A Place at the Table (15 page)

G
US
A
NDRES
: We met in the midthirties, long before our window-dressing days, at a gathering thrown by the Communist Party. A Communist Party party, how do you like that? For a long time I kept my past association with the Bolsheviks—limited though it was—under wraps. The McCarthy trials scared us into silence. But now . . . well . . . let’s just say that the singular advantage of old age is you lose your fear of other people’s judgments.

Alice became a Communist because it was the only political party
that would touch integration. I should add, this was before we found out about Stalin’s purges and all of that nastiness. Though honestly, I was never that political. Was never a card-carrying member or anything or that sort. In fact, I was only at that particular event because Randy was hosting it, and you know how it is when you are throwing a party—you’re terrified no one will come. So I agreed to be filler—a warm body, if you will—and there I was, bored senseless while these unkempt Bolsheviks spoke to me about which eastside buildings they would like to occupy once the Revolution came, when in walks this stunning black woman, carrying a blackberry pie.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Wait. It was a
potluck
Communist gathering?

G
US
A
NDRES
: That was what was so delightful about Alice’s pie. The spirit of the evening had been so drab, so earnest. The only refreshments provided were beer and hoop cheese. Everyone thought they had to be so austere at those things and here comes Alice with this gorgeous pastry bursting forth with dark, ripe fruit. I was forever telling Randy that the only party I approved of was one that served cocktails, and in walks Alice with a decadent offering for the Bolsheviks. It was perfect. She was perfect.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Is that when you decided to open the restaurant?

G
US
A
NDRES
: No, no, no. The party was a decade before.
I
actually decided to open the restaurant. Randy is a photographer, as you surely know, and he wanted a place to display some of his work. We had rented the storefront of a little town house on E. 51st, and Randy was trying to convince me to open a frame shop in the space. He would provide the art for the walls; I would do the framing. Which is basically the same thing as he writes the novel, she types it up for him, so you can see why I hesitated. The town house had a marvelous courtyard garden. One day Randy and I were sitting back there having a cocktail and one of us said, “Wouldn’t this make a
wonderful setting for an intimate little café?” And just then Alice showed up looking for a cigarette. She just happened to stop by. Seeing her standing at the door, I suddenly had a vision. I saw her in the kitchen, fixing blackberry pies for a crowd. And without even considering my words I burst out with, “Alice, darling, we are opening a restaurant and you are going to be the chef!”

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: I’m struck by the fact that you rented a storefront without knowing what sort of business you were going to open.

G
US
A
NDRES
: Well, why not? The rent was cheap—$45 a month—which Randy and I split. I knew we would come up with something.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: It was a different city back then, wasn’t it?

G
US
A
NDRES
: It was a wonderful time. More innocent. For starters, you simply didn’t have ancient people like me toddling around. People dropped dead at a decent age back then, 60 or 65. And there were all of these soldiers coming back from overseas, just spilling into the city. You cannot
comprehend
the level of optimism we felt at that particular moment. The country had been through so much in such a short amount of time: The First World War, then the Depression, then World War II. But in 1946 our future looked bright. We had defeated Fascism. We had saved the Free World. And now the soldiers that survived were home and the economy was good and New York was booming. It was simply a heady, heady time to be alive.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: But you did not serve overseas.

G
US
A
NDRES
: Heart murmur.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: How did you feel about that?

G
US
A
NDRES
: When the U.S. joined the Allied forces, I weighed maybe 95 pounds, wet. I don’t think I would have done much good fighting with our boys. What I
was
good at was selling war bonds at the theaters during Intermission. In that way I contributed.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Back to the restaurant. You told Alice Stone you were opening a restaurant together and she said?

G
US
A
NDRES
: She was a very savvy woman. She said, “Make me part-owner.”

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Which you did.

G
US
A
NDRES
: Yes, and then she came and sat in the garden with us and we started dreaming up ideas for the café. It was her notion that we should serve a prix fixe menu. She just thought it would be easier, which it was.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Did Alice Stone have any culinary training?

G
US
A
NDRES
: A childhood of eating with the seasons on a farm in North Carolina. And the most astute palate of anyone I have ever met. Give Alice a taste of anything and she will immediately tell you what it is missing. I can hear her now:
Grind in some pepper, grate a little orange zest, add a pinch of salt, throw in a splash of vinegar, let the dough rest for five minutes before kneading it again
. Any culinary problem, Alice had a fix. I suppose her official training was the copy of
Escoffier
that we bought her, from which she learned to make all of the French sauces—though of course she never bothered much with
sauce espagnole
, which simply takes hours and hours to prepare.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Under Chef Alice Stone the restaurant became renowned for its excellent cuisine. What are some of the specialties of the house?

G
US
A
NDRES
: Her mousse of course. She made both a lemon and a bittersweet chocolate mousse, and you could choose one or the other for dessert. When we first opened we served the mousse French-style, in big bowls, passed around the table along with softly whipped cream. You simply scooped out what you wanted. It was divine. I couldn’t serve it that way anymore, of course. Either the health department would shut me down or some terribly fat man wearing a T-shirt and sneakers would come in and treat dessert as an all-you-can-eat contest. And then there was Alice’s roast duck with
green olives. She only served it once the weather turned cold, but come November clients would start calling up, asking if it was duck season yet.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Miss Stone worked at Café Andres from 1946 to 1965. Why did she leave? Was there any sort of falling-out between the two of you?

G
US
A
NDRES
: Well, goodness, she was at the café for 19 years. That is a long time to remain at a restaurant, if you ask me, especially one with a prix fixe menu. You can imagine how weary she must have grown preparing the same dish again and again, night after night. Working on
Homegrown
gave her some distraction, but it didn’t last forever. Plus she had married the most
tiresome
sort of man, an absolute
bore
if you must know, and he was jealous of all the time she spent away from home, and so she decided to dedicate herself to him exclusively. She divested her ownership, and she and her husband moved upstate and began an organic farm.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: She began an organic farm in 1965? It’s astounding how ahead of her time she was.

G
US
A
NDRES
: Well, I don’t know if she used the term “organic” or not. She was simply working the earth the way her relatives in North Carolina did. She wanted to grow the best vegetables she possibly could. She was forever haunted by how much better food tasted when she was a child. She’s an interesting bird, that Alice: a wonderful mélange of New York bohemian and sweet, southern country girl.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Alice was from the South, and you have already mentioned that the café was a refuge for southern writers, especially during the late 40s and 50s. Why do you think southern expatriates were so drawn to the café?

G
US
A
NDRES
: I think it has something to do with the fact that time moves so slowly at Café Andres. To get to the restaurant you must first walk down a long hall. I like to say that the hall serves
as the portal to another time and place, like going through the wardrobe to C. S. Lewis’s Narnia. Once you actually step inside you forget the nagging details of your everyday life. I can’t tell you how many of my customers, when going through a divorce, ate lunch at the café every single day during their ordeal, claiming that it was the only place where they felt calm. When I hear southerners reminisce about sitting on the front porch, sipping a drink and watching fireflies, I think it must be an experience similar to what we offer. And we pay careful attention to detail at Café Andres, which I think is a southern thing as well. I am always saying to Randy, “Where would we be in life without our garnishes?” Beauty is so crucial. Why glop on the sauce when you can spoon it over the roast chicken just so? Why bruise the basil when you can so easily avoid that by making sure every leaf is dry and using a good sharp knife to cut it into a chiffonade? Why discard the leaves on a stalk of celery you plan to put on a crudités platter when the leaves—though you wouldn’t want to eat them—add such an air of whimsy and art?

Shakespeare was right, all of life is a stage, but that is especially true of a restaurant. And I think it’s also true of the southern experience. There is a lot of playacting going on in the South. A whole lot of acting indeed. And we all know how deeply eccentric southerners are. As Truman Capote might say, Mama could have shot at Daddy with her pistol over breakfast, but that doesn’t mean the two of them won’t put on their finest and enjoy dinner out at Galatoire’s that night.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Yet your menu never offered southern food. Why?

G
US
A
NDRES
: I apologize for bringing up Truman again, but it makes me think of how he used to drive Alice mad with his requests for her to make him fried chicken, like his cook at home used to do. She would say to him, “I am not your mammy!” So there was that.
And can you blame Alice for being sensitive of the fact that she was cooking for an almost entirely white clientele, with the occasional exception of Jimmy Baldwin? And also, we opened the café in the late 1940s, when “sophisticated food” meant French cuisine. Had we served collard greens and fried chicken, we would have lasted a day. So Alice cooked with a French influence and a southerner’s innate sense of seasonality.

She was the first person I ever met who simply refused to serve raw tomatoes anytime but in the dead of summer. Alice made a wonderful Boeuf Bourguignon, a real customer favorite, but she would only prepare it November through the beginning of March, no matter how often people begged for it year-round. Same with her roast duck with green olives. She was very stubborn that way, very particular about how you should eat and why. And perhaps being stubbornly opinionated about how and when food should be consumed is a more southern trait than whether or not you fry green tomatoes or pickle watermelon rind or eat—I don’t know—pimento cheese.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Let’s talk about your friend Randall Jones, who you mentioned is a well-known photographer. He photographed several of the more famous artists from the restaurant, didn’t he?

G
US
A
NDRES
: His photographs remain my most treasured possessions.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: The two of you own a house together on Fire Island.

G
US
A
NDRES
: Well, neither of us could afford to own on our own.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: But he is your partner in every sense of the word, yes?

G
US
A
NDRES
: I see no reason why this line of questioning has any relevance.

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: I apologize if I offended you, but the question
is
relevant. Many from your list of famous clients—Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers—were not only southern but also bisexual or homosexual. Why did they all flock to you?

G
US
A
NDRES
: I don’t even know where to begin to address your impudence, but I’ll start here. The most important piece of information about an artist is not whom he or she invites into his or her bed! Such thinking drives me mad, as if sex is the single and solitary defining thing about a creative person. Read
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
, my dear. Read
In Cold Blood
. The exactitude of Capote’s prose, the simplicity of his language that captures the hidden melancholy in all of us . . . this is what is lasting of Truman. This and only this!

V
ANITIES
M
AGAZINE
: Okay, clearly I’ve struck a nerve, so let’s move on. Who was the most exciting celebrity to walk through the café’s door?