1999: The Torch is Passed

Copy of one of very few pieces of sculpture recovered from Harappa site; copies of animal seals with still un-deciphered Harappan script. Lucey Bowen, 2012.

 
     For Gourmet enthusiasts, 1999 marked a seismic shift as rattling to those readers as Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese control was for old-Asia-hands:
 Gourmet got a new editor, Ruth Reichl.   As she would be the first to point out, the magazine had a lot of good things going for it.  One of the features of that first year was an alphabet for cooks;  M.F.K. Fisher had created that decades earlier.
     A crop of new-Asia-hands like John A. Glusman imbued old places with a distinctly post-modern flavor, as in his "Bali High, A Legendary Island's Idyllic Resorts."   Gusman amends the standard history of Dutch colonization of the island with a history of its tourism.   Also heralding change is John Willoughby's "Paradise Laos."  His travelling companion is a Lao friend who owns a Thai restaurant in, of all places, Ellsworth, Maine.
     There's also a twist on the nostalgia trope.  Nicole Mones wrote in "Beijing Looks Back; in China's capital, food is a way of contemplating the past," that Cultural Revolution-theme restaurants were springing up all over Beijing.  "Nostalgia for rural poverty? For hard labor? For a movement that was designed to obliterate nostalgia itself," she asks.   Like me, she turns to anthropology for answers, discovering that China's loosening of economic restrictions allows Beijingers to consider consuming a choice of many versions of the past.  The Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, for those who lived through was horrifying and exhilarating, it's remembered as a time when people lived and died for ideas, not money.  For another version of the past, Mones pays a visit to the newly installed Beijing branch of David Tang's China Club.
    

New York:

Asia de Cuba at 237 Madison Avenue is closed.
Pondicherry at 8 West 58th Street is closed.
Shanghai Cuisine at 89-91 Bayard Street is still Shanghai Cuisine.
Cafe Spice at 72 University Place is closed.

Los Angeles:

Bombay Cafe 12021 West Pico Boulevard is still Bombay Cafe.

1998: Filipinos, Feng Shui and Philadelphians

     In 1998 Gourmet had more than a half century of established approaches to writing about food.  "Specialités de la Maison" reviewed restaurants in New York and eventually San Francisco. Regional writers detailed local specialties, or else these were featured in "Road Food."  With regard to Asia, "Gourmet Holidays" gave detailed advice on a roster of destinations that expanded from Hong Kong and Singapore to Bali and Bangkok.  The reviews of Asian restaurants reflected a parallel growth, from Cantonese Chinese to Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and regional varieties of Chinese.  These articles often always included recipes, and even complete menus.
   The October Gourmet mixed things up quite a bit.  "At Home with Susanna Foo, An elegant dinner with Philadelphia's Doyenne of Chinese Cuisine," was about a woman chef from Philadelphia, not previously acknowledged as a culinary capital for Chinese cuisine.  Foo, a librarian by training, was Mongolian by birth but grew up in Shanghai and Taiwan before coming to the United States.  She cooked in her husband's Hunan style restaurant, studied at the Culinary Institute, in Thailand and Italy before opening a restaurant serving food reflecting her personal odyssey. 
     Other new territory was explored that year.  "Resorts of the Philippines" detailed beach resorts in that archipelago.  Under the heading "Hideaways,"   Gourmet, for the first time placed the Philippines in its roster of Asian destinations.  There was a certain irony here, in that the 1990-1999 was a decade of disaster in the Philippines as they suffered a major earthquake, half-a-dozen typhoons and a drought.
   
     


New York:
Kuruma Zushi at 7 East 47th Street is still Karumazushi.
Kang Suh at 1250 Broadway is still Kang Suh.
Mr. K's at 570 Lexington Avenue is still Mr. K's

San Francisco:
E&O Trading Company at 314 Sutter Street closed for renovation and re-opened.
Thep Phanom at 400 Waller Street is still Thep Phenom

Los Angeles:
Ginza Sushiko at 218 Via Rodeo, Beverly Hills is closed.

Covers

     Choosing a the cover image for Gourmet must have involved arguments and tough choices.  The cover is what moves a magazine from the rack to the cashier.  Asian imagery featured in nine, out of 815, issues of Gourmet.  Half the images dealt with Asian food, and half with immigration and tourism.  In case you were wondering, turkeys and Christmas cookies dominate the cover count. (Images are included for review purposes only, and are copyright Conde Nast.)


The first cover with Asian content.  Henry Stahlhut painted "India" and illustrations for "Curry Hot, Curry Cold" for the August, 1949 issue.

Five years later, for the January, 1984 cover, these Chinese twins were photographed in Manhattan's Little Italy, not far from Chinatown.

In April, 1989, "Taipei is brought to life in the color and symbolism of its shrines, such as the Buddhist temple Lung Shan, a monument of the Chin'ing dynasty built more than two centuries ago." Inside, Fred Ferretti toured the island of "cultural, culinary and geographical surprises."

May, 1989 featured "Chinese style steamed shrimp and scallions," a quick recipe included in the monthly column, "In Short Order."

April, 1991, "The emerald geometry of rice fields," was featured, hinting at Anthony Weller's "Gourmet Holidays: Bali."

March, 1992, Jumbo Floating Restaurant, off Aberdeen, a familiar Hong Kong Site, accompanied Fred Ferretti's column, "A Gourmet at Large."

April, 2003, Song An's photograph, "Red, hot and beautiful," fronted "China Bold," Fushia Dunlop's piece on new interpretations of Sichuanese cooking.

June, 2006, harked back to Trader Vic's Asian-influenced-Polynesian-themed "Tiki" fare.

May, 2008, Grilled shrimp drizzled with Japanese dressing was the bait for "Learning Japanese," in the Cooking Vacations  issue.

The 1970s: Stirred Up

The Domino Theory in Blue and White Napkin Rings, Lucey Bowen, 2012

     In the 1970s, Gourmet had to contend with turbulence and television.  In the search for "good living," the first is best ignored.  The turbulence in Asia, was war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  Nixon's overtures to mainland China served to discredit both the really-old-China-hands from the colonial era, and to marginalize the immigrant Nationalist Chinese perspectives.  
     And how to compete with television?  With food porn, of course.  Photo-essays replaced black and white drawings to accompany the writing.    To illustrate articles about India, Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore, Gourmet obtained the service of Ronny Jacques, who captured mouthwatering images of food and people.  Lillian Langseth-Christiansen was the author. While there's no doubt about her writing and cooking chops,  Langseth-Christiansen might seem a curious choice for an Asian voice.   For the earlier issues of Gourmet, she recalled her youth in New York and Vienna as the daughter of a wealthy, opera-loving, gourmand and oenophile and his doting wife.  Her family and her governesses enculturated her palate, strengthening the ties of flavor and occasion.  She and her brother were periodically asked to recall the tastes of some marvelous meal in some fairy tale setting ordered by her father. 
     She determined, at age fourteen, to return to Vienna and attend Franz Hoffman's Wiener Werkstatte.  She had exquisite taste in all things. She provides a cosmopolitan, dare I say European, perspective on how to visit, shop and eat in the cities of the safe parts of Asia.  
     

The 1960s: Thoroughly Modern

Sketch by Lucey Bowen of Russell Wright designed platter for Shun Lee Dynasty, 1966

     Diners and critics who wanted their Chinese restaurants decorated in "authentic" style would have looked askance at the decor of Shun Lee Dynasty.  The owners had commissioned the very modern Russell Wright to design the restaurant from floor to ceiling and fork to chop-sticks.  Why wouldn't the owners hire the premier American designer of the time?  Wright had worked to develop native handicrafts in Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan.  Both the founder of Shun Lee and his partner were Nationalist Chinese who came from Taiwan to the United States.  They could not now return to the Communist mainland where Mao had launched the Cultural Revolution that would last a decade.
     Meanwhile, memories of World War II cooled, and the Japanese economic recovery entered the "Golden Sixties."  A young Japanese wrestler named Rocky Ayoki opened Benihana.  Bringing a style of Japanese grilling, teppan-yaki, together with a knife-wielding, food-flipping chef at every table, the restaurant soon became a fad on par with the hoola-hoop.  Nonetheless, I detect disdain in Margaret Bennett's "Has Anybody Here Seen Sushi?" about her adventures searching for sushi in Tokyo with her minimal language skills.  She refers to a venerable gentleman in a kimono, from whom she asked directions, as "probably the friendly, neighborhood white-slave network representative."
     Understandably, travel to Mainland China is neglected.  Curiously, an essay explains how to grow a garden of Chinese vegetables in the United States.  India and Southeast Asia are the focus.  Nostalgia pervades essays on the difference between Anglo-Indian curry and "authentic" Indian curries.  The authors of these pieces, and one about "Rijstaffel" in Java are written by old "Asia Hands," first, second or third generation veterans of the British or Dutch colonial service.
     Was the focus on Southeast Asia a reflection of the Cold War concern with a communist takeover there and the "Domino Theory?"  In 1964 and 1965, lengthy articles on "The Spice Heritage" appeared.   The first is nothing short of a complete review of European trade with Southeast Asia from the Romans through the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the British.  The next delves into the particularities of growing, trading and consuming cinnamon and its relative, cassia bark.  Pepper and cloves received the same treatment. These histories are a subtle reminder of the long history of colonialism in the region.  They stop well short of the twentieth century.
     Perhaps the most important event in the orientation of American eating goes unmentioned in the magazine.  In 1965, the Immigration Reform and Nationality Act replaced the national origins quota system with one based on skills and family relations.  Asians were no longer excluded from immigration quotas.  The next decades would bring peoples and their cooking from places not previously represented on the American scene.