I Am Not a Chef
I simply like to cook. A very strange old review. A nostalgic menu. A tote you're going to want. And a dish you're going to love.
People are constantly introducing me as a chef. I’m not! Totally untrained, I’m simply someone who loves to cook. And while I once cooked in a restaurant… it was as unprofessional as I am.
I was reminded of all that last week when a man in a Bay Area book store came up and asked if I remembered him.
“Well,” he said, after I’d apologetically admitted that I did not, “it’s been 50 years.” He had apparently been a regular at The Swallow, the collective restaurant where I worked in the early seventies. The man waxed poetic about the quiche we used to make. (It was great.) He liked the popetone (see below) too, and couldn’t stop talking about our carrot cake.
The Swallow was a wonderful experiment, very much of its moment As you will see when you read this “review” I wrote for The East Bay Review of the Performing Arts in… I’m guessing 1976.
And just to prove my bona fides:
While we’re in the Bay Area, here’s a menu from the late seventies. It’s hard to believe that you could once get an entire meal for $12.50!
This is another memento from my recent California trip. Photographer Suzie Biehler gave me this wonderful little tote bag. Since then, I’ve been carrying my tomato tote everywhere I go.
I really love it. I think you might too.
My book tour ended in Seattle, where I had the most wonderful dinner at The Walrus and the Carpenter. I was enamored of everything we ate at the fantastically funky restaurant: the array of West Coast oysters, the great fried oysters and the lovely pea shoot salad. But the dish that really blew me away was this halibut collar: fried until each tiny tidbit was delightfully edible, it was sparked with fish sauce and strewn with chiles and herbs. We devoured every morsel!
And speaking of Seattle, one final thought. I just received notice of something called The Smart Kitchen Summit taking place there week after next. I wish I could have stayed for it: the agenda is fascinating! Are we ready for the robot chef?
I listened to your interview on Everything Cookbooks podcast & thoroughly enjoyed the history of your writing offered in this segment. Then I downloaded 'For You Mom, Finally.' I need to read this because of what you said about your mom, that she was a product of that time, as was my mom. For me, what really helped was watching Feud: Capote vs The Swans. Those women of the 1950s & 1960s, were my mom's role models, the women she would have loved to be. And yet? Those women were products of their time too. They dressed, they gossiped, they drank and smoked..... Idle minds historically have been deleterious to women.... But what were their options? Even rich women fell in line with those times.....Found comfort in what you said about your mom and those times that she and my mom lived in.
I lived around the corner from The Swallow in 1979, on Channing Way. I worked as a cashier at The Espresso Experience across the street so I didn't have the money to eat there, but I know I did a couple of times. The food was great but the staff, OMFG. I remember a long haired British guy having a prolonged raging temper tantrum at his daughter which made me so miserable I couldn't finish my lunch.
In other news, I belong to a FB group called "Jewish Women Talk About Books" and recommended The Paris Novel. I got many many many positive responses from people who had already read it and loved it or were planning to read it or who listed your other books that they had enjoyed.