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.

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.