Read Online Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin by Calvin Trillin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Calvin Trillin
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Somehow, though, there are still a few people in town who have not heard of Goldberg’s Pizzeria. So wherever he goes, Fats continues to spread the word by handing out small paper Goldberg’s menus that list pizzas with names like “Moody Mushrooms” and “Bouncy Meatballs” and “SMOG” (sausage, mushrooms, onions, and green peppers)—the last a house specialty that Fats describes on the menu as “a gourmet tap dance.” Extracting a menu from Fats does not require strenuous persuasion. “I don’t press them into the hands of accident victims, or anything,” Fats once told me. “But I did hand them out to the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall one night as they came out of the pit after the last show.”
From the start, Fats was looking forward to the opening of “A Nation of Nations” as his first trip to a museum in the role of a benefactor. He is not one of those New Yorkers who never seem to take advantage of the city’s great museums; he long ago decided that museums are ideal places to strike up a conversation with someone who just might turn out to be the future Mrs. Fats Goldberg.
“On Sundays, I schlepp through Central Park and stop for a rest on the steps of the Metropolitan,” he once told me. “But I never go inside. The Metropolitan depresses me.”
“You mean because of all those Egyptian tombs and everything?” I asked.
“No, it’s mostly families,” he said. “For girls, the Whitney’s the ticket. I usually work the Whitney on Sunday afternoon. I used to go in, but now I just work the lobby and save the buck and a half.”
The subject of museums had come up suddenly, as I remember, during a conversation about a business scheme Fats had concocted—a plan to offer a sort of food tour of New York that would take visitors from one ethnic delicacy to another for four or five hours.
“Fats,” I said, “I hate to be the agent of your disillusionment once again, but I think you should know that many people do not customarily eat for four or five hours at a stretch. Many people eat breakfast and wait a few hours before eating lunch. Then they go about their business for a while, and then they eat dinner.”
Fats looked puzzled. When he is not on a diet—that is, when he is in Kansas City—he does not exactly divide his eating into meals, although I did once hear him say, “Then I stopped at Kresge’s for a chili dog on the way to lunch.” For several months, he stopped talking about his ethnic-food tour and concentrated on the edible diet book, which many connoisseurs of Goldberg schemes believe to be his worst idea ever. “Don’t you see it?” he would say. “The whole thing would be edible. Food coloring for ink. I haven’t figured out what we could use for the pages except maybe pressed lettuce, but we’ll find something. Each page would have menus for the three meals of the day, but one of the meals would be the page—so, for instance, you’d just eat that page for breakfast.”
“If you ate the page for breakfast, Fats, how would you know what to eat for lunch and dinner?”
“It’d sell like crazy,” Fats said, ignoring my quibble. “Bloomingdale’s, Neiman-Marcus, Marshall Field’s.
Goldberg’s Edible Diet Book
. I’d autograph them at the cookbook counter at Bloomie’s. The cookbook counter is the best place in the store to meet girls.”
1976
Inspecting the Cork
This supposedly took place at a particularly fancy restaurant somewhere in the United States. The sommelier arrived at the table with the expensive bottle of wine that had just been ordered. He displayed the label, opened the bottle, placed the cork on the table in front of the customer who had done the ordering, and poured an inch or so of wine to be tasted. The customer ignored the wine in his glass, but he ate the cork.
I came across the story in a recent speech about the trials facing someone trying to serve wine to the sort of untutored clods who frequent American restaurants—a
From the start, Fats was looking forward to the opening of “A Nation of Nations” as his first trip to a museum in the role of a benefactor. He is not one of those New Yorkers who never seem to take advantage of the city’s great museums; he long ago decided that museums are ideal places to strike up a conversation with someone who just might turn out to be the future Mrs. Fats Goldberg.
“On Sundays, I schlepp through Central Park and stop for a rest on the steps of the Metropolitan,” he once told me. “But I never go inside. The Metropolitan depresses me.”
“You mean because of all those Egyptian tombs and everything?” I asked.
“No, it’s mostly families,” he said. “For girls, the Whitney’s the ticket. I usually work the Whitney on Sunday afternoon. I used to go in, but now I just work the lobby and save the buck and a half.”
The subject of museums had come up suddenly, as I remember, during a conversation about a business scheme Fats had concocted—a plan to offer a sort of food tour of New York that would take visitors from one ethnic delicacy to another for four or five hours.
“Fats,” I said, “I hate to be the agent of your disillusionment once again, but I think you should know that many people do not customarily eat for four or five hours at a stretch. Many people eat breakfast and wait a few hours before eating lunch. Then they go about their business for a while, and then they eat dinner.”
Fats looked puzzled. When he is not on a diet—that is, when he is in Kansas City—he does not exactly divide his eating into meals, although I did once hear him say, “Then I stopped at Kresge’s for a chili dog on the way to lunch.” For several months, he stopped talking about his ethnic-food tour and concentrated on the edible diet book, which many connoisseurs of Goldberg schemes believe to be his worst idea ever. “Don’t you see it?” he would say. “The whole thing would be edible. Food coloring for ink. I haven’t figured out what we could use for the pages except maybe pressed lettuce, but we’ll find something. Each page would have menus for the three meals of the day, but one of the meals would be the page—so, for instance, you’d just eat that page for breakfast.”
“If you ate the page for breakfast, Fats, how would you know what to eat for lunch and dinner?”
“It’d sell like crazy,” Fats said, ignoring my quibble. “Bloomingdale’s, Neiman-Marcus, Marshall Field’s.
Goldberg’s Edible Diet Book
. I’d autograph them at the cookbook counter at Bloomie’s. The cookbook counter is the best place in the store to meet girls.”
1976
Inspecting the Cork
This supposedly took place at a particularly fancy restaurant somewhere in the United States. The sommelier arrived at the table with the expensive bottle of wine that had just been ordered. He displayed the label, opened the bottle, placed the cork on the table in front of the customer who had done the ordering, and poured an inch or so of wine to be tasted. The customer ignored the wine in his glass, but he ate the cork.
I came across the story in a recent speech about the trials facing someone trying to serve wine to the sort of untutored clods who frequent American restaurants—a
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