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In 1957, America was a gastronomic wasteland. One man changed all that.
From his perch at the New York Times, Craig Claiborne led America’s food revolution. He took readers where they had never been before, and brought Julia Child and Jacques Pépin to national acclaim. He introduced us to the foods and tools we take for granted today, from crème fraîche and balsamic vinegar to arugula and the salad spinner. And he turned dinner into an event—dining out, delighting your friends, or simply cooking for your family.
But the passionate gastronome led a conflicted personal life. Forced to mask his sexuality, he was imprisoned in solitude and searched for stable and lasting love. In The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat, acclaimed biographer Thomas McNamee unfolds a new history of American gastronomy and reveals in full a great man who until now has never been truly known.
—Jacques Pépin
1
A Sensation
Putting a piece about food on the front page of the New York Times was unheard of, but on April 13, 1959, they did it.
ELEGANCE OF CUISINE IS ON WANE IN U.S.
Two time-honored symbols of the good life—great cuisine in the French tradition and elegant table service—are passing from the American scene. . . . Cost control cramps the enthusiasm and inventiveness of master chefs. . . . Training facilities for cooks and waiters are virtually nonexistent. Management and union officials are apathetic. . . . Menus soon will be as stereotyped as those of a hamburger haven. . . . Americans seem always to be in a hurry. . . .
Humbert Gatti, executive chef of the Plaza Hotel, predicts: “Within five years kitchens à la minute will replace haute cuisine in America’s major cities. The public will be offered broiled steak, broiled chicken or broiled fish. Or only sautéed dishes. No more sauce Champagne. No more sauce Robert, no more filet of beef Wellington. Even today, you walk into kitchens that don’t have a stockpot. . . . I know places with a big business where they don’t use ten pounds of butter a day.”
The New York restaurant world was stunned. You didn’t come right out and say things like this. It wasn’t just New York, either. Restaurateurs across the country were outraged. There was no such thing as food criticism in those days, no such thing as a restaurant critic. Newspaper pieces about restaurants were written to please the advertisers. Food articles usually relied on recipes sent in by readers or on corporate press releases. And food writers? A few did exist, but M. F. K. Fisher, good as she was, never complained, and James Beard’s judgment was for hire.
This was something entirely new. The writer, Craig Claiborne, had been the food editor of the New York Times for a year and a half, but until this moment he had been largely ignored by the brass. Their concerns were more serious than the decorators and couturiers and casseroles touted in the small section headed “Food Fashions Family Furnishings,” commonly known as the women’s page, where Craig’s work had till now always rather obscurely appeared.
What nobody realized was that Craig Claiborne was going to become the most powerful force American food had ever known.
The editor of the women’s page had always been a woman, and it had always been the custom at the Times to speak only sparingly of restaurants, and always politely. What had been noticed, vaguely, of the new, male editor was that he was a somewhat foppish Southerner with a distinctly literary style and an air of scholarly authority, but nobody high up had paid much attention to him till he pressed forward quite aggressively with his idea for this piece.
This was Craig Claiborne’s dream job. New York was where he was meant to be; his element, he’d felt it from his first moment; the glamour and the gaiety, so many chic women, so many such good-looking men, the dark hum of power unceasing under it all. The voice of the New York Times, the ultimate voice of authority, was now his. And he had more than a dream; he had a plan. He was going to teach America what good food was, and bad. With his intelligent and sympathetic criticism, a new excellence would arise.
He had looked forward to an exploration of fine dining in America’s leading fine-dining city, but New York’s supposedly best restaurants were proving quite a disappointment. Craig had been classically trained in cooking and in service at the best hotel school in the world, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and he had learned there just how fine the degrees of excellence were that could be discerned by a well-trained palate and a discriminating sense of taste. He expected to find in the serious restaurants of New York a more than ample arena in which to exercise his critical faculties. The city had, after all, attracted a plethora of French and other European chefs brought up in the rigorous traditions of their homelands. The farms of northeastern America were capable of growing fruits and vegetables as good as those of Europe. The region’s pastures were rich and abundant. The Atlantic and its bays, sounds, and estuaries teemed with fish and shellfish. Jet planes could now bring to these shores fresh European wild mushrooms, truffles, Normandy butter, sole fresh from the Strait of Dover, even the matchless fishes of the Mediterranean—turbot, Saint-Pierre, loup de mer. Money was no constraint in the postwar boom years, and the topmost restaurants of New York charged accordingly.
By the end of his first year and a half at the Times, however, Craig was fed up. His experience of the city’s restaurants—with one exception—had ranged from dispiriting down. Though he longed to celebrate the greatness that he knew a serious restaurant could achieve, time and again he found himself stymied. He really believed in his mother’s old Southern maxim that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything. If a place displeased him extremely, his preference was not to write about it at all. When pressed by his editors, he would comment only with his native strained reticence. Of Maud Chez Elle his faint praise was that “It is to this establishment’s special credit that the beans were cooked properly.”1 One can picture him blinking in prim dismay at Trader Vic’s “Scorpion, a gardenia-bedecked potion served to four persons from one container equipped with four straws.” It seemed to pain him even to mention the Trader’s “Queen’s Park Swizzle and the Doctor Funk of Tahiti.”2 One easily deduces his thrill at covering the opening of a new branch of the Stouffer’s chain in Garden City, Long Island, of which he managed to observe that it had “a capacity for 586,”3 or the Continental Restaurant, in a shopping center in Paramus, New Jersey, where the closest he could come to saying anything nice was that “Opulence and a long menu are very much in evidence.”4
The great exception was Le Pavillon, a grand French restaurant in Midtown Manhattan descended from the French government pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens and now ruled by the tyrannical Henri Soulé. Soulé was a snob to the public and a despot to his staff, but when it came to the classic haute cuisine of France he was an exacting perfectionist, and the food that emerged from his kitchen was superb. Le Pavillon was not only the best restaurant in New York; it was considered among the best in the world. Craig loved everything about the place.
In early 1959, he had persuaded his editors that the extreme contrast between his standards, as embodied in Le Pavillon, and the reality of dining in New York anywhere else was a story he ought to spend some time on. Once he got the go-ahead, his reporting for the piece was exhaustive. Interviewing classically trained chefs, he found nearly all of them institutionally thwarted. They were bitterly angry over union rules, cheapskate owners, arrogant waiters. Some of the restaurateurs, chefs, and dining room staff he talked to were long since hardened to sloth and corruption. But at Le Pavillon he found precision, excellence, devotion, and cooking nothing short of sublime.
Having had so many bad experiences as a diner, and so sharing the anger of the willing but frustrated workers behind the scenes, he concluded that the only proper course for his piece was to indict New York’s restaurants across the board, to identify the non-inevitable causes of their mediocrity, and to show in the example of Le Pavillon that excellence was possible. Back in the newsroom he couldn’t stop typing. The piece got longer and longer. Craig might have expected his editors to tell him to throttle back—this was only a piece about food, after all—but they didn’t. He also wanted a big photo spread, mainly of the kitchen at Le Pavillon, and they agreed to that, too.
This was a quite surprising request to make of a restaurant. One did not look into restaurant kitchens, and one did not photograph chefs. Too many kitchens were greasy, grimy workplaces, too many chefs growly old bloody-aproned laborers. The legendarily intractable Henri Soulé, however, told Craig that the New York Times would be most welcome in the kitchen of Le Pavillon.
The kitchen was spotless, and the chef, Pierre Franey, in his starched white apron and tall toque blanche, was startlingly young for a chef of such prestige—thirty-eight, Craig’s own age—and strikingly good-looking. The distance between the excellence of Le Pavillon and the absence of it in all the rest would be illustrated by a step-by-step series of photographs, adjacent to Craig’s piece, showing Franey preparing a whole fish stuffed with a mousse of sole and then covered with a Champagne sauce and garnished with a skewer of fluted mushrooms and black truffles. In another photograph, obviously of another restaurant, trays of tired, preheated food populate a steam table.
The headline type was small, and below the fold, but still it was on Page One, and the continuation inside took up most of a page: The piece was twenty-four hundred words long, a length the Times granted only to articles the editors deemed to be of real significance. It was a public sensation, but it would prove significant for Craig in another, entirely unanticipated, and personal way: He and Pierre Franey would become friends, and then professional partners; and they would work together for the next almost thirty years.
As for Craig’s criticism, “Elegance of Cuisine Is on Wane in U.S.” was just the beginning. It wasn’t just New York restaurants that he had it in for, and it wasn’t just high-end restaurants. It was nearly everything about food in America.
What Craig Claiborne saw when he looked out across the vast expanse of the United States was a gastronomic landscape blighted by ignorance and apathy, a drearily insular domain of overdone roast beef and canned green beans. The more he learned of it, the bleaker it looked. American food was terrible, and it was getting worse.
Household after household was losing its connection to the past. Old family recipes were consigned to attics, even tossed out with the trash. Canned-soup casseroles, Reddi-Wip, Swanson’s TV Dinners, instant coffee, Cheez Whiz, and a host of other abominations—reinforced by relentless advertising of unprecedented effectiveness via the suddenly ubiquitous medium of television—were freeing the American housewife from drudgery, and lulling American households into culinary torpor.
World War II had given American women a taste for employment and the sense of autonomy that it engendered, so much so that the prospect of “going to work”—out of the house, and collecting a paycheck of one’s own—had become a powerful social force. Making fresh coconut cake with vanilla boiled frosting and braising a mushroom-stuffed shoulder of lamb all afternoon really didn’t fit the picture anymore. Slapping together some dehydrated onion soup, a can of tuna, and some Miracle Whip, however, with a layer of nice crunchy Fritos on top and half an hour in a hot oven, while you, exhausted, and your equally wornout husband put your feet up and watched the news (and the commercials)—well, that was not too bad. Add in some kids, and it wasn’t only not too bad, it was, or soon came to seem, indispensable.
Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book was widely popular, and genuinely funny, in part because it was so embarrassingly true to the psychological reality of the home cook of the day:
Just shut your eyes and go on opening those cans.5
When you hate to cook, you owe it to yourself never to pass the canned Welsh Rabbit shelf in your supermarket without adding a few cans to your collection.6
Speaking of this, recipe books are always telling you to get a can of a ready-prepared dish and spike it with something, as though the product isn’t quite good enough for you as is. . . . But my own feeling is that you should give the prepared thing the benefit of the doubt and taste it before you start spiking. After all, those manufacturers have worked themselves loop-legged in their sunny test kitchens perfecting a formula that a lot of people like.7
The people of the United States had little connection to the great cuisines of the world. With the exception of the isolated pockets of recent immigrant groups who had maintained their cultural traditions, Americans just didn’t know what was possible. Chinese food was chop suey and chow mein, and did not even remotely resemble what real Chinese people ate. Italian food was pizza (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee from a box!) or spaghetti and meatballs. French? Something that called itself cuisine française could be had only in the biggest cities, and even there it was bastardized beyond anything anyone French could have recognized.
The United States had no equivalent of the great hotel schools of Europe, or of the rigorous apprenticeship system of Europe’s restaurants. Most restaurant cooks learned their trade from existing restaurant cooks who themselves were barely competent. In his front-page jeremiad Craig had pointed with some relief to the “one person making a valiant effort to perpetuate classic cookery in this country . . . Mrs. Frances Roth . . . administrative director of the nonprofit Culinary Institute of America.”8 The CIA was literally the only fully developed professional cooking school in the nation, and, at the time, frankly not a very good one.
In many parts of the country, there were few restaurants of any kind. In others, there might be a diner here or there, or a simple town café, or a boarding house, or a hotel dining room. When Craig was growing up in the Mississippi Delta, the nearest decent restaurant to his home was hundreds of miles away, in New Orleans (and it would have been pretty good, too). His mother served delicious Southern and Creole food in her boarding house—which meant that young Craig’s exposure to good food was truly exceptional.
Now at last from his high promontory at the New York Times, looking out across the whole dreary landscape of American food, he knew his challenge, and his great opportunity. If, bringing all his skill and all his knowledge to bear, he could elevate food, cooking, and dining to the level of significance he believed they should occupy in American life, he could be a cultural critic on a par with the paper’s critics of art, music, books, and the theater. He could change the way Americans ate, the way they thought about food, the way they lived. He could bring a realm of pleasure into their lives of whose existence they had previously not even known.
NOTES
Chapter 1: A Sensation
1. New York Times, January 6, 1958.
2. New York Times, April 28, 1958.
3. New York Times, May 10, 1958.
4. New York Times, April 3, 1959.
5. Bracken, Peg. I Hate to Cook Book, p. 14.
6. Bracken, Peg. I Hate to Cook Book, p. 117.
7. Bracken, Peg. I Hate to Cook Book, p. 117.
8. New York Times, April 13, 1959.
Chapter 2: Beyond the Delta Horizon
1. Claiborne, Craig. A Feast Made for Laughter, p. 37. Hereafter cited as Feast.
2. Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, p. 125.
3. Feast, p. 17.
4. Feast, p. 24.
5. Feast, pp. 35–37.
6. Feast, p. 36.
7. Feast, pp. 38–39.
8. Feast, pp. 49–50.
9. Feast, p. 50.
10. Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town, p. 8.
11. Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, p. 175.
12. Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town, p. 7.
13. Feast, pp. 57–58.
14. From the Craig Claiborne collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. Hereafter cited as “Claiborne archive, Boston University.”
15. Feast, pp. 58–60.
16. Feast, pp. 58–60.
Chapter 3: War and Love
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Augusta_%28CA-31%29.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Casablanca.
3. Feast, p. 62.
4. Feast, p. 63.
5. http://www.etymonline.com/index.phpfiterm=gay.
6. Feast, pp. 62–66.
7. Feast, p. 65.
8. Unpublished draft manuscript of A Feast Made for Laughter from the Claiborne archive at Boston University. Hereafter cited as “Feast, unpublished.”
9. Feast, p. 70.
10. Feast, p. 66.
11. Feast, p. 91.
12. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
13. Perlman, Dan. Interview with Craig Claiborne, unedited transcript. Recorded July 6, 1991. Broadcast in edited form on Outlet Radio Network, October 22, 2004. Hereafter cited as “Perlman interview.”
14. Feast, unpublished.
15. Feast, p. 75.
16. Mississippi State Alumnus Magazine, 1961.
17. Feast, p. 78.
18. New York Times, March 18, 1981.
19. Feast, p. 89.
20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Naifeh_%28DE-352%29.
21. Feast, p. 82.
22. http://wiki.answers.com/.
23. Feast, pp. 93–94.
24. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_islands#cite_note-14 (Stephanie Cooke [2009]. In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, Black Inc., p. 168.
25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwajalein_Atoll.
Chapter 4: Good at Something
1. Feast, p. 98.
2. All: http://www.ehl.edu/eng and interview with Marion Dulux, April 19, 2010.
3. Tuor, Conrad. Wine and Food Handbook: Aide-Mémoire du Sommelier, p. 42.
4. Tuor, Conrad. Wine and Food Handbook: Aide-Mémoire du Sommelier, p. 51.
5. Feast, unpublished.
6. Interviews with James Nassikas, January 11, 2010, and August 13, 2010.
7. Feast, p. 101.
8. Feast, p. 103.
Chapter 5: Spring Like a Cat
1. Feast, p. 123
2. Feast, p. 138.
3. New York Public Library menu collection: http://menus.nypl.org/menu_pages/5199.
4. Root, Waverly, and Richard de Rochemont. Eating in America: A History, p. 321.
5. http://menus.free.fr/index_fichiers/page1719.htm.
6. New York Public Library menu collection: http://menus.nypl.org/menu_pages/7926.
7. New York Public Library menu collection: http://menus.nypl.org/menu_pages/1843.
8. New York Public Library menu collection: http://menus.nypl.org/menu_pages/23821.
9. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People, pp. 789–902.
10. Root, Waverly, and Richard de Rochemont. Eating in America: A History, p. 321.
11. Forbes magazine, March 1972.
12. Feast, p. 139.
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927.
14. http://menus.free.fr/index_fichiers/page716.htm.
15. Feast, p. 34.
16. Tyree, Marion Cabell, ed. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, p. 186.
17. Tyree, Marion Cabell, ed. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, p. 223.
18. Tyree, Marion Cabell, ed. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, p. 23.
19. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
20. Craig Claiborne’s Favorites from the New York Times (volume one), p. xi.
21. Feast, p. 121.
22. Feast, p.107.
23. Canaday, Margot. “We Colonials: Sodomy Laws in America.” The Nation, September 3, 2008.
24. Feast, p. 73.
25. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
26. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, p. 98.
27. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, p. 257.
28. Bender, Marylin. “Elizabeth Howkins, Editor, Dies; Headed Times’s Women’s News.” New York Times, January 12, 1972.
29. Perlman interview.
Chapter 6: Becoming Craig Claiborne
1. New York Times, October 14, 1957.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VII_of_the_United_Kingdom.
3. Tifft, Susan E., and Alex S. Jones. The Trust, pp. 384–385.
4. Gelb, Arthur. City Room, p. 249.
5. Feast, p. 128.
6. Feast, p. 130.
7. Perlman interview.
8. New York Times, December 7, 1957.
9. New York Times, August 21, 1955.
10. New York Times, August 26, 1955.
11. New York Times, June 22, 1955.
12. Clark, Robert. James Beard, p. 157.
13. Clark, Robert. James Beard, p. 283.
14. Both: Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, p. 62.
15. Prial, Frank J. “What Was Eating James Beard?” (review of James Beard: A Biography, by Robert Clark). New York Times, December 26, 1993.
16. New York Times, September 19, 1958.
17. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
18. New York Times, August 20, 1959.
19. New York Times, April 2, 1959.
20. New York Times, December 7, 1957.
21. New York Times, May 29, 1958.
22. New York Times, February 25, 1958.
23. New York Times, January 6, 1958.
24. New York Times, October 19, 1958.
25. New York Times, October 28, 1958.
26. New York Times, November 16, 1958.
27. New York Times, December 1, 1958.
28. Feast, p. 132.
Chapter 7: Pierre
1. Feast, p. 142.
2. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 115.
3. Feast, p. 145.
4. Feast, p. 141.
5. Interview with Diane Franey, November 22, 2009.
6. New York Times, July 16, 1959.
7. New York Times, October 2, 1959.
8. Feast, p. 188.
9. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
10. Feast, unpublished.
11. Feast, unpublished.
12. Feast, p. 57.
13. Feast, p. 73.
14. Feast, p. 142.
15. Feast, p. 90.
16. Feast, p. 104.
17. Feast, pp. 103–106.
18. Mississippi State Alumnus Magazine, 1961.
19. Interview with Donald Smith, June 25, 2011.
20. Feast, p. 106.
21. Feast, p. 106.
22. Claiborne archive, Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, NY. Henceforth cited as “Claiborne archive, CIA.”
23. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 60.
24. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
25. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 23.
26. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 87
27. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 88.
28. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 88.
29. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 203.
30. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 51.
31. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 46.
32. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 67.
33. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 94.
34. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 93.
35. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, pp. 205–206.
36. http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=1962&year2=2011.
37. Town & Country, March 1963.
38. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, pp. 100–105. Additional information from interview with Ed Giobbi, December 19, 2011.
39. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, pp. 91–92.
40. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 107.
41. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 107.
42. Kuh, Patric. The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, p. 76.
43. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
44. Franey, letter to Soulé, February 16, 1960. Courtesy of Diane Franey.
45. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, pp. 144–145.
46. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
47. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, p. 146.
Chapter 8: Authority
1. Feast, p. 236.
2. Feast, p. 133.
3. New York Times Cook Book, p 6.
4. New York Times Cook Book, p. 27.
5. New York Times Cook Book, p. 17.
6. New York Times Cook Book, p . ix.
7. Feast, pp. 133–134.
8. New York Times Cook Book, p. 77.
9. New York Times Cook Book, p. 189.
10. New York Times Cook Book, p. 597.
11. New York Times Cook Book, p. 112.
12. New York Times, January 1, 1960.
13. New York Times, March 6, 1961.
14. New York Times, April 7, 1961.
15. Washington Post, February 3, 2011.
16. http://menus.free.fr/index_fichiers/page2239.htm.
17. New York Times, February 5, 2011.
18. New York Times, April 7, 1961.
19. New York Times, January 25, 1961.
20. New York Times, February 18, 1961.
21. New York Times, April 10, 1961.
22. New York Times, April 15, 1961.
23. New York Times, March 28, 1961.
24. New York Times, June 6, 1961.
25. Franey, Pierre, with Richard Flaste and Bryan Miller. A Chef’s Tale, p. 117.
26. New York Times, November 26, 1960.
27. Kuh, Patric. The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, pp. 93–94.
28. Grimes, William. Appetite City, p. 257.
29. Fabricant, Florence. “La Caravelle, a French Legend, Is Closing After 43 Years.” New York Times, May 12, 2004.
30. Feast, p. 132.
31. Jones, Judith. The Tenth Muse, p. 61.
32. Jones, Judith. The Tenth Muse, p. 68.
33. Jones, Judith. The Tenth Muse, p. 69.
34. New York Times, August 3, 1961.
35. New York Times, October 18, 1961.
Chapter 9: Attention
1. Greene, Gael. “Papa Soulé Loves You.” New York Herald Tribune Sunday magazine, June 13, 1965.
2. New York Times, January 26, 1962.
3. Wechsberg, Joseph. Dining at the Pavillon, p. 36.
4. Greene, Gael. “Papa Soulé Loves You.”
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday,_Mr._President.
6. Feast, p. 164.
7. Interview with Arthur Gelb, November 18, 2009.
8. Whole episode: Feast, pp. 134–136.
9. Chapman, Georgeanna Milam. Craig Claiborne: A Southern Made Man, p. 79.
10. Appointment calendar, January 7, 1963. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
11. Appointment calendar, February 19, 1963. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
12. Appointment calendar, January 2, 1964. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
13. Feast, p. 164.
14. Feast, p. 165
15. Interviews with Diane Franey.
16. Interview with Claudia Franey, February 27, 2010.
17. Gelb, Arthur. City Room, pp. 363–364.
18. New York Times, December 17, 1963.
19. New York Times, October 1, 1961.
20. Chopped, aired February 14, 2012.
21. New York Times, July 11, 1963.
22. The foregoing quotations combine several conversations with Ed and Elinor Giobbi.
23. New York Times, September 1, 1963.
24. New York Times, October 30, 1964.
25. New York Times, May 24, 1963.
26. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
27. New York Times, August 17, 1965.
28. New York Times, August 21, 1965.
29. New York Times, August 24, 1965.
30. New York Times, August 28, 1965.
31. All: New York Times, August 5, 1965, and Life magazine, August 25, 1965.
32. Feast, p. 179.
Chapter 10: Olympus
1. New York Times, October 25, 1965.
2. New York Times, October 25, 1965.
3. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
4. New York Times, December 11, 1964.
5. Grimes, William. Appetite City, p. 259.
6. Greene, Gael. “Papa Soulé Loves You,” New York Herald Tribune Sunday magazine, June 13, 1965.
7. New York Times, June 29, 1965.
8. Greene, Gael. “Papa Soulé Loves You.”
9. “Columnists: Dishing It Up in the Times.” Time, October 29, 1965.
10. Esquire, November 1975. Later a chapter in Capote’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers, 1987.
11. New York Times, December 17, 1965.
12. Franey, Pierre. A Chef’s Tale, p. 116.
13. Grimes, William. Appetite City, p. 258.
14. New York Times, January 28, 1966.
15. New York Times, March 5, 1964.
16. Erwin, Ray. “Reporter-epicure Knows How to Order.” Editor & Publisher, December 24, 1966.
17. New York Times, January 17, 1967.
18. New York Times, March 15, 1966.
19. Feast, p. 156.
20. New York Times, April 17, 1967.
21. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
22. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
23. New York Times, November 6, 1967.
24. Zuber, Amy. “Henri Soulé.” Nation’s Restaurant News, February 1996.
25. New York Times, December 8, 1967.
26. New York Times, March 2, 1968.
27. Time. “Reporting: Search Beyond Sadism.” August 16, 1968.
28. Greene, Gael. “The Gourmet’s Gourmet.” Look, August 20, 1968.
29. Ephron, Nora. “Critics in the World of the Rising Soufflé.” New York, September 30, 1968.
30. New York Times, February 19, 1968.
31. Manville, W. H. “That Anonymous Man in the Corner Can Make or Break This Restaurant.” Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1968.
32. Newsweek. “Waiter!” January 13, 1969.
33. New York Times, January 1, 1970.
34. New York Times, January 2, 1969.
Chapter 11: Quits
1. Craig Claiborne’s Memorable Meals, p. 89.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Cooper.
3. Quoted in Feast, p. 165.
4. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
5. Martin, Douglas. “Howard Gotlieb, an Archivist with Persistence, Dies at 79.” New York Times, December 5, 2005.
6. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
7. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
8. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
9. Interview with Jim Abbott, March 3, 2010.
10. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
11. Memorable Meals, p. 89.
12. Quoted in Chapman, Georgeanna Milam. Craig Claiborne: A Southern Made Man, p. 92.
13. Memorable Meals, p. 89.
14. Interview with Diane Franey, November 22, 2009.
15. Memorable Meals, p. x.
16. New York Times, January 2, 1969.
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Osborne.
18. New York Times, December 24, 1968.
19. Greene, Gael. “How Not to Be Humiliated in Snob Restaurants.” New York, April 13, 1970.
20. New York Times, May 28, 1970.
21. Feast, p. 210.
22. New York Times, October 15, 1970.
23. New York Times, November 14, 1970.
24. New York Times, December 6, 1970.
25. New York Times, December 10, 1970.
26. New York Times, December 3, 1970.
27. New York Times, December 12, 1970.
28. New York Times, December 15, 1970.
29. New York Times, December 16, 1970.
30. Feast, p. 212.
Chapter 12: Prodigal
1. The Chinese Cookbook, p. xiv.
2. The Chinese Cookbook, p. xxi.
3. Harper’s Bazaar, June 1972.
4. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
5. New York Times, October 29, 1972.
6. Feast, p. 213.
7. Craig Claiborne Journal, November 1, 1972.
8. Craig Claiborne Journal, July 15, 1973.
9. Craig Claiborne Journal, May 15, 1973.
10. Kleiman, Dena. “Allons Enfants! Chefs Mark Bastille Day,” New York Times, July 22, 1973.
11. Craig Claiborne Journal, July 15, 1973.
12. Craig Claiborne Journal, January 1, 1974.
13. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
14. Villas, James. “The Wave of the Future May Be Gravy.” New York Times, August 12, 1973.
15. New York Times, May 31, 1973.
16. New York Times, June 1, 1973.
17. New York Times, July 20, 1973.
18. New York Times, August 20, 1973.
19. Craig Claiborne Journal, October 1, 1972.
20. New York Times, December 7, 1973.
21. Feast, p. 214.
22. New York Times, December 7, 1973.
23. Feast, pp. 214–215.
Chapter 13: La Nouvelle Cuisine
1. New York Times, January 20, 1974.
2. Hess, Karen, and John Hess. The Taste of America, p. 156.
3. All: Claiborne archive, Boston University.
4. New York Times, June 20, 1974.
5. Craig Claiborne’s Favorites from the New York Times, p. 195.
6. Craig Claiborne’s Favorites from the New York Times, p. 195.
7. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
8. http://www.kqed.org/w/theapprentice/movie.html.
9. Feast, p. 165.
10. Interview with Florence Aaron, February 20, 2010.
11. Interview with Florence Aaron, February 20, 2010.
12. New York Times, December 9, 1974.
13. New York Times, February 10, 1975.
14. New York Times, February 23, 1975.
15. New York Times, February 2, 1975.
16. New York Times, February 9, 1975.
17. New York Times, February 3, 1975.
18. New York Times, February 12, 1975.
19. New York Times, February 5, 1975.
20. New York Times, February 17, 1975.
21. New York Times, February 24, 1975.
22. New York Times, February 26, 1975.
23. Goodman, Mark. “Craig Claiborne Loves to Cook and Tell—The World.” People, January 13, 1975.
24. New York Times, August 1, 1974.
25. New York Times, June 20, 1974.
26. Interview with Yanou Collart, January 6, 2011.
27. New York Times, August 22, 1974.
28. Robertson, Nan. New York Times, February 25, 1975.
29. New York Times, June 30, 1975.
30. Gringoire, Théodore, and Louis Saulnier. Le Répertoire de la Cuisine, pp. 93–109.
31. Michelin France 1974, p. 21.
32. http://www.gaultmillau.fr/history.jsp.
33. http://www.gaultmillau.fr/history.jsp.
34. New York Times, June 20, 1974.
35. http://www.gaultmillau.fr/history.jsp. Translation by the author.
36. Kifner, John. New York Times, September 5, 1975.
37. http://www.bocuse.fr/paul-bocuse.aspx.
38. Claiborne and Franey. Classic French Cooking, p. 109.
39. New York Times, June 10, 1976.
40. http://www.figandolive.com/rogerverge.php.
41. http://senga50.canalblog.com/archives/2009/10/09/15360421.html.
42. Chapel, Alain. La Cuisine C’est Beaucoup Plus que des Recettes, p. 130.
43. Chapel, Alain. La Cuisine C’est Beaucoup Plus que des Recettes, p. 327.
44. Greene, Gael. “Gael Among the Bries.” New York, June 10, 1974.
45. Greene, Gael. “Eugénie les Bains: I Lost It at the Baths.” New York, December 2, 1974.
46. Greene, Gael. “Eugénie les Bains: I Lost It at the Baths.” New York, December 2, 1974.
47. Craig Claiborne’s Favorites from the New York Times, p. xiii.
48. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, p. 126.
Chapter 14: The Feast
1. Goodman, Mark. “Craig Claiborne Loves to Cook and Tell—The World.” People, January 13, 1975.
2. New York Times, April 1, 1979.
3. This and the whole story following: Feast, pp. 219–225.
4. Interview with Yanou Collart, January 6, 2010.
5. Roberts, Sam. New York Times, December 28, 2006.
6. All: New York Times, November 20, 1975.
7. New York Times, November 28, 1975.
8. New York Times, November 28, 1975.
9. Feast, p. 225.
10. http://www.alexprudhomme.com/his_work/speeches/tribute_to_julia/tribute.php.
11. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
Chapter 15: Pre-Emeritus
1. New York Times, May 21, 1971.
2. All: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Sokolov.
3. New York Times, January 18, 1974.
4. New York Times, September 6, 1959.
5. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, p. 88.
6. All: Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, pp. 88–89.
7. Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit, pp. 6 and 63.
8. Davis, Mitchell, “Who’s Eating New York?: Craig Claiborne, The New York Times, and the Evolution of the Field of Gastronomy in America,” p. 140.
9. New York Times, March 5, 1976.
10. Sheraton, Mimi. Mimi Sheraton’s The New York Times Guide to New York Restaurants, 1982, p. x.
11. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, p. 90.
12. Binns, Brigit Légère. The Palm Restaurant Cookbook, p. 52.
13. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, p. 214.
14. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, pp. 213–214.
15. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, pp. 110–111.
16. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, p. 98.
17. Pers. comm., February 23, 2012.
18. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, p. 225.
19. Gelb, Arthur. City Room, pp. 616–617.
20. New York Times, November 10, 1976.
21. The 60-Minute Gourmet, New York Times, November 10, 1976.
22. Greene, Gael. “The Most Exciting Cooking in the World.” New York, November 21, 1977.
23. New York Times, March 28, 1976.
24. Feast, p. 168.
25. Murrell, Peggy J. “Taste & Tell: Food Critics’ Ratings Can Play Crucial Role in Restaurant Success.” Wall Street Journal, November 2, 1978.
26. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
27. New York Times, June 12, 1976.
28. Rosenthal, Jacob. “The Four Thousand Dollar Dinner Controversy! The Wrong Reason . . .” Taste, winter-spring 1976.
29. Dorfman, Dan. “Dinner for Two: Only $5,004.20.” New York, January 9, 1978.
30. Magida, Phylis. “The Man Who Tells N.Y. How to Eat.” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1978.
31. New York Times, September 29, 1976.
32. Commencement address, January 29, 1977. Reported in Taste Journal, the quarterly journal of the Culinary Institute of America, May 1977. Claiborne archive, CIA.
33. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
34. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
35. Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, p. 123.
36. Translation by a French friend of the author.
37. All: Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words, pp. 123–125.
38. People. “Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of France?” December 17, 1979.
39. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, pp. 243–244.
40. McNamee, Thomas. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, p. 111.
41. New York Times, June 3, 1981.
42. Grimes, William. Appetite City, p. 288.
43. New York Times, April 11, 1980.
44. New York Times, August 12, 1977.
45. New York Times, July 20, 1979.
46. Mimi Sheraton’s The New York Times Guide to New York Restaurants, p. 202.
47. Time. “No Papers for New York.” August 21, 1978.
48. Stetson, Damon. “The Times and News Resume Publication,” New York Times, November 6, 1978.
49. All: Claiborne archive, Boston University.
50. New York Times, November 28, 1977.
51. The whole introduction occupies pp. 3–44.
52. Smilgis, Martha. “Saying No to Na (sodium) Gives Gourmet Craig Claiborne a New Look and a New Book.” People, June 30, 1980.
53. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
54. Feast, p. 230.
55. Brisman et al. New England Journal of Medicine, August 31, 2006.
56. Smilgis, Martha. “Saying No to Na (sodium) Gives Gourmet Craig Claiborne a New Look and a New Book.” People, June 30, 1980.
57. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_aneurysm.
Chapter 16: Love and Remembrance
1. Craig Claiborne’s Gourmet Diet, pp. 3–4.
2. Craig Claiborne’s Gourmet Diet, p. 8.
3. Interview with Ed Giobbi, November 19, 2009.
4. Interview with Vivian Bucher, October 1, 2011.
5. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, pp. 256–257.
6. Interview with Elinor Giobbi, May 14, 2010.
7. Interview with Ed Giobbi, May 14, 2010.
8. Pépin, Jacques. The Apprentice, p. 257.
9. Interview with Florence Aaron, February 20, 2010.
10. Interview with Arthur Gelb, November 18, 2009.
11. All the above: Orlando Sentinel, January 6, 2005.
12. http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.phpfist=FL&last=DINNEEN&first=James.
13. Receipts from Villa St-Jean, Claiborne archive, Boston University.
14. Anderson, Scott P. “Craig Claiborne: An Elegant Epicure Talks about His Recipe for Success.” The Advocate, January 6, 1983.
15. New York Times, April 22, 1981.
16. New York Times, May 21, 1980.
17. New York Times, April 28, 1980.
18. New York Times, April 9, 1980.
19. Schweid, Richard. Catfish and the Delta, p. 164.
20. Schweid, Richard. Catfish and the Delta, p. 8.
21. Fausset, Richard, and Richard Simon.“Mississippi Catfish Farmers Say Vietnam Is Sinking Their Business,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1992.
22. New York Times, November 11, 1981.
23. Feast, p. 20.
24. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
25. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
26. Conway, Martin A., and Christopher W. Pleydell-Pearce. “The Construction of Autobiographical Memories in the Self-memory System.” Psychological Review, vol. 107(2), April 2000, pp. 261–288.
27. Interview with Arthur Gelb, November 18, 2009.
28. Chapman, Georgeanna. Craig Claiborne, 2008.
29. Ferretti, Fred. “36 Chefs Go to East Hampton to Prepare Birthday Banquet,” New York Times, September 5, 1982.
30. All this comes from Ferretti’s Times article as well.
31. Carter, Sylvia. “A Celebrated Cook’s Sometimes Spicy Confessions.” Newsday, August 15, 1982.
32. Fremont-Smith, Eliot. “Sonstroke.” The Village Voice, August 24, 1982.
33. Skow, John. “Memoirs of a Happy Man.” Time, September 13, 1982.
34. Reed, Rex. “Books: Food, Glamour.” New York Times, September 22, 1982.
35. Fussell, Betty Harper. “He Likes to Write and Likes to Cook.” New York Times Book Review, October 10, 1982.
36. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
37. Hausen, Roslyn White. “Claiborne: A Country Boy at Heart.” Stuart (Fla.) News Accent, April 7, 1982.
38. Anderson, Scott P. “Craig Claiborne: An Elegant Epicure Talks about His Recipe for Success.” The Advocate, January 6, 1983.
39. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
40. Personal communication, January 23, 1982. Claiborne archive, Boston University. Quoted in Chapman, Craig Claiborne, 1988.
41. Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, p. vii.
42. Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, p. 296.
43. Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, p. viii.
44. New York Times, May 18, 1983.
45. New York Times, May 30, 1983.
46. New York Times, December 18, 1983.
47. New York Times, December 7, 1986.
48. New York Times, January 4, 1987.
49. Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula, p. 289.
50. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
51. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuinal.
52. National Institutes of Health (www.nlm.nih.gov).
53. Interview with Ed Giobbi, December 16, 2011.
54. National Institutes of Health.
55. Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking, pp. xiii–xix.
56. New York Times, January 20, 1988.
57. Email to the author, September 17, 2011.
Chapter 17: Fate
1. Miller, Bryan. “12-Chef Farewell Meal for Claiborne,” New York Times, May 20, 1988.
2. Various travel documents. Craig Claiborne archives, Boston University, and Culinary Institute of America.
3. Claiborne archive, CIA.
4. Courtesy of Craig Barnwell Skales.
5. Claiborne archive, CIA.
6. Claiborne archive, CIA.
7. Fabricant, Florence. “At a Gathering of Top Chefs, the Food Gets Star Billing,” New York Times, September 5, 1990.
8. Fabricant, Florence. “At a Gathering of Top Chefs, the Food Gets Star Billing,” New York Times, September 5, 1990.
9. Craig Claiborne’s Memorable Meals, p. vii.
10. Craig Claiborne’s Memorable Meals, p. ix.
11. Letter to Yanou Collart, June 17, 1992. Claiborne archive, CIA.
12. Claiborne archive, CIA.
13. Keegan, Peter O. “Waters, Chez Panisse Grab Top Beard Awards,” Nation’s Restaurant News, May 25, 1992.
14. Kracht, Alvin R. Letter to Craig Claiborne, February 21, 1992. Claiborne archive, CIA.
15. All: Craig Claiborne archive, CIA.
16. Craig Claiborne archive, CIA.
17. All the medical information regarding this incident comes from Beth Israel Hospital records in the Claiborne archive, CIA.
18. Interview with Ed Giobbi, November 19, 2009.
19. All the medical information comes from the records of Lenox Hill Hospital.
20. All of surgery report: Raja Skantharaja, M.D.
21. Signature on report is illegible.
22. Shapiro, Mortimer F., M.D, Lenox Hill Hospital, July 19, 1993.
23. Dillon, Evan H., M.D, Department of Radiology, Lenox Hill Hospital, July 27, 1993.
24. http://www.medicinenet.com/staph_infection/article.htm.
25. Rosenberg, Tina. “Better Hand-washing Through Technology.” New York Times, April 25, 2011.
Chapter 18: Residuum
1. Transient Ischemic Attack Information Page, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, updated July 29, 2011.
2. Vermeer, et al. “Silent Brain Infarcts: A Systematic Review.” Lancet Neurology, July 6, 2007.
3. Khawaja, Imran Shuja, et al. “Depression and Coronary Artery Disease.” Psychiatry, January 2009.
4. Pozuelo, Leo, et al. “Depression and Heart Disease.” Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, January 2009.
5. Interview with Velma Cannon, September 24, 2011.
6. Prial, Frank J. “Pierre Franey, Whose Lifelong Love of Food Led to Career as Chef and Author, Dies at 75.” New York Times, October 16, 1996.
7. Yazigi, Monique P. “Etiquette: Is It Back?” New York Times, September 22, 1996.
8. Interview with Elinor Giobbi, May 14, 2010.
9. Interview with Michael Tong, February 18, 2011.
10. Claiborne archive, Boston University.
11. Letter from Galef and Jacobs, attorneys, November 12, 1986. Claiborne archive, CIA.
12. Letter from Galef and Jacobs, attorneys, November 12, 1986. Claiborne archive, CIA.
13. Claiborne archive, CIA.
14. Claiborne archive, CIA.
15. Craig Claiborne’s Memorable Meals, pp. vii–viii.
16. Reproduced in Greene, Gael, Insatiable, between pages 112 and 113.
17. Greene, Gael. Insatiable, pp. 153–154.
18. Interview with Elinor Giobbi, May 14, 2010.
19. Interview with Eugenia Bone, May 17, 2010.
20. Greene, Gael. “The First Foodie.” New York, February 7, 2000.
21. Interviews with Joe Luppi, November 22, 2009, and October 1, 2011.
22. Interview with Velma Cannon, March 8, 2010.
Coda
1. Seligman, Craig. “Classic Italian.” New York Times, October 3, 2008.
2. Hazan, Marcella. Amarcord: Marcella Remembers, p. 71.
3. Sietsema, Robert. “Everyone Eats . . . But That Doesn’t Make You a Restaurant Critic.” Columbia Journalism Review, January–February 2010.
4. New York Times. April 13, 1959.
1 A Sensation 1
2 Beyond the Delta Horizon 9
3 War and Love 21
4 Good at Something 31
5 Spring Like a Cat 39
6 Becoming Craig Claiborne 53
7 Pierre 67
8 Authority 91
9 Attention 103
10 Olympus 123
11 Quits 145
12 Prodigal 163
13 La Nouvelle Cuisine 177
14 The Feast 201
15 Pre-Emeritus 213
16 Love and Remembrance 241
17 Fate 265
18 Residuum 279
Coda 285
Acknowledgments 293
Notes 295
Bibliography 310
Selected Magazine and Newspaper Articles 315
Credits 320
Index 321
Anonymous
Posted August 19, 2012
I found that this book shares some of the same shortcomings as McNamee's Alice Waters biography, and I can't quite explain why. Both are well and thoroughly researched, and both are realistic portrayals of gastronomic icons. And both are missing some je ne sais quoi. Maybe it's because they can't match the food, or the passion for the food. I do know that Craig Claiborne's columns changed the way I cooked and the way my family ate. In that sense, the book was a trip down memory lane. -- catwak
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted July 11, 2012
Full of details, anecdotes of world reknowned chefs and bittersweet personal accounts, this biography of the late Craig Claiborne is imposible to put down. Well written and extensively researched, it is a book not to be missed.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted July 10, 2012
This is a strange biography, and ultimately a failed effort. No sense of Claiborne comes through the rather jagged prose. Problems are referred to but never explained. As a great admirer of the man, this rather poor effort is a major disappointment.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 27, 2012
Loved this book. I knew Claiborne's name and had a vague sense of his name connected to the New York Times Cookbook, but that was it. Never knew anything of his importance in the world of American food, eating, and cooking. Enjoyed the book tremendously.
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Overview
In 1957, America was a gastronomic wasteland. One man changed all that.
From his perch at the New York Times, Craig Claiborne led America’s food revolution. He took readers where they had never been before, and brought Julia Child and Jacques Pépin to national acclaim. He introduced us to the foods and tools we take for granted today, from crème fraîche and balsamic vinegar to arugula and the salad spinner. And he turned dinner into an ...