The Quintessential California Chef

Also, a rather astonishing vintage menu, NY's best seafood platter and a ceramic casserole you're going to want.

That’s me and Jonathan Waxman in 1986, which is about four years after I wrote the article below.

In the early eighties Thomas Hoving, who was then the editor of Connoisseur Magazine, asked me to write a piece about “the quintessential California chef”.

This is what I came up with. The article never ran; I have no idea why. Reading it now makes me think how lucky I was to have been writing at a time when reporters had such extraordinary access.

Jonathan, of course, did not open the new version of Trader Vic’s he talks about in the article; a couple years later he moved to New York to open Jam’s, and ultimately gave us Barbuto, one of my favorite restaurants in New York.

Seems like a good pairing. Jonathan, after all, once worked at Chez Panisse. And this is what they were serving on a March evening almost exactly 40 years ago in Berkeley. What an astonishing menu! And what large appetites we had!

This is the seafood platter at The Tavern at Gramercy Tavern; I think it’s the best version in New York. Every single item was spectacular: the Long Island shrimp were astonishingly delicate, the Island Creek oysters pristine and crisp, the lobster salad filled with bright flavors, the crabmeat stunningly fresh, and the sea urchins sparkled. It was so good I wanted to sit simply savoring the flavors, rather than going on to eat more. But then this showed up….

a really original version of steak tartare with blue cheese and sweet crisp bits of Asian pear that I couldn’t stop eating. “No more!” I cried, until this refreshing dessert of blood orange sorbet with passion fruit appeared.

Is it any wonder that the restaurant is celebrating it’s 30th year?

Over on Three Ingredients Nancy, Laurie and I were talking about the great cassoulet master David Campigotto of Chez David in Castelnaudary, and the way he constructs the dish by layering the meats into a large ceramic dish with slanted sides. Looking for the perfect cassoulet container, we found this hand-made cassole.

Don’t you long to own one? I certainly do.