Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [19]
TOOTHPICKS
On this day in 1872, Silas Noble and J. P. Cooley were awarded the patent for a machine that manufactured toothpicks. It was a long time coming. Toothpick marks have been found on the teeth of prehistoric man, and chewing sticks, mentioned by the Chinese as early as 1600 B.C., had been used in Babylonia more than three thousand years earlier.
The first toothpicks were twigs, taken from trees, with a pleasant taste and scent and were used to help clean the teeth. The twigs evolved into rudimentary toothbrushes, with a pointed end and a softer, mashed one that eventually developed into a brush made of the bristles of pigs. Nylon replaced natural bristles in the late 1930s, and electric toothbrushes followed soon after.
In 1941, while on a boat bound for Brazil, Sherwood Anderson, the novelist and short story writer who had been an influence on Hemingway, died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party. He was sixty-five years old.
BEAUVILLIERS
Until the end of the 18th century, a visitor to Paris could not dine except at the home of friends. There were places to stay—inns and hotels—that served some food, but only to guests.
The first actual restaurant in Paris was opened by a former chef and steward to royalty, Antoine Beauvilliers, in 1782. It was called Grande Tavern de Londres and was located at 26 rue de Richelieu. The decor was elegant, the waiters well-trained, and the food excellent. Beauvilliers dressed fashionably and carried a sword. More than 170 dishes were on the menu, including partridge with cabbage, veal chops grilled in buttered paper, and duck with turnips. By the year 1800, over five hundred restaurants had opened in Paris, and being served was a luxury that belonged to the masses, at least those with some money.
Beauvilliers’ great success was due in large measure to his knowledge and style. He understood how to cater to and flatter rich patrons. He attended to them personally; he would point out something on the menu to avoid, recommend another thing, and then order for them still a third dish not listed, at the same time calling up choice bottles from the cellar. He had a prodigious memory and could greet by name customers who had been in twenty years before.
The restaurant survived the Revolution, the Reign of Terror that followed, the empire of Napoleon, and the occupation of Paris in 1814 and 1815. In these latter years, in fact, Beauvilliers especially prospered. He knew heads of state and generals of foreign armies by name and could speak, when necessary, their languages. The Grande Taverne lasted until 1825, and the name Beauvilliers did not disappear for one hundred more years.
LUIS BUÑUEL
1900. Luis Buñuel, the inimitable film director, was born in Calanda, an old Roman town in Spain, having been conceived during one of his well-to-do parents’ trips to Paris.
All his life Buñuel was fond of bars—dark, quiet places where he could muse and drink. He was especially devoted to the dry martini. Although he drank other things—wine, vodka with his caviar, aquavit with smoked salmon—he attributed to gin a stimulating effect on his famous imagination, and rarely, if ever, missed his daily drink.
At home, his formula, reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s, was: the glasses, shaker, and English gin in the freezer the day before; “a few drops” of Noilly Prat vermouth and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters poured over ice he specified as too cold and hard to melt, then shaken, and poured out, the ice retaining a faint flavor; and finally, cold gin poured over the ice, shaken, and served.
Buñuel once half-planned to open a bar in New York, intended to be the most expensive bar in the world with the finest liquors from all over and a cannon by the door to be fired whenever a customer spent one thousand dollars.
I never met Buñuel in any of his favorite bars, like the