The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [147]
“I’ll have a Bloody Mary, please. On the rocks,” Lynn told the waiter before he could leave.
I glanced at the menu. I’d already seen it online a few days before and had eyed the crab cake. But my hangover had changed my appetite from adventurous to simply ravenous. It was too bad there was no menudo on the menu.
“We always order the same thing,” Grace said, for herself and James. “The Hangtown Fry. Except we get ours with a side salad instead of the potatoes. The waiters all know us here; we come just about every Saturday” She and James smiled.
“So Mark, as I was saying a bit before, has a supper club that he runs in his apartment,” Grace said to Lynn. “And there are four or five who do this with you?”
Mark jumped in to explain Whisk and Ladle to Lynn, adding that they had recently begun a series of dinners that were being shot for an upcoming online show.
“Oh, why, that’s terrific,” Lynn said. She took the straw out of her Bloody Mary and sipped heartily.
We chatted for a few minutes about the supper club, alternating with conversation about who in our group liked Bloody Marys and who didn’t. As a non-liker, Mark was persuaded by Lynn to try a sip of one. He still didn’t like it.
“Actually, I’m not terribly in the mood for one. I think I’d prefer a glass of white wine next,” Lynn said.
“Are we ready to order?” asked Grace. The waiter had stopped by our table. Grace and James ordered their standard, while Mark and Lynn decided to try the pulled pork hash. I opted for the Stone Park Omelette, with tomatoes, spinach, Swiss cheese, and the house-cured sausage. I planned to eat every piece of the toast that came on the side. While the rest of the table ordered white wines, I declined and ordered a cup of coffee instead, explaining that I’d had a long night. Mark, too, had been up late for a Whisk and Ladle dinner, and in between talking with Lynn and Grace, we shared snippets about our respective feasts from the night before.
Our meals came to our table after a short wait. I was happy to find that my omelette had been prepared in the classic French fashion—quickly beaten in the pan and rolled into a uniformly textured, pale yellow log. I enjoyed the house-cured breakfast sausage, which was spiced with basic breakfast-sausage seasonings. I was surprised by the tomatoes in the omelet—I was pretty sure they were canned Italian plum, chopped roughly. The intense, bright color and equally strong flavor made them an interesting choice, though not, I deemed, an unpleasant one.
But the real highlight of the meal was the conversation. Grace was an effusive talker, and we discovered we’d both recently written about similar topics on our blogs. We talked with Lynn about The Brooklyn Cookbook for a while, as Mark tried to gather ideas for his dinner menu. Lynn was a whip, sharing stories about her short-lived theater career long ago, and offering strong opinions on everything from Brussels sprouts to bagels. She reminded me of Ruth Gordon’s character in Harold and Maude, the feisty old woman who falls in love with a teenager and looks death in the eye with a twinkle. Somehow, the topic of James Beard came up.
“I knew Jim from way back,” Lynn explained, wrinkling her nose as if the late food connoisseur were a childhood pest. “He was a real fruit, you know” She gossiped about the penthouse he’d owned on Park Avenue, adding that Beard used to shower before a clear window facing the public. She finished her wine and began to ask the waiter for another. Grace suggested ordering a bottle for the table, since the four of them were up for another glass.
While the waiter was pouring, I asked Lynn if she was originally from Brooklyn.
“No, we’re from Pittsburgh,” she said. “My parents were in the iron and steel business. She ironed, and he stole.”
“Can I steal her?” I whispered to Mark as our table laughed.
“So you’re part of a different supper club now?” Lynn asked me.
I nodded and told her about A Razor, A Shiny Knife.
“So you cook a lot, too, then?” she went on.
“Yes,