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.