The Usual Suspects
Happy Thanksgiving, mes vieux.
As you can see from these pictures, Kathleen is the better photographer. If I'd moved the glass in front of her, she wouldn't seem to be sitting in purdah. But she rolled her eyes when I suggested sitting next to her on the banquette and getting a waiter to snap the shot. So here we are.
A few years ago, cleaning up after one of our Thanksgiving feasts, Kathleen and I had a little heart-to-heart. We decided that there was nothing wrong with our recipes or our cooking techniques. We simply didn't like turkey. We didn't like it whether we made it ourselves or were eating somebody else's. Nor did we really care for anything else on the Thanksgiving menu, except for cranberries, which would be a summer dish in our house if we had room for a deep freeze and could stock the berries until temperatures climbed. After considerable meditation, Kathleen hustled us out of New York City last Thanksgiving, on an ostensible 'vacation' to Paris whose only purpose was to spare us the turkey and stuffing. This year, I convinced her that extreme measures weren't really necessary. In the event nobody pressed an invitation upon us, and all our nearest and dearest had other plans. Not that I waited. I booked a table for two at the Café Pierre in September - having called in June to find out when they'd be taking reservations for 25 November.
Because we were brought up on old-fashioned lines, Kathleen and I walk into an old-fashioned restaurant (even one as spruce as the Café Pierre, which, as I noted the other day, has been acquired by the Four Seasons chain) with feelings of comfort and relaxation. We don't feel that we have to behave in an unusual way or remember forgotten protocols. You could say that we get to be ourselves for a few hours, but that might make us out to be princely refugees from some ancien régime, which we're certainly not. I seem to recall an editorial in today's Times about suppressing desire on this day of thanks - a Puritan idea, thank you very much, that I couldn't disavow more heartily.
What did we have? There were few choices on the prix fixe menu, but we had no trouble finding good things to eat. An endive salad with blue cheese, a terrine of foie gras, truffled risotto and black sea bass on chanterelles, chocolate mousse with caramelized banana and pumpkin pie - it was all quite lovely, and not what we get at home. And to drink, a '99 Grgch Hills cabernet.
"Do you think that anybody else can tell that we're married," Kathleen asked after dessert. I omit the question mark because she wasn't really asking.
