The making of a restaurant reviewer
Mother’s death sparks memories of learning food as an art form
By Erica Wayne 05/21/2009
When folks ask me how I got my reviewing gig, I usually tell the same convoluted tale: I taught art history at Occidental College and ran an annual lecture series on various periods in European history, ending with a (costume optional) banquet featuring semi-authentic foods and entertainment. One year, the alumni office extended the Renaissance offering with a trip to Italy. I was lecturer; my friend Melody was liason. While there, she noticed my interest in regional cuisines and offered me a job when she became editor at the new Pasadena Weekly.
But that’s just the end of the story. The beginning lies in my infancy, when my parents started me on the path to gourmetdom.
My Dad loved to tell how I first pointed to lox — “mato,” I supposedly insisted on calling it, despite their efforts to disabuse me — when I was only about a year old. Legend has it that my eyes got big and round and, after I swallowed, I demanded “more mato.”
As Daddy’s law practice in Baltimore prospered, he and Mom began to enjoy vacations — first to the Catskills, later to the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and even Africa. On their return they would regale us with slides of the wonders they’d seen and, just as often, the ones they had eaten.
Meals in French cafés, Chinese villages, the capitals of Russia, Japan and Scandinavia all loomed large. Dad loved describing how Ethiopians ate their tablecloths (injera — the spongy bread on which other foods are piled) and the $25 blini appetizer rip-off (lots of show and almost no caviar) they had suffered in New York.
Mom adored entertaining. She and Della, our long-time maid, would plot out exotic meals with great delight — the more complex, the more intriguing. My sister and I would come home from school to find them huddled together with open cookbooks and scattered recipes cut from magazines.
In 1956 they took guests to the film “Around the World in Eighty Days,” then brought them home for escargots, paella, caesar salad and baklava. Mom kept complete menus from every party they gave during their 67-year marriage and a cookbook collection that would do a culinary institute proud.
When we got older, we got to come along on vacations, including one to Los Angeles to visit Daddy’s parents (Grandpa Charlie was a baker — after watching him make one of his specialties, I named my new splotched kitten Marble Cake). Wherever we went, it was always with a list of destination restaurants.
And when we reached adulthood? Our trips were made after parental consultations. Rome — Tre Scalini; Rhone Valley — Paul Bocuse and La Pyramide; Paris — onion soup at dawn at Les Halles; London — dover sole amandine; St. Thomas — salt cod with ackee.
It was either become a reviewer or have bariatric surgery to remove temptation.
After my parents moved West, I was often the one directing them: Saladang Song, Yujean Kang, Ocean Star, Akbar, El Portal, Green Street, Marston’s, Robin’s, Burger Continental, Celestino’s, Marakesh, Twohey’s, La Luna Negra. Hot, odd, simple or elegant, there wasn’t a food they didn’t love. Eating well never ceased to be the focal point of family life.
Daddy died (at 90) two years ago. Mom turned 90 in February and a month later was told she had terminal cancer. As I write, she’s stuck in bed waiting to die. My nephew called from Brussels a few weeks back. Her parting words: “Don’t leave without trying the mussels.”
Mom doesn’t have much of an appetite now. But we’ve been able to tempt her with sashimi, pot stickers and caviar (the real kind!), which, she dictates from her sickbed, must be served with sweet onion, fresh lemon juice and not too much hardboiled egg. Jello just doesn’t do it for a woman who’s spent her life thumbing through Gourmet.
As we spend our final days with Mom, my sister and I reminisce about (what else?) our great family meals: “Remember the king crab? We always had it with artichokes so we could use the lemon butter for both.” “How about the shad roe wrapped in bacon?” “Crab Imperial, with the criss-crossed anchovy on top!” “Bracciole!” “Seafood paella.” “Remember how happy Mom was when I brought back the saffron from Spain?”
Lobster at Baltimore’s Chesapeake. Coffee cup souffle at Four Seasons in New York. Dim sum at San Francisco’s Yank Sing. Smithfield ham on fresh-baked biscuits. Grandma’s stuffed cabbage with ginger snaps and raisins. Fried salt mackerel. Della’s fresh coconut cake and her homemade barbecue sauce — tart with vinegar and hotter than hell. So many happy Proustian memories.
And Mom — managing to share the lox, eggs and onion that my sister has made for lunch — smiles as we talk of the passion we share, our memories of tastes and smells, the recipes we still exchange. And, as we reminisce, we savor the wonderful smoky, salty delicacy that started me down the delicious path to the column you’re reading now.
Warren Weinberger
(April 13, 1917 – April 21, 2007)
Marcella Weinberger
(Feb. 12, 1919 – May 2, 2009)
Love ya!
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