A Celebration of Chefs and Others

Millions of people all over the world will open a restaurant menu today. They will look at menus for the food and the price and make their selection, then the menu will lay on the table, ignored, an annoyance taking up elbow space.

Not so for Jim Heinmann, whose new book Menu Design in America: 1850-1985 (Taschen) asks that you set aside the hunger pangs and examine the menu, admire its design. Heimann’s book made its appearance at one of the best-catered signings in recent history. Delicacies and drinks provided by Taschen’s Beverly Hills store’s glamorous neighbors: Mr. Chow, Spago, The Cheese Story Beverly Hills, Vosges Haut Chocolate, The Spare Room and Remy U.S.A.

The dress code was country club casual. I was struck by a number of women with seventy-year old hands and faces as smooth as river stones in pretty summer dresses, light layers of lavender and other gentle shades of purple daringly accented with a coral pink or chartreuse accessory.  Their hair was sparse with age but coiffed into cotton candy halos. It was all very Palm Beach or Palm Springs on Easter Sunday, or Beverly Hills before black became de rigueur. None of them smoked, not upstairs at the open-air bar or out on the clean, expansive sidewalk, but their hushed, hoarse voices betrayed a secret habit, some sweet vice recently abandoned.

Dear Madeleine,

You probably don’t remember me, but as you read this it may all come back to you after the leagues of students that you have mentored pass by in a blur. You changed my life and I’m sure there is a long line behind me. The first time that I came to your cooking school in Newton Center, Massachusetts with Heidi Wortzel to introduce me, I was where I had always dreamed of being.

The smells on the outside of the entrance pale in comparison to how wonderful it smelled inside. Students were whirling around, busy making puff pastry and tending to their pots on the  stove tops all with smiles on their faces. It was magical..I remember thinking you were so busy but so very welcoming as you talked about your school. The brick walls were covered with well-used, brightly-polished copper pots and oddly an upside down framed autograph from Paul Bocuse. It was where I wanted to be and I couldn’t wait to roll up my sleeves and learn all that I could.

Working for a food magazine, your life pretty much revolves around eating and drinking. Not as much as people might think, but more than the average person in America. I am more of an oenophile than a foodie, but I know great food when I taste it. It’s food that lingers in your imagination for days after the experience and that you just can’t seem to stop telling other people about. Flavors that come right back to you, when you think about THAT bite and how surprisingly delicious it was. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be memorable, but true culinary genius is, like most talents, not a common thing - the theme of this sweet and sumptuous little film.

Sure it has big backers behind the scenes - anyone heard of Oprah and Spielberg? - but the story of a young Indian chef on his path of culinary self-discovery is simple, funny and heartfelt and will leave you hungry for more. Forced by tragedy to leave India, Hassan Kadam and his family find themselves in the small village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. The locals don’t know what to make of the family and they certainly are not necessarily lining up to enjoy their Indian cuisine, but the family refuses to give up and slowly begins to make headway in the village.

Though he has no formal training Hassan, who learned everything he knows about taste and spices from his mother, is made the chef of the family restaurant, Maison Mumbai. The family’s loud and ethnic presence makes their direct neighbor Madame Mallory, the chef/owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant Le Saule Pleureur, very, very unhappy. What ensues for the first half of the film is a comic War of the Roses with both sides trying to make the others’ lives miserable, while gaining business for themselves.

There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized.  It’s then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself thinking of her.  Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I, heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen.  If at a dinner party, after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just appear in my mind.  And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself:   

“What would Anne of Green Gables do?”