Wallflower at the Orgy Read Online Free

study cooking. On his return—and after a brief fling bartending—he began to write for
Gourmet
magazine and work for Ann Seranne’s public-relations firm, handlingsuch products as the Waring Blender and Fluffo the Golden Shortening. In 1957 he was hired by the
Times
, and he unabashedly admits that his job has been a dream come true. He loves it, almost as much as he loves eating, though not nearly as much as he loves cooking.
    Claiborne is happiest in his Techbuilt house in Springs, East Hampton, which overlooks an herb garden, an oversized swimming pool, and Gardiner’s Bay. There, he, his next-door neighbor Pierre Franey—whom he calls “my arm and my dear friend”—and a number of other chefs go fishing, swap recipes, and whip up meals for fifty guests at a time. The menus are logged into a small leatherbound notebook in which Claiborne records every meal he eats throughout the year. During the winter, Claiborne lives in Greenwich Village. His breakfasts often consist of Sara Lee frozen croissants. His other daily meals are taken in restaurants, and he discusses them as if he were serving penance. “That,” he says firmly, “is the thing I like least about my job.”
    Six years ago Claiborne began visiting New York restaurants incognito and reviewing them on a star system in the Friday
Times;
since that time, he has become the most envied, admired, and cursed man in the food world. Restaurant owners decry his Francophilia and can barely control their tempers while discussing his prejudice against large-management corporations and in favor of tiny, ethnic restaurants. His nit-picking constantly irritates. Among some of the more famous nits: his censure of a Pavillon waiter who allowed his pencil to peek out; his disapproval of the salt and pepper shakers at L’Étoile, and this remark about Lutèce: “One could wish that the owner, Monsieur Surmain, would dress in a more reserved and elegant style to better match his surroundings.”
    Surmain, a debonair man who wears stylish striped shirts, sputters when Claiborne’s name is mentioned. “He said in a restaurant of this sort I should wear a tuxedo,” said Surmain. “What a bitchy thing. He wants me to act like a headwaiter.”
    The slings and arrows of outrage fly at Claiborne—and not only from restaurateurs. Carping about Craig is practically a parlor game in the food world. Everything he writes is pored over for its true significance. It is suggested, for example, that the reason Craig criticized proprietor Stuart Levin’s clothes in his recent review of Le Pavillon had to do with the fact that Levin fawned over him during his two visits to the restaurant. It is suggested that the reason Craig praised the clothes of Charles Masson of Grenouille in the same review had to do with the fact that Masson ignores Craig entirely too much. It is suggested that Craig is not a nice person; and a story is offered to support the thesis, all about the time he reviewed a new restaurant owned by a friend after the friend begged him to wait a few weeks. His criticisms, it is said, drove the friend to drink.
    But the fact of the matter is that Craig Claiborne does what he does better than anyone else. He is a delight to read. And the very things that make him superb as a food critic—his integrity and his utter incorruptibility—are what make his colleagues loathe him.
    “Everyone thinks about Craig too much,” says cookbook author and consultant Mimi Sheraton. “The truth is that he is his own man and there is no way to be a friend of his. He is the only writer who is really honest. Whether or not he’s reliable, whether or not you like him, he is honest. I know
Cue
isn’t—I used to write for them.
Gourmet
isn’t. And Michael Field is just writing for Craig Claiborne.”
    Whenever members of the Food Establishment tire of discussing Craig they move on to discuss Craig’s feuds—though in all fairness, it must be said that Claiborne is usually the less