Café Chatter est of 2009
Days of Wine and Beef Wellington
Where to find some
of yesterday’s classic
dishes today
BY LIZ JOHNSON
Above:
The classic
hamburger at
Louis’ Lunch,
sans ketchup
and mustard.
Right: Senate
Bean Soup.
We marvel at the first person who thought
to shuck and eat an oyster. But what about
the first person who thought to take an
oyster, top it with spinach and bread
crumbs, and brown it under a broiler?
That person, Jules Alciatore, was the
second-generation owner of Antoine’s,
the famous restaurant in New Orleans,
and he decided to name his creation after
the richest man in America at the time.
He called it oysters Rockefeller.
Chefs and restaurant owners come
up with ideas all the time (peach Melba),
but it’s the ones that stick around that
matter (Bu;alo wings). And I’ve noticed
a renewed interest in culinary history,
too. So, it seems like a good time to honor
the past. This year, Arrive’s Best of the
Northeast dining scene isn’t focusing on
the newest trendy restaurants. Instead,
we’re looking at classic dishes, the best of
what’s held up over the years, and where
you can still find them.
Maybe the struggling economy is
making us long for childhood favorites—
sending us back to our kitchens and
reminding us of when, during the Great
Depression, our grandparents were
needing comfort, too. A few recent
books, for example, take an in-depth
look at food through the last century.
William Grimes, former restaurant
critic for The New York Times, just came
out with Appetite City: A Culinary History
of New York, a comprehensive look at
restaurants from colonial times to the
present. Kelly Alexander, a former editor
for Saveur magazine, recently co-wrote,
with Cynthia Harris, Hometown Appetites:
The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the
Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled
Ho w America Ate, about a journalist for
the Ne w York Tribune who transformed
the food section from a vehicle for grocery store advertising to a compelling
read about what food means to people.
And the latest from Mark Kurlansky,
known for such books as Cod and Salt,
is The Food of a Younger Land, in which
he researches files from a lost Works
Progress Administration project and
tells the story of American food before
our system was industrialized.
Some of these dishes were introduced
during that time, others are more modern, but all have one thing in common:
You can still taste terrific versions of
them throughout the Northeast. Here,
from oldest to newest, is a look.
Best of 2009
The Hamburger
Seriously. It had to start somewhere,
right? The true moment of creation of a
dish is hard to pin down, but a tiny little
bar in New Haven, Conn., just may be
where the hamburger originated. (And
you thought New Haven was just known
for pizza. Oh, and Yale University.) Louis’
Lunch ( louislunch.com) lore says that,
back in 1900, a guy walked in asking for a
quick meal he could eat on the run. Someone broiled up a patty and put it between
