The Night That Changed Dining in America

The story. The menu. The moment. Also, a great everyday balsamic. And a visit to Traverse City, a terrific place to eat.

Had we known back then how important this dinner was going to be in the history of American food my editors would surely have given me more space. But the American food revolution was still in its infancy, and asking a group of chefs from across the country to collaborate on a meal was considered a mad experiment - and one doomed to failure. Certainly none of us understood that this dinner would end up being more important than Julia Child’s new Institute which it was celebrating (and which never actually found a home at UC Santa Barbara).

The editors considered the event little more than another meal to review, and most of my article got left on the cutting room floor. You don’t get a sense of the electricity that filled the air, or learn that every important American food person was in that room. You can’t hear the sound that rippled through the crowd when the doors were thrown open to reveal the softly lit space, the gasps when we saw the gorgeous edible centerpieces. Nor can you understand how brave the chefs were to allow movie cameras into the kitchen so the diners could witness the chaos in the kitchen. But it was what made us all feel that we were participating in a historic moment.

The food was delicious and, for the most part, new. Olympia oysters - the only oysters native to the West Coast - which had been decimated by overfishing were just beginning to make a comeback. Few people had ever tasted them. American caviar was in its infancy, the American goat cheese industry was only four years old, and red fish, a Louisiana delicacy, was just being introduced to the rest of the nation. (And thanks to Paul Prudhomme, would soon became so popular that it became endangered.) Alice Waters’ beautiful mesclun salad? She had half of Berkeley pulling up their lawns to grow the tiny greens for her, but they would soon become a commercial product - and de rigeur in dining rooms across the country. Pizza, of course, was about to have its moment. The one food on this menu which still hasn’t gained traction is that tripe gumbo. One can always hope.

About the last line in the article… Paul Prudhomme was about to create America’s first pop-up restaurant; a few months after this dinner he closed his New Orleans establishment and brought the entire staff to San Francisco. They recreated K-Paul’s in one of Bill Graham’s nightclubs. There were no reservations, but people were so eager to taste his food they happily lined up for 12 hours to secure a place at the table.

There was no balsamic vinegar in any of the dishes served at the Stanford Court. No surprise: balsamic vinegar was pretty much unknown in the United States at that time. The meal described below (it’s from Comfort Me with Apples) is one I ate in 1979 at Darrell Corti’s house.

The great balsamico that Darrell served us was, of course, the thick, intense very aged elixir that I wrote about here. I dole it out in thimblefuls. But for everyday balsamic Bariani is the brand I use; made in the traditional manner in California, it’s far superior to the stuff you find in the supermarket.

I’m at the Traverse City Food and Wine Festival, where I’ve just had a spectacular dinner created by a number of Michigan chefs. The restaurants in this city are truly impressive; I’ve only had time to sample a couple, but I’ll be back to this beautiful city.

My favorite bite at the dinner was from Umbo: rich, crisp brown butter brioche hugging a delicate scallop mousse and crowned with caviar. Among other things it made me long for more brioche in my life.

There was also this impressive combination of green beans, peaches (the peaches here are fantastic right now) and capicola from Detroit’s Selden Standard ….

and this Sardinian gnocchetti with pesto trapanese from Detroit’s She Wolf…

I also want to give a shout out to Amical, where I ate a truly delicious rendition of my own recipe for spaghetti with bottarga.