AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER and THE CHEZ PANISSE BIRTH OF CALIFORNIA CUISINE

I have been obsessed with Escoffier since I was sixteen.

At King’s College School in London, my drama teacher gave me Auguste Escoffier’s cookbook Ma Cuisine for having played Henry, in Shakespeare’s Henry V.

A curious choice, I thought. But I read it every night under the bed covers with a flashlight after lights out.

And was entranced.

Later, in Harvard College and cooking for friends, I graduated from Ma Cuisine to Escoffier’s masterpiece Le Guide Culinaire. I worked through it enough so that as a senior at Harvard when I moved out of Adams House to a little house in Cambridge, the first dinner I gave was pure Escoffier.

Dinner for Friends, Cambridge, 1965

Caviar Blinis

Frozen Zubrovka

Consommé Madrilène

Salmon en gelee aux truffles

Pouilly-Fume 1962

Filet de Boeuf perigourdine

Châteauneuf-du-Pape 1957

Peches Rose-Cheri

Asti Spumante

Coffee

Sercial Madeira 1884

And continued to collect cookbooks and, out of them, cook for friends. Here with my best friend, the poet Michael Palmer.

One afternoon in February 1970, I had just returned from the Harvard Graduate Design School to my house in Somerville and I was told by my dancer house-guest that ballet stars Margot Fonteyn and Richard Cragun were coming to dinner at my house.

In 2 hours.