In the days when this department's indulgence of folly and genius for chaos expressed itself in the form of a syndicated newspaper column, it was its custom every year or two to draw up a tally of New York's ten best restaurants for the pleasure, instruction, or fury of its readers. Bad feeling and hostility flowered on every hand whenever this essay in indiscretion was undertaken, and upon one occasion and inflamed by what, in the latter light of reason, seems to have been complete dementia, it even undertook to name the ten best restaurants in North America. Without exception they, too, were in New York, although this desperate decision haunted us for days with fragrant souvenirs of lunches in the Palm Court of San Francisco's miraculous Palace, gaudy gustatory devisings with Ernie Byfield in the Pump Room in Chicago, savory interludes at Count Arnaud's and at Roy Alciatore's Antoine's in New Orleans, riotous collegiate repasts at Locke Ober's Winter Place Wine Rooms in Boston, and unbelievable steaks awash with pure creamery butter on the diner of the City of San Francisco, the streamlined Taj Mahal of all mobile gastronomy.
It would be face-saving to insinuate that a repetition of this folly, practically unparalleled since Paris was fooling around with that golden apple, was suggested by an avid reader. Such is not the case, and this department embarks upon the venture against the best advice of almost everyone. Here, however, and alphabetically, are what it considers the ten best restaurants in New York; let the fish and chips fall where they may.
Baroque:
Long the favorite restaurant of this department, Baroque accommodates only seventy-five clients at a sitting and is one of the superlatively well-run houses of a city overflowing with good restaurants. It has been the dream child of its two very active partners, Frank and Joseph, ever since they opened seven or eight years ago, and it is doubtful if a single defective or even questionable order of food ever left its kitchens. Physically it is a little jewel of a place and the service is irreproachable. Frank and Joseph do a good deal of the waiting themselves supported by a staff that doesn't seem to have changed a face since the place opened. The quenelles of Kentucky ham Périgourdine, the house specialty Wednesday, the green noodles on Tuesday, the oysters Mornay throughout the season, and its venison steaks whenever the management can come by them, are, in a word, out of this world.Chambord:
There is nothing of subdued magnificence at all about Chambord and it displays its resources in the grand manner, furnishing forth pheasant in full plumage, plovers' eggs by the hamper, champagne in gold wine buckets, and most of its desserts in a blaze of vintage cognac. If it is the most costly restaurant in America, it is also the most gastronomically elaborate, and neither wars nor rumors of bad times have ever diminished its wholly admirable flow of pressed duck, terrapin stew, cherries Jubilee, truffled foie gras and, in January of course, strawberries Romanoff. René Dufau, the presiding genius of this gastronomic subtreasury, can so hypnotize the guests with racks of baby lamb, chocolate soufflés, magnums of Perrier Jouet, and other enchantments, that they can even face the ultimate reckoning without demanding the traditional fright wig.Chateaubriand:
This is a bit out of the way in East Fifty-sixth Street, over the other side of Lexington, but a faithful following of its proprietor, Maurice Chapuis, many of them well-upholstered French folk, make the pilgrimage noon and night. Maurice himself, a ranking local luminary of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, is a careful, managerial restaurateur of the old school who leaves nothing to chance and watches every detail of his house with an eagle eye. The cuisine is in the classic French tradition with overtones of subdued magnificence.Colony:
Still, as always, it is probably the world's finest restaurant where food, cellars, service, and the social chic of its clientele are severally and individually above reproach. Gene Cavallero, its proprietor, would probably have been terrified if, twenty-five years ago, he could have foreseen the social authority implicit in his least disposition of a table, but the fact remains that today the Colony is practically a closed corporation so far as patrons are concerned, and that it is the only restaurant in the world which does not derive prestige from its customers but instead bestows distinction on them by permitting them to eat and drink in its premises. There is a legend, nourished by viveurs everywhere, that there is no food or style of its preparation that the Colony management cannot serve on a few minutes' notice. This is strictly apocryphal, but the variety of its menu—potential, not printed—is inexhaustible and its cellars have been dented by wine shortages only in recent years. The Colony family, which embraces Marco, the chief barman, and Charlie, the bar captain, incline to view strangers with suspicion, and justifiably so since the house has all it can do to serve its regular superplush, extra de luxe carriage trade.Jack and Charlie:
For years the most glittering display case for Cartier jewels, Hollywood faces, and London titles, “21” suffered something of a falling off during the recent wars when its proprietors inclined to take the inconveniences of rationing and austerity living a bit too seriously. The customers, knowing this was all the quintessence of folly, resented it and went elsewhere until the storm subsided, but now they are all back at the old stand, destroying each other's reputations and absorbing double bottles of Mumm's English Cuvée in one of the most beautiful restaurant rooms in the world. The Brothers Kriendler and Bern who, in a partnership of amazing complexity, own both “21” and “21” Brands of liquor, are amateurs in their own right of sumptuous living, and lunching and dining at “21” are ritual without which no name celebrity on the town would dare to circulate. Quite aside from its implications of social and professional smartness, “21” has always been (excepting a brief war interlude) a restaurant distinguished for its food, style of service, and remarkable cellars. It is probably the only establishment in New York making a specialty, for example, of vintage ports, and its Burgundy and claret bins are the wonder of collectors and oenophiles everywhere. Its “21 Sauce” is strictly a gag, confected by a cynical management to distinguish the sheep from the goats under their starched shirts. So hot it destroys all flavor with which it comes in contact, its acceptance by a customer marks him as emphatically no gourmet.Lafayette:
So long and affectionately established a New York institution as scarcely to need mention, the restaurant of the Lafayette Hotel in University Place has been celebrated for generations as a resort of gentle manners and gentle folk and the finest moules marinière this side of Bienville Street, New Orleans. Sunday night dinner at the Lafayette is a Manhattan legend and its foie gras, baby turkey, squab in casserole, salads, and cheeses must be experienced to be believed. Atmosphere seekers like the white-tabled French café-bar in the front of the hotel where ancients of the French colony read provincial newspapers from the racks, play chequers, and watch the activities of the fencing academy across the street.Luchow:
The old reliable of all German restaurants, Luchow's is knee-deep in solid respectability, solid woodwork, and solid customers. The finest dark beers in town are here, and a variety of wonderful German dishes, including a saddle of jugged hare and jelly pancakes, and enough varieties of herring and other delightful pickled fish to make you dizzy. Herr Seuter, the waiter captain, is a man to be trusted with any sort of gustatory trusteeship in the event your knowledge of German food or language is limited. Like the Metropolitan Opera or Central Park, and at times a great deal more comforting than either, Luchow's is a New York institution dating from way, way back and one that all lovers of good living hope will continue way, way on into the future.Pavillon:
The most staggeringly opulent of the town's restaurants is celebrated as the Pavillon, and Henri Soulé himself ran the French Pavillon at the New York World's Fair of fragrant and gracious memory. This is the classic French cuisine in its finest and most formal flower, flourishing in a midst of mink and monocles, gilt and mirrors reminiscent of the best Paris restaurants in the spacious days. Soulé, who is the animate sublimation of what the amiable and prosperous restaurateur should be, knows that the visual appeal of food is a mighty power, and his cold buffets, ranked with Prague hams, delicate pink smoked salmon, and approximately a score of varieties of eggs in aspic and truffles are something to send patrons into a trance of delight even before they clap eyes on the menu itself. The motif of Soulé's is one of austere elegance with every course very plain and superlatively fine, with vegetables as separate courses, and all the formal amenities of eating in the great tradition. A recently added front room was feared by Soulé under the impression that his patrons might think it a sort of doghouse, like the backroom upstairs at Jack and Charlie's, but it turned out to be a singularly beautiful apartment and as a result is filled to capacity with the most aristocratic French poodles de luxe.Plaza:
Under the stewardship of the incomparable Max Herring, onetime managing director of the Gotham Hotel, the Plaza's food and wine in its multitudinous restaurants and bars have been restored once more to the distinguished eminence they possessed before the wars. Bearing in mind always that hotel food must be characterized by a greater impersonality and less imagination than is possible in a small, private restaurant, the Plaza's is just about tops, whether it is absorbed in the Oak Room, sacred to businessmen at weekday lunchtime, in the Persian Room, in the old reliable café overlooking Fifth Avenue, or in the magnificent gold and crystal Terrace Room which is once more open for lunch and dinner Sundays. There is, too, a really good businessman's lunch served from a steam table on weekdays in the Men's Bar, where Ed Hutton's offices used to be, by Mr. Fischer, who in his other capacity is assistant to Jules, maître of the Oak Room. The big day in the Plaza is traditionally Sunday when decorous New Yorkers don their best formal morning attire and lunch of the Plaza's celebrated homemade chicken soup, eggs Benedict, and other restorative dishes until late afternoon. The Plaza cocktails are noted among boulevardiers as the largest and most potent money's worth anywhere.Stork Club:
A night club with really top-notch food is a rare bird, but Sherman Billingsley's very decorous and well-mannered premises contrive this improbability in an authentically distinguished manner. The Stork's chef, as a matter of fact, is happiest when it is apparent that some really knowing patron upstairs is ordering without benefit of the menu and for the satisfaction of a sophisticated taste. The conventional things such as duckling bigarade, filet béarnaise and shad roe amandine are evolved to perfection and, while the Stork specializes in the sale of spirits rather than wine, there is an adequate champagne list and somehow a good year of Mouton or Lafite always turns up when it is required. Billingsley is a restaurateur at heart and can be seen any night stalking the happy gastronomes at his tables and beaming approval when he knows that authentic amateurs of culinary art are in the house. His stock of cognacs is without exception the finest and most extensive in New York.Since the confection of this department's most recent Broadway bulletin, only two shows have splashed into the ken of theatergoers, but both of them are important and each of them is, in its own particular manner, of outstanding excellence. Their subject matter is somewhat divided since Born Yesterday concerns itself with a big-time Pal Joey who is anxious to take over the world's commerce in postwar junk, while Lute Song is a Chinese classic some five and a half centuries old and, we are assured, the popular equivalent of Ming times of, say Uncle Tom's Cabin. That will give you an idea.
Born Yesterday was evolved by Garson Kanin, its producer, and Paul Douglas, its principal participant, while lying under mounds of steaming towels in the Dawn Patrol, an all-night barber shop in Seventh Avenue, and making notes on the manners and speech of the patrons, most of whom derive from the post-midnight half world of the Times Square district. If Born Yesterday came to assume certain aspects and overtones of John O'Hara's now celebrated Pal Joey, it is only a confirmation of Mr. O'Hara's insight in reporting the world of racketeers and dinner-jacketed mobsters functioning in a post-prohibition national scene.
Opposite Mr. Douglas, who aspires in the play to becoming the junk king of the universe and who buys senators as he buys the favors of love, is Judy Holliday whose part is that of a tough but intelligent hoyden who, once possessed of a little formal book learning and some clues to what life is all about, is able to give the big-time scrapheap man his comeuppance in a manner acceptable both to Broadway cynics and more moral observers of contemporary ways.
Born Yesterday is rough, tough, and trashy, as befits its theme, and its humors are eminently those of the West Forties and The Loop as befit its subject matter. It flags and flutters only when its authors allow moral indignation to rear its boring head which isn't very often, thank God.
Lute Song, as has already been established by the play reporters, is the kind of show that either leaves the beholder entirely cold or fills him with such a crusading enthusiasm that he is tempted to hire space in the public prints, at his own expense, to advertise its charms and wonders. It is, as its adapters, Will Irwin and Sidney Howard, are the first to admit, an elaborate and fanciful Chinese ballet stemming originally from the fifteenth century folk theater, in which speech, action, and songs are the merest incidental to ritual, pageantry, and symbolism.
Mary Martin is assigned a part of lyrical eloquence and, through all the ceremonial conventions which hedge the play and lend it a curious and satisfying tranquility, she contrives to live up to the almost rapturous advance notices she received along Broadway during its Boston tryout. Mike Meyerberg, proprietor of Lute Song, is reported to have invested ＄150,000 in its settings, costumes, and properties, and this is readily understandable since it is one of the most glamorously furnished shows of the current season and is characterized by parades, ceremonials, and processionals in every other scene. To this reporter, at least, Lute Song was a charming and eye-filling evening in the theater and something quite out of his previous experience. It should be doing business, despite various critical yahoos, even when this is printed.