Food, Family and Memory

How did it happen that the Androuet Restaurant in Paris could quietly disappear without fanfare or protest? How could it become a dilapidated sign over a store front; soulless, diluted and gone? Why have I waited so long to write about it? Secretly, I hoped that somehow it would come back to life.

The original cheese shop, ripening caves and restaurant was located on Rue Amsterdam. Rue Amsterdam was quirky and not so nice an area. The street was long and one-way. We would circle around for half an hour to be able to park close enough to be safe after dark. It was Mecca for a cheese lover - I am a zealot.

The tiny, refrigerated shop on the first floor was filled with every cheese made in every corner of France. Each one was ‘a’ point’-- perfectly aged and ready to eat. The three tiny, older women tended the inventory of cheeses constantly. When you walked in there was no grand greeting, only a quick look up and aloof ‘Bon jour’. I always wondered if they knew how difficult a place it was to find. If they did know how much effort it took maybe they would have been kinder. It doesn’t matter now because the best cheese shop in the world is gone. Maybe their intense concentration is what it took to maintain such high quality.

Cheese is like wine; it opens in your glass-the first long sniff of its’ aroma to the last sip of perfectness. Cheese is like that as well - birth, aging and perfection and it then it gone, too. These three women struggled to keep so many cheeses perfect. Most, barely lasting a day or two. I understood why they never looked up from their arduous work.

I went to bat for my friend Tracy. She wanted the starring role in a movie my dad was producing, but it was really his friend Bob who was the money guy and director. If it were just my dad, it would have been a slam-dunk. So, I went to work on Bob. I pitched him for months, relentlessly. That’s me when I want or need to be – a dog with a bone. “Have you seen Tracy in Christopher Guest’s new movie?” I asked. “She’s brilliant.” Or: “Check out her credits, you’d be lucky to get her.” And: “Bob, let her audition, you won’t be sorry.” Finally, when I had exhausted all other angles, I went for the Boys Club Secret Society as a last try: “Your lead actor has always wanted to fuck her.” Yep, that did it. The part was hers.

We went to Texas and my best friend Tracy had the lead as the girlfriend. And I had one scene, one great scene, as the angry-crazy-ex-wife. (It would be another year before I’d play the role in real life.) And except for the hurricane threatening to shake things up and me freezing my ass off the day I was shooting, it was great fun to be on location with my dad and my close friend. I spent most of my downtime hunting for Galveston’s best fried chicken.

That was the late 80’s. Sometime in the mid-90’s, Tracy called to say she was hired to do some reenactments for the Leeza Gibbons Show and would I like to join her, they need another actress. Me, panicking: “Is that in front of a live audience?”

If a group of 10 people playing the word association game were given the word “summer”, chances are at least half would say picnic. Probably more. For me, the best summer picnic, the only summer picnic, is a beach picnic. My family wasn’t park picnickers or picnic in the woods people. We were Long Island beach lovers. And that’s where we did our picnicking.

Every summer from the time I remember, until I was 18, my family belonged to the Lawrence Beach Club on the south shore of Long Island, New York. When school let out in June until after Labor Day, my sisters and I were there, rain or shine. If it rained while we were in the pool, we just opened our mouths to catch the drops.

On hot days after school started back up in September, my mom would pick us up at 3, the station wagon idling at the curb, and take us to the beach until 5 well into October when it was starting to cool down and get dark early.

Memories of Lawrence Beach Club own prime real estate in my memory bank. Beach picnics on summer weekday nights with my family are among the most precious. So precious they are usually keep vaulted in the back of the bank and brought out to be viewed on rare occasions.

“I always use a combination of cumin, sweet paprika, garlic powder (not garlic salt, it’s way too synthetic tasting), kosher salt, white pepper, and a bit of sugar. OH MY GOD! And hot paprika! I recently bought some fresh hot paprika and I can’t believe how much depth of flavor it packs with the smokiness of paprika and the spiciness of cayenne!” My spice rant had gotten me so excited I almost skidded off the leather couch of the Pasadena tapas bar we were chatting in.

I looked at the wonder and awe (shock and horror) on the faces of my friends and quickly dialed it down. I hadn’t seen most of these people in over 5 years and hot paprika was definitely NOT the most interesting reunion topic.

Last weekend, Shannon and I flew out to Los Angeles for a marathon he was competing in. I hadn’t been back in three years, and then it was only for a weekend catering job. I had moved back to New York two years before that, after living in Los Angeles for a 16 year stretch.

16 years. Gadzooks.

It’s a city that holds a lot of powerful memories for me- both successes and failures. I was terrified of what I would discover on my return. But you know what I found?