Jeffrey Steingarten

Bill, I haven't been back since the last Slow Food convention in Turin, and then only for a day. After speaking about you with Phyllis at Vogue, I would rely on you and her to discover the latest and newest. Maybe its time for me to write a restaurant roundup of Piemonte. But so much eating! Three years ago Cesare Bardini at Agrimontana i(Cuneo) reached me during slow food and said that a car would come for me at 3 PM. He gave me no other information. Well, the car arrived and took me to Cesare's in Albaretto. Cesare was recovering from his cancer and he hadn't been cooking well; I hadn't seen him in four years. In any event, the Langhe was at its most magical with the nebbia slowing sliding through the hollows of the hills while glimpses of the pink Alps shone through now and then. Cesare had the shoulder of kid in the fireplace--he knows it's my favorite--and the rest of the meal was very fine and contained nothing I had eaten before, except one of the pastas. The tartuffi were near their best. Only somebody like you could understand why I had to stop eating more often than I have ever done, to wipe my eyes. Please don't tell anybody that I would admit this.

Hey Bill, Phyllis Posnick (my lifeline to Irving Penn at Vogue) has told me all about you. -- Jeffrey

I've tried B 'n' P (binge and purge) only a few times. They call it bulemia to make it sound like a disease. That is way harsh. It's part of the double-bind into which our culture puts the overweight. I've looked at the identical twin studies. Raised together, their weight will show an 80% correlation. Raised apart, it'll be 70%. So, genes account for 70% of our overweight, nurture 10%, with the remaining 20% for the environment (which today means McDonalds, etc.) and will power. Maybe that's why people who lose weight gain it back 95% of the time. And yet every attempt to classify chubbiness as a medical matter is ultimately derided. Whenever some new hope such as leptin fails, the Times writes the same cruel and ignorant editorial: Yes, someday those mad, mad scientists may discover a silver bullet. But until then, we stick with the tried and true--diet and exercise. Let's just pull up our socks! Tried and true? It doesn't work! It's just a way of making it our fault and punishing us for it. Perhaps B 'n' P is the only out. Until the true Fen/Phen returns. To change the subject: I'd like to congratulate Mr. Shaw on his appointment to Elle. When I started writing about food, Elle had the most extensive and in some ways the best food coverage of any non-food magazine. There were eleven pages in each issue, beautifully photographed, with lots of recipes, and it was mainly about France or about French cooks in the USA. For a while, the young Jonathan Gold was writing the articles, though he was rarely allowed to travel. And then, during an advertising recession, probably around 1993, Elle underwent a transformation--along with the other fashion magazines. During these periods, the business people become much more powerful and crass, and what they consider inessential is discarded. The French-born woman in charge of food at American Elle--I had lunch with her once but can't remember her name --was fired. I was lucky to survive. Those days are gone. But let me wish Mr. Shaw luck and courage in bringing back some of what Elle gave to fashion foodies a decade ago.

Dear GG Mora, Wonderful question. Or, more accurately, diatribe. But what right do you have to buy extra virgin olive oil and deprive grandma? The only difference is that you know from rancid. But did you really know ten years ago? Twenty? We all start somewhere. The only way is up! What did I or you really know about mozzarella until we had travelled to Campania and tasted and chewed on the true cheese with all of our measly powers? For me that was six months ago. Before then, I was fond of stuff from some places in Little Italy only because it was made fresh every morning. Yes, there is a way back. Food lovers and writers should talk much more about quality and taste. Don't use balsamic unless 1) you can afford the good stuff ; 2) you can taste the good stuff; and 3) you use it only where this precious treasure belongs. And if you can't afford it, be secure in the knowledge that great fried chicken is as fine a meal as anything that humankind has ever discovered. And anybody who prefers waxy, factory-made mozzarella to a bowl of really good potato chips should go back to his or her childhood and start again. One of the great thrills in exploring for food is discovering inexpensive dishes that are as delicious and satisfying as foods that onlhy the rich can afford. I remember a spaghetti dish I was served at a good restaurant in Siracusa on Sicily. Maybe it was bigolli , thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle. The sauce was chopped onions, a few preserved anchovies, and lots of breadcrumbs fried in olive oil. You'll find recipes for this in several Italian-language cookbooks. I've made it several times with only partial success--my versions lacked the lightness and finesse of the original. But I can tell you that nothing could have been more delicious than what we ate in Siracusa. It must have cost them 50 cents a plate. The last time I travelled to Bologna, I ate the lasagna in several trattorias. It was similar to the recipe in Marcella's first book, though it was less austere, with more bechamel and more ragu, but still with only four layers. I was speechless with delight, at least for a few minutes. And you can make it yourself from relatively inexpensive ingredients. The main cost is labor. You cannot make it with anything out of a can or a bottle or a package. When I returned from Italy, I asked an "important" restaurateur at an Italian-style restaurant why she didn't serve real Bolognese lasagna. She agreed that nothing in the world could more delicious. But she gave a very complicated explanation for why it wouldn't fit on her menu. (You'll be lucky to find it on five menus in this country.) I asked her whether it didn't all boil down to the notion that she couldn't charge enough for it. Reluctantly, she nodded. That's the attitude we need to combat. Jeffrey

Dear Roz, Oxford! Israel! Who knew? Where do you live in California? I first discovered fresh dates ten years ago or more at the Santa Monica Wednesday market. My article/chapter gives good mail-order sources., at least as of two or three years ago. Sweet and fleshy and miraculous as fresh, fat giant medjools are, the most amazing are just-picked Barhis at their ripest and fattest, their sweetest and least dessicated. I found some at an Arab-owned grocery in Poway or somewhere up there in San Diego county. But the mail order sources for Barhi dates--especially if you speak with the people who work at the farm and they understand how high your standards are--should be even better. Yours, Jeffrey

Dear Chad, For the first year or two after learning the pernicious skills that waiters learn to make more money, I was probably pretty offensive. But as you spend more time eating out, you change. You don't become nice, heaven forbid, but you become kinder. Waiters should try to sell you more food--but not upsell, as you call it. After all, you'll be happier eating more food. You probably forgot to order those extra dishes, or maybe the women at the table embarrassed you into ordering as though you were at a spa. Maybe they said, If we're still hungry we can order more later. And you never do. I like waiters who try to interest me, in words a food writer would admire, in more and more good food. There are still things I can't stand, and I respond with corrective action, though with kinder words. Waiters who keep on pouring the wine must be told that this practice is bad for the wine in the glass, bad for the wine in the bottle, bad for them as professionals, and bad for them as human beings. A phrase or two must suffice, however. And waiters who act as they know more about food than you--except on those occasions when they really do, especially perhaps in a little corner of the food world such as, say, bread pudding--must be squished like an insect, but only in the calmest way. In my cruel youth, I would drop a series of bunker-buster bombs right into their spider holes. Now I simply ask them a few quiet questions. Those who don't get the point are hopeless,--exceptions to the Buddha's statement that "There are no unsuitable candidates."

Dear Gabe, You make an important though ultimately incorrect point. Just kidding. Look. I do not write for incredible gorgeous models. I write for the minority of Vogue subscribers who have or may some day have an interest in good food; for people like you who, I assume, buy or steal copies of my articles at the dentist, at the carwash waiting room (in southern California), or at your wife's gynecologist; and for people who will some day buy or steal my books. The readers I have in mind as I write are: Anna Wintour, my editor, people who've sent me positive letters; food-writer friends; members of eGullet and others who know a lot about eating. But hey, have you ever stood next to a supermodel. I remember some party, the kind I'm never invited to, where I was forced to stand in close proximity to Christie Turlington. Yes, her interest in things like yoga shows that she's obsessed by the need for self-improvement and preservation. But I was able to detect that her body is made out of different materials from mine. Her skin was an even pink, smooth, sleek, unblemished, and fitted perfectly to the underlying flesh. I wanted to ask her whether she believed that we two were members of the same species, and why. I don't believe we are--any more than a fat house cat is truly related to an Ocelot. By the same token, why assume that she doesn't consume 15,000 calories of the most fabulous food every day, while you and I grow fat on 2,500? For even further proof, I can report on my lunch with Giselle. So here was my idea. I had heard from a Vogue sittings eidtor that Giselle has all kinds of youthful Brazilian food memories and many modern theories, none of which involve dieting. I proposed the idea that I interview her over lunch. Anna went for it. I bought a new tape recorder, the kind that doesn't have tape. I engaged the services of an overnight transcription company. Giselle's agent suggested Nobu, around the corner from Giselle's apartment or loft. I love Nobu, but I found out that Giselle does not eat raw fish. Her favorite is that Brazilian meat place, Plataforma Chur... (sp?)(ck?), where I've eaten well. She agreed. We sat at her special table in the far corner, near a window or terrace full of light. You don't really order; they come around with long skewers of everything, and everything is dripping with the most savory juice. Much of the time, they would serve her and then forget about me. I had to interrupt our interview to beg for my share of the food, of the little special crispy morsels they saved just for her. There was no loss here because the interview was a flop. We didn't get along. She didn't understand my jokes. She was immune to my quite evident charm. But I did take two things of great value from the experience. First, I ate some really scrumptuous meat. And second, I saw the perfect Giselle is an sbsolute hog, a total pig, at table. I asked her my question about Ocelots and fat house cats. She was misbelieving. I explained. "You're silly," she replied. "Of course we're the same species. We both have language. We both see the same things." I'm not so sure.

Dear Robert, Whew! You've left my head spinning! Where to start? 1. Considering the extremely nasty things I've written about Dean Ornish, the food at Canyon Ranch eight years ago (Vogue lost their ads), Evian (ditto), the American Diabetic Association, nutritionists in general, Alain Ducasse's Spoon (though I admire him and have known him for years), Snackwells, the service at several named restaurants, lactose intolerant crybabies, the food at several named theme restaurant chains, nearly all pizzas outside the New York City--New Haven axis, (with an exception for Phoenix), all Weber grills, the FDA's cheese police, Laura Bush's hot chocolate recipe, the restaurants of San Diego, nearly all steak houses in the USA,etc., etc., etc., I am surprised that you would think that I'm afraid to be considered a Conde-Nasty. My article about low-fat cookbooks, as published in Vogue but not as shortened (in this rare case) for my first book, was so negative that the author of the most awful of the books wrote that she had cried when she read the piece, her mother was praying for me, and her son had loaded his 22 caliber rifle and was planning to head up to NYC from the town in Texas where they lived. 2. As for company policy, I have received messages from the Conde-Nast lawyers on only two or maybe three occasions. In one instance, I may have softened my intemperate and repetitive invective, largely for literary reasons; on another, I told the lawyer that he was being overly cautious and was not serving the interests of literary freedom, and I believe that I never heard from him again. If you read the unreasonably poisonous review of Jean-George's 66 in Vanity Fair by A.A.Gill, you'd know that there's no company policy about any of this. 3. There's a huge difference between mentioning a restaurant and reviewing it. And between a monthly magazine reviewer and that of a daily newspaper. A newspaper reviewer has to cover a city; to be useful, she or he must include new restaurants of note and old favorites. There's no need for a negative review of an older place that nobody goes to any longer because presumably everybody knows it's bad; or a new place that opened without any hype and that people knew immediately was not worth spending money in. But all other restaurants are fair game and should brace themselves for any number of nasty comments. Most monthly magazine reviewers are read by people who want to find out where to eat in a city they don't know very well, and not where not to eat, except in the case of a famous and much-vaunted establshment. Why tell people not to eat at places where there's little chance they would go in the first place? All positive reviews should be based on at least two visits; negative reviews on three or four, especially because an influential critic (are there any left?) is in a position to ruin somebody's livelihood and destroy twenty or fifty jobs. I rarely review restaurants, except when I need an excuse for travelling somewhere, such as Paris, Barcelona, etc. I may, however, describe my one visit to a restaurant in an article about, e.g. Thailand. And I would probably choose only places where I ate well. A reviewer, on the other hand, would want to cover the most important restaurants in Bangkok, good or bad, make a few strategic discoveries of tiny, charming, perfect little places; and conclude with the best three restaurants in the city or country. To do this, I would have to spend two months in a city as rich as Bangkok, and even then might not get it right. People--I won't name them--who do this after four days in a major city are....frauds. 4. You quite easily discovered from my November article that I had eaten at Dumonet only once. That's because I made it clear. I was not reviewing fifty or a hundred restaurants or however many I mentioned. I was writing about the explosion of new restaurants in New York City, those that had opened in the recent past and those expected in the near future. As for the former, I mentioned only restaurants I had eaten in; and with the latter, restaurants that I (or even others) were looking forward to. Dumonet was obviously in the former group. Most of the eating I did for the article was in places like Dumonet that I had never been to but thought I probably should have--especially as I do not enjoy giving favorable (or even neutral) publicity in a national magazine to a place that doesn't deserve it. There's so much good food around--cheap, expensive, and in between--and so much competition for attention that I consider it generally (though not absolutely always) unethical for a food writer to increase the popularity of bad, or potentially bad food. I rarely even mention a cookbook that I haven't cooked from. I made a reservation at Dumonet after reading the menu (which I requested by fax) and remembering that I had enjoyed M. Dumonet's cooking at Les Trois Jeans. If the food had been well made, Dumonet would have lived up to the nostalgic promise I had seen in it. In a review, I would have told you precisely what was wrong with each of the dishes; and I would have eaten there three times; but this was not a review. The management of the Carlyle presumably wanted M. Dumonet so strongly that they put his name on the place. And so I was sending him a litlte message (I've never met him) that it was now or never, do or die. This is food that has not much changed since the early 1900's in Paris. Ducasse is doing a fine job of it at Aux Lyonnais in Paris, and he's published his recipes. You and I can cook much of it, and we love to eat it, especially with experienced old European waiters and handsome surroundings. So it still might be worth a try. But I was not reviewing it. 5. Of course I wasn't implying that young underlings can never cook as well as their older masters. But as restaurants are organized these days, underlings are only rarely expected to run the kitchen. Most of them are assigned a limited range of specialized tasks; and, if they are Hispanic, as most of them will be in NYC, they are rarely given the chance or the skills to run the place. Even if they are fine young cooks, they still need an editor. Everybody needs an editor. Oh, and by the way, I'm one of those who still believes that you are unlikely to be able to cook this kind of food with the proper spirit unless you've eaten widely in Paris and Lyon. Hey, are you some friend of Dumonet, defending him for being many miles away while I was trying to eat my barely warm sole a la meuniere , covered with a congealed lemon butter. Well are you?

Dear Connie, Thanks for the kind words. I'm troubled by your story about requesting (you and your friends) the mozzarella di bufala list at bufala@earthlink.net, a mailbox I set up for the purpose, and not receiving the list. I'll admit that it took too long for me to get the list together, but we were waiting for certain developments in Vermont. Still, it was some time ago, over a month, that we e-mailed many copies of the list. If nobody had received a reply, we would have gotten lots of hate mail--judging from past experience. So I'm puzzled by your experience. If you've sent in your request fairly recently, it's possible that you've been grouped into a second wave of replies. Please elucidate. As for Homeland Security: My understanding of the FDA's new rules, which went into effect on December 12, is that foreign companies importing food into the US must now appoint a responsible agent within the US and must inform the FDA (through any of several methods, including the Internet) of the shipment at least four days before the shipment is set to arrive. There's nothing I can find in the new regulations regarding individuals' bringing in food. Remember, carrying in raw milk cheeses aged fewer than 60 days is still not allowable under the law and never has been--at least for the past 52 years. As I explained in the "Cheese Crise" chapter of "It Must've Been Something I Ate," the reason you can carry in illegal cheese with impunity is that the FDA has no inspectors at the airport, and the customs people who check your baggage couldn't care less about the FDA's war against real cheese. Everybody I spoke with denied there was a policy of benign, very benign, neglect. On many occasions I have followed the policy of "declare everything." I am always very explicit in what I declare; I write on the back of the form "raw milk cheeses aged for fewer than 60 days" and sometimes add, "in contravention of FDA regulations and statutes." The inspector reads it and waves me through. If the FDA were thoroughly concerned with homeland security, they would reassign everybody there who has been working against real cheese. Although I have not yet had a chance to test the new regulatory regime, I don't believe that the FDA has any more inspectors at the airports for non-commercial , personal, imports than they did before. If they do, it's a real waste of money. The reason for declaring everything, apart from the fun of it, is to protect yourself legally. But as I've written, the main thing to fear at the airport is the USDA. Bring in some uncooked (i.e. unpasteurized) meat, and the USDA guys will read you your rights. Thing is, except during the Mad Cow and Sick Pig scares, the USDA was not concerned about cheese. The FDA is concerned with human health, the USDA with animal health. And besides Sky King, my fabulous golden retriever, animals do not eat Camembert.

Very good question. In truth, the two food aversions I was temporarily content to live with were dislike of bugs and of desserts in Indian restaurants. Although I didn't realize it at the time, perhaps because it had never occured to me, I also had a strong aversion to eating pigs' brains. I conquered my fear of eating bugs on trips to Mexico and to Thailand. Writers hate repeating themselves, except when they're desperate, and so I'll refer you to "It Must've Been Something I Ate," now out in paperback, for the answer to your questions about bugs--especially the introduction and the chapter on Thailand, where I made the greatest breakthroughs. That's also where I conquered my suppressed phobia towards pigs' brains, at a Yunnanese restaurant in the Thai city of Chiangmai, to which my Thai friend had taken me to feast on chickens' brains,. This was only one of many occasions on which he tried to gross me out. They weren't serving any, but had the more common and ordinary pig's brains. When I returned from Thailand, my only aversion involved desserts in Indian restaurants. And then, astoundingly, on a trip to India last October, I overcame this last obstruction to my becoming a perfect omnivore. I'll report on the trip, though probably not much about desserts, in the April Vogue. My only confusion now is whether I prefer a good Rasmalai to a fine.....

P.S. I neglected to thank you for your extravagant praise and expectations. And to wish you luck with your new website, which I may never be able to read.

Although I'm a major fan of Wodehouse (my favorite novel of his is "Joy in the Morning"), I hear S.J. Perlman more often as I write. Or at least I used to. Now when I read, usually fiction, I learn something in every story or book that I'd like to try out; and sometimes, it actually works out. Recently reading James Elroy's amazing "American Tabloid" made me want to write in sentences all five words or shorter--quite the opposite of what I typically do. I never accomplished this, though the piece I just completed on Cooking Large for Vogue's February issue has lots of short sentences. I hope this lesson sticks. I'd be indebted to you for information on who this Benson character is! As for biographical information: Most people like to explain themselves by telling stories--their first discovery that they possessed a tongue, watching their grandmother cooking, etc., etc. But the truth may be far less romantic and more biochemical. Please refer to the second chapter of "It Must've Been Something I Ate,"--it's called "Brainstorm"--and see if you don't agree that my behavior may be largely explained by a lesion in the right frontal hemisphere of my brain.

My books, or at least the first one, have been translated into Portuguese by a Brazilian publisher. It's possible that your opinion of me is due to a translation that is better than the original. And the Portuguese-language editions may convey the mis-impression that I know something about Portuguese food. The truth is that I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about Portuguese food. It is one of the many gaping holes in my culinary self-education. Many people have encouraged me to correct this--and told me how wonderful the food is, though they disagree on whether it's better in the southeast, close to the Spanish border, or way in the north, where the seafood may be the best in the world. After I've taken care of my current list of gaping holes, I hope I'll be off to Portugal.

I'll admit that I'm flattered, most of the time, by Amanda's verbal portraits of me, not only because men are the dumbest sex and are delighted by attention from much younger and in this case much prettier women, but also because while I feel that Amanda exaggerates both my favorable and repulsive qualities, the overall effect is close to the character I've created for myself in my writing which is, I'm afraid, awfully like the real me. The one episode I explicitly objected to was the one where I stole her private and priceless idea to write about an already well-known tapas place in Barcelona. The precise facts are too boring to recount; even having heard them, her husband, then fiancee, still agreed with her; others don't. Amanda herself is a fine and natural writer. Her parents, from central Pennsylvania, wouldn't let her apply to a liberal arts college, and she was compelled to attend one of the Babson business schools, in finance. Nor did this poor, imprisoned soul wake up at dawn every day and write in her journal for several hours. She has a very good palate and often has insights about a dish we've eaten together. She can surely cook, though I've never been given dinner at her house; she and Sam Sifton adapted the recipes in the Times's excellent Thanksgiving roundup. All in all, I'd consider her among the best of the younger food writers. The most maddening thing about Amanda is that she writes freely and without difficulty. I know only a few people like this, and she's the only one I like. I hate each of the others intensely. I do feel that Amanda should write less often and writes longer pieces involving lots of research, and I've sort of told her so. But unlike me--and largely because she writes so easily--Amanda is not so attached to everything she writes. Doing a few pieces for the Times about subjects that do not deeply fascinate her seem only a minor burden for Amanda. She accepts this as the lot of a newspaper writer. So if you're in the mood to judge Amanda and her work, it's only fair to judge her at her best, which by my standards is pretty good indeed.

Absolutely no need for apologies. I met lots of interesting people on my book-signing trip through Ohio, and I ate very well in Cincinatti. I regret only not being able to try the chili in northern Kentucky and the BBQ at one place in Cincinatti.

I'll answer the questions about shirts first because it's the easiest and few will benefit from the answer. I've retained two luxuries from my years as a lawyer: lavish amounts of food and custom-made shirts from Turnbull & Asser in London. This would not be fantastically expensive if I did not continually change in size, usually on the upside. My shirts are always neatly pressed because I get them neatly pressed. Oh, a third luxury, more costly than the other two: I get my sheets ironed. I can't accept spending so much time in a bed that is more shabbily outfitted than one at, say, a Motel 6. As for the artwork that accompanies my photos: Vogue is a picture magazine, and enormous amounts of money and time are expended on the photographs. It's more important for the photograph that accompanies my pieces to be very fine, from Vogue's point of view, than that it be a perfectly accurate illustration. Iriving Penn is pretty much revered by all of us. (Despite his age and experience, I'd say that between a half and a third of his food photos see the subject in a way that nobody has before.) He has first dibs on every article I write; if he gets excited about doing the picture, we're all glad and relieved. Then, my piece goes in the center of the book and theoretically gets more space. One sittings editor, Phyllis Posnick, has pretty much sole responsibility to get Mr. Penn excited. If Mr. Penn, as we all call him, unless we call him just Penn , is not interested, the art department and Anna Wintour look to assign the photo to another photographer. Although they're always looking for one who merits a full color page in the center of the book, the only photographer who has made the grade is Raymond Meier. Raymond has not done a photo recently, but I love working with him. He loves food and knows about it, and we have fruitful discussions before the shoot. Mr. Penn and I converse only through Phyllis. Vogue always prefers pictures that are edgy. As I rarely turn in my pieces before the photo is taken, I have my input orally with Phyllis and with the food stylist, who is usually Victoria Granoff (and who knows huge amounts about food), and then more often than not with the photographer. I'm happy if the photo 1) is beautiful and perhaps provocative and 2) does not contradict the point of my piece.