Part 4 (1/2)

Exceptions from this type of lingo often signal promising gastronomical finds, for even as a chef might err on the billboard, being slightly off the mark in comprehending the lowest common denominator, so too might the side dishes retain a regional or idiosyncratic signature.

”Eggroll and Barbecue Take Out” could spell disaster, but at least it will probably be a memorable one. ”Live Bait and Ice Cream” indicates a particular sensibility. The old-fas.h.i.+oned word ”cafe” is often a plus, especially when preceded by the cook's first name, and surrounded, at six A.M., by a semicircle of parked police cruisers and pickup trucks bearing local license plates. Once inside, listen for a bell attached to the door, look for day-of-the-week specials listed on a blackboard in illegible penmans.h.i.+p, and keep an eye out for real plants in the windows. If actual herbs or tomatoes are growing, settle yourself upon a round stool at the lunch counter. And if the owner confesses, with some pride, that the well-scrubbed stains on the baby high-chair upholstery were made by her very own grandchildren, contemplate permanent residence. You may have stumbled into an eatery where children are regarded as people with smaller appet.i.tes and not as a separate, cholesterol-crazed subspe-cies.

It's the kind of joint Mickey and Minnie were always pulling into during their journey of forty years past, the Americana full of Frank Capra faces, bottomless cups of coffee, and in-the-booth jukeboxes with selections drawn from local favorites rather than MTV. It flourished when geography meant more than a printout of bills from the same motel chain, when the Mississippi River divided-except for Pitts-burgh-the radio stations whose call letters began with a W from those that started with a K, when every small town produced its own version of a newspaper reporting its own version of the news. And it still exists.

In 1986 my wife and I drove across country with our daughters to visit my grandmother. We probably appeared to be the ideal demographic-the nuclear family feeding group-but in our hearts we were Kerouac, ready to be transformed by the bizarre, the offbeat, the unknown. We eschewed major highways, fine family dining that provided 79 79 crayons with the place mats, and set our radar for hand-st.i.tched curtains in the windows of establishments with names like Betty's. We spent a night in the Atlasta Motel because it advertised ”in-room clock radios”

and ”heat.” And late one afternoon we came by chance upon the cafe of our dreams in an otherwise ordinary little town in the Pacific Northwest. A mimeographed sheet, tucked between the salt and pepper shakers, informed us that a ”pie war” was presently under way with a rival establishment, one block down Main Street, and as a result, a slice from any of the sixteen varieties made fresh on the premises that morning could be had for only thirty-five cents. So confident was the baker that he invited us to sample the compet.i.tion (naturally, at the same price), then return and get our money back if his was not better.

For me, it was Paoli squared-Parsifal had found the Holy Grail-and five years later we didn't just come back to that town to order more pie.

We came back for good.

80 EVAN JONES.

Delmonico's In the early nineteenth century, the first American menu to list all its selections in two languages-translating the names of French cla.s.sic dishes in an adjoining column-was that of the Restaurant Francais des Freres Delmonico. Among the scores of entrees presented on its eleven crowded pages were a dozen kinds of simmered beef, seven variations of grilled steak, and thirty-eight chicken dishes, including euisse de poulet euisse de poulet en papillot en papillot, or drumsticks in paper sleeves. Once, this menu, in a puffed-up phrase, was declared to be ”the Magna Carta of sophisticated and gracious dining in America.” Whatever the encomium, the beginning of Delmonico's was the start of something good, a first effort to a.s.sure New York diners that they could eat as stylishly as bon vivants across the Atlantic.

The man behind this bill of fare (it translated ”ham and eggs” as jambon de Virginie aux oeufs jambon de Virginie aux oeufs) was twenty-eight-year-old Lorenzo Delmonico, whose family made its surname a part of the American language, a.n.a.logous with eating in splendor. Astonis.h.i.+ngly, none of the family had been trained in le vrai cuisine le vrai cuisine, nor had even waited tables in Paris. The first of the clan was John Delmonico, a retired sea captain whose three-masted schooner had engaged in trade between the West Indies and New York, and who had grown up in the wine country of the southern Alps. Fed up with life at sea and impressed with the boom-town tempo of Manhattan, John brought over from their home in the Swiss province of Ticino his elder brother Peter, who was a confectioner, as glad to shake off the dust of the Old World as he. Together they began to operate a small shop near the Battery in which they sold wine from barrels, and offered a place to sit for patrons who bought fancy cakes and ices. When it opened it was as unpretentious as any one-room hamburger joint-about a half-dozen wooden tables with primitive chairs to match, and a counter along one side that was laden with the newly baked pastries, napkins of white cloth, and pottery cups and plates. But soon the cafe developed a reputation for hospitality and ”the prompt and deferential attendance” that could not be had, as one 81 young diner recalled, at any other New York eating place of the period.

The unimpressive shop caught on, and became known in advertis.e.m.e.nts as ”Delmonico & Brother, Confectioners and Restaurant Francais,” for John and Peter had found that they could hire French cooks from the steady stream of immigrants arriving in pursuit of American dollars.

Yet however prosperous the brothers may have been as entrepreneurs, neither of them suspected when they welcomed their nephew Lorenzo that the family's success for the next hundred years was a.s.sured. Under their proprietors.h.i.+p, and with the chance to learn from the French emigres in the kitchen, the nephew turned himself into an astute and sensitive master of Parisian-style dining.

It was a time when there were virtually no places in Manhattan that could be called restaurants. The average public dining room, according to a firsthand report, served little else but ”very rare roast beef in thick slices, or a beefsteak barely warmed through, English plum pudding, and half-and-half ale...customers helped themselves, bolted the food, and rushed out....” On the other hand, the same observer noted, Delmonico's offered ”delicious dishes and moderate charges [which] suited the pockets of Knickerbocker youth....” James Fenimore Cooper drew the contrast in sharp distinction when he returned from living abroad.

”The Americans are the grossest feeders of any nation known...” he told his readers, ”their food is heavy, coa.r.s.e, and indigestible....”

It was plain to the Delmonicos that their rescue squad had arrived in time. The family of uncles, nephews, and cousins soon decided to take on New York, and they found the compet.i.tion guilty as charged by Cooper. A few blocks from the brothers' cafe on South William Street was Daniel Sweeney's ”six-penny house.” Here a small plate of stringy meat and tepid vegetables could be had for sixpence, and rice or cornmeal mush went for ninepence-Sweeney's may have been the first self-declared ”fast food” dining room in the U.S. Not much different was Brown's Ordinary in Water Street, likened by a Tribune Tribune reporter to an English-style chophouse, one which-hard to believe-dealt every day with up to two thousand customers. The quality of Brown's food may have been a cut above Sweeney's, but there was nothing to appeal to New Yorkers who wanted to dine in leisurely style. reporter to an English-style chophouse, one which-hard to believe-dealt every day with up to two thousand customers. The quality of Brown's food may have been a cut above Sweeney's, but there was nothing to appeal to New Yorkers who wanted to dine in leisurely style.

More and more of them were becoming interested in nightlife. There were ”pleasure gardens” for food and frolic, and there was, at last, John Jacob Astor's elegant hotel, which attracted people who had learned not to bolt their food. The more serious eaters among them discovered Delmonico's, and the interest in the cafe's novel menu per-82 suaded the brothers in 1829 to open a second place, and to bring over Lorenzo, then only nineteen. For a decade, while New York developed into a city often praised by travelers (”situated on an island...it rises, like Venice, from the sea [and] receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth”) Lorenzo saw the opportunities in the same rosy terms. He became convinced that Delmonico's should attract all those New Yorkers who had acquired cultivated appet.i.tes as well as purse strings open to expensive, even luxurious dining. When a fire forced the construction of a new Delmonico's, the family imported two Pom-peian columns to frame the corner doorway of the impressive three-story building at 2 South William Street, which had a cafe, lobby, and dining room on the ground level, and ballrooms and lounges above.

The word ”Delmonico” was chiseled in stone above the Italian pillars.

As the family supply sergeant, Lorenzo ensured the best of ingredients for the kitchen by rising daily before dawn to check out the open-air market on the Hudson River side of town. Here was a sprawling scene of sheds, stalls, piers, patched and rebuilt structures filled with game and much pork, and almost as much beef, some produce from the nearby countryside, bananas from the Caribbean, seafood from the Atlantic, and delicacies from Europe and the Mediterranean. A dark-haired, stocky youth distinguished by full sideburns and a good wardrobe, Lorenzo knew how to get the best from farmers and merchants, or any other suppliers. By midmorning daily he was on his way back, his car-riage loaded with garde manger garde manger booty. If the vegetables that day had been less than choice, he could meet the chef's needs most often with the produce the family had planted on the two-hundred-acre farm it maintained near what was to become Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. booty. If the vegetables that day had been less than choice, he could meet the chef's needs most often with the produce the family had planted on the two-hundred-acre farm it maintained near what was to become Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Like other Manhattan eating places, Delmonico's prided itself on wild food served in sophisticated style. The visiting British writer Captain Marryat, a satisfied patron who was impressed by the New York market bounty, wrote that ”the great delicacy...are the terrapin and the canvasback ducks.... They have sheeps' head, shad...their salmon is not equal to ours...oysters are very plentiful, very large, rather insipid...[but] there are plenty of good things for the table....” Nineteenth-century travelers often based their judgments of American restaurants on the taste of food that was not domestically raised, for they rightly believed that a knowing chef could distinguish himself by his understanding that woodland fish and game draw unique flavors from the nature of the country in which they mature. Like Les Trois Freres Provencaux, which brought to Paris the taste of the Mediterranean, 83 83 Delmonico's reflected untamed America. In the era in which pork was considered ”common doin's,” the choice of red meat was a sign of vir-ility, and status, too. Pigs overran the new country ”like vermin,” and they were treated as such. They were easy to raise because they fended for themselves. In rural districts a good-sized hog was shared by three or four families. In the towns, pork wasn't considered impressive enough for a home-cooked company dinner, and it was unfit for Delmonico patrons-the stylish restaurant's lengthy menu, which Lorenzo had composed, lists not a single item of pork.

In the British-American tradition, that early bill of fare is dominated by beef, and it wasn't long before Lorenzo's kitchen staff was known for featuring a particular piece of beef-it was the first cut near the head of the short loin, the chunk that is now known variously as a club steak, or a ”Delmonico.” The cut has always been an expensive choice; home recipes sometimes have cautionary phrases appended: ”Delmonico steaks-if the budget allows.” In Jeanne Owen's Delmonico recipe, that dynamo of New York Wine and Food Society after World War II stipu-lated a further qualification. ”If an added touch of sw.a.n.k or taste is desired,” she wrote, ”pour [a pony of brandy] into the pan after the steaks have been removed ' pour glacer pour glacer' as the French have it. Then pour the juices of the meat mixed with brandy over the steaks.”

”Sw.a.n.k” was a word just coming into usage as Lorenzo Delmonico, taking over after the death of John and the retirement of Peter, began to make the restaurant a synonym for fas.h.i.+on. In the minds of New York's gentry, Lorenzo's immediate compet.i.tion was the dining room of the Astor House, the nearest contender for the ”sw.a.n.k” patronage.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Astor was enthusiastically touted by Americans and Europeans alike as a ”palace” among hotels.

But, though it served de luxe de luxe meals to those who could afford them, its big dining room offered a table d'hote menu with a mingling of French and colonial items, including boiled cod alongside meals to those who could afford them, its big dining room offered a table d'hote menu with a mingling of French and colonial items, including boiled cod alongside ballon de mouton aux ballon de mouton aux tomates, macaroni au parmesan tomates, macaroni au parmesan, and desserts as prosaic as Queen Pudding.

As a restaurant without the burden of providing rooms for scores of travelers, Delmonico's stuck to menus that were exclusively a la carte.

Under the system that became known as ”the American plan” (a carryover from colonial days of roadside taverns), hotel keepers charged their guests a lump sum that covered three to four meals a day as well as a place to sleep. The custom may have started out with a wayfarer eating whatever his landlord and family were having for breakfast, din-84 ner, or supper, but as hotel compet.i.tion grew, potluck gave way to something that was described by some observers as ”cuisine.” Table d'hote, in its ”American plan” version, meant vast tables loaded with dozens of dishes, hot and cold. There were tureens of soup, and platters bearing choices of meat and game, various vegetables, and great bowls of cornmeal pudding and other boiled grains. The common table was perceived as a symbol of democracy, but its days became numbered when society caught on to the Delmonico vision of what a good restaurant could be like.

In the course of his long influence on American eating, Lorenzo presided over a half-dozen establishments bearing the family name.

He had a keen sense of New York's residential s.h.i.+fts. When John Jacob Astor moved his family (Astor House remained on lower Broadway) to the Thirty-fourth Street site later occupied by the Empire State Building, Lorenzo watched the trend that made Fifth Avenue a necklace of ornamented mansions. In one of these, the four-story Italianate town house on Fourteenth Street built by a whale-oil tyc.o.o.n, Lorenzo established at the beginning of the Civil War a splendid complex of restaurants, ballrooms, cafes, and residential suites. He kept the downtown restaurants on South William Street, and one near City Hall, but in the new place the Delmonicos could concentrate on what the Times Times called called ”the very centre of fas.h.i.+onable life.” The newspaper, indeed, expressed doubt that Europe could boast anything to compete with the new Delmonico's in understated elegance.

The ground-floor cafe on Fourteenth Street, with its marble-top tables and without a bar that pandered to those who might order alcohol, was the first of its kind; the private dining rooms and apartments upstairs were innovations that enhanced the life-styles of powerful men. There were travelers who came to Delmonico's not simply to dine well but to share with Lorenzo their enthusiasm for the fastidious preparation of food. General Winfield Scott was a Mexican War hero who became Chief of Staff, and his career had required him to cover the country on inspection tours from which he returned to check in at Delmonico's.

He was the only candidate for the presidency who was defeated (as gossip had it) by charges that he was guilty of luxurious eating. He was notorious for putting on airs, and he was accused of posturing by those who whispered that he lived on ”hasty plates of turtle and oyster soup.”

A bountifully padded soldier, six feet four, he seemingly would rather be fat than President-he carried only four states when he was defeated by Franklin Pierce.

85 Scott was one of a very few regulars who could get Lorenzo to leave his small office to dine vis-a-vis. As longtime friends, they could discuss the menu, trading expertise about origins of cla.s.sic dishes. Scott had eaten studiously in Paris, at least once taking his officer's leave time to drink in the mysteries of Chef Baleine's cuisine at Rocher de Ca.n.a.le, or the techniques that distinguished Very's, and La Restaurant Les Trois Freres Provencaux. But, at least as importantly, he brought Lorenzo news of the delights of American gastronomy beyond the New York horizon.

Scott applauded the Delmonico policy of serving only aged southern hams, and those from Charles County, Maryland, stuffed with spring greens, were among his favorites. For his own larder, he had regular s.h.i.+pments to his quarters of barrels in which, packed in the ashes of fruitwood fires, were hams taken only from hogs that ran wild in beechnut woods. Scott once pa.s.sed on his appreciation of Great Lakes whitefish along with a recipe: ”They must be cooked done done, and immediately rolled up, one after another, in a napkin, doubled and heated almost to scorching. Then they are to be served and eaten immediately, unrolling the napkin as the fish are wanted.” The gourmandizing general was as keen about roast canvasback duck as either Lorenzo or their friend Sam Ward (who liked his duck with gooseberries), while the Delmonico kitchen recognized the best of American cooking by serving the bird with fried slices of hominy grits. Unlike other waterfowl, the canvasback of the eastern seaboard fly-way chose to feed on the roots of an aquatic gra.s.s known as wild celery, which then was rampant in the Chesapeake Bay region.

As Lorenzo's menus increasingly recognized the best of native provender, Americans felt freer to boast openly of regional dishes.

Canvasbacks appealed to nineteenth-century epicures because they lacked the fishy tang characteristic of other wild ducks. European restaurant-goers bolstered local pride. Charles d.i.c.kens, in whose honor one of Delmonico's most noteworthy galas was given, told his readers about the skies over the Chesapeake Bay that were blackened by the seasonal flights of canvasbacks, and the Delmonico chef, Alessandro Filippini, later wrote that ”no game is more highly praised or more eagerly sought after in Europe,” in effect certifying the general American contribution to cla.s.sic feasting.

Two items of the Delmonico kitchen that evolved into menu cla.s.sics were aspic de canvasback aspic de canvasback and truffled ice cream, the latter becoming an essential in the minds of New York high livers who liked to have a and truffled ice cream, the latter becoming an essential in the minds of New York high livers who liked to have a 86 86 hand in their own private dinners. Leonard Jerome, the grandfather of Winston Churchill, was one, and so was August Belmont, a Wall Street leader of the new social order. As important as any of numerous others was Lorenzo's longtime admirer, Sam Ward, the so-called King of the Lobby, who at sixteen had become a devotee of the first Delmonico cafe. Throughout his influential life in New York and his career of political advocacy in Was.h.i.+ngton, Ward made a practice of eulogizing Lorenzo, once describing him as ”the young Napoleon of our future army of restaurateurs,” once as one who was shrewd enough to see ”the unfolding resources of the mighty West.” Sam Ward had gone to California during the gold rush, and had eaten with miners who had made famous the simple combination of oysters and scrambled eggs known as Hangtown Fry. But in the East, Ward became known for his own recipes for such delicacies as wild mushrooms and aged Virginia ham under gla.s.s, and for his way with minced chicken and bacon. He was an epicure whose advice on food and wine was sought by contem-poraries who, coming into sudden wealth, were in much need of social guidance. Like Winfield Scott, Sam Ward had brought home from his serious study of Parisian kitchens many ideas to enhance the dinner parties that made his name almost as much a household word as that of his sister who wrote ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” And he may have been the only amateur cook permitted by Lorenzo to prepare his own sauces side by side with Delmonico chefs.

In the ballroom of Delmonico's on Fourteenth Street, Ward McAllister, nephew of Sam Ward, established his reputation as the guru of society matrons. He began the custom of exclusive dances, which were known as cotillions and were most often followed by elaborate supper parties; and he also invented the term ”the Four Hundred” to designate those he found acceptable as the ”society” that counted. He made Newport, R.I., famous for society picnics staged on his country estate. It was his boast that he showed America how to entertain alfresco as ostentatiously as at a meal in Delmonico's indoor opulence. But after a brief period, McAllister found it shocking that in Manhattan fewer than a dozen of the best families had their own chefs, and that the nation in general was being taken over by nouveaux riches nouveaux riches.

The majordomo of the Four Hundred may not have realized just how times had changed.* But the signs were there. Increasingly, Lorenzo * Unlike Lorenzo, McAllister refused to see much merit in cooking that wasn't French ori-ented. At a dinner for sixty in Newport he arranged a ”cook-off” between a noted black cook Unlike Lorenzo, McAllister refused to see much merit in cooking that wasn't French ori-ented. At a dinner for sixty in Newport he arranged a ”cook-off” between a noted black cook and a French chef. The latter, he said in his autobiography, was ”very much the victor...an and a French chef. The latter, he said in his autobiography, was ”very much the victor...an educated, cultivated artist”; his compet.i.tor had only ”a wonderful, natural taste, and the educated, cultivated artist”; his compet.i.tor had only ”a wonderful, natural taste, and the art of making things savory, i.e. taste good.” art of making things savory, i.e. taste good.”

87 found himself dragooned into providing food and service for people who preferred to entertain at home. Manhattan families summering in Newport prevailed upon Delmonico's to cater country parties, and dozens of waiters were transported north, along with wagonloads of food, as relief for the kitchen staffs of Newport's wealthy vacationers.

The middle cla.s.ses were affected differently by the new tempo. In the 1880s, armed with new culinary technology, more modestly affluent families were beginning to use their kitchens and dining rooms in a renewed effort, an observer said, ”to secure or elevate their often shaky status.” As servants proved hard to get, Juliet Corson addressed the new interest in food by opening the New York Cooking School in response to requests from some of the city's wealthy hostesses. Dinner parties at home became the vogue. One might not be able to afford Delmonico's or to rival the Astors in elaborate cooking, but guests could be impressed by expensive ingredients when they were prepared with care for your own dinner parties.

Nonetheless, Delmonico's remained the Times Square for itinerant diners-out as well as the Fifth Avenue crowd, and as always it was the place to find the best of new ingredients from everywhere. An habitue named Ben Wenberg, who operated his own coastwise s.h.i.+pping line to the Caribbean and South America, added to the restaurant's aura when he came in from a voyage one day and demanded a brazier and spirit lamp in order to demonstrate a new lobster recipe. His dish was found to be so agreeable that it went on the menu with his name appended. His elegant creamed lobster became even more talked about after Wenberg was turned out of Delmonico's following a fight he caused with another patron-what had been known as Lobster Wenberg was henceforward listed as Lobster Newburg.

Delmonico's was also the place where people first began to speak with some excitement about avocados. Richard Harding Davis, novelist, playwright, swashbuckling journalist, and escort of Ethel Barrymore, made his usual reentry visit to Delmonico's upon return from a.s.sign-ment in Caracas. On this occasion, he showed up bearing a basketful of avocados, which he had eaten for the first time in Venezuela. Although other Americans by then were growing avocados as an exotic fruit, they weren't yet being served at the table. A Florida horticulturist had brought some from Mexico in 1833, and a couple of generations later 88 an avocado grove was planted in Santa Barbara by a California judge named Ord. But Delmonico regulars were the first Americans to encourage a place on the menu for a fruit course of ”alligator pears,” as they were first known. As listed in the ma.s.sive Delmonico book of recipes, the fruit was peeled, cut in slices, seasoned with salt, pepper and vinegar, with lemon slices on the side. After some acceptance early in this century, the myriad ways of serving avocados began to develop after World War II, when they were grown in Florida and California as a cash crop that became available in supermarkets. Henry T. Finck, the New York music critic and gastronome, compared his first encounter with avocados to ”the discovery of a new song by Schubert or Grieg, or a new painting by t.i.tian.” The avocado's firm flesh, ”though soft and custardy,” he wrote, ”has a most exquisite flavor which, with oil and vinegar makes a symphony of flavors.” After the early introduction at Delmonico's, avocados became so characteristic of American summer fare that they are available in every small town.

The pervasiveness of the dish called Chicken a la King (the bane of business lunches and sometimes served as a late supper indulgence) has been attributed to one of Lorenzo's guests, but there are also others credited for the first serving of this creamed chicken that is made prettier with chopped green pepper and pimiento. For some reason, claims about its origin are numerous. Foxhall Keene, a rather rich young patron, is said to have brought the idea to Delmonico's, and on Long Island the chef of the Brighton Beach Hotel prepared an almost identical recipe and asked his boss, E. Clarke King, to lend it his name. Charles Ranhofer, who presided over Lorenzo's kitchen for years after his boss's death, is the chef who got the honors for creating Baked Alaska, a dessert conceived to help celebrate the purchase of the territory that is now the forty-ninth state.

As Lorenzo's life as the host of New York raced on, he was given credit for the influence he had on the nation as a whole. ”O rare Delmonico!” a literary editorial writer intoned in the New York Herald New York Herald, ”we would say [this] of the great king of cuisine, as it was said of Ben Jonson, did it not strike us that a captious world might think that the perfect chef of chefs was in the habit of presenting his viands underdone. Let us rather say sagacious Delmonico sagacious Delmonico, for it is the live tradition of nearly a century in Gotham that 'as Delmonico goes, so goes dining.'” Praise for Lorenzo followed him as once more he moved uptown, building in 1876 a lavish new complex of dining rooms on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. The new restaurant was described as ”the pride of the nation,”

89 by the Tribune Tribune. The newspaper wasn't shy about its approval: ”There is no restaurant in Paris or London or Vienna which can compete with our Delmonico's in the excellence and variety of its fare,” the Tribune Tribune writer continued. ”This is mainly the result of keeping the business in the same family....” writer continued. ”This is mainly the result of keeping the business in the same family....”

As general manager of the four Delmonico establishments, Lorenzo had the help of his brother Sirio, who often came along on his sunrise marketing sorties and who ran Delmonico's on Chambers Street. A cousin was in charge of the Broad Street place, Lorenzo's brother Constant at the old South William Street quarters. Charles, Lorenzo's nephew, took command of the new flags.h.i.+p restaurant on Fifth, and in the kitchen was Chef Charles Ranhofer, the Paris-trained cook who had had stints in New Orleans and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., before Lorenzo hired him. Ranhofer believed, as he once wrote, that the ”culinary art should be the basis of all diplomacy.” It was a statement Lorenzo might have made. He picked chefs and sous chefs for Delmonico kitchens who were to continue his standards for hospitality and high-quality cooking when they ran restaurants in other regions. Lorenzo and Ranhofer saw eye to eye immediately, and the young chef (he was twenty-six when he took over Delmonico's) got the credit for developing Lorenzo's policy of emphasizing ingredients considered uniquely American. Ranhofer's paupiettes of kingfish and buffalo fish bavarois failed to ignite the public fancy as did Baked Alaska, but his touch with earthy American ingredients was an inspiration of sorts for cooks at home. He took, for example, pumpkins he had cut into matchstick size, parboiled the pieces, and dusted them with flour, then deep-fried them as a forerunner of shoestring potatoes.

Ranhofer was firmly in place when Lorenzo died in 1881, leaving the Delmonico empire to his nephew Charles. The transition proved to be seamless, but across the street from the newest Delmonico address was a former waiter who was to make his name as a rival to all that Lorenzo had initiated in his half-century of restaurant building. Louis Sherry, who earlier quit his job as maitre d'hotel in the dining room of the Hotel Brunswick, began to challenge Lorenzo's reputation as a pacesetter.

Delmonico's was a place for serious banquets in honor of visiting fire-men from the reigning Prince of Wales to Louis Bonaparte, the future Napoleon III. Sherry's became the same kind of gastronomic inst.i.tution, housed in equal l.u.s.ter in a four-story mansion designed by Stanford White.

Sherry's was a rendezvous for J. Pierpont Morgan and his set, and 90 90 for a while the compet.i.tion was nip and tuck. ”The public...fickle and uncertain,” wrote Frank Chase, the host of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table, ”would s.h.i.+ft for no apparent reason back and forth across the avenue. One year, Sherry's would have the advantage, until suddenly everyone would begin going to Delmonico's, and continue for a year or so before they suddenly s.h.i.+fted back. If you were taking the reigning favorite of the theater to lunch or supper...you would first find out which of these two places was in favor at the moment.” The kitchens of both restaurants were considered superlative; the compet.i.tion was often heated up by Louis Sherry's skillful flattery of society egos and by Charles Ranhofer's mastery of the gala dinner. The feud was inspired publicity, and newspapers and nationally distributed magazines filled columns with what went on in the kitchens and who sat with whom in the dining rooms.

One result was that ”Delmonico” became the unchallenged synonym of excellence in the gastronomic world. The family name was appropriated by various hotels and restaurants as new eating places were opened across the country. In downtown Boston's Pie Alley there was a Delmonico cafe that flourished for years. One of the earliest popular stops in San Francisco was named without apology the Delmonico Hotel.

Even restaurant proprietors in cow towns and mining camps composed menus by copying directly from Delmonico's, although these enterprises, said one reporter, ”were prepared to serve only a limited selection of frying-pan and boiling-pot victuals.” Only a gullible stranger would take such bills of fare seriously. The novelist Owen Wister tells of a traveler who ordered vol-au-vent vol-au-vent because he saw it listed. As Wister had it, ”The proprietor yanked out his six-shooter and said, menacingly: because he saw it listed. As Wister had it, ”The proprietor yanked out his six-shooter and said, menacingly: 'Stranger, you'll take has.h.!.+'”