Food and Drink

I’m sipping Madagascan hot chocolate out of white-and-gold Haviland Limoges, and nibbling on Venezuelan milk-chocolate bonbons, under an oil painting of Queen Victoria. I am on a visit to Guild Chocolates, “the finest chocolate shop in Petrolia,” in southern Ontario. The town’s population was circa 6,000 at the last census and on a Saturday morning, the chocolate shop is the place to be. During my visit, a sign on the Dickensian, wood-paneled storefront clearly indicates the shop is temporarily closed, but people keep turning the door handle and popping their heads in hopefully. Jaclyn Sanders, proprietor and chocolatier, calls warmly and apologetically out to them. Jaclyn opens her shop only one day a week: Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I can still remember it: probably the worst seafood dinner of my life. A slice of fish that was simultaneously cold, hot, dry, crumbly and rubbery, surrounded by overcooked vegetables and accompanied by a mysterious whiff of cigarette smoke. It was so repellent that even though I was famished, I summoned the waiter, returned the dish and retired to my room, there to endure a dinner of Pringles from the minibar. What made it worse was that I was in a celebrated fishing port. All I had to do was look out the window and I could see trawlers bringing in some of the world’s finest fish from some of the planet’s richest seas. It was dismaying, saddening, deflating and left me starving. What it was not, however, was surprising.

These pages recently carried a lament for the little French restaurant, and the loss from the cities they once graced of a certain element of gentility and, yes, class. On the same subject, let us consider another era when class was valued more highly, and which produced the classiest, and the grandest, French restaurant of all. This requires a journey. In July 1936, a Chicago family, relations of mine, embarked on an unrushed two-month European vacation. A meticulous Thos. Cook & Son-Wagons-Lits, Inc. itinerary routed them first to France, then Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and finally to England. It was a thoroughly first-class affair.

Cool guests, hot food; cool music, warm hostess: the recipe for the perfect party, and the motto of Perle Mesta, one of the most successful postwar Washington hostesses. Good King Wenceslas, a model host of even greater status, lived out this motto in legendary style centuries earlier. His guests were cool, if not downright frozen; their host was warm of heart (and sole, as the page discovered on treading in his footprints). The food was hot, for the king ordered up pine logs along with the flesh and wine. As for the music, the rude wind’s wild lament must have been on the cool side — though jollier tunes would surely have prevailed once the king and his fellow diners made it back to the royal fireside.

For first-time restaurateur Bolun Yao, New York is a city to experiment in: “I feel like New York is the city that is always exploring new things. If you have a new idea, you put it here.” The Chinese-born entrepreneur — who has also spent significant time in New Zealand — came to NYU to complete a master’s degree in food studies. He quickly fell in love with the fine-dining Korean scene, including the two-Michelin-starred Atomix and COTE, America’s only Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse. Both merge contemporary and traditional techniques and ingredients. “Wow, that’s really, really smart and really creative,” the twenty-eight-year-old recalls thinking. “Why is there not a Chinese restaurant that does the same thing?