THENASTYBITS (29 page)

What is a
carioca}
Simply put, he's a lovable scamp, a guy who somehow finds a way, always, to avoid legitimate toil in favor of the popular Rio diversions of going to the beach, flirting, making love, dancing, and hanging out. He is a man who survives on charm and what are called
jetinhos,
improvisa-tional, amiable hustler/joker strategies to avoid work and keep doing what he's doing, which is basically nothing. Rio is filled with
cariocas:
crowded around cafe tables, playing volleyball with their feet on the beaches, surfing, tanning, swaying to music, hanging out at
lanchonetes
and
barracas,
usually with fabulous-looking women feeling them up—in general behaving like aristocratic rogues in Speedos. Whether they go home at night to the walled compounds of the rich, or take the bus to a hillside favela, all
cariocas
—in fact most Brazilians—are shockingly sophisticated about fashion, culture, the events of the world, and stratagems for survival. Everyone, rich or poor, seems to know how to dress stylishly (even on a budget), handle themselves in most social situations, and make the most of their charm, winging it through life. Is there appalling poverty? Are there organized drug gangs, squalid housing, and rampant prostitution? Yes. Do I oversimplify? Yes. Remember, I didn't get too far from the beach.

In fact, I confined my investigations exclusively to the coast, beach-hopping from Copacabana with its tourist hordes, big hotels, nightclubs, and family beaches, to the slightly mor~ segmented Ipanema. In Ipa, there are beaches for surfers beaches for gays, beaches for aging leftists and artists, a beac" with a band shell for live music. The surf is stronger, and th social strata more intricate. A few blocks back from the beach, it's like Sutton Place. Ten blocks beyond? Slums that make the South Bronx of the 1970s look like Club Med. I traveled down the coast, through mountain tunnels to Barra (another one), a Montauk-esque beach community with even wilder waves and a less crowded beach—a sort of dress-down-if-you're-stinking-rich enclave strip of cafes and shops and modest but well-kep homes, a few full-bore pleasure palaces. I ate
caldo verde
(Portuguese kale soup), fried fresh sardines, and grilled chorizos and onions; drank
cacbaca
and
chopp;
and looked out for good places to return for dinner.

When the whole group was briefly reconstituted at the hotel, we set out for dinner at a
cburrascaria,
a highly recommended place in Copa with an extensive buffet. But the minute we sat down, we knew it was a mistake. The meal was awful, pointless, and touristy. The Argentine beef was bland, chewy, and uninteresting. I felt like a carnival mark watching the bolero-jacketed waiters carving slices off indifferently grilled meat. There was only sirloin, filet, and round—no skirt or hanger or kidneys or interesting bits. I hate all-you-can-eat concepts to start with. Few foodstuffs, in my experience, are actually better festering under heat lamps, or growing oxidized on a buffet. A late-night sushi snack the next night was equally dreary. Taka's face, previously filled with enthusiasm as he discussed the films of Werner Herzog, went slack as he laid eyes on the limp graying tuna,

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the insipid California rolls. The bastards didn't even have Japanese beer!

What
was
sensational was my first experience of
feijoada,
the national dish of Brazil.
Feijoada
is traditionally eaten on Saturday afternoon, in gargantuan, gut-busting portions, the idea being that after a full experience of this hearty mix of hooves, snouts, tails, and other meats stewed in black beans, one need not eat again for the rest of the weekend. Eager to find the best available, I strolled down the main drag of Copacabana, eyes peeled for locals, until I found a particularly busy cafe packed with
cariocas
happily digging in.

Major score. My
feijoada
arrived baked in a massive earthenware crock, accompanied by plates of white rice, sauteed kale, and pork cracklins. It was breathtakingly good. Like so many truly great dishes,
feijoada
derives from desperate and humble circumstances. It's said originally to have been thrown together in impromptu fashion by African slaves, with leftovers pilfered or passed along from their cruel masters' plates. Pigs' feet, ears, tongue, shoulder, spicy chorizo sausages, what looked like snout, some tail, all slowly braised in a hearty, heart-clogging mix of black beans and spices. Heaped in increments over rice and sprinkled with cracklins, it can take hours to eat at a leisurely pace. Mine was titanic in size and astonishingly good. The sun was setting over Sugarloaf beyond the dark turquoise water by the time I'd scraped every last morsel and mopped up the beans with a crust of Portuguese-style bread. Samba music was playing faintly in the background; beachgoers covered themselves with simple wraps and waited for the busses that would take them home, or strolled down the boulevard looking for friends and drinks and music. Lovers held each other by the waist wordlessly, friends chatted, hookers posed, food arrived at other tables, disappeared, was replenished. Bossa nova insinuated itself from the cafe next door, the
chopps
flowed, older couples sipped strong Brazilian coffee and stared blissfully out to sea. I sat for hours, perfectly content for a brief time at the center of the world.

THE
OLD,
GOOD
STUFF

i
was
standing
on
East Sixtieth Street in front of the uni spiring facade of Le Veau d'Or, one of those places you walk b without a glance (hell, you've already walked by it a millio times), where faded, framed reviews from likely long-dea restaurant critics still hang in the window. I was having a la cigarette before going inside to meet a friend for lunch, when stranger approached me.

"You're going to lunch
here}"
she demanded.

"Uh . . . yes," I replied warily, a little afraid of what she mig' say next.

"You're going to
love it\"
she squealed. "I
adore
this place! It' so hilariously,
wonderfully
old school!" Then, her face took on suddenly serious expression as she considered something sh hadn't thought of before. "Just don't tell anyone about it, okay?"

A few minutes later, the ancient proprietor-waiter of Le Vea d'Or threw my coat over an unused table and ushered me across a small, mostly empty dining room to join my friend. A couple sat at a corner table, side by side on an aged red banquette. A few lone diners, regulars from the look of them, ate silently by themselves, concentrating on their food. At forty-seven years of age, I was the youngest person in the room.

I was in The Restaurant That Time Forgot, an observation reinforced by one look at the menu, a historical document as untouched by the decades as the dining room. Reading down the

list of menu items and the day's specials was like a blast from the past, a dizzying drop into a time warp. Even the typeface and logo looked like a 1940s film prop. As I read, I felt myself repeatedly catching my breath, inhaling sharply with each defiantly out-of-fashion offering:
Celeri remoulade, saucisson chaud, poireaux vinaigrette, hareng a la creme, vichyssoise, endives roquefort . . .

"Oh my
godV
I spluttered idiotically, my face breaking into a big grin. "I can't believe this!"

Trout
meuniere, navarin d'agneau,
sauteed chicken tarragon,
poussin en cocotte "Bonne Femme," rognons de veau Dijon-naise, coq au vin, tripes a la mode de Caen , . .
one forgotten French bistro classic after another. And the desserts! The
desserts!
Okay, creme caramel and tarte aux pommes—still obligatory. One would expect to see those two here. But
oeufs a la neige? Peche Melba!?
These were preparations you had to go digging for in old copies of
Le Repertoire de la Cuisine
or
Larousse
to find. This was madness! This was insane! This was absolutely fantastic!

One might think—considering the sight of me giggling at Le Veau d'Or—that perhaps I was appreciating this dino-era menu in a modern, post-ironic way. That I was somehow snickering at the proprietor and his improbable, almost irrationally unsellable choice of menu items, that there was something funny about how out of touch, days-gone-by, stubbornly incongruous and
French
Le Veau d'Or's menu was—the height of unfashionable, only a few feet from Bloomingdale's and Madison Avenue.

But one would be wrong.

My eyes filled with real tears. My heart sang. And as I ate my
celeri remoulade
and my proudly ungarnished
rognons de veau,
and later, my
ties flottantes,
I was bursting with admiration for the place. This was the good old stuff. This was roots cooking, the kind of French food I first came to know and love, the wellspring from which I—and many cooks like me—came. And I know that I am not alone in my affection.

In Paris, of course, they continue to serve this kind of fare sans irony. On a recent trip, I found myself walking in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres with my editor, who'd grown up in the neighborhood. Every few blocks, she'd stop and excitedly point out a forlorn-looking storefront and say, "Oh! That place there makes the
best rognons de veau flambeeV
or "the
boeuf aux carottes
there is superb!" This is akin to walking through suburban New Jersey with an American and having them passionately expound on the glories of diner meatloaf, or coffee-shop tuna salad. I love the French. Their maniacal obsession with the simple act of lunch has, I think, made the world a better place.

But what about us? What's left of the once common, even de rigeur, yet now forgotten cuisine bourgoise, and the more upscale "continental" classics that seem to have gone down with the
Titanic}
Who still loves them? Who continues to uphold the glorious tradition, against the forces of time and trend and simple good sense?

Riffing on old-school classics is something well-known American chefs have been doing for some time. It's been decades since you could find a "napoleon" in a restaurant that in any way resembles the original pastry. Thomas Keller serves a faux "blanquette" (of lobster), and Eric Ripert serves a "croque monsieur" (of caviar and smoked salmon), and other hotshot modernists both here and abroad have been freely pilfering the kernels of forgotten classics for ages. They're not serving the "real deal." But they're not laughing, either.

They'd serve
rognons de veau Bercy
if they could. I just know it.

It can be a hard thing for a chef to do "forgotten" classics the old way, the way they're supposed to be done. Making a "real"
blanquette de veau,
for instance. Tradition dictates that you simmer veal neck or shoulder in plain water—no jacking with stock or medley of herbs; that the mushrooms be uncaramelized; that you serve it with plain white rice. In short, that there be
no
color. No garnish. And no fancy black plates, either. This goes against every modern chef's first instincts, conventional wisdom, and all our training. The natural urge, of course, is to always

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seek color contrast, that presentation be bold and eye-catching, that chefs at the very least "tweak" all that passes through their kitchens, no matter how classic the dish, essentially making it, with the addition or subtraction of the odd ingredient, somehow their own. But
blanquette de veau
should be
all white.
Not even a single shred of chopped parsley or tuft of chervil to set off its uninterrupted monochrome. To change anything is to not make a blanquette. Not really.

This can be tough for a chef. To do it "right" can be a bold, almost reactionary move. Or, it can be a bald, thoroughly guileless expression of earnest and undying love.

Or, as is thankfully still the case in isolated pockets in America, it can be the still-offered fare of an institution that for whatever reason has chosen to stay stuck in time and space, a fly in amber, unchanging—unaware, perhaps, or else afraid to change, or simply clinging to the old ways for the sake of an original clientele, one very likely dying of attrition.

Look at Louis XVI in New Orleans, where they still serve such Cunard Line-era monsters as oysters Rockefeller,
feuillantine de crustaces
(vol-au-vent of shellfish in Nantua sauce!), canard Montmorency (duck in cherry sauce), filet au poivre prepared
tableside,
and, most remarkably, the unthinkably retro, perennial ruler of the elephant graveyard, filet de boeuf Wellington! Think about that: A filet of beef slathered with foie gras and mushroom duxelle, wrapped in pastry, baked, and served with a truffled bordelaise
(Perigordine).
When was the last time you saw the words
duxelle, truffle, foie gras,
and
pastry
all in the same sentence? This heavy, labor-intensive, difficult to hold and reheat cliche of a dish has endured nouvelle cuisine, cuisine minceur, the single slice of kiwi—with fanned skinless poussin breast—on large plate, pink peppercorns, Asian fusion, New American, quick grills, Atkins-mania, molecular gastronomy— and plain old good sense. And you've got to admire the folks at Louis XVI for it. They're like the Robert Mitchum, the Johnny Cash, the Keith Richards of restaurants: too old, too mean, and too
cool
to change. Louis? I salute you.

La Chaumiere in Washington, D.C., continues to feature
quenelles de brochet
(pike dumplings in Nantua sauce), a dish maybe one chef among thousands remembers, much less knows how to prepare. They also feature cassoulet Toulousain,
boudin blanc,
tripes, and calves' brains. The tripe and calves' brains can hardly be flying out of the kitchen—especially in these fearful, troubled times—but kudos for sticking with them. It's a decision that borders on the heroic.

La Petite Auberge in New York City still sells coquilles Saint-Jacques, served in scallop shells, just like my mom did back in the sixties. Frogs' legs with garlic, chasseur sauce, and bordelaise sauce still take their place on the menu. It's been a long time since I've seen bordelaise on a menu—it's usually been long supplanted by the healthier-sounding "demi-glace" or "reduction."

New York's Pierre au Tunnel wins the Biggest Balls award for keeping the unthinkably scary-ass
tete de veau
(essentially calf's face, rolled up and tied with its tongue and thymus gland and slowly stewed in court bouillon) on their menu. They must get a lot of old Frenchmen as customers, because even in Paris these days, you pretty much have to point a gun at someone's head before you can motivate them to eat a calf's face. Pierre? Good on you. I wish I could serve
tete.
Really I do.

For sheer number and frequency of lumbering, old-style, unapologetically French dishes, you've just got to give it up to (again New York's) Chez Napoleon. A trip down memory lane into inspired lunacy:
rillettes de pore,
veal
forestiere
(Remember that one from school? Anybody?), tripes, kidneys, liver, brains,
boudin noir,
coq au vin, bouillabaisse, hot souflees—and cherries freaking
jubileel
The mind reels.

At Boston's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, their Dining Room continues to prove the existence of the old-style professional waiter, serving Dover sole
meuniere
tableside. One wonders where one can find a server these days who knows how to fillet a whole sole with fork and spoon in front of an audience, or prepare the Dining Room's crepes Suzettes flambees without igniting themselves or their customers. It's inspiring to know they're there, and doing what they do.

Chefs, many of whom grew up with these dishes, are often passionate about them. But are their customers? It's interesting to see how resolute and determined modern chefs try and slip in the occasional oldie through guile and seduction. At Vincent in Minneapolis, they have had to make concessions to the marketplace, dutifully offering up a hamburger and a "carpaccio" of beets along with the steak tartare and escargots. The
escargots de Bourgogne,
tellingly, are helpfully described on the menu as "a traditional bistro dish"—as if to take the sting away from the more straightforward "snails." The "blanquette" is a compromise between urges and generations, a "braised veal shank . . . with cauliflower, wild rice, and green onions." "Les haricots persillades" sit next to "creamy yellow grits" on the list of side dishes. But, under the regularly changing header of "Something Strange But Good," they have managed to sneak in that beloved old warhorse, "Normandy-Style Braised Tripe"—incredible.