The Books: Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink; edited by David Remnick; ‘All You Can Hold For Five Bucks’, by Joseph Mitchell

Next up on the essays shelf:

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick

Secret Ingredients is a collection of food writing from The New Yorker. I love these collections. So far, we have excerpted from the following collections: Life Stories, The Fun of It, and The New Gilded Age. There are a couple more collections out there that I do not own, sports writing, humor writing, fiction.

I am not a foodie, but I love reading these pieces, many of which amount to profiles of chefs and restaurateurs. It’s also a book that spans the 20th century, so we get some great snapshots of other eras (this piece is one example). Eating out in New York in the 1920s and 30s … what was that like? Trying to find a good place to eat in Paris following WWII … The essays here focus on food, but they are really cultural snapshots.

The first piece in the collection is from 1939, and it is by Mitchell. He wasn’t just a “food writer”. He wandered around New York, talking to people, off the beaten track mostly, he traveled through the boroughss, seeking out the odd, the interesting, the unique. His Wikipedia page gives some great background. He worked for The New Yorker for decades. A very interesting man.

It is a portrait of the beefsteak experience in New York City. This is a lost world he is describing. Mitchell starts off by discussing the fame of the beefsteak, its history, its association with the political machinery in New York, Tammany Hall, Republican district clubs, etc. Beefsteaks were always “stag” affairs until the Nineteenth Amendment started to change things. Mitchell bemoans (perhaps ironically) the fact that women began to “corrupt” the beefsteak. Beefsteaks were always about gluttony, eat, eat, eat, burp, vomit, eat more. You know, good times. Lots of drinking (and Prohibition had thrown a wrench into the works as well). But beefsteaks allowed women in begrudgingly. Suddenly, napkins were involved, and cocktails were served. This was resented. Beefsteaks, traditionally, involved men sitting on barrels, with sawdust-covered floors, giant bibs, no silverware, lots of beer and lots of drunken singing.

Mitchell then zooms in his lens: in New York, Mitchell describes that there are “two schools” of the beefsteak dinner, the East Side school and the West Side school. He visits the headquarters of the East Side to talk to the dude in charge, and also to the West Side, to do the same thing. What is the philosophy of the beefsteak? How do you prepare the beefsteak? Are potatoes involved? There is some difference of opinion. A lot of the piece is quotations, from the head of the West Side and the head of the East Side school, and both are eminently quotable men. Joseph Mitchell has a reporter’s ear for the excellent quote. William Wertheimer, who runs the steakhouse on 1st and Nineteenth (therefore, the East Side), is the main character. He lets Joseph Mitchell tail along behind him as he pontificates his theories on beefsteak.

His piece is character-based, in many respects. But I love the section when he attends a beefsteak thrown for the New York Republican Party.

It gives such a beautiful snapshot. Remember, it’s 1939. At the tail-end of what Auden called the “low dishonest decade”. A lost world, come vividly to life again.

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick; ‘All You Can Hold For Five Bucks’, by Joseph Mitchell

I heard one of the chefs back in the kitchen yell out, “Steaks ready to go!” and I went inside. One chef was slicing the big steaks with a knife that resembled a cavalry sabre and the other was dipping the slices into a pan of rich, hot sauce. “That’s the best beefsteak sauce in the world,” Mr. Wertheimer said. “It’s melted butter, juice and drippings from the steak, and a little Worcestershire.” The waiters lined up beside the slicing table. Each waiter had a couple of the cardboard platters on which bread had been arranged. As he went by the table, he held out the platters and the chef dropped a slice of the rare, dripping steak on each piece of bread. Then the waiter hurried off.

I went to the kitchen door and looked out. A waiter would go to a table and lay a loaded platter in the middle of it. Hands would reach out and the platter would be emptied. A few minutes later another platter would arrive and eager, greasy hands would reach out again. At beefsteaks, waiters are required to keep on bringing platters until every gullet is satisfied; on some beefsteak menus there is a notice: “2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., portions permitted and invited.” Every three trips or so the waiter would bring out a pitcher of beer. And every time they finished a platter, the people would rub their hands on their aprons. Sometimes a man would pour a little beer in one palm and rub his hands together briskly. At a table near the kitchen door I heard a woman say to another, “Here, don’t be bashful. Have a steak.” “I just et six,” her friend replied. The first woman said, “Wasn’t you hungry? Why, you eat like a bird.” Then they threw their heads back and laughed. It was pleasant to watch the happy, unrestrained beefsteak-eaters. While the platters kept coming they did little talking except to urge each other to eat more.

“Geez,” said a man. “These steaks are like peanuts. Eat one, and you can’t stop. Have another.” Presently the waiters began to tote out platters of thick lamb chops, too. (On souvenir menus, these lamb chops are called “canapé of elephant’s wrist.”)

Then a man stepped up to the microphone and introduced a number of politicians. Each time he said “I’m about to introduce a man that is known and loved by each and every one of you,” a beaming politician would stand and bow and the constituents would bang the tables with their noisemakers. One of the politicians was Kenneth Simpson, the Republican leader of New York County. While bowing right, left, and center, he took bites out of a chop. There were no speeches. A politician would have to be extraordinarily courageous to make a speech at a beefsteak. When all the Republican statesmen of the Twentieth A.D. had been introduced, a band went into action and two singers stepped out on the dance floor and began singing numbers from Show Boat. By the time they got to “Ol’ Man River,” the 450 double lamb chops were gone and the waiters were bringing out the kidneys. “I’m so full I’m about to pop,” a man said. “Push those kidneys a little nearer, if you don’t mind.” Here and there a couple got up and went out on the dance floor. The lights were dimmed. Some of the couples danced the Lambeth Walk. Done by aproned, middle-aged people, ponderous with beefsteak and beer, the Lambeth Walk is a rather frightening spectacle. The waiters continued to bring out kidneys and steak to many tables. There was no dessert and no coffee. Such things are not orthodox. “Black coffee is sometimes served to straighten people out,” Mr. Wertheimer said, “but I don’t believe in it.”

When the Republicans began dancing in earnest, the activity in the kitchen slackened, and some of the waiters gathered around the slicing table and commenced eating. While they ate, they talked shop. “You know,” said one, “a fat woman don’t eat so much. It’s those little skinny things; you wonder where they put it.” Another said, “It’s the Cat’lics who can eat. I was to a beefsteak in Brooklyn last Thursday night. All good Cat’lics. So it got to be eleven-fifty, and they stopped the clock. Cat’lics can’t eat meat on Friday.” The two weary chefs sat down together at the other side of the room from the waiters and had a breathing spell. They had not finished a glass of beer apiece, however, before a waiter hurried in and said, “My table wants some more steak,” and the chefs had to get up and put their weight on their feet again. Just before I left, at midnight, I took a last look at the ballroom. The dance floor was packed and clouds of cigar smoke floated above the paper hats of the dancers, but at nine tables people were still stowing away meet and beer. On the stairs to the balcony, five men were harmonizing. Their faces were shiny with grease. One held a pitcher of beer in his hands and occasionally he would drink from it, spilling at much as he drank. The song was, of course, “Sweet Adeline.”