Free Eating by Jason Epstein

Peace.
Edmund Wilson, the distinguished literary critic and essayist, was also aboard, with his wife, Elena. He was on his way to Israel to write about the Dead Sea Scrolls for
The New Yorker.
Wilson’s abundant output in those years required the services of several publishers. I was one of them, and we had become friends. That evening, Edmund and Elena joined us at the New Year’s Eve gala in the first-class dining room, with its grand double staircase and double-height ceiling. We had beenassigned a table for six, and when the four of us arrived we found the great comic actor Buster Keaton and his wife in the other two seats. Keaton seemed uncomfortable in his tuxedo and old-fashioned starched collar. He barely spoke, oblivious to the pitching and rolling ship, unblinking, his mouth a horizontal slit, his eyes straight ahead, as deadpan as the character he played. He seemed to have no idea that Wilson in his world was as distinguished as himself in his. But when Wilson, a gifted prestidigitator who was juggling several festive cotton balls handed out at ships’ galas in those days, suggested to Keaton that he might perform for the passengers, Keaton replied politely but without expression, “No props,” and silently began juggling some cotton balls himself. I remember crêpes Suzette and cherries jubilee aflame as waiters struggled to remain upright beneath their trays, amid fox-trotters sliding this way and that across the polished floor, as the ship rose and fell through violent seas. “No props,” indeed.
    In Paris, we lived in a vast, gloomy apartment at 35 rue de la Faisanderie, off Avenue Foch, looked after by an ancient housekeeper who replied to our infrequent requests,
“J’ vais au cimetière.”
Someone had told us that the Grand Véfour, in the Palais Royal, was the best restaurant in Paris, so almost every day Barbara and I went there for lunch or dinner or both. With American money, everything was cheap, even the best three-star restaurants. On the ship we had drunk La Tâche for five dollars a bottle. The Grand Véfour, which hadopened in 1784 as Café de Chartres, is still the most beautiful dining room in Paris, with its gilt mirrors and red velvet upholstery. The menu was classic: quenelles de brochet, sole Véronique, coulibiac Colette (named for the great writer, who lived in the Palais Royal and took her meals occasionally in the Grand Véfour, but whom we never had the good fortune to see). One day at lunch, we were each offered an ortolan, the tiny bunting that is fattened and roasted to be swallowed whole, a delicacy in southwestern France since before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. These birds were then and may still be an endangered species, and could not be served legally, but we had become regulars, and this illicit treat was the manager’s way of welcoming us.
    When we tired of the Grand Véfour, we tried more modest places: Lapérouse, with its
cabinets particuliers,
and Chez Allard, in the Sixth, with its rustic menu. It was there that I first had braised duck with olives, one of the few Parisian dishes of the expiring Escoffier period not covered with béchamel or espagnole in various forms. For years I served my version of this classic dish at home in New York, and occasionally still do.
    From Paris we flew to Berlin, which by then had begun to dig itself out of its wartime rubble. Bricks from ruined buildings were piled neatly along the Kurfürstendamm. The cabarets were open all night. But politically Berlin seemed to be digging itself back in, for the Cold War had begun, and Berlin, deep within the Soviet sector, was its central front. The best bookstorewith fine editions of Russian classics was in the Soviet zone, and so was the best restaurant. It served thick soups, black bread, sausages, and fried potatoes in many versions. For years I kept the menu in my desk. In the United States there were no collected editions of our classic writers, an omission which, at the suggestion of