1993: Ripe for Change

Chinese chicken rice, Malay saté, Indian curry at the Chatterbox Coffee Shop, Singapore, drawn by Lucey Bowen from Ian Lloyd's photograph in the January, 1993, Gourmet

     Gourmet's writers did not always traffic in nostalgia, or portray Asia as timeless, or a place whose Golden Age had passed.  Fred Ferretti's 1993 essay "Singapore," takes the city as it was: the result of three decades of determination to make this city of "Many races, one people," the most modern in Asia.  Singapore's foods reflected the mix of inhabitants: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Nonya-Baba or mixed Malay-Chinese.  Carolyn Bates' piece on "Dining in Honolulu," stresses the same slow evolution of the flavorful mix of native Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese foods.
     Chris Yeo, a culture-broker-chef-extraordinaire, exported Singapore's cuisine to Straits Cafe in San Francisco, where it made an indelible impression.  The flavors might have seemed familiar to Chinese and Indian food fanciers, but the combinations were brand new to San Franciscans.  Like the Honolulu mix, this was more than a not marketing concept for restaurant, it was the result of lived experience.
     Meanwhile, other chefs introduced similar changes, sometimes called "Fusion," or "Pan Asian." The Alsatian Jean-George Vongerichten, who'd worked in Bangkok, served his version of Thai food at Vong, in New York.  Wolfgang Puck's Chinois on Main, featuring "an imaginative marriage of Chinese, Japanese, and Thai flavors on a French base," was again reviewed.  Another culture-broker-chef, Bruce Cost, served Chinese and South Asian food at Ginger Island in Berkeley.  East India Grill changed the format of staid Indian restaurants to waiters in T-shirts and "cooking that might be characterized as Cal-Ind."
   
     Meanwhile, Gourmet, in October, 1993, noted a change that removed a beloved place from the food geography of my childhood.  The storied Blue Mill Tavern, former speak-easy and steak-house in New York's Greenwich Village became The Grange Hall.  From the description and reviews of The Grange Hall, I conclude that an authentic piece of mid-century urban history had been ripped out and replaced with a Disneyworld view of farming.

Change has come to many of the restaurants reviewed in Gourmet in 1993:  
New York:
Vong at 200 East 54th Street closed in 2009.
Chiam at 160 East 48th Street is closed.

San Francisco:
Straits Cafe at 3300 Geary Boulevard is now Pot a Pho;  Straits Restaurant in the Westfield Shopping Center and other locations.
Ginger Island at 1820 Fourth Street, Berkeley is closed.

Los Angles
Woo Lae Oak at 170 North La Cienega Boulevard closed in early 2012.
Talésai at 11744 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City is still Talésai.
East India Grill at 345 N. LaBrea Avenue is still East India Grill.
Chinois on Main at 2709 Main Street, Santa Monica is still Chinois.

The Grange Hall at 50 Commerce Street is now Commerce.