Florent

The Dining section of the Times today has a surprisingly moving audio slide show about the history of Restaurant Florent, the last bastion of cool to hit the Meatpacking District, narrated by owner Florent Morellet.

Ever since I moved to New York eleven years ago, Florent has been a mainstay in my late night dining rotation. While I was never one to hit the clubs, much less Hogs and Heifers, Florent would beckon when those 3AM cravings took hold even if I was no where near the Far West Side. I remember seeing Q-Tip there one very early morning many years ago, eating dinner with a beautiful woman. To this day, it remains one of my favorite celebrity sightings.

More recently my forays to Florent have been during somewhat respectable hours for dinner with friends or a glass of Lillet at the bar. The vibe and style of Florent is in a class by itself, and while I relish old-school restaurants that hark back to the 20's or 30's, I also really love (especially being a child of the 80's) the unattainably cool New York of say, Unique Boutique, Desperately Seeking Susan, and yes, Restaurant Florent.

When I heard that Florent was closing, I asked Monsieur Morellet if he would be so kind as to donate some menus to the Library. He most graciously obliged and now, I'm pleased to say, the Library's menu collection has a nice range of his quirky menus (designed by Tibor Kalman's M&Co) including one from 1985, the year Desperately Seeking Susan was released and opened my eyes to a new world, and the year Florent opened its doors and changed the Meatpacking District forever.

I can't image any future NYC historian researching the Meatpacking District without referring to Florent, and I'm hoping that these menus will allow for a richer and more detailed look at this uniquely New York neighborhood.

Friendly's

I'm fascinated by fast food. I don't eat much of it, except for the occasional McDonald's meal on I95, but I'm still really interested in the history of fast food: the "where, who and why" of it all. From the Harvey Girls who made waiting tables into a real career on the railroad lines, to Duncan Hines and his drives across the country discovering hole-in-the-wall restaurants, to Burger King, Wendy's and Fat Burger -- behind every fast food joint there is usually a great American story.

Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age is a wonderfully readable book on the history of roadside restaurants, and it offers quite a bit of background on fast food culture, including one of my all-time favorite restaurants: Friendly's.

For those of us who grew up in suburban New York or anywhere in New England, Friendly's is an important landmark. It's where you went with your friends after a movie, or where your parents took you after a school play or concert. Friendly's is where I experienced my first real stomach ache (Jim Dandy? I don't think so...) and where I learned that I do indeed have a delicate constitution. Regardless of all that, I can't get over the feeling of nostalgia that warms over me when I walk into a Friendly's restaurant.

According to the book, Friendly's originated in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1935 as a dairy and soda shop. They shut down during the war due to gasoline rationing which cut automobile traveling, but opened up again afterwards, serving ice cream throughout Massachusetts. In the 1950s Friendly's expanded to upstate New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C and even to parts of Indiana and Ohio, but still remained an ice cream-only destination. It was only in the 1980s that Friendly's began to serve food.

And speaking of food, while my love for Friendly's is vast, my heart belongs to the Fishamajig.



A little background before you think I'm crazy. I grew up in a kosher home. We didn't eat out much, and when we did it was to a deli or Moshe Peking or Pizza Hut. However, we did love a good Friendly's meal. Besides ice cream though, the only thing we were allowed to order was a Fishamajig. The Fishamajig is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich with fried fish and tarter sauce in the middle. A bit like the Filet-O-Fish, yet probably less healthy (if that's even possible) and I'm guessing just as non-kosher. I had one this past weekend, and while I did feel a tad sickly afterwards, it was worth the pain. It was a sublime Fishamajig.

For those of you who haven't tried a Fishamajig yet, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. It's kind of an acquired taste. But should you desire to peruse a menu to see your other options, we have one in the Library's Menu Collection. I should know - I put it there myself.

A Good Meal is Equal to Victory

The other day my friend and colleague Jessica Pigza was teaching her class on all things Hand Made (she'll be teaching more of those in the coming months so be sure to check it out...) and she emphasized something I should have brought up with culinary researchers long ago: pamphlet volumes.

In non-library lingo, pamphlet volumes are essentially short pamphlets that have been bound together into a book. The pamphlets range from topic to topic, and sometimes pamphlets bound together have absolutely nothing to do with one another except format, while other times they're bound by subject as well.

What makes these little guys so great is that they often cover subjects that are difficult to find in any free-standing book. Case in point: A Soldier's Simple Cooking Recipes for Cooking in the Trenches and Billets (with vocabulary of French words), published by Harrison and Sons, London and printed sometime between 1914 and 1918.

The preface reads:

Tommy Atkins has the best rations of any soldier in the world, but at the same time Tommy Atkins is the very worst cook in the world. These recipes, however, will help him in his difficulties when he needs to turn his hand to cooking.

The pamphlet provides recipes for trench cooking, including a jam roll and trench cake, and also provides a glossary of French words and pronunciations for those soldiers needing to purchase supplies.

Some examples include:

Chicken...Poulet...Poo, lay

Dining Room...Sale a manger...Sarle ah monjhay

Tongue...Langue deboeuf...Longe der berf

So if you're ever looking for wonderfully quirky cookbooks, look no further than pamphlet volumes (indicated by a p.v. after the call number).


Trench Cake

Crush 4 or 5 Army biscuits into powder.
Add enough water to make a stiff paste, mix in sugar and a tiny pinch of salt with a tablespoonful of butter if available.
Knead it well, but not too heavily.
Bake on a flat hot stone which has been heated in a fire. (If you can, use a beaten egg instead of the water; it will make the cake much more tasty and light.)

Apollo 11 Menu

I've spoken often about the Library's Buttolph restaurant menu collection, but it's worth mentioning that we have menus in other collections as well.

The other day a reader requested mementos from an official state dinner honoring the astronauts of the Apollo 11 voyage. The menu, seating plan, invitation, and some related correspondence from that dinner are part of the Rare Books Division (but not the Buttolph Collection), and I highly doubt I would've come across it had a reader not requested it.

The dinner was held on August 13, 1969 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and was called by the Los Angeles Times, "the dinner party of the decade, perhaps of the century."

According to articles in both the New York and L.A Times, the dinner was one of the most coveted invites in town, with the White House fielding phone calls all week from those asking to be included on the guest list ("[The White House secretaries] have been surprised by the blunt language some of the callers have used.")

Some of the invites included Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes (both turned it down), Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, and former President Johnson (also turned it down).

Those that did come were treated to a menu that included the following:

Supreme of Salmon Commodore

Filet of Beef Perigourdine

Artichauds Columbia

Carottes des Indes

Limestone lettuce (all veggies were California grown)

Fromages de Brie, Bel Paese and Roquefort

and for the finale...

Clair de Lune - marzipan, meringue, blackberry sauce and of course - an American flag.

What's also fascinating about this folder of mementos is the correspondence that's attached to it. These items - given to the Library in the fall of 1969 - tracks the request from the New York Public Library to the Century Plaza Hotel, who sent the request to NASA , who passed it along to the Social Secretary of the White House, who honored the Library's request and sent the menu and invite to the Rare Books Division.

And now I'm passing it along to you.


Does anyone know the email address of Bush's social secretary?

Au Revoir, Chez Laurence

A few weeks ago on Friday March 21st, Chez Laurence, a little restaurant on Madison Avenue favored by many librarians, closed its doors for the last time. Even to me, a relative newbie at NYPL, it was a rather upsetting day and to the older librarians who had been going for years, it was heartbreaking. While its prices were in keeping with the times, some of Chez Laurence's menu offerings were remarkably atypical of current Manhattan restaurants. With sandwiches like Mackerel and Grated Carrot or Sardine with Cream Cheese, eating at Chez Laurence felt like going back in time so that at any moment Kay Leiland Strong (Vassar class of '33) might walk in for a cup of coffee.

On its second to last day, I stopped in for breakfast, a take-out breakfast of coffee and a croissant. People were lining up for their morning fix saddened that in a few days they'd be forced to join the masses at Starbucks and Pret a Manger. When I went back that Friday - their last day - and secured the Chez Laurence menu for the Library's menu collection, regulars were on line for pastries stunned that the restaurant wouldn't be open for dinner that night.

With its French decor, Polish waitresses, and tinned fish sandwiches - is there any restaurant in New York that serves a mackerel sandwich? - Chez Laurence will be a greatly missed midtown destination, especially to those of us working at this great New York cultural institution.

And while I don't have the recipe for Chez Laurence's sardine sandwich, I will subject myself to potential ridicule (in case I haven't already...) by posting a family-favorite sardine recipe. Some may call it a spread, others might appreciate the term pâté, but at home we've always just called it Sardine Dip.

Sardine Dip
(courtesy of Claire Federman. All measurements are approximate and to taste)

1 tin of sardines, reserve liquid
Philadelphia cream cheese, about 1-2 tablespoons
French's yellow mustard (or Dijon if you must), 1 to 2 teaspoons 
lemon juice, about 1 teaspoon 
salt and pepper

Pulse in a food processor or "mini prep".  Spread on bread or crackers.

Culinary Class

This Friday, April 4th, I'll be giving a free class in the South Court classrooms of the New York Public Library on how to get started using our materials for culinary research. The Library can be rather intimidating to new users in any subject, but for those who specifically want to research culinary history, cookbooks, or archival material, it can be more so. There are a number of databases where one can search for material and there are quite a few regulations related to rare book and menu research.

I'll be going over our catalog of books (CATNYP), some electronic databases that lend themselves well to culinary history, and the Library's menu collection database. I'll also bring some examples from the collection for your viewing pleasure.


Friday, April 4th
3:15 - 4:15
New York Public Library South Court Classrooms
1st floor (enter on Fifth Avenue between the lions)
42nd and 5th
No registration necessary. Just walk in.

Ma Gastronomie

If you tuned in to Charlie Rose last night you might have seen Rose's interview with Thomas Keller. While the conversation was hardly earth-shattering, Keller did mention Fernand Point as the one person, living or dead, that Keller would most want to share a meal with. Keller went on to mention that Point's Ma Gastronomie is a must-read for all his staff.

Fernand Point, former chef and owner of Lyon's famed Restaurant de la Pyramid (you can see the menu and interiors in Vincent Price's book), died in 1955. After his death, Point's wife kept Fernand's high standards in place and the restaurant continued to thrive. Ma Gastronomie was compiled by Madame Point from her late husband's notes and was published in 1969.

It's not the easiest book to get a hold of. Recently Charlie Trotter mentioned the book in a Wall Street Journal piece, and the book flew off the shelves of used book stores. Rest assured, a new edition will be published this year by Overlook Press. In the meantime, get inspired by Point's gastronomical genius at the Library! We have both the French and English versions in the stacks.