1985: What Do Brioches Have To Do With It?

Setting for Gourmet's October, 1985, Chinese Banquet.
Drawing by Lucey Bowen after photograph.

      Restaurants reviewed in Gourmet, whether Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, or Malaysian served at least two audiences.  The first was almost always immigrants, hungry for a taste of home. The other was the European or African-American wanting to eat food that wasn't just like home, but wan't too strange, and was served in a setting more elegant than home.

     Resolution of the possible conflicting wants of these two audiences came in a variety of ways.  In 1985, the deregulation of Japanese banking had begun to inflate the Japanese "bubble economy."  The legendary insularity of Japan to foreign influence was over, and Tokyo itself developed the concept of Seryna,

the Japanese equivalent of The Four Seasons restaurant. Strikingly, extravagantly handsome, it was a jewel set in a mid-town pocket park in Manhattan.  The food was influenced by Chinese and European cooking.  Wealthy Japanese and other business men loved it, and its geisha-like servers.
     In New York, Cuisine de Saigon, was one of the first Vietnamese restaurants to so call itself. The bitter memories of the Vietnam conflict were fading.  The owners had come to New York in 1968 as part of the Vietnamese mission to the United Nations, and could not return.  

     At Fu's,  also in New York, manager Gloria Chu was outspoken in condemning the "old immigrant experience" in which youngsters "get stuck in menial jobs all their lives."

     California's long history of Asian immigration prompted another innovation.  In the old Chinatown of Hanford, California, third generation Chinese American Richard Wing had fed escargot to Chaing Kai Shek's ambassadors at his Imperial Dynasty restaurant.  Wolfgang Puck took this concept to Hollywood with his Chinois.   Puck admitted "I don't know anything about Chinese food. This is a way to learn it."  The restaurant fused French technique with Japanese, Thai and Southeast Asian ingredients.  I wonder if an immigrant from those places would find comfort in the food or the prices.

     Both restaurant reviewers, Jay Jacobs in New York, and Caroline Bates in California provided the personal history of the restaurant owners.  Jacobs and Bates visited each restaurant multiple times, so that they could engage with the owners and staff in a personal way.  Sometimes the stories heard hint at the faraway conflicts which brought the owners to the United States.  Fragrant Vegetable Restaurant in Monterrey Park was a Chinese restaurant serving the vegetarian cooking of Buddhist monasteries.  The chef learned his craft in a temple in Saigon, before he was forced, probably by the Cultural Revolution, to flee to Hong Kong .

     These vignettes serve two purposes. By affecting to know the owner or chef of a restaurant,  a male customer appears in control.  They also appear to make the experience of these restaurants more authentic, a key component of the gourmet experience.  The most authentic travel story was Lesley Blanch's piece, "Afghanistan Remembered."  Blanch, who died in 2007, at age 103, lived in Afghanistan in  the early 1960s.  Her 1985 memories of the people and food of the region are tinged with the tragic awareness of subsequent revolutions and invasions.  How much authenticity do we really want with our food?

   
     The October, 1985 issue of Gourmet provided the menu and recipes for "A Chinese Dinner," replete with four cold plates and five main dishes.  That issue also featured Jacques Pépin's method for making brioches.  I made brioches.  I don't think I've ever made them again.  No matter.  By following that recipe, I partook of Gourmet's crusade to make fine living available to a wide audience through food.
     Our travel that year was strictly western hemisphere.  To escape the Massachusetts winter, we to Dominica in the West Indies.   It has the distinction of having the only surviving intact tribe of Carawak Indians, and virtually no beaches.  Having been a British possession, the cooking is undistinguished, and being an island, almost all food imported. 
     In the Spring we flew to England itself, and took the recently revived Orient Express to Venice.
     My adherence to the middle class aspirations of Gourmet held tight in July.  In honor of my sister's wedding I cooked the exact Rehearsal Dinner menu from the previous month.  The main course was "Pistachioed Turkey Ballottine."  Little did we imagine that deboned turkey would become a family tradition for Thanksgivings to come. 

The fate of the restaurants featured in 1985 Gourmet is mixed:
New York:    

Fragrant Vegetable Restaurant is gone.

Cuisine de Saigon ar 154 West 13th,  New York City, is now in hands of third generation.
Seryna next to Paley Park is now Valbella, northern Italian.
Kumio "Yama" Koyama of New York's Yama opened his own restaurant at Fort Lee, NJ called Yamagata!! at 1636 Palisades Ave Fort Lee, N. 
At Nirvana Club One, Julie Sahni was executive chef; hers was my first Indian cookbook.
California
Robata Grill is still in Mill Valley, CA.
Chinois is still Chinois.
Fortune Garden Pavillion replaced by Richard Sandoval's Pampano,  upscale Mexican.
Katsu at 1972 Hillhurst Avenue in Hollywood's Los Feliz, is now En Sushi

Mike's Chinese Cuisine at 5145 Geary, SF is now Old Shanghai.

Lesley Blanch is remembered and read.

1984: The Pinafored Chinese Twins in Little Italy

Chinese Twins in Little Italy, Gourmet, 1984

     The pair graced the cover of Gourmet in January, 1984.  In fact, the feature article was on New York's Little Italy, not neighboring Chinatown.  And that was that for Asia in America that first month of the year.
     Back in New York, and back in Chinatown, Jay Jacobs reviewed Say Eng Look, notable for its Shanghai style food, not its decor. In November, Jacobs found Szechuan Village Inn, at 1st Avenue and 89th Street.  Not very far from   
     Jacobs found Darbar, housed in a duplex at 44 West 56th Street.  The interior of the restaurant incorporated sandalwood screens, tiles, carpets, paintings and sculpture, all commissioned in India and installed in the restaurant.  Its Mogul, or northern Indian style of cooking was excellent.        
     Continuing in the magazine's traditions of explaining the Spice Route and the nostalgic memoires of early issues of  Gourmet,  Julie Sahni wrote "An Indian Spice Sampler" a recollection of the cooking of her childhood in Kanpur in north central India.  This piece, part memoir, part ethnography, indoctrinated the reader into the power of spices, and was followed by over a dozen recipes.    
      Meanwhile, Jay Jacobs travelled to China.   In 1984, with the re-unification of Hong Kong with the People's Republic still more than a decade away, the restaurants of Hong Kong were far superior to those in Beijing or Chengdu, the markets filled with edibles and in-edibles that lured Jacobs in ways that jade jewelry did not.  His piece, "The Lone Marketeer: Hong Kong," was also written with a very personal slant.  Before arriving in Hong Kong, Jacobs had stayed three days in poor village in outlying Anhui province.  The contrast to sleek, free-wheeling Hong Kong almost unhinged him.  He investigated the Kowloon market.   The term "Foodie" had not yet been coined. He called himself a "fooder."
      Fred Ferretti offered an alternative, grand hotel dining.  In "Hong Kong, Sans Chopsticks."  Ferretti opined that in decades prior, alternatives to the outstanding Chinese food of Hong Kong were few.  By the early eighties, the enormous wealth of the city brought with it a demand for grand cuisine of other places: France, Malaysia, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, Germany. Ingredients were flown in from everywhere.  You can see the international economy eating.
       "Foodnik" was still the coinage to describe a dedicated gastronomer like Nobuyoshi Kuraoka of Hyotan Nippon, at 109 East 59th Street in New York.  Beautifully equipped with a sushi bar and decorated with Kyoto tiles, the menu was extensive, the food unusual and good.
      Jacobs was not so jaded as not to appreciate his discovery in New York of China Garden, and its proprieter, Tam Choi Lam.  Jacob's observed, not for the first or last time,  the difficulties an "Englished Chinese menu" create.
      The Big Island of Hawaii, was historically a stepping stone to California in Asian immigration.  Carolyn Bates didn't dwell on the history of contract laborers imported tom Hawaii to work the sugar and pineapple plantations, but many of the establishments she visits are the creation of Japanese Americans.  She described The Akatsuka Orchid Gardens, Restaurant Fuji, the Yamaguchi Family's Kalapana Store and Drive-Inn and Susuma Nakagowa, a retired government scientist who raises mullet in ancient fish-ponds for the Seaside Restaurant.  On their website, I learned that the Nakagowa family has long-standing tie to Hawaii.  Susuma's parents, Seiichi and Matsuno opened the restaurant in 1921.  The fishpond was destroyed by the 1946 tsunami and rebuilt twice since.  Tellingly, Susumu served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and his fellow veterans helped rebuild the pond in the early 1980s.  In focusing on Hawaii's volcanic geology and on the remnants of the original Hawaiians, Bates obscured Hawaii's troubling 20th Century history.
    Given Hawaii as a melting pot of all manner of Asian peoples and foods, and its relative proximity to San Francisco, it's not surprising to find innovative mixes there.   The fusion phenomena of Japanese-French appeared in San Francisco with Masa's.  Masaka Kobayoshi learned his arts and skills in Tokyo and France.  He had cooked French food in New York and the Napa Valley.  The food served to Carolyn Bates seemed to have been Japanese in its visual aesthetic and in the purity of falvors, yet French in its sauces.  
     Caroline Bates opined that San Francisco has cornered the market on Vietnamese cooking in California, with Garden House, the newest addition, at 133 Clement Street.  Southeast Asia was also represented by Prakas Yenbamroong's Talesai, at 9043 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where his mother, Vilai, was chef.  

New York:
China Garden, in 2012, is a pizza parlor.
Hyontan Nippon is gone now, replace by a convenience café.
     
Hawaii:
The Seaside is still owned and operated by the Nakagawa family.
   
San Francisco:
In 2012, Masa's is still a destination restaurant, albeit many chefs later;  and now the food is called California French.  I note that the pastry chef is Hong Kong born, California educated Maggie Leung.
Talesai is  still there, run by the third generation, Kris Yenbamroong, who was born in LA, but returned to Thailand to complete his education. He returned to take over management of the restaurant and still relies on his grandmother's recipes.
Garden House, with a different chef and now Le Soleil Authentic Vietnamese , it re-opened in February, 2012 after redecoration.

1983: Restaurants: Thresholds for Immigrants

Chairs in Surakarta kraton museum, Java, drawn from Gourmet

     Gourmet had long treated New York as the dining capital of the country.  Eventually it had admitted California to a regular restaurant review column, alternating Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Yet, more than a third of the 1980s wave of Asian immigrants, especially those from the Philippines, China, South Korea and India, settled in California. 

      

     In New York, Jay Jacobs reviewed Shanghai Manor, an "uptown" Chinese restaurant.  Interestingly, although he applauded the cooking, he listed the quibbles of a irritated cosmopolite:  westerners treat appetizers and soups in un-Chinese ways; why do menus say crispy instead of the perfectly good adjective crisp?  Jacobs devoted a review to Pamir.  He began by locating the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan.  The owners of Pamir, seven brothers and sisters of the Bayat family, were Pashto speakers, originally from Kabul. Jacobs found the food reflected Afghanistan's location near India and Iran.  
     At Flower Drum in New York, Jay Jacobs found another remarkable immigrant, Pao Peter Lee.  Jacobs wrote that Lee belonged to the "last generation of restaurateurs born in what is now the People's Republic of China."  The fortunes of war and politics drove him from Beijing to Taiwan, via Wuhan and Chongqing  Lee came to America in 1953 to attend an international conference of  police chiefs.  He worked, he studied and he became an interpreter at the United Nations. He saved.  Ten years later he opened his restaurant, and by Jacobs description is was first rate.  Peter Pao Lee was many things in addition to restaurateur, including an expert in tai chi.    He learned the 108 Yang family form of Tai Chi from his grandfather.  

    Back in the realm of David Keh, this time to Auntie Yuan.  With the assistance of one Ed Schoenfeld, the restaurant was geared to American tastes, based around the cooking of particular Taiwanese cooks, but incorporating the nouvelle cuisine developed in France.
     Jacobs dedicated his column to Takesushi, a temple to the rite of eating fugu, the tiger blowfish of deadly toxin.  The next month, he featured Toons, a Thai restaurant in Greenwich Village.  In addition to explaining the prevalence of fish sauce in Southeast Asian cooking, Jacobs dwelt on the importance of street, or sidewalk food, and in Toons' menu as appetizers.  The remainder of his review was devoted to making parallels between the French treatment of foods like frog's legs and crab served in its shell to Thai food, perhaps to build a launching pad to Thai food from the French restaurants and recipes which numerically dominated Gourmet's pages.
     Perhaps Geri Trotta's Indonesian junket prompted Jay Jacobs' discovery of the Indonesian Tamu, recounted in the June issue.  The owner, Andi Sangkala, hailed from Sulawesi, fourth largest of the islands in the Indonesian archipelago.  Jacobs thought Tamu the only Indonesian restaurant in New York City.  The number of Indonesian immigrants in the United States tripled between 1980 and 1990, most lived in Southern California.


     In California, Caroline Bates ventured to Santa Barbara to visit Bangkok West, a restaurant run by one Pathon Jittayasotorn and his wife, and numerous brothers and sisters, recently arrived from Bangkok. La Petite Chaya's Japanese food with French influence first succeeded in Japan, and then was launched in Los Angeles. This fusion concept, the idea of applying Japanese thinking to a French base, was already several years old.  Was a concession to American tastes, or was it the Japanese, with their expanding economy who explored this?  Or is it the some molecular similarity between Japanese Kaiseki, the special refined small plates that go with the tea ceremony, and the French menu de degustation or tasting menu?
     Bates began her March review of Korean Palace with the observation that Korea seldom gets credit for a cuisine of its own.  She was impressed with the individuality and vitality of the cooking at this San Francisco restaurant.  The owner and his wife, Nam Kun Song and Un Hui, created what a homey and welcoming place that  featured dishes influenced by Japan, like ku jul pan, a Korean version of obento presentation, and uniquely Korean ones, like bibim bab, a salad said to be of Buddhist origin.   
     For Christmas, Bates decided on Indian food for a post Nutcracker feast, largely because The Kundan had opened in the just completed Opera Plaza condominium near the San Francisco Ballet.  She observed that San Francisco was the country's reigning capital of Indian cooking.  The focus, as with The Gaylord and The Peacock is Mogul, or northern Indian cuisine, served formally.  

      Travelling in Jogjakarta, central Java, Geri Trotta happened on a performance of the dance drama of the the Ramayana, in front of the Prambanan temple. Trotta observed the Jogja dance style, created by a sultan in the Eighteenth Century. She visited the many Hindu temples or Candi as well as Borobdur, the world's largest Buddhist monument. The Hindu epic Ramayana is wildly popular in a county which recognizes six religions but Islam is the principal creed.

     Elisabeth Ando wrote about lunch at the Sanko-In, a temple on the outskirts of Tokyo.  Ando observed that in Japan, the very best vegetarian fare was found at Buddhist temples.  The Sanko-In luncheon was the creation of nun, Yoneida Soei.  Ando described each course, and also gave detailed instructions on travelling by train to the Tokyo Suburb. 

   In the midst of a icy New England winter, Dick and I took a page from the December issue of Gourmet, 1982, and went "Scuba Diving in the Bahamas" off Andros Island at a resort called Small Hope Bay Lodge.  In October, we retraced together the Maine adventure I'd previously enjoyed alone.  We had duck and pork curry at Aubergine and camped in Blue Hill.  We cooked over a wood fire.  In rain and fog, we hiked the carriage trails of Mount Desert from Northeast Harbor.  At the Central House we had bouillabaise and steak with bernaise sauce.  The next day we climbed the rocks of Mount Desert in bright and hot sun.  The next day we walked to Jordan Pond House for popovers.
     I might have remained in this East Coast to the Caribbean axis, had I not not been sent to Silicon Valley for training in computer software.  I made my first trip west of the Great Divide.  I checked into Dinah's Motor Hotel, with its collection of Asian art and and its Japanese garden.  My instructor, a young Vietnamese woman, invited me to dinner---at a French Restaurant.  My friend Patrick took me for Mongolian Bar-b-cue in Mountain View, another friend guided me to the Asian Art Museum and the Japanese Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.  On we went to the Japan Center on Geary, with its Kinokinuya Bookstore.  In my journal,  I wrote "I feel very much a citizen of the world, powerful because I am able to cope with change."


New York:
Shanghai Manor is currently home to a Chinese restaurant, Lychee House, who claim to serve a "modern Chinese,"  and they still serve crispy fish.
Pamir is gone, and the intervening years no kinder to Afghanistan.
Flower Drum Leaving New York, Peter Pao Lee took Flower Drum Restaurant to Palm Springs.  Lee died in 2008, but his students continue to teach Tai Chi.



Los Angeles:
La Petite Chaya is still going strong, as can be seen in its offspring, Chaya, with branches all up and down the Pacific Coast. 
Bangkok West

San Francisco:
Korean Palace at 631 O'Farrell, still houses a Korean restaurant,  Dong Baek, 
which from its yelp* reviews seems to merit a visit.
The Kundan is gone from Opera Plaza, replaced by a Max's Opera House Cafe.

1982: Not Quite Ready for Durian, the stinky fruit?

Gamelan player, Central Musuem, Jakarta, from a photo by Michael Oppersdorf

     Where there's peace, tourism thrives.  Where there's war,  the metropole gets a taste of a new cuisine.  If it's good, cosmopolites want recipes.  That's why travel articles, restaurant reviews and recipes are the staples of Gourmet's representation of the Asia.
     Geri Trotta was at first dismayed with Jakarta, with its European hotels and Continental food.  At first it seemed too European, too modern, so she immersed the reader in the history of Indonesia; its combination of land and sea, its Hindu roots, the arrival of Islamic and Christian traders, especially the Dutch East India Company. At the Wayang Museum, she found “a world within a world of puppets from the various islands.”  In two paragraphs she summarized the world of puppetry, so crucial to Indonesian society.  She also told the story of another pillar of Indonesian culture, Iwan Tirta, who revived the craft of batik.  She ended her piece by repeating her observation that Jakarta was a disquieting city, where luxury and squalor co-existed, giving a “raw vitality resulting from the collision of cultures, East and West.”
    The establishment of diplomatic relations with China expanded tourism.  Jay Jacobs spent three weeks in the People’s Republic of China, where he “stuffed his face continuously.”  He realized that the dishes he ate in China were simpler and more clearly defined than what he’d eaten in American Chinese restaurants.  Returning to Manhattan, he found the cooking at David K’s Cantonese Kitchen more like the dishes he ate in China.  David Keh was said to have changed the image of Chinese food in America. In New York he brought introducing Sechuan food uptown. (You may remember that David Keh was the owner of Uncle Tai’s.  Eventually, Uncle Tai’s closed because David Keh didn’t approve of unionized labor.)
     In 1982, according to Caroline Bates, the customers at Chef Monkgorn Kaiswai’s Thai Gourmet were more familiar with Chinese food than Thai.  The restaurant featured unusual dishes from Thailands northeastern area.  The customers were drawn from the neighborhood.  
     Bates observed the changing demographics of Asian population.  In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Asian communities formed outside of the central Chinatown or Japantown.  Small gems of restaurants like Thai Gourmet were to be found just off the freeway and off the tourist's map.
     Bates reviewed Mango Bay in San Francisco.  In 1982 it opened at 298 Gough Street.  The original founders of Mango Bay felt that previous restaurants featuring the islands cuisine were “too ethnic and too limited.”  Bates opines that “only a homesick Filipino” was likely to lament the changes they made.  Lumpia, Philippine egg rolls, reflect a cuisine that's basically Malaysian, with influences from the Asian mainland and Spain.  Actually, there were a lot of homesick Filipinos.  The Filipino community in San Francisco had become more visible because of the fight to preserve the International Hotel, home to many aging Filipino veterans of World War II.
     I didn't take myself to any of these places, but that year I met my own version of Nicholas Hel, a tall thin engineer who liked to cook Peking Duck and lobster.  Having attended M.I.T.,  Legal Seafood was a favorite.  The best night out, however, was Maison Robert.  For dinner,  the women dressed in silks and the men in tweed and suede.  We were seated at the round table in the center of the room.  We consumed the French influenced food and wine, and the group decided to share one of each of the desserts.  "Take a bite, and pass to your right." Then there was the contest to see who could hold a spoon on their nose.  No effortless control for me.

New York:
David K’s Cantonese at 1395 Second Avenue is Szechuan Chalet.  David Keh died in 2003.
Los Angeles:
Thai Gourmet at 8650 Reseda Boulevard, Northridge
San Francisco:
Mango Bay at 298 Gough Street is gone.  After a stint in the International Food Court at Yerba Buena Gardens, Mango Bay migrated down the Peninsula to Redwood Shores, along with the growing Filipino community.

Maison Robert, in Boston's Old City Hall, closed in 2004.

1981: Down East and Not Looking West

Pines, Rocks and Atlantic, Monhegan Island, watercolor, Lucey Bowen, 1981

   
     For "Old China Hands," like Henry McNulty, "the pull of that country was like a gigantic magnet."  Upon the re-opening of diplomatic relations with China, he had to get back.  In the June 1981, Gourmet his  "Going Home to China"  tells us that McNulty was born in Suzhou in 1913. His father ran a missionary school.  McNulty recalled fleeing school Nanjing ahead Chaing Kaishek's troops in 1927.  Graduating from Princeton University in 1936, McNulty had a career as a war correspondent, journalist and publicist for French Champagne.  His was a voyage of rediscovery.  He shared his special perspective.  He provided the reader with a bridge between the end of Dynastic Imperial China and the end of Mao's China. In 1981, much of China was still closed to foreigners.  He calls his a nostalgia trip, I found it full of insight.  He had grown up speaking a local dialect; Mandarin was now being taught as the standard.  The word for a rickshaw pulled by a running human had disappeared with the introduction of humans on cycles pulling the same cargo.  For the benefit of travelers wanting to retrace his journey,  McNulty included information about restaurants and hotels in Nanjing, Suzhow and Shanghai. 

      As Deng Xioping proposed economic reform in China, he could look to Singapore for inspiration.  Singapore was home to a majority population of overseas Chinese.  The former British colony had leaped out of the starvation times of the 1940s and 1950s and by the early 1970s had established itself as a manufacturing center for American companies like Texas Instruments.  Trotta's article made a useful guide for Americans traveling there on business or pleasure. She makes it clear that visits to the old colonial haunts, like Raffles hotel are of historic interest.  Yet this is no playground for "Old Colonials,"  it is the vibrancy and ambition of the mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian and European that makes the place unique. Her essay, combining ancient and modern history, sociology, anthropology, anecdote and food is Gourmet at its best.  

     Meanwhile, Asian immigrants were flocking to California and livening up the scene. Carolyn Bates described Tien Fu, a restaurant for authoritative Szechuan dishes.  She remarks that now in San Francisco, Chinese restaurants are to be found in neighborhoods far from Chinatown, like Noriega Street at Nineteenth Avenue, in the Sunset district.  Once again, the piece explains certain basics, such as the cold dishes that are the Chinese equivalent of appetizers.  In August, Ms. Bates reviewed Fuku-Sushi, which was located in San Francisco's Japantown.  The intracacies of sushi are explained. In December she reviewed The Peacock, an Indian restaurant at 2800 VanNess.  The owner, Pupla Goswami, accurately predicted that Indian cooking was going to be the next craze. The same might have been said of Vietnamese food at the Golden Turtle in Richmond, restaurant which had opened in 1977.
     I confess.  My 1981 vacation was pure Gourmet, specifically the June issue's feature "Coastal Maine." the June issue of Gourmet.  From Worcester, Massachusetts, I drove up the Maine coast.  The Laura B ferried me to Monhegan Island, all pinewoods, rocks and splashing Atlantic. The Wyeths, Andrew and Jamie painted it over many years.  I spent a week and I painted, hardly speaking a word to anyone, and eating the very plain food you'd expect at an old hotel on an island in Maine.  When I returned to the mainland, I ate.  I ate fabulously at Aubergine, in Camden, and at Le Domaine in Hancock.  It was good living.


Tien Fu
The Peacock, at 2800 VanNess is now a real estate agency.

Fuku Sushi
Golden Turtle
Henry McNulty died in 2001.

Geri Trotta, Barnard graduate, world traveller, writer and editor, died in 2005 at age 90.

The chef owner of Aubergine, David Grant, still lives in Camden, and hasn't lost his cooking and eating chops.

The family who founded Le Domaine it sold it almost a decade ago, it is still providing fine French food to summer people from June thru October.