Gael Greene Self-Interview

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Gael Greene Self-Interview
Questions I ask myself:Q: Have you ever counted how many meals you’ve eaten in the line of duty?A: 17.966 give or take a few thousand. Happily my brain tends to obliterate memories of the worst. I wake up every morning full of hope that this will be the day I discover a talented new chef or at the very least, taste something astonishingly delicious. Q: Forgive me for jumping to the obvious but what in the world does Elvis Presley as chapter 1 in your memoir, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess, have to do with fine dining?A: I feel my boldness in simply jumping into bed with the young beautiful Elvis 50 years ago signaled the passion for adventure and fearlessness a good food writer needs. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, the fact that I don’t remember how good the sex was or who sat on top as vividly as I remember Elvis ordering a fried egg sandwich, suggests I was destined for a career in food. Q: Do you think your foodie readers will give a fig about your erotic hijinks?A: As Wolfgang Puck always says whenever we meet, "The two essentials of life are food and sex." It doesn’t hurt to give non-foodie readers something to savor. And besides – all that passion, all that disco dancing – that was what life was for some of us in the Seventies when America was just beginning to fall in love with food. Before raddichio, before vinegars in twenty flavors, before sushi madness and crème brulee, before Iron Chefs. It was a totally different world. Q: It seems to me you didn’t leave anyne out.A: But I did. I am sure there will be some men who will be relieved I left them out and a few who will be disappointed. Q: Won’t readers and some food writers too, think it’s a pretty big stretch, linking food and sex? A: But in fact they are inextricably linked. We use the same senses at table to measure a great meal as we do to appreciate a fine time in bed — the eyes, the nose, the mouth. The skin that registers the heat of torrid spices or the thrill of a passionate caress. The ears that measure the crunch of a superior French fry or a murmur of love. I believe the sexual revolution prepared Americans for the food revolution…a whole nation began thinking of how it felt and how it tasted and how much pleasure indulgence could be. Q: You’re not suggesting everyone you knew was ready for sex orgies…even if you did live on the same street as Plato’s Retreat.A: No, not at all. Very few people I knew were ready for orgies. But through the sex revolution and through feminist writings, everyone became more sensually aware. We had been a nation where the upper class, uptight notion of dinner was an overcooked lamb chop and tapioca pudding, and it wasn’t proper to carry on about food. And look at us now – a nation of foodies, whole foodies obsessed with the organic, classic foodies just looking for cuisinary thrills, incurable trendies intent on the flavor of the month. Supermarkets everywhere are international food bazaars. And these days almost everyone is a restaurant critic. Q: Besides jumping into bed with Elvis what made you a candidate to be New York magazine’s restaurant critic.A: Nothing really. Compared to Craig Claiborne, then the powerful critic at New York Times, I had no credentials at all. I was an amateur in the real sense of the word: I just loved to eat. And I told Clay Felker that when he called a few months after launching his new magazine. As a successful free lancer, I couldn’t afford to work for the infant New York. "People are begging to be the restaurant critic so they can charge all their meals to us," he said. Fireworks exploded. It was my chance to order from the left side of the menu instead of the right. I couldn’t refuse. I decided that as a newspaper reporter I could report the who what, where and why of Manhattan dining games. As for judging, I taught myself on the job. One day I noticed something was wrong with the quiche and I said so…and that was that. I was a critic. Q: You dared to tell Andre Soltner of Lutece the filling of his frozen souffle was dry and boring?A: Well, I cooked. I took cooking lessons. And I was an early foodie before the word existed. My friends and I went to France once or twice a year for cuisinary epiphany. I had eaten the food of the greatest chefs of that time. So I was actually somewhat equiped to brave humiliation in the city’s snobby French restaurants and at the imperious "21" to give the reader courage. I wanted to convey to the Puritanical or untraveled reader the sensuality of a glorious meal. I think I gave New Yorkers a new way to think about food. And Soltner later admitted I was right…the filling was dry. Although he teases me that I was wrong about everything else and I ordered my chicken pink. Q: What do you miss most about not being NEW YORK magazine’s weekly critic anymore?A: I loved taking friends to dinner every night on the magazine’s expense account. Given New York magazine’s power and influence, I could invite a total stranger to lunch – I remember a glorious picnic lunch with Mayor Lindsay on the floor of his office at City Hall. And a total stranger…
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