Just for fun, close your eyes. Picture Zsa Zsa dining at Bistro Garden or Liz at Chasen’s – bejeweled and pleasing to the eyes. Imagine charming George Hamilton tanned and natty in his double- breasted blazer table-hopping his way around the room. Now open your eyes. If the vision remains, then you must be in Palm Beach! And, guess what! You’ll still see charming George tanned and natty in his double-breasted blazer table-hopping his way around the room – along with Jimmy Buffet, Rod Stewart, Donald Trump, Vic Damone, Dina Merrill, Susan Lucci, the indomitable Dame Celia Lipton Ferris, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
Surely, you understand the delight for a Left Coast Malibu Beach Bum time-warping on the "Right” Shore. For someone who actually remembers the bridal trail down Sunset Blvd and a laid back Rodeo Drive of local businesses, Palm Beach and Worth Avenue is the old Beverly Hills I most cherish. Here in Palm Beach most of the upscale restaurants recall those old glamour days, and their menus cater to the pre-foodie crowd who like their food simple and well prepared.
Café L'Europe most exemplifies Beverly Hills posh dining from the eighties. The interiors, with décor reminiscent of the Belle Epoch – sparkle like champagne. Gaiety seems part of the menu with its varied list of Iranian, Russian, Italian and domestic caviar, Sliced Scottish Smoked Salmon, Escargot Bourguignonne, (any one who ever lived in the Colony knows an excellent snail when they see one!), and a ninety-eight page wine list.
OK... it is better than not coming at all!
Our friend, Shiny Sheet Society Editor, Shannon Donnelly, can masticate on purple prose as well as any one I know: we are naught but a chew toy impaled on the incisors of the Cosmic Hellhound of Wall Street (from a "society" editor, no less). She was catching our attention to suggest that bad times should equal better manners – and why not; we can never over-spend on Grace. Course in this case Grace is the "slightly-hung-over" Doyenne of the Etiquette of Denial. From her delicious SOCIAL GRACE'S GUIDE TO GETTING THROUGH ALL THIS, comes Rule Number One which forbids the use of the word "new" unless it is followed by either the (interchangeable) "grandchild" or "shelter dog." And, forget any conversation that touches on "bling" or "leveraged buyout." That will be a challenge to most Palm Beachers, but not to us as we now "have permission" to cross Worth Lagoon at will and treat the whole experience as just one of life's many broadening experiences. Crossing Southern Bridge leads to West Palm Beach – an exotic land to be sure.
On the second day of our Florida trip, we dined at one of our favorite,
always good, “coming home” restaurants in Apalachicola: The
Apalachicola Seafood Grill. Located in the heart of “downtown”
Apalachicola (within spitting distance of the town’s solitary traffic
light) , The Grill offers a simple menu, The World’s Largest Fried
Grouper Sandwich, an impressive assortment of beer (you get your own
bottle) and the motto “No Whining.” We have been eating at The Grill at
least once a trip since Sam was two and threw a sippy cup at the front
window. We’ve not been disappointed. I have had everything on the menu
that I want to try, and the Grill is not the kind of restaurant that
changes it’s menu. There are fresh shrimp, oysters and fishes fried,
baked, broiled, in soups, stews and chowders, in sandwiches and/or in
baskets. City folk can have a salad with seafood in it, if they insist.
If I arrived at The Grill to discover that they were offering a terrine
of langoustine on a bed of microgreens with a Guiness reduction, I
would burst into tears.
