A Few American Food Moments

It's hard to believe now, but when the American Institute of Wine and Food (chaired by Julia Child and Robert Mondavi), decided to throw an All American Celebration with a menu created by an octet of young American chefs, the idea was met with deep skepticism.  "Too many chefs will ruin the soup," was the general feeling.

There were a LOT of chefs. In addition to the ones above, whose signatures were splashed across the front of the menu, there was Mark Miller (long before Coyote Cafe) and Wolfgang Puck (whose Spago was still new).  Why were their signatures not included? Not a clue.  But the chefs played beautifully together and proved everybody wrong. The meal, at San Francisco's Stanford Court, was a triumph.

Here's the menu:

Very bold of Barbara Kafka, I must say, to serve tripe gumbo!

And here, just because I just found them, are two more menus of the time.  The first is dinner at Greens, when Deborah Madison was the chef. Note the price: $18 for a three-course meal.

And finally, a special menu from the New Boonville Hotel in the Anderson Valley, in honor of Marion Cunningham's birthday. There were just six of us: Alice Waters, Stephen Singer, Judy Rodgers, John Hudspeth, Marion and me.