I saw a beautiful fruit tart today, but I didn’t buy it. Though one brief glimpse of its light crust, glistening white cream & assorted seasonal berries and our whole intense love affair came rushing back.
It’s the mid 1970’s. The place: Patrick Terrail’s West Hollywood restaurant Ma Maison. An old house on Melrose converted into the most innovative, modern French restaurant of its day. It was so very French and so very Hollywood, and when those two worlds collided on that patio of Astroturf and umbrellas, it was magic.
Big Hollywood deals were made, infamous fights broke out, and occasionally I was lucky enough – if someone with more money was paying—to be there, enjoying the food. That’s where it began – an infatuation that would turn into a stalker’s obsession. They had me at crème anglaise.
I was there a lot with Jackie Mason, which sounds so random, sort of like my celebrity dreams, but he was a friend of my dad’s and we went as his guest, or vice versa. Often, when we were at a meal with Jackie, he would do his bit:
Gentiles never finish drinking, Jews never finish eating. What do you think Jews talk about for breakfast? Where to eat lunch. At lunch: "Where should we have dinner?"
I turned fifty-two last week. While I’m told that fifty-two is the new thirty-eight, no one told my metabolism. It seems to have slowed even more than I have. Knowing this, and knowing that the only way to really celebrate a birthday is to eat and then eat some more, my wife, Peggy, and I had been dieting from the end of the holidays to the big day – ten whole days. And when the big day came, we wasted no time in returning to our post-holiday fighting weight. Here is how we did it. 
This fall I took a night train ride from Buffalo, New York to Chicago, Illinois. Normally, I find the train relaxing, a chance to rest, read and reflect. On this trip, however, I just wanted to sleep. But the guy sitting behind me snored so loudly that even the usually soothing train sounds couldn’t drown out his volcanic eruptions.
There are moments during the holiday season where recipes are true soul food. Instead of feeling sadness about the ones we have lost and are no longer seated at the table sharing the day with us, we can feel happiness by knowing how loved we were by recreating their favorite recipes that they would make for us.
Defining the dress code of the Gents, that was easy….BUT OH, THE DRESS CODE for women…that was serious. Pant suits were just coming in big and the Maitre’D would have none of it. It was here, at the Plaza Hotel, with all the Management taking notes, that I rewrote their dress code with sketches and fabric swatches, as I tried to educate those huffy puffed-up doormen.