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.
 
     

1997: A Flag is Lowered, Another Raised

Silk, Drawn by Lucey Bowen from Photograph of Silk at Jim Thompson Thai Silk, Bangkok, in 1997 Gourmet.

    

     In Gourmet's cast of characters Fred Ferretti is synonymous with Hong Kong, which he'd written about for decades.  It's natural that he write the feature "Hong Kong 1997," where he detailed the changes anticipated when Hong Kong reverted from Crown Colony status to that of a special administrative region of China in June of that year.  The consensus seemed to be that outside of the removal of "all overtones of British sovereignty," the important things, food and free market economics ("One country, two systems.") would remain paramount.
     William Warren's "Shopping for Thai Crafts" describes a market of a very different sort, that for locally made handicrafts.  It seems that the west still has an insatiable desire for the silks and ceramics of the Orient.

   

New York:
Joe's Shanghai at 9 Pell Street is still Joe's Shanghai.
Seryna at 11 East 53rd Street is closed.
Korea Palace at 127 East 54th Street is still Korea Palace.
Wu Liang Ye at 36 West 48th Street at 46 East 29th Street is still Wu Liang Ye.
Sushi Zen at 57 West 46th Street is still Sushi Zen.

Los Angeles:
Le Colonial at 8783 Beverly Boulevard is closed, but note San Francisco and Chicago locations.
Seoul Jung at the Omni Los Angeles, 930 Wiltshire Boulevard is closed.
Jozu at 8360 Melrose Avenue is closed.
Yujean Kang's at 8826 Melrose Avenue is Yujean Kang's at 67 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena.
All India Cafe at 39 South Fair Oaks Avenue, Pasadena is All India Cafe with other locations in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
Obachine at 242 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills is closed.

1996: Kitchen Evolution

Crab over glutinous rice, drawn by Lucey Bowen from Ian Lloyd's photograph accompanying "Chefs of Asia," Gourmet, October, 1996.

     Perhaps I exaggerate, but Fred Ferretti's Gourmet, 1996, feature "Chefs of Asia," was a new fusion of some diverse cultural and societal trends.  Previous travel articles and restaurant reviews often identified the chefs and managers of Asian hotels and local restaurateurs.  Celebrity chefs had been around even before television, but they were either French, British or American.  Ethnic Asian restaurateurs and chefs in the San Francisco and New York had been mentioned by name, with short biographies.  "Chefs of Asia" featured eight  chefs and their signature dishes, photographed on their home ground.   In Shanghai, Taipei, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Jakarta, they are not anonymous cooks turning out traditional standards.  They are inventors, "keeping tradition in a modern manner."  They refine and combine in new ways.
Feretti's thesis is audacious.  "All of Asia's cooking, " he says, "is rooted in China."  Chinese migrants ot Southeast Asia brought with them their ingredients and techniques, and adapted  them to the foods of that region.  He could argue that these modern chefs cook "the manifestation of a broad, changing Chinese kitchen."  Perhaps, if you choose to ignore the equally ancient foodways of the sub-continent of India.

See how the restaurants reviewed have evolved or become extinct:

New York:
Nadaman Hakubai at the Kitano, 66 Park Avenue is Hakubai at the Kitano.
Typhoon Brewery at 22 East 54th Street is now Papillon.
Aja at 937 Broadway is closed.
Azusa of Japan at 3 East 44th Street is still Azusa.

San Francisco:
Betelnut Pejiu Wu at 2030 Union Street is still Betelnut.

Los Angeles:
Manhattan Wonton Company at 8475 Melrose Place is closed.
Chaya Brasserie at 8741 Alden Drive, West Hollywood is still Chaya Brasserie.

1995: Golden Ages that Were and Weren't

The Makings of Pho, Drawn by Lucey Bowen from Ian Lloyd's 1995 Gourmet Photograph.

     A return to bygone days seems by the mid-90s a haunting, if constant, refrain in the pages of Gourmet.  Leave it to expatriate Frenchmen in New York to judge that Americans were ready for a high-styled Vietnamese restaurant called Le Colonial.
     Elsewhere, Nina Simonds, prepared Americans to travel to Vietnam itself.  As she explained in "Vietnam's Culinary Capitals," the United States had re-established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and at the urging of veterans John Kerry and John McCain, had lifted trade embargos, although American airlines did not yet fly directly to Vietnam.  After two decades, Vietnam was recovering from war; the GDP had grown by 8 or 9% since 1991, it was not the Vietnam of the French era, nor the years of the American war.  As is her want, Simonds educates the reader to the three distinct styles of Vietnamese cooking: the Chinese-influenced northern, the spicier but more refined of the old imperial capital, Hue, and the even spicier and eclectic southern style.
     Gerald Asher's "The Princely Pleasures of Udaipur" conjured up another retro-fantasy, the palaces-turned-hotels of the Mewar Maharanas.  Visitors could imagine themselves guests of these ancient Hindu rulers. To Asher's credit he carefully distinguishes the Hindu Mewars from the Moguls, and from the Jains, a religion, founded around the same time as Buddhism as a reformation of Hindu practice.
     Takashimaya, home of the Tea Box, was a branch of the great Japanese department store chain.  From a store selling Japanese novelties in the late 1950s, it had grown, with the Japanese economy and tastes, into a store perhaps even more prestigious than Bergdorf-Goodman, its neighbor across Fifth Avenue.  I wonder if the Japanese look upon the 1980s and 1990s as the Golden Age when they colonized America?
 
New York:
Tea Box at Takashimaya, 693 Fifth Avenue is closed.
Otabe at 68 East 56th Street is now Cosi.
Le Colonial at 149 East 57th Street is still Le Colonial and a branch is now open on the site of Trader Vic's in San Francisco.

   

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Broadcast...to Eat

After my trial tour on the theme of music in South Asian and Southeast Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, I treated myself to lunch at the new South of Market Invitational Food Truck Court (opposite Costco) and discovered Dosa Republic, who also have a restaurant in San Mateo.

A trio of engaging young men cheerfully discussed with me the history and semantics of the Dosarrito, the "South Indian Burrito."

Now that's what I'm talkin about; it just gets better and better.  And because of the Old Delhi Lamb Dosarrito, all is forgiven.

Not sure how pork belly works into this, but am going to investigate.

1950s: Cold War Dishes

South India, Not Southern France, drawn by Lucey Bowen from 2009 photograph by Lucey Bowen.

 
     The editorial staples of Gourmet in the 1950s continued to be well-written restaurant reviews, essays on travel and recipes.  Understandably, since travel to France, Italy and Spain was once again possible, those were the main dishes. The provinces of France with their sights, their foods and their wines, were glowingly described and illustrated.
    Asia was dangerous, contested territory. Since the close of the war, American troops had been stationed in occupied Japan, responsible for its military government.  In 1950, as the demilitarization of Japanese forces was completed,  the North Korean invasion of South Korea brought United States forces, into that conflict, and the Seventh Fleet to Taiwan.  Then, in 1955, as the Korean conflict began to wind down, military advisers were sent to aid South Vietnam.
     With the exception of missionaries, and the soldiers, nurses, diplomats and journalists directly involved in the conflicts, Americans had little first-hand knowledge of the region.  Years of legislation had denied citizenship, and sometimes entry, to "Hindus, Chinese and Japanese races."  On the West Coast, the discriminatory policy of interning all Japanese, whether foreign or American born, had destroyed the restaurants, grocery stores, farms and other Japanese economic and cultural resources that had existed throughout towns in the West.  While legislation against Chinese immigration had been eased in 1943, the communist takeover of mainland China meant a trickle of Nationalist Chinese would arrive, via Taiwan.
     Gourmet's task was education.  The teachers were various; the good ones had first hand information to impart.  Z. L. Loo's four part series of accounts of his privileged childhood in early 20th Century China.  Editorially, such essays were triple plays.  Recent Chinese history was reviewed, the basics of the Chinese Confucian ethos was explained, and recipes were included.  That they evoke with nostalgia a lost era goes without saying.  Tao Kim Hai's wife wrote about a meal celebrating his birthday while they were stationed in Korea, and later about an early morning gustatory expedition in Thailand.  Tao Kim Hai wrote of himself as a "Disciple of Ong Tao," the Vietnamese kitchen god.  It is an explanation of how, in spite of Vietnamese society's strict hierarchy of occupations, he was attracted to the kitchen before he could crawl.  His mother was a great supervisor of cooks, but she knew chef wasn't a fit occupation for a gentleman scholar.  If readers had been paying attention, they would have wondered about all the male chefs in America's Chinatowns.
    Several Chinese restaurants were found worthy of mention in the "Spécialités de la Maison" column.  The founder of Lum Fong's was born in Canton in 1886, came to the United States in 1915, and established his first restaurant, at 220 Canal Street, in 1920.  In 1940 he opened a second one in mid-town Manhattan at 150 West 52nd Street.  It is claimed that Lum Fong introduced the egg roll to New York.  When describing the restaurant in 1953 and again in 1955, Gourmet's reviewers, as usual, went to some trouble to mention the names of owners, managers, and in this case, a waiter who was the nephew of the late Lum Fong.
     Tom Marvell, author of the "Spécialités de la Maison' column used his review of the Sun Luck restaurant to inform readers that Chinese cuisine could be broken down into four styles: Northern or Peking, Eastern or Shanghai, Southern or Cantonese and Western or Chungking.  He offered the further advice: go in a group and listen to the headwaiter.
     By 1959 another restaurant, East Horizon, at 116 57th Street, and another reviewer, Alvin Kerr, were on the scene.  Kerr also reviewed Esther Eng's at 1085 2nd Avenue.  He remarked on the Chinese theatrical regalia that decorated the restaurant.  He seems to have been unaware that Esther Eng was a major figure in motion pictures. She made films in Hollywood and Hong Kong. According to film scholar Frank Bren, prior to 1950, she was the most prolific film-maker in Chinese cinema and perhaps its first feminist director.  She even gave Bruce Lee his film debut, as a baby,  in 1941!
     Esther Eng is neglected in accounts of Asians in popular American culture in the 1950s. Non-Asians capitalized on the American fascination with the dangerous and contested territory, and appropriated the narrative for movies and books.
     Examples are numerous, but I'll focus on two which formed my understanding of Asia in the 1950s.  When I saw Rogers and Hammerstein's films, Anna and the King of Siam (1956) and South Pacific (1958),  I wanted to be Anna, I wanted to be Nellie.  I whole-heartedly embraced the idea that an English teacher or an American nurse had something to contribute to the King of Siam, or an aging French planter and his mixed-race children.  (Hopefully, it wasn't Fritos, which an advertisement in the September, 1950 of Gourmet lauded as "A Truly Distinctive American Food.")  What did I know?