Snack Cart: The Nana Gee Rule
Snack Cart is a weekly newsletter of my favorite food writing from around the country.
The Nana Gee Rule is exceedingly simple. Two cocktails before dinner and you shouldn’t even look at the menu until you’ve ordered your second. She enforced it rigidly, and God help the waiter who “was just checking in” too many times.
Genevieve Riordan Gee (she hated her name and went by Plum her whole life) passed away last weekend. She played golf into her late 80s and died peacefully in her sleep after spending the preceding days visited by friends and family. Honestly, it went about as well as these things can go.
Nana was famous for her organizational skills and exacting standards. My Dad likes to joke that in a previous life she was a Field Marshall in the Prussian army. She was also someone who listened, asked questions, and remembered everything. My grandfather was loud and garrulous, but Nana was the one who kept in touch, turning fast friendships into life-long ones.
She also was the one who cultivated their shared passion for food and wine.
They collected wine. They were members of the Chaîne de Rôtisseurs and the Confrérie des Chevaliers de Tastevin. They started visiting France and caring about food at a time when that was kind of a new thing. It was during those trips they befriended Jean and Pierre Troisgros, chefs and brothers who were in the process of revolutionizing French cuisine.
Granddad probably invited Jean to their house in the Poconos, but I bet it was Nana who followed up to make it happen. After Jean made his famous salmon with sorrel sauce the first night, Nana paid him back the next day with fried chicken, corn on the cob with butter, and sliced tomatoes.
He’d never seen anything like it. Jean supposedly held up a piece of corn, looked at her baffled, and said, “Pas de sauce?” He tried it, his eyes lit up, and he ate five ears.
As a souvenir he took home tea bags and grape jelly, two other things he’d never seen.
Nana believed in the proper way of doing things as only a Nana can. Particularly a Nana who grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania when it was the center of American steel and coal industries and a bastion of WASP culture. She got her hair done every Tuesday and Friday. She wore pearls.
That extended to the dinner table. It was proper to show respect by dressing up and having table manners. Men in jackets (a blazer is fine, a tie wholly optional, and novelty welcomed). Elbows off the table. Napkins on your lap. It took me 15 years to learn, and she was sitting next to me the whole way, kicking me under the table. She gave up trying to get my father to sit up straight.
But it was also proper to enjoy yourself at a meal. She and my grandfather loved food completely and without pretension. She’d order a fine French Sancerre and think nothing of asking for a glass of ice cubes to go with it. If you wondered out loud about getting an extra side or asking for french fries instead of mashed potatoes, she’d sigh in an exasperated tone, “well if you want, it, order it!” She hated prix fixe menus and would never have sat down at a place that had “substitutions politely ignored” printed on the menu.
They say a good measure of a person is how they treat waiters. Nana never hesitated to speak up if a waiter was pushy, rude, or condescending. But if a waiter was new or made a mistake, she would be the first one to forgive (after correcting them). When the sommelier at her favorite restaurant said she’d never been to France, Nana took her. She sent annual Christmas cards and gifts. She even contributed financially when one restaurant was damaged in a fire. At lunch the day after she passed away, we told the staff at one of her regular places what had happened. Two of them had to excuse themselves to go to the kitchen and pull it together.
That mix of demanding and kind is probably the main reason why whenever we went out, the staff started making her favorite cocktail the second she walked through the door.
Which brings us back to the Nana Gee rule. She did get a little lenient when she turned 85 — we could order after only our first cocktail instead of our second.
But you really do need to try to the original rule, at least on special occasions. It’s slightly decadent. It changes the rhythm of a meal. You ease into it a bit more. The initial focus shifts from the food to the people around the table. Conversation starts without the crutch of, “What are you going to order?” You drink, you chat, and right about the time you get to your first conversational lull, it’s time to order.
It’s a throwback to a different era. To the days when before-dinner drinks were even a thing. When you try it, think about Nana. Think about how food and eating out have changed over the course of her lifetime. How different it was to be a “foodie” (or whatever you want to call it) when there were only a dozen fine dining restaurants in the country and French was the hot new foreign cuisine.
In today’s high-turnover world, restaurants will sort of hate it. They will bother you a lot and the waiter will be outright baffled by what you are doing.
But you’re just doing what is proper. Your napkin is on your lap. You’re going to tip well. In the meantime, you’re going to enjoy your meal.
New York
Eater has dropped their list of Best Restaurants in America in 2016, and named Blue Hill at Stone Barn as the best. Restaurant critic Bill Addison writes compellingly of the magic of the place, though I wonder if someone who isn’t restaurant critic Bill Addison would have gotten the same treatment. Still, I have a friend who keeps trying to convince me to go with him for a meal there and I think this year I will (OKAY GREG?).
Pete Wells visits Aska in Williamsburg. He waxes poetic praising the new Nordic menu and upgrades the new location of the menu to three stars. I got the feeling he really wanted to give it four, but there were just enough missteps to stop him.
Ligaya Mishan heads to MaLa in the East Village. I had never heard of Sichuan dry pot, but the wok-fried companion to more familiar hot pot sounds fun. Heads up: the review starts with an in-depth description of Rooster testicles.
The New York Times goes deep into cheese balls. These holiday totems of the American heartland are the kind of democratic food I really wish I liked more. Still, if you make one for a party your guests from the Midwest or the South will *freak out* in the best way.
Pizzagate people need to stay the hell away from Roberta’s. If you’ve been avoiding it, Reply All explains what the whole pizzagate thing is all about.
Thankfully, I largely missed the great Chopped cheese debate (If you did too, First we Feast did a documentary, then like a week later the NYT did a big profile. Lots of thinking face emojis). This piece from Citylab links to both (each is worth your time) and humanely talks about the problematic nature of poverty foods getting big. It even drops “Columbus syndrome” (aka Columbusing), still my favorite food term. In general, if it’s good I think we should all eat it and try not to worry too much.
Tweet of the Week.
Boston
The rooster who was an accomplice to a theft of Pabst Blue Ribbon in Western Massachusetts is the only story that matters.
Ok fine. Matt Schaffer reviews Lucy’s American Tavern and Lower Mills Tavern in Dorchester. Amid describing salads, oversized burgers, and craft beer lists, he nails the current state of dining in Boston:
When the history of Boston-area dining is written, one thing the twenty-teens will be remembered for is the proliferation of neighborhood restaurants in areas not previously considered restaurant neighborhoods. Of course, we’ve seen the building booms of the Seaport and Somerville. But it has also been a decade when chefs and restaurateurs set up shop in places where rents were reasonable and residents clamored for more dining options. From the suburbs to all corners of the city, restaurants are finding us where we live.
Lest you think me snobby, I think this is a fantastic way for the city to build up a better food culture.
Catherine Smart makes an excellent case that the best pizza in Boston is being made by an El Salvadorian and a Brazilian at Ciao! Pizza & Pasta in Chelsea. I can’t think of a better rebuttal of Donald Trump than that, tbh.
When the Globe goes low, Scott Kearnan at the Herald goes high, writing about the ways chefs around town are serving caviar in more approachable ways.
Los Angeles
Besha Rodell reviews Soregashi, a strip mall sushi place in Hollywood. She awards it two stars, using it as a placeholder for the overwhelming amount of excellent sushi that Angelenos take for granted.
China Cafe in Grand Central Market has closed for refurbishing. For my money, it is one of the most iconic restaurants in Los Angeles, so if they change anything I’m burning the whole place down.
Katherine Spiers documents how Breakfast tacos are gaining ground in a city that has long been dominated by breakfast burritos. They’ll find a place, but for my money the right way to eat tacos in Los Angeles is from a truck after 1 am.
This article about the best dog friendly patios in Los Angeles needs more pictures of dogs on patios.
In lieu of J Gold, here’s a lovely essay about how one of his most iconic essays helped someone process the election and be hopeful about America. If you’ve never read the original, about recovering from the 1992 riots, do yourself a favor and feel better about the world.
Chicago
I don’t care if the content is sponsored if it’s good (or related to Hamilton), and this Eater list of where to eat before seeing Hamilton is both.
The story of the rise and fall of Finch brewpub has the ups and downs of your average Game of Thrones episode.
Hot Chicken purveyor Budlong is opening in Lincoln Park. Seems like a neat example of a food hall vendor expanding to a real restaurant. But mostly it made me realize I want some hot chicken.
Louisa Chu does a first look at Elkse, a West Town restaurant that is the brainchild of chefs from two of the most respected places in town. A reasonably-priced tasting menu and Scandinavian-influenced food seem to make this a place to try quickly before it gets too crowded.
Nick Kindelsperger in the Tribune schools me on tlayuda, an Oaxaca street food dish that’s newly available at a few places around town.
I’ve only just realized that Chicago Magazine does some of the best food coverage in Chicago, so here’s Jeff Ruby with a long review on Alinea. It’s one of the best restaurants in the world and completely reinvented itself to be even better.
Iconic J Gold Quote of the Week
A lone, well-lighted Salvadoran restaurant in a block long burned-out mall stands improbable sentinel, churning out pupusas and carne asada although surrounded on either side by ruined stores, smoking rubble and military patrols.
