-"Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York" (North Point Press. 368 pages. $30), by William Grimes: New York's role as a fancy food capital began in the early 1800s as a pastry shop near the foot of Manhattan, run by two brothers — Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico from Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
Half a century later, New York had four Delmonico restaurants with a staff of 400. They had invented lobster Newburgh and been hailed by The New York Times as "perfection in gastronomy." Chef Charles Ranhofer kept Delmonico's at the top for 35 years: Lobster Newburgh and baked Alaska were among hundreds of dishes associated with his name.
"In 1873," the book says, "an importer named Edward Luckmeyer broke the taste barrier with a $10,000 dinner."
That would be close to $200,000 in 2009 dollars — almost a $3,000-a-plate meal.
"Seventy-five guests sat at an oval table nearly as large as the dining room. At the center of the table was a 30-foot lake surrounded by an artificial landscape featuring waterfalls, streams and grassy hillocks planted with elaborate floral beds. As the guests ate, white swans — on loan from Prospect Park in Brooklyn — paddled across the lake."
Competition from a great variety of ethnic restaurants, soda fountains, cafeterias, Automats, cafes and establishments where one could eat off the enlarged and extended arm of a chair made it possible to get a nourishing meal for a good deal less. Bernarr Macfadden, publisher of the prosperous tabloid Evening Graphic and an enthusiast for "vital foods," opened five penny restaurants in a single year.
The menu listed over a dozen items from split pea soup to "sugar for coffee" at 1 cent each; beef stew with vegetable was 5 cents and "beef meat cakes" two for a nickel.
A half century after that, the last Delmonico's shut its doors, a victim of Prohibition and new styles of dining. "Appetite City," a history of New York food, quotes critic Edward Wilson as describing the "For Rent" sign on the building as marking the end of an era.
Author William Grimes, the Times former food critic, cites a couple of reasons why the restaurant failed: "In 1923, the mighty Delmonico's served its last meal. In a bow to new customs, it had allowed dancing. It even gave tea dances on the upper floors."
Tea dances and classic French cuisine just didn't rhyme. Prohibition just made things worse. Julian Street, a popular novelist, said that when lobster Newburgh was made without sherry it tasted like "superior grade newspaper."
Grimes' culinary history intensively covers eating and eateries in the most recent half of the city's 400-year existence. One of the book's scores of curious illustrations shows a coffee house called the Gentlemen's and Exchange. The caption says that before there were restaurants, such houses served New Yorkers "rudimentary meals."
Another coffee house took a newspaper ad offering steak, chops, chicken and oysters. It suggested that families send servants to pick up cooked items.
"This was, in effect, takeout food, a category which would eventually become one of the city's most distinctive cultural landmarks," Grimes writes.
