John McPhee's "A Philosopher in the Kitchen"

December 27, 2024 6:16 AM

In a great restaurant of Europe, the team in the kitchen will be led by the gros bonnet, and under him a saucier, an entremettier, a potagiste, a rôtisseur, a grillardin, a friturier, a garde-manger, and any number of commis running around with important missions, urgent things to do. Here - with Anne excepted, as la pátissière-en-chef - this one man is in himself the entire brigade de cuisine. - John McPhee, ”A Philosopher in the Kitchen" (1979)

If you want to find out who the chef was and what happened after this was published, you can read this.

posted by Lemkin (25 comments total)

The piece is collected in McPhee’s Giving Good Weight under the title “Brigade de Cuisine”.
posted by Lemkin at 6:27 AM on December 27

Before I read this I want to state my firm belief that a potagiste is the person in charge of potatoes, and I will not be moved from this.
posted by mittens at 6:43 AM on December 27 [7 favorites]

a potagiste is the person in charge of potatoes

I thought a potagiste was a ghost that breaks things.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:04 AM on December 27 [8 favorites]

Were these writers paid by the word? As an editor, my hand is itching for a red pen.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 7:10 AM on December 27

my hand is itching for a red pen

In fairness, I do skip over the Latvia stuff.

But telling McPhee “too many words” is in the neighborhood of telling Mozart “too many notes”.
posted by Lemkin at 7:23 AM on December 27 [14 favorites]

Also: attention spans were longer 40 years ago.

The New Yorker in particular was (in)famous for letting its article writers go to town.
posted by Lemkin at 7:26 AM on December 27

McPhee talks about the editing process in a piece called Omission: 'Robert Bingham was my editor for sixteen years. William Shawn, after editing my first two pieces himself, turned me over to Bingham very soon after Bingham came to The New Yorker from The Reporter, where he had been the managing editor. I was a commuter, and worked more at home than at the magazine. I had not met, seen, or even heard of Bingham when Shawn gave him the manuscript of a forty-thousand-word piece of mine called “Oranges.”'
posted by mittens at 7:27 AM on December 27 [6 favorites]

To be fair, Mozart never met a note he wouldn’t use if he could get away with it …
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:42 AM on December 27

I’ve heard of John McPhee but I don’t know that I’ve ever read any of his work. He definitely uses more words than my attention span can handle but wow, he’s good.

On the upper lip, an aggressive mustache was concentrated like a grenade. The man was almost browless, his neck was too thick to permit a double chin, and his tiny black eyes—perhaps by the impertinence of the photographer—were opened wide.
posted by ashbury at 7:48 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

I love John McPhee. Oranges and Annals of the Former World are two of my all time favorite reads.
posted by HumanComplex at 7:51 AM on December 27 [5 favorites]

John McPhee is a legend, deservedly so. I've learned so much from him!

Thirty years ago, I road my bike from Newport, OR to the Bay Area, and on the last day I sat down with a copy of The Control of Nature and read it at a campground in Marin County while I waited for my BIL to pick me up. I haven't reread the book since, but I still have my copy, which I bought in that great bookstore in Point Reyes Station.
posted by suelac at 8:06 AM on December 27 [5 favorites]

The piece on the Mississippi in The Control of Nature is even more timely now than it was then.
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:09 AM on December 27 [4 favorites]

I met McPhee about 10 years ago at a social event. After some embarrassing fanboy blather about him, I salvaged the encounter by asking about Andy Chase, a central character in "Looking for A Ship," which is both a travel piece about a voyage along the coast of South America, and a reflection on the dwindling merchant marine economy.

McPhee visibly brightened and told me that Chase was now an instructor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Seems like he had formed quite an attachment to the guy during his research and writing, and they had stayed in touch over the intervening two decades or so.

"The Control of Nature" is a great intro to McPhee, if you're looking for one. Four relatively shorter essays, varied topics, and the ones on Iceland and the Mississippi in particular are, as tofu_crouton said, still relevant.

Also (and I think I've told this story before too): McPhee was doing a talk in our area, and a newspaper colleague of mine wrote a profile of him as an advance feature on the talk. This co-worker was a hell of a good writer, and almost as good as he thought he was, so after it was published, he sent it to McPhee for a critique.

McPhee wrote a short note back, closing with "a few bits of lint." Coming from McPhee, who rarely if ever wastes a word, my friend took that as high praise.
posted by martin q blank at 8:52 AM on December 27 [3 favorites]

Can anyone link to a free version? The New Yorker says I can only read the first few paragraphs.
posted by Vatnesine at 9:09 AM on December 27

I have a personal anecdote about this article and the places where Otto/Alan Lieb cooked.

I'm a food writer--first as a hobby, then as a vocation. Back in 2008 or so, I bought a little cabin in New York, directly across the Delaware River from Shohola, PA. During my first two years there, I had a handyman from the PA side who told me first about the article, and then showered me with stories about "all the rude New Yorkers who came up, looking for that restaurant."

I managed to find an original copy of McPhee's piece on microfiche (!) and read it, then went in search of Otto/Alan and his former restaurants, as well as any places that aspired to take their place. Apparently, the Red Fox Inn (the original restaurant McPhee wrote about) burned down about 35 years ago, so that was out.

Moving on to Otto/Alan's second restaurant, I visited the only restaurant in Shohola, the Rohman Pub. This was, I believe, the spot Mimi Sheraton panned in her follow-up. I don't know how it was in 1979, but in the late-aughts, it was a dive serving Sysco food. Looking at their menu today, it seems as if nothing has changed.

What I did find along the way, however, was a tiny group of chefs, all of whom had been lured to the Upper Delaware Valley (just outside of the Poconos) by the legendary Otto/Alan--some directly, some indirectly, through family or real estate agents who knew how to spin a compelling tale about the adventure of cooking out in a beautiful, yet rural part of the Tri-State region.

The best of the bunch was Henning Nordanger, a Norwegian chef who opened Henning's Local in Cochecton, NY--a modern-American bistro with a few strategic Scandinavian twists, including an unfailing commitment to serving local trout from the Beaverkill Trout Hatchery. Nordanger closed the restaurant last year, but he and his partner, Julia, now run Julia's Local, a more Nordic restaurant in Round Top, NY. They still serve trout from Beaverkill. You should go.
posted by yellowcandy at 9:14 AM on December 27 [8 favorites]

I knew the name of the author but never read anything from him prior to this. It was entertaining enough to immerse me while waiting for a flight in a busy airport.
posted by PussKillian at 10:35 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

What I wonder is, when he writes…

To drink the pond or to share with the geese the scraps of Otto’s profession, raccoons appear, and skunks, opossums—every creature of the woods, including one whose name would blow all this away.

… is that a mountain lion?
posted by Lemkin at 11:08 AM on December 27

On the upper lip, an aggressive mustache was concentrated like a grenade. The man was almost browless, his neck was too thick to permit a double chin, and his tiny black eyes—perhaps by the impertinence of the photographer—were opened wide.

That, I believe is August Sander’s Pastrycook (1928).
posted by Lemkin at 11:13 AM on December 27

archive link
posted by mumimor at 12:01 PM on December 27 [2 favorites]

is that a mountain lion?

I had trouble with this! Is it a predator who blows away the scene of the peaceful pond, or something more like rats, whose presence makes the restaurant seem unclean and unwholesome? Lord knows there are always plenty of rats everywhere, even in the woods.
posted by mittens at 12:03 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Like a full-bodied, slightly fruity entrée washed down with a highly acidic wine, McPhee's love letter to Otto should be paired with Mimi Sheraton's hatchet job in the New York Times:

The truly awful first course was composed of slices of briny, pale‐yellow artichoke bottoms of the type usually canned, topped by large chewy gray snails that tasted dank and musty. Covered with a heavy brown sauce that formed a film instantly, the dish bordered on the inedible.

Mimi Sheraton, interviewed in 2015: 'The only three people in the world who thought McPhee’s piece was bullshit were me, Craig Claiborne and Frank Prial. We thought, This chef doesn’t sound so good. This is a ridiculous story .. And we went to this place and it was awful! The food was awful.'
posted by verstegan at 12:54 PM on December 27 [2 favorites]

McPhee is such a wonderful writer— I can see everything he describes very clearly. Thank goodness he had editors who understood!
posted by Ideefixe at 1:43 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this.
IMO, it's not so much about the food as it is a deeply empathic portrait of two refugees/immigrants with troubled pasts and precarious futures. So Mimi Sheraton was wrong, even though she was probably right about the quality of the food.
Strangely, there is a similar restaurant close to where I live. The owner is not an immigrant, but he is a guy with a "colorful" international background and he serves insane meals in a little wonky hut far away from all the fancy places. I don't think he'll ever get a Michelin star or any critical acclaim because even though he uses the best ingredients and treats them very well, there is something off about the whole thing. But everyone here loves him and his food.
posted by mumimor at 1:53 PM on December 27 [2 favorites]

Mimi Sheraton, interviewed in 2015: 'The only three people in the world who thought McPhee’s piece was bullshit were me, Craig Claiborne and Frank Prial

She literally doxxed someone who had made a point of wishing to remain anonymous, with the express intent of injuring his livelihood, without even the excuse of his restaurant being in her field of coverage.

I have nothing nice to say about Mimi Sheraton.
posted by Lemkin at 2:10 PM on December 27 [4 favorites]

I enjoyed reading this. But. I feel McPhee betrayed Otto's friendship. It was inevitable that he would be unmasked, and Sheraton was reacting to McPhee's portayal of Otto - she herself says she would never have gone out there otherwise. There is a comment on the blog post linked second here which suggests that the impact of the article was profound and unwelcome.

Of course, perhaps Otto was a willing partner and looked forward to the fun that would eventuate. But somehow I doubt it.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:19 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]