Cocktails, Always, Again
Welcome to Gourmet magazine, an independently owned digital food magazine that’s not affiliated with the Gourmet magazines of yore. Our Tuesday editions are where we feature great writing about food. Thursday is for recipes.
IN THIS ISSUE: Some personnel news, the chefs letting Noma’s douche de cuisine slide online, and a reader’s Xtreme crème anglaise hack.
Appetizers
Some Personnel News
Termination is the sincerest form of flattery? Last week my tenure as a software engineer at the New York Times ended; the Gray Lady sees being a worker-owner at Gourmet as a conflict of interest with my coding work for the newspaper. It’s both funny and a little bit of a compliment—we’re new and we’re scrappy, and they were founded in 1851!
We’re admirers of Times food coverage (as seen in the item below), but they’ve already got 11 million paying readers. Subscribe to Gourmet, the magazine the New York Times doesn’t want you to read.
(And please do reach out if you are interested in hiring a senior developer with 13 years of experience building tools for journalists.) —N.S.
Red(zepi) Flags
The New York Times published a nauseating report this past week running down allegations of horrible working conditions at Noma and the abusive behavior of founder René Redzepi. The allegations include bullying, physical assault, even threatening to have a worker’s family deported. (One passage from the piece describing when a former worker was allegedly caught using her phone: “Without a word, she said, [Redzepi] punched her in the ribs hard enough that she fell against a metal counter, and cut her hip on its sharp corner.”)
Redzepi posted a four-page statement on Instagram, saying he “[doesn’t] recognize all the details in the stories.” “To those who have suffered under my leadership, my bad judgment, or my anger, I am deeply sorry and I have worked to change,” he added.
Some in the industry think Redzepi’s Instagram apology for allegedly attacking multiple employees over many years is enough. Tom Aikens, British chef behind Muse and other restaurants, wrote, “We all have ghosts from the past, every person does regret something that they did and its not just in kitchens…You may cross the line of normality, it happens , its human nature to be competitive.” [sic, sic, and sic] Albert Raurich, former head chef at elBulli who now runs Dos Palillos and Dos Pebrots, replied, “You’re not just sincere and brave. Behind those words there are awareness and sensitivity. Bravo, René!” Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam, who founded Teranga in Manhattan, said, “René, many of us who grew up in kitchens know how intense that culture has been. It takes humility to look back and speak about it honestly.” CJ Jacobson, chef at Ema and Aba (and an apparent Noma alum), wrote, “I am with you, chef…I admire your courage to change yourself and willingness to speak honestly. What you have built took vision, discipline, and conviction. You have my respect and support.”
Others signaled support but couldn’t find the words. Justin Pichetrungsi, chef and owner of Anajak Thai, wrote, “❤️❤️❤️.” Three hearts weren’t enough for Mike Solomonov, the chef behind Philly’s Israeli restaurant Zahav, who replied, “❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️.” Chef and cookbook author David Castro Hussong, behind Fauna in Mexico’s Valle de Guadelupe, posted, “👏👏👏👏.”
Meanwhile Top Chef alums Tristen Epps, Shota Nakajima, and Shirley Chung all liked Redzepi’s post. —C.G.W.
Häagen-D’anglaise
Friend of Gourmet (FrOG) Erin Eckert wrote in with a shortcut for last week’s Sour Crème Anglaise recipe:
While it looks lovely and rich and I am sure it is delicious, I wanted to share the ‘Lazy Woman’ version...melt a tub of Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean. Basically the same ingredients, but you can keep it frozen and just melt what you need. Melt a few tablespoons to spoon over your berries or drizzle on chocolate cake. I always keep a pint in the freezer.
If you need us, we’ll be in the kitchen doing a side-by-side taste test. —N.S.
Cocktails, Always, Again
By Julia Langbein
The author of a 2008 Gourmet piece on the Palace hotel bars of Paris takes a dizzying spin through their new incarnations
I. Reviving Corpses
In September of 2008, the month Lehman Brothers tanked and a broad public began to feel the pain of the financial crisis, I told the readers of Gourmet magazine to go drink cocktails at the fanciest hotels in Paris:
The secret is that this cluster of Right Bank monuments holds, and often hides, lounges that provide singular, decadent, theatrical sets for a magical night out in Paris, where opulence and silly fun can go hand in white-gloved hand.
When I got the assignment, opulence still seemed like silly fun. The editors, who had found me through a filthy, ridiculous blog in which I skewered the New York Times’s restaurant critic, thought it was just the right leavening for the Paris issue of the magazine—a broke floozy infiltrates the city’s posh hotels, finding sparkle behind the stodgy façades. They wanted it “dripping in humor.” I was happy to abscond for a week from my PhD program at the University of Chicago, where I was training to become a “professor in the humanities,” which eighteen years later has an archaic ring to it, like “horsepostmistress.”
So I flew to Paris on Gourmet’s dime to drink alone at the bars of the Ritz, the Crillon, and the Plaza Athénée—the handful of establishments so princely that they had conventionally been called “Palace” hotels, a term that became, in 2011, a regulated designation indicating an experience above five stars. Gourmet called the article “We’ll Always Have Cocktails,” as if the future were as shiny and stable as a zinc bar. The month the article ran, 85,000 Americans lost their homes. 680,000 copies of Gourmet went out, bearing a picture of Colin Field, the legendary mixologist at the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz, doing something maniacal to a passionfruit for a $30 drink.
I remember learning from one of the editors that my article had provoked some angry letters. We’d come off as tone-deaf, callous.
A year later Gourmet was dead, and I felt like I’d killed it.
