May 14, 2008

Michael Dashkin, whose photos often appear on this site concludes his tour through old restaurant guides of New York by taking us to the modern (so-to-speak) era of 1958-70. Earlier installments examined the genre's genesis in the 1920s and '30s, until post-war affluence allowed everyday New Yorkers to experience the gastronomic diversity of the city:

By the time we get to Danton Walker’s Guide to New York Nitelife (1958), most of the basic contours of the New York City restaurant guide book are in place (the stop to pause and remember the old time places that have faded from the scene, the ritzy uptown establishments and their continental cuisine, the tour of Greenwich Village bohemia, the after-theater places, the supper clubs, etc.).

It would take the wild-and-crazy 1970s to shake up this basic structure, with that era’s “insiders’ guides to Chinese Restaurants” and “cheapskates’ guides” to everything.

Fittingly, Walker has a nice sense of history. He offers an informative brief on the speakeasies of the Prohibition era with an aside on the speakeasy card (a pseudo-membership card providing the bearer with the illegal establishment’s address and “access privileges”). Listed are the names and addresses of speakeasies for those interested in hunting down their former locations – some can still be found although many of the buildings were swept away in midtown redevelopment in the 1960s and ‘70s). Here, also, is an engaging mini-essay on Max Gordon and the club he founded – The Village Vanguard.

I especially enjoyed Walker’s review of Teddy’s restaurant, once located at 219 West Broadway, a neighborhood that twenty years in the future, would come to be called Tribeca but at the time of writing was unknown territory, without even a name:

Teddy’s isn’t exactly in the Village nor of it. In the words of its owner, it lies “halfway between Washington Square and Wall Street,” and is one of the hardest places to get to in New York…It takes a seeing-eye taxi driver to find 219 West Broadway…

Teddy’s would survive into the 1970s and beyond. YouTube makes available a television commercial they broadcast during that decade:

The date of publication of Walker’s guide book doesn’t seem that far away, but few of the restaurants he reviewed remain in business today. It’s reflective of the fact that in reality few establishments survive even one-third the lifespan of the average person, and many not even that long.

* * *

Our final guide book was published in 1971 and it’s a dyspeptic collection of reviews from the business publication Forbes. It’s the dining guide equivalent of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (the classic film that portrayed a subway hijacking in dysfunctional and decaying New York), as the Forbes crew fights for survival in the eateries of the 1970s.

Needless to say, Forbes was not at the forefront of the era’s counterculture. And the reviews show it, evincing squeamishness over waiters with long hair and brightly-patterned shirts, the hot-and-heavy singles’ scene and the occasional restaurant located above a Times Square porn shop.

Where the earlier restaurants guides were polite, even genteel, by the time this guide was published these critics were, on a good day, at least ruffled, and often downright pissed-off. It’s hard to believe that so much had gone wrong and so quickly from the era when Danton Walker’s volume was published (just a dozen years previously), but it appears to have.

Do you remember the charming Japanese restaurant Miyako we first encountered in 1925? By 1971 here’s what Forbes was writing about it:

You can get dishes like sashimi…but a “you won’t like it” from the waiter greeted another order of a less than familiar dish. And if you hesitate at all before ordering, your waiter or waitress may quickly suggest the special dinners or lunches…In other words, you are encouraged to cop out at the slightest hurdle.

Blood pressure medicine, anyone?

Now, these Forbes eaters weren’t always in a bad mood. They recognized that, even though their city had changed, good food could endure. I really enjoyed the description, and scene-setting, of Ceylon India Inn on West 49th Street:

Forty-Ninth Street was more sedate in those days – the World Theater down the block was showing “Open City” instead of “Sexual Practices in Sweden,” and there was a restaurant downstairs instead of topless go-go dancers. But now, as then, Ceylon India offers some of the best Indian food in the city.

Unfortunately, because the Forbes guide was written for business people, it doesn’t include any neighborhood places on the Lower East Side or Chinatown. The closest we get to the East Village is Luchow’s on East 14th Street. It takes a pretty good beating from the Forbes gang:

Luck failed completely on another visit. Braised leg of Canadian hare was dry and unappetizing. So was just about everything else.

* * *

Just as Mackall did with his book published in the late 1940s, the Forbes guide includes a glossary. Here, though, Al Jaffee of Mad magazine could have written the definitions:

Leisurely Dining: Our waitresses have bunions and take their own sweet time

Candlelight Dining: Bring a flashlight if you’re the kind who likes to check figures on the bill

Known from Coast-to-Coast: Our Uncle Julius lives in Los Angeles and we have a brother in New York

The true misfortune that the Forbes’ critics suffered was that their expectations were shaped by guidebooks of the 1940s or ‘50s even as they were stepping out into the restaurant world of 1971. It would take diners and reviewers until about 1975 to catch up with the decade.
--Michael Dashkin