Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble (31 page)

“It’s appalling what we’ve done to these guys,” he told Crouse. “McGovern was like a fish in a goldfish bowl. There were three different network crews at different times. The still photographers kept coming in in groups
of five. And there were at least six writers sitting in the corner—I don’t even know their names. We’re all sitting there watching him work on his acceptance speech, poor bastard. He tries to go into the bedroom with Fred Dutton to go over the list of Vice-Presidents, which would later turn out to be the fuck-up of the century, of course, and all of us are observing him, taking notes like mad, getting all the little details. Which I think I invented as a method of reporting and which I now sincerely regret. If you write about this, say that I sincerely regret it. Who gives a fuck if the guy had milk and Total for breakfast?”

White sat in the Harvard chair given to him by the Harvard Alumni Association and looked with irritation at his new manuscript,
Breach of Faith
. Here it was 1975 and he had a new book coming out. What in Christ was he doing with a book coming out in 1975? He wasn’t supposed to have to write the next one until 1977. Theodore H. White shook his close-cropped, black-haired head. It was these damned politicians. He’d spent the best years of his life trying to train these assholes, and they couldn’t even stay in office the full four years.

White stared at the title. Breach of faith. The new book’s thesis was that Richard Nixon had breached the faith of the American people in the Presidency; that was what had caused him to be driven from office. But deep down, Theodore H. White knew that the faith Nixon had breached had been his, Theodore H. White’s. White was the only American left who still believed in the institution of the Presidency. Theodore H. White was depressed. Any day now, he might have to start work on the next book, on
The Making of the President 1976
, and where would he ever find a candidate who measured up to his own feelings about the United States and its
institutions? The questions lay in his brain cells, growing like an invisible landslide, and suddenly Theodore H. White had the answer. He would have to run for President. That was the only way. That was the only way to be sure that the political processes would function the way he believed they ought to. That was the only way he could get all those behind-the-scenes meetings to function properly. That was the only way he could get all those other reporters out of his story. White realized that something very important was happening. And so he did what he always does when he realizes something very important is happening: he called the weather bureau.

It was forty-nine degrees and raining in Central Park.

August, 1975

It is generally agreed among the people who have any perspective on it at all—and there are only a handful who do—that the entire civic scandal of Richard Collin and the mysterious spaghetti sauce recipe could only have happened in New Orleans—which was, in fact, where it did happen—and for fairly obvious reasons. For one thing, New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.) For another, people in New Orleans really care about food, care about it passionately, can spend hours arguing over whether Antoine’s is better than Galatoire’s or the other way around. What sets the people of New Orleans apart from the people of San Francisco in this respect is that in New Orleans, there is basically nothing to do but eat and then argue about it.

All of which should have made Richard Collin a welcome addition to the New Orleans food scene. Richard Collin is a restaurant critic. He is New Orleans’s first and only serious restaurant critic. A professor of American history at the University of New Orleans, Collin, forty-three, began his career in food in 1970 as the author
of
The New Orleans Underground Gourmet
(Simon and Schuster). A few months after its publication he was hired by the
New Orleans States-Item
to write a weekly restaurant column. In it, Collin employs an extremely elaborate system of stars and dots and parentheses and
X
’s which takes over five column-inches of space to explain each week. In addition, he uses an expression he coined to describe things he particularly loves; he calls them platonic dishes. “This is my own personal accolade,” Collin once explained. “The term is derived from Plato’s
Republic
. It simply means the best imaginable realization of a particular dish.” Collin’s style of criticism can best be described as hyperbolic; it can also be described as self-important and long-winded. But he works hard, and his guidebook is considered as reliable as any city restaurant guide in the country.

In New Orleans, however, the question of whether Collin is reliable is not the point. The point is that he is critical—and in public. Arguing privately about the merits of various restaurants is one thing, but criticizing them publicly runs completely counter to the local spirit of boosterism. To make matters worse, Collin is not even from New Orleans; he is from Philadelphia and he is seen as an outsider who has stumbled onto a gold mine at the expense of local merchants. So when the episode of the spaghetti sauce recipe and the two thousand dollars surfaced a few months ago, the city fathers fell upon it as an excuse to ask the
States-Item
to investigate Collin. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

The position of restaurant critic is a new slot at most newspapers; nonetheless, the job has a tradition and a set of ethics. The classic American restaurant critic is rarely photographed, makes reservations under a
pseudonym, cannot accept free meals, and never reveals his identity to a proprietor. Some restaurant critics have gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve their anonymity; last year, for example, Jack Shelton of
San Francisco
magazine was subpoenaed to testify in a local trial, and he appeared wearing a mask.

Prior to the publication of his book, Richard Collin followed traditional practices; in any case, it would have done him no good to reveal himself, since his name meant nothing. But the success of the book, the newspaper column (which ran a sketch of Collin alongside his by-line) and subsequent public appearances made Collin’s face and name well-known. By 1973, when the revised edition of
The Underground Gourmet
was published, Collin had moved into a slightly revisionist phase of behavior. He continued to pay for his meals, but he admitted that from time to time a restaurateur managed to force a free one on him. He continued to reserve under a pseudonym, but it became increasingly difficult to keep from being recognized. He began to metamorphose into a role he thought of as kindly godfather, but which might more correctly be defined as participatory journalist. He became a close friend of Warren Le Ruth, whose restaurant, Le Ruth’s, received Collin’s highest rating: four stars and ten platonic dishes. He gave advice to owners and to chefs. He seemed to regard himself as an impresario who was going to bring to New Orleans cuisine the acclaim it deserved. “I frequently introduce myself
after
the check has been paid,” he wrote, “especially in smaller restaurants that are doing well and that deserve to be encouraged. I also notify restaurants in advance when a favorable review is to appear in the Saturday paper so that the restaurant does not run out of food by six or
seven in the evening, as has happened when the pending review was kept a secret. For this edition I have not been quite as anonymous as I was for the first edition. Many restaurateurs saw me on television or met me at speaking engagements around town. However, known or unknown, distant or friendly, I have continued to base my evaluations solely on the genuine merits of the food restaurants serve. I enjoy being a restaurant critic too much to allow my integrity to be compromised.”

The trouble began in April, 1973, with what looked—to Richard Collin, at least—like a pure case of civic duty. Turci’s Original Italian Restaurant was about to close. Turci’s was a typical grubby neighborhood restaurant on Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans; it had sluggish service but a platonic spaghetti sauce. It also had a platonic veal parmigiana, but the important thing was the spaghetti sauce: it had a rich, tomatoey, almost burned flavor, and it was packed with meatballs, mushrooms and chicken. Collin had given the restaurant three stars and, with his customary enthusiasm, announced that Turci’s cooking was “unsurpassed in New Orleans or in Italy itself.” But times got hard for Turci’s, the neighborhood changed, and Rose Turci Serwich, the daughter of the original owners, decided she would have to shut down. Collin heard the news and wrote a column suggesting that someone raise the money to move Turci’s to a better location and save the restaurant.

A New Orleans businessman named Joe Bernstein read the article. Along with two partners, he had just bought a building on Magazine Street and was looking for a ground-floor tenant. Bernstein called one of his partners, Ben C. Toledano, who occasionally wrote
book reviews for the
States-Item
and knew Collin; Toledano called Collin and asked him to serve as intermediary in arranging the purchase of Turci’s. “It was an uncomfortable position,” Collin recalled recently, “but it was part of my responsibility to the community at large.” Collin went ahead and arranged for Turci’s to sell its name and good will for a reported ten thousand dollars and for Mrs. Serwich to sign an employment contract. A year later, the new Turci’s opened. It was beautiful. It was crowded. It was fashionable. And it was terrible. Everyone knew it—Joe Bernstein knew it and Mrs. Serwich knew it. Both of them were on the phone to Richard Collin to complain about restaurant personnel. Mrs. Serwich hated the chef. Mrs. Serwich had objections to the manager. Joe Bernstein was going crazy because of the tension between Mrs. Serwich and the chef and Mrs. Serwich and the manager. But most of all, there was the problem of the spaghetti sauce. “I couldn’t go to a cocktail party or go out on the street without someone telling me the sauce just wasn’t the same,” Joe Bernstein recalled. “I became frantic.” The problem with the spaghetti sauce was really a very simple one: there was no recipe for it, and there never had been. The old Turci’s spaghetti sauce had been a concoction made of tomato paste and leftovers. The new Turci’s had no leftovers, owing to a streamlined kitchen and cost accounting; the new chef had no idea what to do under the circumstances. In the midst of all this, Richard Collin dropped in to Turci’s for dinner.

The next day, he called Bernstein and told him to come by his house immediately. Bernstein arrived within a few minutes, and the first thing Collin asked him to do was to sign a release absolving Collin of any
responsibility for what he was about to say. Bernstein signed and Collin began talking. He told Bernstein to fix the spaghetti sauce, eliminate the crab claws from the menu, and do something about the chef, who, Collin said, was “a Massachusetts Greek who didn’t know from Turci’s.” If Bernstein failed to make improvements, Collin said he would be forced to give the restaurant a bad review—which he had in fact already written, and he read a few sample sentences from a piece of paper: “Frankly, we would all have been better off last year had the real Turci’s been allowed to die a natural though unwelcome death.… It seems to me that in the move uptown what the new Turci’s has proven is that one can turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear. Requiescat.” Within a few days, the chef quit—Bernstein says it had nothing to do with Collin’s ultimatum—and Collin returned to the restaurant for a review. He gave the new Turci’s three stars. “Try finding the likes of Turci’s even in Italy,” he wrote. “The new Turci’s has the setting this marvelous restaurant has always deserved—a splendid place in which to serve its grand food.…”

At this point, we must pause to introduce a new character in this drama, a person Collin refers to as “my own favorite platonic dish.” Rima Drell Reck Collin is a professor of comparative literature at the University of New Orleans, an editor of
The Southern Review
, and, according to her husband, “the most creative and gifted cook in the world now.” She had just finished writing a New Orleans cookbook with her husband and was planning to open a food consulting firm in partnership with Warren Le Ruth of four-star, ten-platonic-dish fame. “The firm,” says Collin, “was an attempt to get her out from being Mrs. Underground Gourmet. She’s got enormous
talent, but in this town she is still Mrs. Underground Gourmet.”

One day a few weeks after the good review appeared, Joe Bernstein visited Richard and Rima Collin to talk about the restaurant. He was still concerned about its inconsistency, particularly when it came to the spaghetti sauce. One thing led to another, and before the session was up, Bernstein had hired Mrs. Collin’s firm to fix the sauce. Bernstein paid her two thousand dollars for two months’ work—after which time she and Le Ruth, who had not been able to implement a new recipe, fought with each other and dissolved the partnership. The next month, Mrs. Collin sent Bernstein another bill, which Bernstein refused to pay. There was considerable shouting on Bernstein’s part and considerable crying on Mrs. Collin’s part. According to Bernstein, Mrs. Collin threatened his bookkeeper and said that if he did not pay up, the restaurant would be hurt. Bernstein did not pay.

It was at this point, Richard Collin says, that he realized for the first time that he was in a spot. “I was in a very bad situation,” he said. “It was okay as far as helping the restaurant and shaking out the sauce—that struck me as a civic restoration—but once a falling-out occurred, I knew that anytime I changed the rating it would look suspect.” In January, 1975, just before the Super Bowl, Collin nonetheless printed a revised set of ratings for New Orleans restaurants. Turci’s was stripped down to an altogether new category—a star within parentheses, meaning “some good food but not a recommended restaurant.” What intrigued the owners of Turci’s about this new rating was that Collin had not eaten in Turci’s at any time since his original review had appeared.

A month later,
Figaro
, a small New Orleans weekly newspaper (in which, in keeping with the tenor of this saga, Joe Bernstein’s children own a minority interest), broke the story.
Figaro
’s editor, James Glassman, quoted Bernstein and Collin on the Turci’s episode, and also quoted Chris Ansel, the owner of Christian’s Restaurant, who said that Collin told him to fire his chef and cut down on the salt; when the chef failed to do so, Collin stripped Ansel of his stars and eleven platonic dishes. The
Figaro
article caused a sensation. The New Orleans Restaurant Association wrote the
States-Item
demanding that Collin be investigated. The Louisiana chefs association seconded the motion. A group of local restaurateurs tried to pressure the National Restaurant Association to drop Collin from a panel discussion at the association’s annual convention. There were television debates. There was an acrimonious press conference. Mrs. Galatoire of Galatoire’s accused Collin of not ordering a dish he subsequently reviewed. The New Orleans
Times-Picayune
—which has an active rivalry with the
States-Item
although both are owned by the Newhouse chain—unleashed its food writer to attack Collin.