Dishing It Up in the Times

The slight man with the crinkled, smiling eyes is not the sort of celebrity for whom headwaiters snap to attention. When he walks into a Manhattan restaurant, hardly anyone notices. But he notices everything. Is the decor adequate? Does the headwaiter seem anxious to get on to someone else? Is there any single offering out of the ordinary on the menu? Is the wine overpriced? Is the busboy attentive to such details as discarded swizzle sticks and filled ashtrays? Are the service plates set just right? Then, having eaten and paid for his meal, Craig Claiborne, food and restaurant editor of the New York Times, goes on his way, full of sharp impressions.

Within a few days, the restaurant staff may wish it had made more of an effort. For Claiborne can dish out as good as he gets--or as bad. And when he says good, it is very, very good for the restaurant's business. When he says bad, it can be horrid. "Our children depend on this restaurant for their future," complained one hard-hit owner in a letter to the editor.

At 45, Craig Claiborne is regarded by many as New York's most important cuisine critic. After eight years on the job, he has more to say to more people than any other food columnist in the U.S. He turns out three columns a week, plus occasional Sunday-magazine pieces, is now updating his guide to New York restaurants, has edited the 717-page New York Times Cook Book, and is writing three more books, one of which will be a guide to the American regional kitchen.

To get material, Claiborne has trekked all across the country. Last month he got as far as Alaska, where he gamely tried boiled whale--a dish on which he delicately neglected to pass gustatory judgment.

Begging for Status. Born in Mississippi, where his mother ran a boardinghouse, Claiborne decided early in life that boardinghouse reach was not his preferred style of eating. After a hitch doing public-relations work for Joe Kennedy's Merchandise Mart in Chicago and a tour of duty with the Navy during the Korean War, he enrolled for a year at the Swiss Hotelkeepers' Association school in Lausanne. It is, he insists, the best such school in the world, and he is proud of the fact that he finished eighth in a class of 60 in cooking, sixth in table service ("I'm a bit rusty, but I could still outdo almost every New York waiter").

Shortly after graduation, the trained hotelkeeper decided to turn critic. He heard that Jane Nickerson, the woman who was then the Times food editor, was about to retire. "Don't you think it's time for the paper to hire a man?" he asked bluntly. The paper agreed, and made Claiborne the first man ever to hold the job.*

The only thing that the trim, 155-lb. bachelor enjoys more than his job is his bayside home in East Hampton, L.I. There, decked out in an ankle-length apron, he putters happily around his professionally equipped kitchen. A precise and sparing eater himself, Claiborne hates and rarely uses marzipan, marshmallows or iceberg lettuce, serves rigidly small portions to a constant stream of guests who range from curious neighbors to the giants of the profession.

One cookout this summer included White House Chef Rene Verdon, former Colony Chef Jean Vergnes, former Le Pavilion Chef Pierre Franey, La Caravelle Chef Roger Fessaguet, and Jacques Pepin, former chef to Charles de Gaulle. On the beach, the fivesome whipped up a little barbecue that featured poached striped bass, grilled squabs and lobster farci, plus a bluefish au vin blanc. Inevitably, the recipes used found their way into his column.

Claiborne's flair for entertaining also led him to write a regular feature on the country's outstanding hosts and hostesses. It is already so widely read that one woman begged to be included because "to be on the Times's food page is the newest status symbol in New York." She didn't make it.

Gross, Overcooked, Smoky. His lightly edited copy, which he clicks off in a half-hour per column, is primarily for those who make haute cuisine a hobby. The weekly thumbnail sketches he does on three restaurants are a guide for everyone who likes to eat well when they are out on the town. To keep up to date, Claiborne often tries two different places a day. He awards up to four stars, does not even deign to write about a restaurant "if there is more than 50% wrong with it."

He has long since concluded that New York is a vastly disappointing restaurant town, and the higher a restaurant's reputation the more demanding he seems to be. Said he of Voisin this year: "The egg en gelee was gross, the shrimp marseillaise was overcooked, although in an excellent spiced sauce, and the grilled sweetbreads Rose Marie tasted unpleasantly of smoke." The Colony, he says, can be worse. Best in the city, he insists, is Henri Soule's Le Pavilion, followed by Joe Kennedy's favorite, La Caravelle. But the man from the Times has a taste that is nothing if not eclectic. He is always on the lookout for a good bowl of chili or a tasty batch of delicatessen chopped liver. And, for his money, the Chock Full O' Nuts sandwich chain rates high indeed--although he reports sadly that during the past two years its frankfurters have gone into a decline.

* A rarity that prevails throughout the U.S. press. Of 700 newspaper food editors, fewer than half a dozen are men.

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