CUISINE POITRINE

AROUND THE FAIR

"Waiter, there's a pastie in my soup!" Moira Hodgson

DINING WITH THE NAVEL ACADEMY; UBIQUITOUS OUT ON A TOOT; AND EXPORTING THE SOUTH BRONX SOUND

The ballet ad in the paper showed a woman in a leotard, posing on one toe, with her arm behind her head. “Sold Out!” it said underneath. Opposite was a full-page picture of a woman in a similar position—but she was naked except for white ostrich plumes and rhinestones. “Folies de Paris in New York! Fabulous French revue! Midnight romance, no cover with dinner, superb French and Continental cuisine...”

“My parents used to go to those sorts of places in Berlin,” I said. “They even went to one where women rode naked around a ring standing on horseback. I always wondered what it would be like to see that.”

“I suppose it depends where you’re sitting,” said Philip.

“If you’re going to talk like that, I’m not going.”

But we went anyway. We invited Cynthia and John, and when we called to make a reservation, a Greek voice told us there were two sittings, 7:30 and 10:30.

"It sounds like an ocean liner,” Philip said. “Except that on a ship the early sitting is for children. Let’s meet for a drink First and go to the late show.”

When we arrived, the entrance was crowded with people on their way out. Inside, there was a large beigecarpeted room done up like the lounge for a salesmen’s convention. Padded metal office chairs were placed at intervals around the room, and over the bar an enormous chandelier spread its layers of crystal like ruffles on a giant crinoline. The windows to the street had been blocked over and hung with flounced boudoir curtains. Through the ceiling we could make out the strains of belly-dancing music.

“I feel we should have made the reservation in the name of Al Capone or Juan Peron.”

“Or Ariel Sharon,” said Philip, as we walked past the bar into the dining room. Each table had a fringed bedside lamp in the center with a real candle underneath. Hanging in front of the stage was another boudoir curtain, and everywhere in the background, “easy listenin’ ” disco music.

We were greeted by a waiter in a shiny black dinner jacket and blue ruffled wash-and-wear dress shirt. His black toupee, also wash-and-wear, perched on the top of his head like a knitted beret. A red apple in his buttonhole subtly complemented the color of his natty red handkerchief.

When he seated us and offered us a drink, Philip asked him for the wine list. The list had a quote from Omar Khayyam on its opening page—always a good sign. The same lines figured in a cocktail party my mother and I once went to in the Time & Life building. We were rather drunk on martinis. It was some sort of art show, and we were standing in front of Magritte’s painting of the man in the bowler hat with the loaf of bread coming out of his back. A tall man stood next to us. His lapel, which was at eye level, said, “Hello, my name is Bud Redpath.” My mother directed his attention to the painting.

“‘A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread— and Thou,’” she proclaimed. He took one look at us and ran.

“Est-ce qu'il y a un bon vin qui n'est pas trop cherF' asked Philip, leafing past the triple figures to the low end of the Italian wines in the thick leather-bound volume.

“Tood est bon. Rien de mauvais, ” the waiter replied in a voice that sounded like Henry Kissinger addressing a French embassy official.

Philip chose a cheap, off-year Barolo. The waiter, seeing his tip diminish with the choice of the wine, nodded sulkily.

He returned with the wine and menus. “A complete five-course dinner for $40,” said Philip. “That’s $8 a course. Not bad.”

“But everything’s extra,” complained Cynthia.

My salmon (extra $5.50) arrived on a plate as cold as a Norwegian fjord. It must have been in the refrigerator for days. Similarly, John’s prosciutto (extra $2.50). Cynthia’s artichauts vinaigrette were “canned, then frozen and thawed,” she said. “But then, they weren’t extra.”

Philip’s snails (extra $5), however, had not passed untouched from can to casserole. “They taste something like the fat that congeals on the plate after you’ve had a grilled hamburger,” he remarked, putting on his glasses to look at them.

“There’s nothig rog wid the snails,” said Kissinger, dropping the French. “Bud if you wand somethig elze, dry the smogged salmon.” Philip acquiesced—and had to pay $5.50 extra.

“I’d like a salad, but they’re extra too,” said Cynthia. Endive salad, extra $3.50. Mozzarella and tomatoes, extra $5.50. But Kissinger brought us a “house salad” we had not ordered— iceberg, Bibb, and pale pink tomato wedge with Green Goddess dressing.

“I love that name,” said Cynthia. “It reminds me of those wonderful names for lipsticks like Fire and Ice and Mojave Desert Pink.”

“The dressing tastes more like moisturizer than lipstick,” I said, looking around the room to see whether the other tables were enjoying the same. But then I saw that we were the only people eating. The other people, mostly young out-of-towners or Japanese businessmen, were nursing pina coladas or glasses of Scotch. “I think they must know something we don’t.”

For the main course we were served rubber lobster tails (extra $10), Styrofoam lamb chops (extra $8), neoprene steak au poivre (extra $9), and a New York steak (extra $8.50) that, although rare, disintegrated into strings when sliced. We all got Swiss extract gravy and steam-table carrots and string beans.

The waiter brought us another bottle of wine. The cork came out with barely a twist of the corkscrew, and the wine tasted like warm grape juice mixed with ammonia and soap. Philip wanted to send the bottle back. But Kissinger shook his head. “The last boddle was good.”

“Yes, but this one is not. Taste it yourself.” Philip handed him the glass.

The waiter brushed it aside. “If you don’t wand this one, you must order another kind,” he said, as if talking to half-wits.

For dessert there was chocolate mousse cake (extra $2.50), hot apple pie a la mode (extra $2.50), creme caramel, and ice cream (“choggolate or vanilla”).

The fifth course was coffee— espresso (extra $1), cappuccino (extra $2), or Irish coffee, which was extra $4.50.

Cynthia had the house coffee. Philip asked to taste it. "It’s a special house recipe,” he said. "You wash the pot out with detergent, but you don’t rinse it. Add cold water and drip through coffee grounds. Turn up heat, bring to rolling boil for twenty minutes. Off heat, half fill cup. Top up with cold water and serve.”

At this moment, the lights dim. “Saysee bong! Saysee bong!” The show has started. On come the girls in rhinestone G-strings, ostrich feathers, and dead-canary hair. Their eyelashes are like sets of shoe brushes. There are cries of excitement from the girls, but not from the audience, which watches impassively. A singer in a headpiece that looks like a sequined football helmet grabs the mike. She begins to sing “Ay, La Moor.”

John begins to laugh. “Shut up!” hisses Cynthia, who is studying the women intently. The male dancers are in white ruffled shirts, toreador jackets, and white polyester bell-bottoms. The singer tackles “Say Four Me Da Blah.”

“I only like two kinds of men, domestic and foreign,” she says, and pouts like a baby who sees the approach of an oncoming bottle.

The music turns Wild West, and the dancers come back in white chaps with nothing but G-strings underneath. The cowboy number gives way to a circus number, and after that a gangster-and-moll number. After a while it all seems the same.

“They aren’t even singing, they’re mouthing the lines!” exclaims Cynthia. “Everything is taped!”

For light relief a red-haired juggler catches billiard balls in nets around his waist, and a magician from Athens pulls dyed pigeons out of the air and makes them disappear.

“They’ve taken them off for pigeon moutarde,” says John.

“Enough!” whispers Cynthia.

When the last pigeon vanishes, the curtain comes down.

Then the lights went up, and there was polite applause.

Kissinger returned with the bill. “You can go upstairs for belly dancing until four A.M.,” he said.

“My belly’s dancing already,” I said. “Let’s go out for a hamburger.”