We were living in Sydney in this house when the call at 3 am came through.
From my grandfather in Carmel, California, to which he had just retired from Greenwich, Connecticut.
‘No emergency, but it is time you visited us in California.’
We took the long way around via India, Italy, New York, the California Zephyr train and, finally, Carmel. I immediately fell in love with that California.
In that first trip in California there was a lot to fall in love with.
In my grandfather’s big house above the head of Carmel Valley, we had summer luncheons on the terrace. Given the times and their times, I was always with jacket and tie even when just the immediate family. No matter the temperature outside.
That is how it was.
When the day called for lunch at The Lodge at Pebble Beach, I was expected by my less socially secure (then my tycoon grandfather) to wear my Riverview School (Sydney) uniform.
But it was the visits to Big Sur that held my love and fascination.
First were the visits to the Garrapata Trout Farm. I had never seen a trout before, let alone caught as many as we could eat and then grill them over a picnic area fire. A nice change from the formal dining room and Japanese servants in Carmel. And exciting enough that my loyalty to those trout ended up in a 120 Truite au Bleu for Alice Waters’ favorite event with one of my menus at Chez Panisse, the Champagne Dinner in November 1973.
Boudin de Lapin à la sainte-menehould
White sausage of rabbit breaded and grilled
Truites au bleu au champagne
Fresh trout poached in champagne
La brioche de ris de veau au champagne
Sweetbreads in a brioche pastry with a champagne sauce
La Salade verte
Field greens salad
Plat du fromages de Champagne
Special cheeses of Champagne
Sorbets de Poire et de Cassis
We served those Big Sur trout again at The Santa Fe Bar & Grill and then again at Stars for New Year’s Eve in 1984, its opening year.
Also imprinted on my soul from those years in the 1950’s in Big Sur were the afternoons at Nepenthe. The fog rolling in from the golden hills below as we sat outside on the terrace wrapped in blankets in front of the fire eating hamburgers.
When my grandfather died while I was still in the Harvard Graduate School of Design. I took a break from the student revolution and went to help my grandmother in Carmel to regroup.
My standing invitation to visit the famous sculptor, Emile Norman, and his lover Brooks in their (I had heard from friends) kingdom high up on the ridge above Highway 1, could finally be consummated. As it could not while my grandfather was alive.
Coming out was out of the question.
But now I jumped in my grandmother’s Cadillac, and headed south to Big Sur. Somehow I got that enormous car up the unpaved 5-mile dusty-filled driveway and landed up at lunchtime in front of their house. I walked up the ramp to the front door and knocked. It slid open to present Emile dressed only in a towel wrapped around his extensive waist.
“Hello, and you are just in time. We are not dressed and you can undress or stay as you are. Whichever makes you the most comfortable.”
After a magnum of 1961 Pommard from Carmel’s Monterrey Market, it was my first naked lunch.
Thirty years later I was living on the original Big Sur family property, in the old Pfeiffer house on Highway One while working as chef at Big Sur’s Ventana Inn.
I had just sold my Chez Panisse shares in 1978, and moved to the south of France to work with Richard Olney on the new Time Life series The Good Cook.
While there I received a letter.
“DEAR JEREMIAH TOWER” is how my second letter of employment read. “Your salary will be $22,000 gross... and the starting date will be July 15, 1977.”
Actually, I didn’t start until a few months later, because the Ventana Inn in Big Sur was in a mess—had I known how much, I would not have taken the job. But in that halcyon beginning, both the general manager, Lee Ivey, and I thought that a great American restaurant in the middle of several hundred California coastal acres—a wilderness of frozen vegetables and chef’s salads—would bring us national attention and fill up the Inn.
I set out to write the Great American Menu.
It seemed a good chance to reinvigorate my vision of what new American cooking was all about. One Richard’s stationary I wrote my ideas of what the Ventana menu could be.
The next thing I knew was that the GM loved the menus and I had the job as chef. And moved to Big Sur.
Just as James Beard has made Chez Panisse famous across America with his nationally syndicated column saying Panisse was one of his favorite restaurants in the United States, it seemed obvious to call him. And arrange a James Beard dinner at Ventana so he would write about it. All the national press would have to pay attention.
I invited all the non-chef major players in the California food world including Alice Waters.
The goats of Lafler Canyon just down the road from Ventana, provided the milk for the cheeses, and “The entrance of the mandarins” was in honor of one of the guests, the very fabulous Cecilia Chiang, mentor and friend, and owner of the Mandarin Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. The entrance was an orange tree in a planter big enough to hold the tree and small enough to wheel into the dining room to the music of the overture of Coppélia. On the tree were a mandarin orange each, filled with mandarin ice, and hanging by gold wire from the branches. A waiter cut each one, removed the wire, and placed each mandarin in front of each guest.
I joined the guests, including Jim and Alice, at the table after the dinner. Exhausted and happy. Alice’s comment was “what was it about those Escoffier eyes” she saw I had.
And now, a bit more than 30 years after all that, I am cooking at the Big Sur Food & Wine festival in 2023. The goats may be gone, but there is still Chappellet and Chalone, and the Perrier-Jouet replaced by Laurent Perrier.
Blue Trout in Pink Champagne
Serves 4
4 eight-ounce live trout
¾ gallon vegetable broth
I cup clarified butter
1/2 bottle pink champagne, at room temperature
I cup savory (shellfish) sabayon
Prepare the trout: Being very careful to handle the trout as little as possible so that the protective slime (the blue when it is cooked) is not rubbed off, hit it over the head, put your fingers into the gill opening, wrap a finger around the esophagus, and pull out the entire intestinal tract along with the gills. You will get really good at this after the fiftieth trout, so just do your best with the first four.
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer. The moment you have cleaned the trout, put them in the hot broth and cook for 8 minutes.
Have ready a heated rimmed 2-inch-deep platter that will just hold the trout and melted butter. Stand the fish up on their bellies on the platter in a swimming position and pour the butter over each trout. Take the platters to the table, open the champagne, and pour the pink wine over the trout.
Serve the trout with the champagne butter scooped over them. Each person draws back the skin, then spoons some sabayon on each bite of trout.
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Yes, a great evening. Was the Cristal really that chep - wow!
Thank you, Kelly, and yes, that is it exactly!