FORK PLAY July 12, 2011 The Wedding Dress. Blue Skies. Casa Nonna. Eating Around. Torture at Salinas. Remembering George. Dear Friends and Family,
Loving friends tell me I will feel like a new person, buoyant and energized, if I wade into my closets and throw away everything I haven't worn in 20 years. How about 30? It's on my "must do" list. It's been on the list since the walls started crumbling in my walk-in closet and the landlord told me to get ready for the painter. That was three years ago. Now the whole living room and what used to be our bedroom on the balcony are closets too.
Last week I told Steven if he would weed out everything he doesn't wear any more in his closet, I would remove everything of mine that has been encroaching on his space.
I pulled out my wedding dress, carefully wrapped in navy blue tissue to keep it from yellowing. It wasn't actually a bridal gown. It was a summer formal, sleeveless, floor length, empire waist, in white eyelet cotton. It was very heavy. I carried it to Blanche at her resale shop in the rear of "Off-Broadway" on West 72nd Street.
"It's Donald Brooks for Townley," I said. "Originally Clare McCardell designed for Townley, but when she died, Donald Brooks took over before starting his own label and designing for Jackie."
"It's small," said Blanche, looking at me. "It would be a size 2 today."
"I was very thin for about a month," I said.
"Designer vintage. I can sell this," Blanche mused, stroking the cotton. "They don't make fabric like this anymore," she said.
I thought about snatching it away. But I didn't. The groom and I flew to Detroit to get married in my sister's Bloomfield Hills backyard. I'd asked the florist for a Gothic arch. I stomped and had a fit (brief, not to ruin my eyes) when I saw four poles like giant Pall Mall cigarettes stuck in the ground. "I should have known no one in Detroit would be able to do a Gothic arch," I wept.
I still can't believe I actually gave away the wedding dress that's been hanging in that closet for 50 years. I gave up my adorable, wildly beloved husband 37 years ago because it seemed the right moment to move on. There is nothing like your first love. He often said that. I never asked him if he meant me.
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Blue Skies, No Candy
Fork Play's colors this week - summer blue skies and winter sky blue - celebrate the 35th anniversary publication of my 197 6 erotic novel, Blue Skies, No Candy, as candid and daring as ever, just $4.99 to download. "Not since Henry Miller has a book about sex caused such a furor," said the Times ad. A National Best Seller, it was greeted in 1976 with shock and outrage by male critics and championed by women. "A caviar and foie gras freefall of uninhibited, delicious and tantalizing sex," wrote the Toronto Globe. Kate Alexander, in her own whimsical and uninhibited voice, a woman who has everything: professional success as a screenwriter, adoring husband, well-balanced offspring...all the ridiculous, delicious trappings of celebrity in Manhattan.
Panicked at turning 40 and struggling in a profession where there are few women has eroded her confidence. The one place she feels comfortable is...bed. Her afternoons are devoted to acting out the erotic fantasies that crowd her head. Then she meets Jason the urbane Texan who is her match, the man who seems to know Kate better than she knows herself. She forgets her own rules for careful adultery on their carnal odyssey through the truffle fields of France.
In the first week of publication, three devastating reviews from the most important male critics sent me weeping to my bed. Quotes from women lifted the gloom, especially a line from Ruth Harris, author of the novel Decades. "A super talented writer has taken a completely original voyage into the lushness of a woman's sexual longings. I think of Greene as a contemporary Colette."
Some clergyman complained to the MTA that ads for the paperback with its brilliant zipper cover were obscene and the book was banned from the subway. The story on CBS and my rebuttal - "I'll show you filth in the subways," I challenged - 15 minutes on the 6 o'clock news, 15 minutes at 11, led to half a million sales that week alone.
Over the years I've met women who thanked me for writing the book. And men who wanted to show me they were hotter t han Jason. One woman introduced me to her fiancé. "He has become the most wonderful lover since reading Blue Skies," she told me. He smiled a bit sheepishly. Another woman wrote to me: "I use it all the time." At that point, I thought I could write a sex guide and did, delivering Delicious Sex, a "gourmet guide for women and men who want to love them better" in 1986. Now both books are available for download on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other ebook sites.
Is it all cooking shows, kids? Is it just watching Bobby and Eric spearing and searing that gets you off? How about a good old fashioned multiple orgasm? In an era when I am guessing everyone under 50 goes to bed clutching a smart phone, I hope my reborn erotica is stirring up forgotten sensuality.
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Casa Nonna
That first evening at 8 p.m. we were the only people at Casa Nonna, given our choice of tables in 15,000 square feet of space. I had a feeling our waiter had rushed directly from 10 minutes of training to take our order. The pizza cook seemed to still be priming the stove. I didn't have high expectations, so I was surprised by a dazzlingly crisp and delicious Diavola pie, blistered, peppery hot, the dough full of flavor, rounds of pepperoni adding spice and salt. What pleasure. It was not the soft and soggy Neapolitan style it claimed to be on the menu.
A week later, one dining room is almost full - tourists, I imagine, sent by prepped concierges from nearby hotels. And the kitchen is definitely making prog ress, even though Nonna's marvelous pizza with zucchini flowers and fried quail eggs and the Emilia pie with fennel sausage and broccoli rabe are not quite as crisp as I remember. They're still very winning. Sharing fine pastas and a couple of secondi, the five of us would definitely be back if we had reason to be in this not yet gentrified neighborhood again. Click here to know what we ate that pleased us. 310 West 38th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.
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Eating Around: Cantina
There's nothing like a feverishly overloaded sandwich to excite the Dagwood that lives inside a congenital gourmand. (Never hear d of Dagwood? Try Google, I bet they know him). The Senoran dog at Cantina in the pocket-size space that once was Cascabel Tacqueria is an effluvial eruption of pinto beans, tomato, jalapeńo, avocado, onion, queso fresco, mayo and mustard. Not even the Road Food Warrior can get his mouth around it.
Equally daunting is the black bean chile-loaded hamburgesa with a chile rellano tucked under the bun. But good. Like most of what we tasted. And cheap. Cheaper than what my cleaner charges for getting mayo spots off a silk blouse. Read more by clicking here. 1542 Second Avenue.
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Dim Sum Paradise
It is midnight dim at Chinatown  Brasserie. I bet someone thinks that's hot, or at least romantic. "Got a flashlight?" we ask a hostess. "How about a few more votives?" we beg. It doesn't strike me to ask if they can turn the lights up. But then it does. I ask. And suddenly we can see. Just in time to love the crunchy vegetable dim sum with peanuts, the lamb potstickers and deliciously sticky turnip cake. Dim sum meister Joe Ng comes out of the kitchen to take our order for udon noodles. Then, at that point when we can't possibly eat another bite, come gifts from Ng: voluptuous barbecue beef with asparagus and a pork dish with sticks of chive that taste green as well as oniony.
"To go, please," says our guest, a first timer here. "Good for breakfast. "
380 Lafayette Street at Great Jones.
(It is only weeks now from friends and family tastings at Red Farm on Hudson Street, Ng's partnership with Eddie Schoenfeld and Jeffrey Chodorow. Joe's already conjuring major fusion: truffle shu mei, foie gras soupy dumplings. Read more on Red Farm.)
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Torture at Salinas
All of us are eager to see what Basque chef Luis Bollo is doing at Salinas in the narrow space leading to a charming garden with a retractable roof on Ninth Avenue. We remember his audacity at Meigas and later at Suba before he left town eight years ago. Our five definitely do not fit at a corner table for four unless we interlock our legs and promise not to move all night. A hostess graciously moves us to a makeshift sixtop across the sardined can of a room. Yes, it's dark. Very dark. We're used to that. I have my flashlight magnifier. But what's unforgivable is the noise. It's lethal. It bounces off stone walls and low ceiling. Why is it so noisy? Partly because two women at the next table are screaming to be heard above the din.
The three of us against the wall can actually hear each other. The two opposite us, trapped in the full brunt of the roar, cannot hear us at all. It's not that some of the food is not good. Very salty, even excessively salty, but good. Salty little squares of patatas bravas are my favorite dish. But the paella negra to share is wonderful too. The whole cuttlefish, lending their ink to moisten the luscious black rice, dotted with monkfish, clams (not quite cooked in their shell) and mussels. A s for the lush lemon zest aioli on the side, I could just eat it off my finger and be happy. Raw haricots verts scattered across the paella are a mistake, I feel, or a misjudgment. Undercooked Brussels sprouts don't work either. No one says a word when Steven sends back the tough grass fed steak - not rare as ordered - and smeared with preserved lemon emulsion. Too busy to be curious, I guess.
All of us are exhausted from the torture and aren't sticking around for dessert. "Your food is good but I'll never be back," says one of our crowd to chef Bollo as he hovers to bid us goodbye.
He looks shocked. "But why?"
"It's the noisiest restaurant I've ever been in," she tells him.
"Is it really?" he says.
136 Ninth Avenue between 18th and 19th Street.
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Remembering George
George Lang died last Tuesday. I was startled and saddened by Jenifer Lang's email but not surprised. We'd seen him just a year ago in January in Flushing. He seemed uncharacteristically quiet. Very fragile. Till suddenly he smiled and started explaining amusingly why he was wearing a tie he didn't mind messing up in a Chinese restaurant.
I'd been angry and objected when some of the press were brutal in describing the Café des Artistes in the days after the Langs moved to close it.
Was I the only one still writing that recalled Lang the exuberant international restaurant consultant (he invented the concept) who cleaned up the naked nymphs and breathed life into the dying Café des Artistes in 1976.
The obituaries gave him his due: the escape from a forced labor camp in Hungary, his arrival in America with just a few dollars, his dream of becoming a violinist, his reality in restaurants - first as a cook, then working with Joe Baum to help create the Four Seasons and the whimsical Tower Suite where each table was served by a butler, a waiter and a maid who introduced themselves by name. A gambit even he came to regret. His sorcery in restaurant consulting followed. Read the Times farewell if you missed it.
I remember George with a violin kissing one of his wives on the cover of New York for a story I wrote on the kitchen as erogenous zone. And Lang announcing his labor of love at Des Artistes on his unique stationary with the asparagus logo. "It is really not my place," his letter said. "I will come as a guest -- just as I hope you will."
"That is George Lang," I wrote "linguist, littérateur, calligrapher, bibliophile, scholar, showman, violinist, the expert's expert -- to his friends, clients, competitors, a genius, a dazzling opportunist, P.T. Barnum, something of a charlatan. "It is really not my place..." That is the ever-so-practical Lang, new proprietor of the Café des Artistes...hedging. Read more of George in his prime and the renaissance of 36 naked ladies by clicking here.
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Photographs of Casa Nonna's pasta, Cantina's hot dog, Chef Joe Ng and dim sum at Chinatown Brasserie, and the Squid ink rice and steak at Salinas may not be used without permission from Steven Richter.
Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2011. |
