Peace y’all,
I am just off the 6 train, having returned from a panel conversation at Lex Yards at the Waldorf Astoria. The discussion introduced a preview to the new spring menu at Lex Yards, and featured a restaurateur group of panelists with insights and “examinations” on the “American brasserie” if you want to sit with that term for a moment.
The cast featured Michael Anthony (chef, previously of Gramercy Tavern), Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto), Camari Mick (forthcoming L’Atelier Ebene!, formerly of Raf’s), and Drew Nieporent (Nobu and now-departed Tribeca Grill). The conversation was semi-moderated by Ruth Reichl.
My head is still spinning from the various entry points to the conversation, which I think attempted to define the brasserie through an American lens, why it still exists, why we love it so much, where it came from, what it represents.
I thought I might have commentary for you about this particular form of dining and its more contemporary authors. But I’m still processing the quips, lore, and mythology that shaped much of the panel conversation. It’s hard to encapsulate more than a century of dining into one conversation with so many major players who shaped the last three to four decades of American-ish dining, especially when everyone has their own defining point of gravity. (I will not get into “fusion” tonight! We don’t have time.)
Of many one-liners that left me speechless: Nieporent declared that, “Japanese restaurants [in New York City] before Nobu catered only to the Japanese,” because before then, “you had to sit on the floor.” For clarity, Nobu opened in 1994. The dining offerings of the era included more than pillows and tatami, I assure you.
It’s an overstatement I would’ve loved to follow up on (among others), because Nieporent seems like the kind of New Yorker who loves a declarative statement but also doesn’t mind being directly challenged. I could listen to him go on about Robert Di Nero at the Tribeca Grill all night (unrelated, let me cue up Heat yet again).
I also heard some elder panelists use terms like “elevated” and “accessible” when referring to restaurants and their menus, which should be red flags in the absence of defining the audience you’re describing and why it would be that a cuisine that has lasted hundreds of years would need to be elevated—and elevated from what exactly? From a cast-iron stew pot your grandmother had to an artfully portioned share plate?
For now, I will say this about American dining and its historical French focus: The more we avoid the origin story of this nation and the power dynamics and relationships among the people who owned laborers versus those who performed the labor and literally crafted the culinary identity, the more confusing and unsatisfying the rest of the narrative will always be. The questions so many of my predecessors and peers have are mostly embedded in the credit they don’t have the context to give. You cannot bypass to easy answers when you refuse across all areas of culture to ask the hard questions. It doesn’t matter how much R&B they play in their dining room!
Too many of the Baby Boomers are still too iffy and uncomfy around the subject of what (and who!) defines American cooking, and the role of capitalism and industrialized food systems at the turn of the century following slavery. I don’t think it’s entirely innocent behavior, but I don’t think it’s entirely orchestrated or malicious either. We’re at ease repeating lore, especially when the lore remains attractive to a lot of people. Yet it’s deceptively incomplete, and this is what should make you uncomfortable.
And so I watched a conversation led by the older guard with wide-sweeping statements and half-stories and limited details leave a room wanting more but struggling what to even ask. This is how a panel of experts devolves into Reichl advocating for “tavern” as the linguistic replacement for “brasserie” because as she said this evening, “it’s American.” Rearranging the refrigerator magnets do not change the contents of the refrigerator. Hello?
C’est dommage. When are we gonna learn in this country? Rebranding doesn’t really work, or can you not tell yet from the state of our airports? Renaming brasseries wouldn’t make up for what Reichl was tacitly avoiding in a statement like that, and one I’m sure she saw no conflict in.
That is, that a lot of the taverns of yore (especially those along the Atlantic seaboard, the OG 13 of what would become the United States) were owned and/or operated by Black people. Restaurants in the U.S. were born of plantation-era entertaining culture, and those were most of the folks doing the work of cooking, bartending, hosting, and catering into the the twentieth century. Your quintessential American bar is rooted in Black American hospitality. Specifically! The American brasserie was never all that French.
The Delmonico founders were Swiss migrants who changed their name and curated a French identity to serve a particular group of customers. American Frenchness has always been a yarn, and I say this as someone who studied the language since childhood. Paris in all its beauty is what happens when your government profits from the trade of African people throughout the Americas, and the raw materials their labor produces because they don’t export anything other than ideas and cultural rules.
The Astor family’s wealth (namesake of the Waldorf-Astoria) comes from the history of American chattel slavery. Y’all ready for the discussion of slavery in New York City? The city Mayor Mamdani had to apologize for describing as a place built by immigrants, where at one point the only city with more enslaved Black people was Charleston? (I’m glad he apologized, it seemed sincere; it’s also absurd the man quoted Wu Tang throughout his campaign but forgot about this country owing so much to African Americans.)
You cannot be a restaurateur or storyteller in New York who aims to define dining within historical context while omitting this originating and still influential chapter. To understand the American brasserie and its longevity, you’d have to be interested in why people like the Astors found the French iteration of the casual restaurant so compelling, the story and lore they were building for themselves in direct rejection to the history they came from. You would also have to stop believing you’re kind of French!, which might be the true American affliction. That’s the lore, baby. Who is asking the real questions!
I do crave the kind of public convo where the panel might have ended someplace new, had someone had the courage (the competency? the curiosity?) to start at the beginning. ⭑
I was excited and inspired to hear of a new opportunity at the Hambidge Center in north Georgia. Hambidge is a creative space dedicated to artists at various stages in their careers. It’s situated in the mountainous Rabun Gap, about two hours outside of Atlanta. The 600-acre property sits on top of a mountain, remote enough that you have drive back down to get cell service. It’s about as serene and idyllic as it gets without being in the middle of nowhere.
Hambidge hosts multidisciplinary residencies, workshops, and community programs. My dear friend Feifei Sun recently launched the Sun and Zhang Family Distinguished Fellowship for AAPI Social Practice Artists of the American South. Named for her parents, the award will go to artists accepted for a Hambidge residency who live in, or have connections to the American South. The award includes a $700 stipend and handles the fees associated with a two-week residency.
I say that I’m excited and inspired because my friend did something that’s going to make a real difference for a lot of somebodies, and because especially now, we are in need of fallow time. I didn’t realize until recently that the word “fallow” could be defined as light yellowish-brown color, owning to the characterization of unseeded land sitting idly during the growing season. I always associated it with laying low, or “being leisure,” as my friend, artist Alex Waggoner used to say. The implication of fallow in the dictionaries is that the land should be doing something but isn’t. As an expert relaxer, I would say being fallow is the biggest part of doing something.
The doing of things: Crumbling to bits, releasing the old, allowing big deals to turn to minutiae. Trying again, changing your mind, asking for help. Telling the truth. Practicing. Choosing playfulness. Sleep. More sleep. Being brave enough to grieve. Doing your work to reveal to yourself what you think. If this sounds like you, I hope you know you’re an artist.
I had a short residency at Hambidge in 2019, thanks to the Wisebram Culinary Distinguished Fellowship. I have always struggled with the notion of going off somewhere to do what is my primary creative outlet and also my job, despite having done that dance more than a few times. The difficulty is mostly wanting to explore the new surroundings while having some thousands of words to write. The premise of a woodsy, nature-focused space like Hambidge, is while you can certainly stroll paths, take hikes, and count creatures, you will have little to do but your work.
Feifei and I met as Atlantans in the aughts somewhere across the dining scene—I want to say our first hang was at the Sound Table (Gah! Kind of club, kind of listening lounge. What a time.). We learned that we graduated from SCAD in different eras (me, writing; her, advertising), among a host of other mutual synergies, as in a pastime I like to engage in called, If We Were Mayor. Mad props to Feifei for this fellowship being one of her many (un)official acts!
Over the years Feifei’s storytelling skills have taken her from New York media to corporate external comms, but she founded this fellowship to celebrate the creativity that fuels through her. Her father is a practicing illustrator and calligrapher, and her mother taught as an English professor at SCAD for more than two decades. The award honors their respective pursuits in the arts and their personal histories as Chinese immigrants impacted by the Cultural Revolution.
When I went to the Hambidge website to read more about Feifei’s fellowship, I was surprised to land on an excerpt of my fellow statement from 2019 (I don’t know why I was surprised; I guess I just wasn’t expecting it):
“You cannot draw parallels and connect new dots or make revolutionary statements without plenty of fallow time to soak in the knowledge you’ve amassed, then sort it out for yourself and make something new.”
Hambidge features residencies on a seasonal basis with many fellowships across a wide range of artistic and creative practices. I’m saying this to you who is reading this so that you can look into it! If Hambidge doesn’t align with you, maybe someplace else will. If you aren’t yet doing things that would merit your participation in a creative residency and still you want to participate, maybe peruse the site for examples of alumni who might inspire your next steps.
My point is the fallow time. And choosing to create beyond the expectations that might define your career-driven work at the moment. Whatever you wish for yourself, I am absolutely certain you will require grounding space to generate, and/or maintain, what you foresee.
Applications for the fall cycle are due April 15. Sexier than a tax deadline! ⭑
Back next week and ready to be in your business!