Former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes is the author of a new book, Appetite City, a history of the city’s restaurants and culinary habits. He spoke to the Buzz about everything from turtle soup to street carts to time travel.
Zagat Buzz: What was the impetus for the book?
William Grimes: The head of the New York Public Library, Paul LeClerc, called me up when I was the restaurant critic for the Times and asked if I’d be interested in putting together a show of vintage menus in an exhibition space at the library. I already knew about the collection because I had written about it before, and after I delved into it further came the idea to construct a continuous narrative about dining out in New York.
ZB: What were your primary sources?
WG: I would estimate that about 75% of the information in the book is something that people will be reading for the first time. It was buried in newspapers and magazines that were written by long-ago journalists who would retire and reminisce about their glory days when they ate at Delmonico’s. They were my best sources. God bless those journalists.
ZB: You write that steak, oysters and turtle soup were the foundations of a fine 19th-century meal, and they still are – with the exception of turtle soup. What happened to turtle soup?
WG: The turtles got scarcer and prohibitively expensive, so soon there was a lot of mock turtle soup around. Eventually it disappeared altogether, like the oyster restaurant. The dedicated oyster stand or oyster restaurant was once an enormous part of the NY dining scene, but it doesn’t really exist anymore – except at Grand Central’s Oyster Bar, the last hurrah.
ZB: Along the same lines, German food was once very popular but over time has fallen out of favor. Why is that?
WG: It’s a seldom remarked upon trend of New York dining: German food was once considered a high-prestige cuisine, particularly at finer restaurants like Luchow’s. Then the first World War dealt a death blow to not just German cuisine, but to German philosophy, German music, German everything. Today, of course, there’s the sense that this cuisine is fatty and heavy, making it an uphill climb to win favor again – although there was a moment when Austrian cooking had a resurgence after Danube and Wallsé opened.
ZB: Some older trends that you discuss are having a rebirth. For example, today’s street-cart renaissance harkens back to the very earliest days of the city when most New Yorkers got their food off a wagon.
WG: That’s right, it recalls the days when vendors strolled the streets with slices of pie for sale and coffee containers strapped to their back. It was a time when mobile lunch service was a big feature of the town – even if the idea of buying raw shellfish on the street is kind of unnerving.
ZB: If you could live in any other food time in NYC, when would it be?
WG: I think I’d like the time machine to take me back to 1910 in Times Square, which was then very upmarket. My second choice would be to go down to Park Row and see all the cheap joints, the nickel-and-dime hash houses and Dennett’s lunch room. I’d be curious to see both sides of the spectrum.
ZB: Any particular restaurant you’d like to visit?
WG: For the interiors alone, either Rector’s or Murray’s Roman Gardens in Times Square, and, of course, I wonder how the food tasted. It’s like imagining opera performances in the days before recorded sound.
ZB: A question about food criticism and the Times. Has it changed since your tenure?
WG: The big change is that when I was a critic there were only two food websites of any consequence, eGullet and Chowhound. I don’t think there were any blogs then, so the explosion of freelance criticism has changed the relationship of the paper to the outside world. There’s a clamor of conversation about food now that didn’t exist then.
ZB: And your thoughts on the Times’ latest restaurant critic?
WG: I think Sam Sifton very wisely stepped up to the plate and swung hard in his first review to announce what his voice is going to be like. Heart and soul, Sam’s a $25-and-under kind of guy, and he’s going to be presented with all kinds of super-fancy restaurants as he moves along. I’m curious to see how he talks about them and responds to them.
– Curt Gathje