Vintage Insatiable Critic
As George Eliot observed while waiting for dessert, "It is hard to live up to our own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy dining." Still I hope vintage readers of the Insatiable Critic in New York might be amused to see these vintage reviews. And perhaps newly arrived gourmands might be amused to discover our early obsessions. Many of the restaurants I loved or skewered or had high hopes for are gone. These older reviews are here for nostalgia or visitors in search of history.
If you have a favorite ancient critique you would like to see here email me.
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PAPA SOULÉ LOVES YOU
June 13, 1965
La Côte Basque Countdown: cinq, quatre, trios, deux…What a mess! In quenelles-de-brochet-eating circles, it was like the return to the concert stage of Vladimir Horowitz. Henry Soulé was making his historic comeback to La Côte Basque. Showman, snob, perfectionist, martinet, conman, wooer and wooed master of haute cuisine… more
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PALEY'S PRESERVE: THE GROUND FLOOR
November 11, 1968
The Ground Floor is appropriately grand. It is slick, rich, calculating, spare, intimidating. It is Contemporary Wasp…the perfect place to end an affair…more
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THE QUINTESSENTIAL SOULÉ FOOD
November 25, 1968
At La Côte Basque the spirit of Henri Soulé still hovers: in the food and the wine, and in the air. Electricity! Drama!... more
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THE MAFIA GUIDE TO DINING OUT
April 7, 1969
What is good for the Mafia is good for gourmet country. The Mafia is widely advanced as “the Michelin Guide for Italian Restaurants,” and a three-star police raid is...a tribute to the excellence of the kitchen... more
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LA CARAVELLE: INSULT á LA CARTE
May 19, 1969
Someday a gourmet anthropologist will do a thesis on the Manhattan culture's painful rites of passage. It will be called, "Coming of Age on West 55th Street: ...more
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BROOKLYN COME HUNGRY
July 14, 1969
Eating in Brooklyn restoreth the soul. You can go home again. No matter how long and determined your exile, no matter how homogenized your diction, no matter how alienated your spirit. If you were born in Brooklyn or married into it, certain tastes instantly restoreth...more
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LA SEINE: THE RISEN PHOENIX BUILDS HER SPICY NEST
July 21, 1969
On the Ides of March, La Seine was born."They gave us a dead horse and told us to bring it into the Preakness," says maitre d' Martin Decre…”Everyone's fighting to get into La Seine." The names are dizzying: Parley, Roosevelt, Fairbanks, Burden, Loeb, Ribicoff, Mellon, Hoover (as in J. Edgar), the Duke and Duchess (one needn't ask which D&D)… more
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CAFE CHAUVERON AS LOVE OBJECT
September 22, 1969
Cafe Chauveron has long been the love object of my unadulterated great food passion. Great food alone, isolated from chic, ego indulgence, pampering or masochism....more