looks like my book clubs have read a large portion of their collection, which expands on the concept of a local book club canon to indicate perhaps a national collective consciousness through common reading (with due credit to Pulitzer Prize and New York Times Bestseller lists). In my college alum group book club, many members have been attending for years, and therefore have read many of the same books, which inevitably flavors and informs subsequent discussions with references back to earler readings. This group had an 10th annivrsary meeting and stacked up a copy of each book read (save one title we couldn't locate) to see all that had passed before the eyes of the gathered company and our predecessors. Skimming the titles piled on the table, readers commented on books they recalled with affection or irritation, and newer members like myself borrowed copies from others so we could catch up on the canon, in hopes that we will be able to offer more depth of book-club commentary at future meetings.

Wishing you bon appetit and a delicious new year, I offer you these delectible selections from my online readings and hope to hear your thoughts on literary cuisine and political fashion as we ramp up for the next issues.

Portland vs. Berkeley - Restaurant Review

by Brian Duff

Mainers are a proud people. So it’s no fun to hear that Maine’s most acclaimed restaurant, Fore Street, owes its best qualities to the innovations of a woman from California, of all places. But food types agree that Sam Hayward’s splendid restaurant in Portland works squarely in the style created in the 1970s by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley — an approach in which the best ingredients to be culled from local farms are prepared simply and elegantly to preserve their freshness.

It is really nothing to be ashamed of. Chez Panisse is no humble parentage: Gourmet rates it the best restaurant in America (Fore Street comes in at #16). Still, Maine pride requires that a friendly competition exist between Hayward’s Fore Street and the old lady of the new cuisine. Fore, open since 1996, is a mere baby compared to Panisse (1971), but already there are whispers that Hayward and his chefs are producing dishes of equal brilliance in tougher circumstances, climate-wise. Frankly, it is easy to cheer for Hayward even without the regional bias. All those years of acclaim have turned Waters into a sanctimonious pain in the butt — with her books, her awards, her board affiliations, and the press slavishly covering her every dinner party and every pronouncement about the virtues of "slow food." On the other hand, Hayward’s fundamental modesty and lack of pretension emerge even in the most worshipful articles. Food writers refer to Hayward as "brilliant" and "a culinary hero," even as they must quote him explaining his favorite dishes in terms of "goo" and "chow."

Of course, the best way to assess the comparative virtues of Chez Panisse and Fore Street is to get down to the food — setting aside considerations of personality to stage a coast to coast, Iron Chef-style battle. After all, no matter how smug Alice Waters has become, when you go to Chez Panisse you don’t actually have to eat with her. To control for considerations of good company, I had dinner over the past month at each restaurant with my little sister, who is delightful.

Well, let’s get ready to rumble. There is no denying that Fore Street’s décor is the more impressive, with its high wood-slat ceilings, exposed beams, brick walls, huge windows, and enormous open-hearth oven. Chez Panisse is quainter and quieter and perfectly charming — a little like the small back room at Fore Street where we were seated. But two things worked quickly to offset Fore Street’s early advantage. First, our waiter informed us that (at 8:15 on a Monday) the kitchen had run out of two of the three entrées from the applewood grill, including the intriguing bison sirloin.

Then, as we digested this news, the host sat the table next to us with amazingly obnoxious fourtysomething businessmen. They arrived already drunk with fresh glasses of scotch in hand. Speaking loudly and cursing liberally, they veered wildly between schadenfreude (literally high-fiving over the news that an acquaintance had lost his job) and resentment (belittling another acquaintance who had recently been promoted above them). When one of these guys called over our waiter (whom we loved) to tell him the scotch was "disgusting," we took the opportunity to track the waiter down at the bar and ask him if we might move to a different table — something I can’t ever remember doing before. Our request was handled smoothly and we got a new table with a terrific view of the open kitchen in the bargain. Actually, the whole thing kind of warmed us up to the place. But who would have guessed that it would be in Maine rather than California that we would encounter such obnoxiousness? It probably helps that Chez Panisse does not serve anything stronger than wine.

In fact, wine was another category in which Chez Panisse grabbed the early advantage. In both restaurants we told the waiter what we wanted to spend and gave him a few ideas about what we like. At Fore Street, we found the recommended bottle to be perfectly nice, but the waiter at Chez Panisse chose a bottle that was truly superior. It was spicy without too much pepper, quite full, and had just a little of the flavor of oak. We tasted plum, black cherries, fig, and maybe even a little newton. It added something to every part of the meal.

With the bread the nod must once again go to Chez Panisse. Theirs had real flavor without being too dense or filling. The crust was light, crunchy, pretty to look at, and had a dignity akin to what Russell Crowe has become so good at portraying on screen. The bread at Fore Street was okay, but reminded us too much of sliced whole-grain wheat.

With the first course, things started to look up for Portland’s own. Our Fore Street salad of endive and roasted pear did not have many fancy words in its description, but it was all a salad should be. The pears were even sliced unpretentiously, their sweetness working well with the endive. Pumpkin seeds and tart cheese popped up on every second forkful, adding some tasty saltiness. We also ordered Fore Street’s grilled quail in part to get at the celery root–foie gras mash on which it is served. Indeed, while the quail was good, the mash was a divinely flavorful mushy brown. I liked it so much it felt downright Freudian.

At Chez Panisse, we ordered a plate with three salads — a little like the crudite you might get at a neighborhood restaurant in Paris. The lentil salad was somehow great, with just a hint of oil and parsley. The beets were good because beets are good, but otherwise pedestrian. We thought the endive had too much oil. We also ordered a salad of persimmon and fennel with one of Waters’s fancy balsamics. The fennel cut into the fruit’s sweetness perfectly. We tried, too, a small serving of noodles with chanterelle mushrooms and wild nettles. It was very simple and flavorful, although the mushrooms were diced kind of small for our taste and we got the sense that the nettles were in there as much to get the word nettles on the menu as to add something distinctive to the dish.

Following our waiter’s recommendation, we ordered Chez Panisse’s entrees of baked grouper with artichokes, potatoes and chervil; and pork shoulder cooked with red wine and prunes, served with cabbage. The plates were pleasing to look at, the grouper all muted shades of green, beige, and yellow, and the pork all reds and browns. The grouper was disappointing, however. This unspectacular fish could have used a more imaginative preparation than being baked and pushed through the old olive-oil car wash. The pork was nicer — coming apart easily with the touch of a fork. Once again Waters worked the sweet/bitter thing to perfection with the prunes and the mild cabbage.

At Fore Street, we were hesitant to follow the waiter’s suggestion to get the flounder, but he was right — it was light, succulent, palpably fresh, and perfectly cooked. The butter sauce added a lovely taste without overwhelming the flounder the way the oil had the grouper. Venison, simmered in wine sauce with mushrooms and marafax beans, arrived in an unexpected clay pot and turned out to be a perfect winter dish. It had a stew-like quality without descending into stew. The heartiness of the beans and venison was perfect at the end of a cold day.

We just had to order Chez Panisse’s mulberry ice cream after our charming busperson (from Portland, it turns out) told us the story of the single tree from which Waters gets all her mulberries, which was almost lost when a beloved farmer passed away. How can I describe how good this ice cream was and how pure the mulberry flavor? Think of the scene in the movie Mask when Rocky Dennis teaches colors to his blind girlfriend using hot and cold rocks. If he had wanted her to truly know purple (and if he could afford dinner at Chez Panisse, like if Cher was really his mother instead of just playing her in the movie), he should have let her taste this ice cream.

Finally, you know how it is at the end of a great meal: That warm bittersweet chocolate cake calls to you like it is the one ring that will rule them all. We ordered each shop’s version and found Fore Street’s to be a tower of richness, depth, and soft complexity. What Chez Panisse offered was in comparison a stiff slab of mediocrity.

Two wonderful meals, but in the end, and particularly with the help of the fish, we thought Fore Street took it by a nose. If flounder has a nose. Hayward and all Mainers have reason to be proud — a restaurant that, on any given day, can beat the best.

David Brooks Also Eats Cereal

In today's breakfast-cereal age, there are two types of people in the world, those who like to look into their bowl at a sea of desiccated marshmallows, and those who prefer an unsweetened alternative made from whole-grain oats. I call them the Lucky Charmers and the Cheerioians.

Lucky Charmers hold their spoons overhand-style and make slurping noises as they eat. Sometimes, they even try to pluck the marshmallows out with their fingers, because the marshmallows bob up and down in the milk, which makes it very hard to get them out with just a spoon. Sometimes, they don't even pour the cereal into a bowl and eat right out of the box.

Cheerioians, on the other hand, often eat their cereal entirely unadorned, even with sliced banana or strawberries. They use bowls from Pottery Barn, hold their spoons correctly, and read a major metropolitan newspaper or watch cable news while eating their breakfast cereal. They are lured by the boxes that promise lower cholesterol or healthier colons. They often drink orange juice from a glass, or coffee out of a mug.

Lucky Charmers prefer apple juice and drink out of a sippy cup. On occasion, they will even fling their cereal bowl over their heads and shriek, "Wheeeeeeeee!" They are free spenders, preferring a wind-up toy to a money-saving coupon in the bottom of the box. They watch SpongeBob, during which they giggle.

Sometimes, a Cheerioian will abandon cereal altogether and grab a bagel as they run out the door. Increasingly often, the Cheerioian won't even have time for breakfast. A Lucky Charmer who has skipped breakfast is nothing to trifle with.

A close look by a disarming columnist/commentator/author at the issues facing the candidates this year shows that one of these groups may decide the upcoming election. That group is the Cheerioians, because the Lucky Charmers are six years old, and therefore cannot vote. More importantly, they can't read my columns, which unerringly describe the shape and fabric of the America that exists inside my own head.

Not only are Lucky Charmers and Cheerioians moving apart; they were never particularly close together. Cheerioians are getting older, while the Lucky Charmers remain trapped in their arrested development.

There was a time in all of our lives when we were Lucky Charmers, when we could ignore the consequences of a morning sucrose bomb on our metabolism, our dental health, our fight against Islamic terrorism. But now, post-9/11, we find ourselves heading into a more serious and sober world, a world where we can no longer turn away from the empty promises of artificially sweetened candy passing itself off as a healthy breakfast. The Lucky Charmers have fallen prey to a sham, a mirage of empty promises of a simpler, magically delicious world coming out of the mouths of leprechauns, like Howard Dean. It's no accident that the Dean candidacy crashed more quickly than a hypoglycemic's blood sugar. Green clovers and yellow moons are not going to win the war on terror. Purple horseshoes either.

(Though it looks as though we could use a few more pots of gold to aid in the reconstruction of Iraq.)

I have been critical of President Bush, not because I have actual convictions, but because I have a pathological need to seem reasonable. But I have looked into President Bush's pantry, and I see a man who would go on the offense against Count Chocula, the Boo Berry ghost, or the Cookie Crisp wizard.

My hunch is that John Kerry eats pastry.

Finally, all of us need to keep an eye on that Trix rabbit, a known election tamperer. Trix may be for kids, but voting is for grownups who agree with me.

The Zen of flip-flops

FASHION dictates them. The warm weather welcomes them. Politics appropriate them. The subject is flip-flops, must-have footwear that double as social commentary.

Some basics: The cheapo sandals are a wardrobe essential. They're worn by polished-toe fashion plates and Bigfoot guys ambling to the corner to mail a letter. A lifetime supply can be purchased for, say, $28.75. If they're not already a requirement for California residency, someone should ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to get it done.

Are they safe when riding a bike? Do they make sense to wear on escalators or around lumber yards? Who cares? Not this page.

Flip-flops look as flimsy as a Florida trailer park. But they can endure forever. One pair, thin as paper, lasted for 12 years including a round-the- world trip. Mountain porters in the Andes wear them, and so do construction crews in Thailand. Go to any public market on Earth, and there they are: heaps of colored plastic with the familiar v-shaped thong. Talk about globalized culture.

Something this big soon finds extra meaning. Changeability, casualness and flip-ness -- they all went along with the easy-going nature of this footwear.

Then the words took root elsewhere. A pair of flip-flops was hang-loose sandals. But a single flip-flop was a human flaw, a reversal of belief.

That's why the simple foot covers have become a prime symbol in the billion-dollar presidential race. When John Kerry goes anywhere near a college campus, there's a noise that can be heard for blocks. Republican students bang their flip-flops together to remind folks of the Democratic candidate's alleged changes of mind.

Then, when they are through, they can slip on the shoes and flip flop away. Rhetoric meets the road.