This is the third edition of a new occasional feature on The Mix called “Making History,” in which we’ll crack open those dusty cookbooks of a once-renowned restaurants and see if their bill of fare still holds up.

These days, the Brown Derby restaurant is known primarily for two things: the Brown Derby cocktail, a drink that the joint didn’t even invent; and the Cobb Salad, one of the greatest salads in history, yet one that most people don’t know originated at the Hollywood hotspot. That’s because the owner of the Brown Derby, Robert H. Cobb, named the large-format chefs-salad-on-steroids after himself, not his restaurant.

That’s a pretty sad fate for a place that, in its day, was one of the most famous restaurants in the world.

The Brown Derby opened on Wilshire Boulevard, across from the Ambassador Hotel, in 1926. The restaurant’s defining characteristic was, is and always shall be that the building was in the shape of a large, brown derby. Atop the crown was a neon sign that flashed the message “Eat at the Hat.”

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This is the second edition of a new occasional feature on The Mix called “Making History,” in which we’ll crack open those dusty accounts of a once-renowned restaurants and see if their bill of fare still holds up.

In the annals of New York restaurant, there are closings and there are closings. Some are sad, some are heartbreaking, and some go beyond emotions because they are actually news, news in the historical sense.

The December 2020 exit of The “21” Club was a closing of the historical variety.

“21” was, following the demise of Chumley’s and Bill’s Gay ‘90s, the last operating restaurant or bar left in New York City that began life as a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns, cousins, first opened their speakeasy in Greenwich Village 1922. They called it Red Head and were an immediate hit with the younger set. A couple of moves later, they were on 42 West 49th Street and sailing under the name The Puncheon Club. When Rockefeller Center started construction, they were bumped over to 21 West 52nd Street, an address that gave them their lasting name. Opening night was Jan. 1, 1930.

The wrought-iron gate that made for the club’s soon-to-be famous entrance was a keepsake from 49th Street. Jack and Charlie apparently didn’t want to part with it, so they lifted it off its hinges and reinstalled it on 52nd Street. It’s still there today, doing nothing, swinging open for no one.

1930 was still Prohibition, so “21” was built with casual criminality in mind. That’s an odd thought, given how conventional and upright the restaurant became in the decades to come. They hired one Frank Buchanan to design a system to hide the booze should the Feds raid the place, one of “camouflaged doors, invisible chutes, revolving bars and a secret wine cellar.”

I saw the wine cellar in question several times. It was behind a massive, blue-gray stone door a foot thick. It was opened with a long metal rod inserted in a hole in the middle of the door. It was truly the coolest secret room in all of New York. Real James Bond stuff. Inside was a table where “21” regular Mayor Jimmy Walker supposedly entertained his mistress, actress Betty Compton. The cellar was actually not under No. 21, but part of No. 19 52nd Street next door—a nice dodge that allowed the owners and staff to truthfully say there was no liquor on the premises.

Once Prohibition ended, “21” could operate out in the open. By this point, it had developed a reputation as a haunt of the well-heeled and famous. Everybody had their preferred table, from Bogart to Sinatra to Nixon. By the 1980s, you knew who used to sit where by way of gold plaques affixed to the walls behind the tables.

I don’t remember my first visit to “21,” but it must have been for lunch. The lunch menu was less prohibitively expensive and the crowd less intimidating. It was also possible to get a reservation; the dining room was rarely full at lunch.

The dress code—one of the last to fall in the city—was still in effect, so I arrived in jacket and tie. I was seated in “Siberia,” the third and furthest of the dining room’s three semi-circular sections. But I didn’t know I was in Siberia at the time and didn’t mind. I was just happy to be there; I felt I had somehow gotten away with something.

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I probably ordered the burger or the chicken hash, because they were the most famous dishes on the menu, but also because they were the least expensive things you could order. In all my visits, I rarely ventured beyond those two menu items. As I got into cocktail writing, I began ordering Southsides and Martinis to go with the food. Rightly or wrongly, “21” had a strong association with the Southside and sometimes claimed it had invented the drink. (It didn’t.)

After that first experience, I made a point of asking to be seated in the middle section at the table beneath a large metal bell. This was J.J. Hunsecker’s table. Hunsecker was the ruthless columnist at the center of The Sweet Smell of Success, my favorite movie. “21” has been featured in many films, including Written on the Wind, All About Eve, One Fine Day and Wall Street (“Lunch is for wimps”). But no picture used the setting better than The Sweet Smell of Success. That the filmmakers were not allowed to film in “21,” so had to build a complete replication from scratch, mattered to me not a bit.

I loved "21" from the beginning. It was historic and alive and unique and cozy and convivial. It was one of a kind. Every visit felt like a celebration of what made New York different from all other cities. The food was good (in my opinion), the wine list fantastic, the grasp of tradition firm, and the decor a riotous delight for the eye and mind (Remingtons on the walls; corporate toys and things hanging from the ceiling; plaques, pictures, framed cartoons poking decades of fun at the place; naughty 1930s murals in the men’s bathroom). It was a restaurant, a club, a haven and a landmark.

During the aughts, I became something of an unofficial chronicler of “21” Club life. Plenty of writers had penned studies of the place in the past, but at that time virtually nobody was wasting any ink on it. “21” wasn’t seen as cool enough by the media to merit copy.

But it was cool enough for The New York Sun.

The New York Sun was a short-lived daily (2002-08) that was looking to take on and possibly topple The New York Times. (It didn’t succeed.) I began writing about the theater for the Sun around 2003. The Sun ran a daily profile, one of its nicest features, and soon enough I was writing dozens of those. And that led me to “21.”

You didn’t have to look too hard to find a “21” subject worthy of a feature. The restaurant was full of characters. In 2004, I wrote about Lorenzo Robinson, the restaurant’s charasmatic and long-serving men’s room attendant, who was known as “The Rev.” He lived in Connecticut, commuted in daily, met Presidents, and greeted everyone with a sunny “Hello, young man!”

In 2005, I profiled Bruce Snyder, the nattily dressed general manager, who was about to retire. He was the sort of guy who could carry off a Winchester shirt and wore Presidential cufflinks without irony. Having been hired by the original owners—the Kriendler and Berns families—he was the last living link to the restaurant’s origins. “21” held a party in his honor, inviting several hundred of Snyder’s closest friends.

I wrote about how the restaurant—which had served every Commander in Chief since FDR—was having trouble coaxing the home-cooking-loving George W. Bush to dinner (Bush never did visit); about the place’s longstanding association with the Southside cocktail; and how the wine cellar was stocked with bottles reserved for the rich and famous. Most of these bottles were never claimed because their owners were either: A) dead (Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., John Ringling, John Huston, Joan Crawford, etc.), or; B) didn’t know they had vino down there (Chelsea Clinton).

This sort of ongoing coverage wouldn’t have been possible at any other publication. The New York Sun was read by the sort of titans of industry and blue bloods who frequented “21.” The editors knew their audience. It’s doubtful New York Sun subscribers would have ever grown tired of reading about what amounted to their private clubhouse.

I was aided in all these assignments by Diana Biederman, one of the nicest and most effective in-house restaurant publicists I’ve ever met. Biederman put a human face on what could be a cold, anonymous institution—the restaurant was owned by the Bermuda-based Orient-Express Hotels, Ltd., beginning in 1995. Biederman made sure appreciative journalists felt appreciated. Moreover, Biederman knew all about the history of “21” and its value. After she left, the PR outfits that repped the place seemed to know less and less about the property. I frequently found myself correcting them on various points of “21” history.

Later, after the New York Sun’s paper version went out of existence, I wrote about the restaurant for Punch and, finally, Grub Street. At the latter, I wrote a sort of eulogy after “21” closed during December 2020, ostensibly because of the pandemic. That probably wasn’t the real reason, but that’s what Belmond Ltd.—the rebranded version of Orient-Express—said.

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When it came time to choose a “21” meal to make, the choice was obvious. It would either be the chicken hash or the burger. We opted for the burger.

That presented a problem, because the hamburger had a complicated evolution. Every new chef that came through “21” wanted to reinvent it.

The burger made its debut on the “21” menu in 1950. That would seem to indicate that the innovation was the work of Yves Louis Ploneis, who was chef at “21” from 1947 until his death in 1966. It was priced at $2.75, an amount of money that could have gotten you a full steak dinner elsewhere.

It was actually just a hamburger, not a “hamburger sandwich.” There was no bun, just a rounded mound of seasoned, cooked meat smothered in a savory sauce.

Not everyone was impressed by this burger. The Restaurants of New York by Seymour Britchkey was published in several editions during the 1970s. Britchkey called the cuisine at “21” “nothing but Stouffer’s at three times the price.” He described the burger this way:

There is a “21” Burger listed as a Spécialité. (Your waiter may allow as how it is the most popular dish in the place.) This is the final triumph—the world’s most ordinary dish, a hamburger, prepared without any imagination, served with a sheaf of hangdog sting beans and peddled as a specialty of one of the most expensive restaurants on earth.

We wanted to make a version of the burger that hewed as close as possible to the original. “21” put out a cookbook in 1995. The author was then-chef Michael Lomonaco. It had a recipe for the “1975 ‘21’ Burger.” Wrote Lomonaco: “The older version of the ‘21’ Burger—sautéed in butter and served with Brown Sauce (no bread or bun)—was really more like a Salisbury steak than a burger, even though it was shaped like a burger.”

(In 1995, the burger sold for $24, which was considered comically pricey at the time. Now that is the average price of a hamburger at a New York restaurant.)

Mary Kate here —

Decades ago, I used to work for an architect who designed quite a few of the top restaurants in New York. Part of designing the restaurant, of course, was to get to know the chef. One of the ways the architect did this was to cook the chef’s recipes.

Part of my job was to take the recipes, break them down and shop for all the ingredients. In order to do this well, I read the recipe through a few times so as to understand what was happening and then bought the ingredients as they were needed. For instance, if the recipe called for three-quarters of a pound of cleaned, deveined, large-sized fresh shrimp, that’s how I would have it. I would not just give him a pound of shrimp and expect him to do the prep work himself; one of the fish countermen at Dean and DeLuca would clean, weigh and package them for me.

This process allowed me to learn more about not only the chef and their recipes (and how to read them), but how the food went into the recipes—and where to get some very exotic (for the time) ingredients quickly.

Just as this architect wanted to understand the chef by making his recipes, Robert and I want to understand old restaurants by doing the same, and in some lucky cases relive the memories of our favorite long-gone establishments. The “21” Club tops that list for both of us.

I remember the first time I dined there in 1988. It was for my sister Betsy’s birthday. My parents, their friend Mary Auletta, my sister Betsy and I met for lunch. As we sat in the dining room, it seemed that we were surrounded by waiters. The gentleman standing near me was exceptionally attentive. I took a sip of my water and he refilled it. Over and over again. It made me giggle.

It was an afternoon of refilled water glasses, napkins being re-folded, and delicious burgers. Betsy remembers getting the “21” Burger. This would have been just after chef Michael Lomonaco joined the team, but I believe was not yet in charge. I have no idea what I ordered. I’d like to think I was paying too much attention to the room, the service and this incredibly singular dining experience, but my memory is blank probably just because I was not used to day-drinking.

The last time Robert and I dined there, on December 18, 2019, I know I had the burger. This is all thanks to my trusty phone camera. So, in honor of all these things, we made the burger!

The “21” cookbook recommended we accompany the burger with hash browns and creamed spinach, so we did.

Having no memories of what these foods looked like in the years before Robert and I patronized “21,” and not being able to find images of the food, I was a little freaked out at the outset. The day before cooking the actual meal, I started by preparing the beef stock needed to make the Brown Sauce. That was great. The recipe was easy to understand and relaxing. Robert kept coming in and out of the house saying “it smells great in here"; that was definitely confidence boosting. It did smell great.

The next day, I tried to count backwards in how much time I would need to make each item, what could overlap and anything at all I could get ready in advance. First, I blended the burger meat, formed the patties and put them in the fridge covered in foil to await their big moment.

Then I made the hash browns—and I’m glad that I did. The hash browns took about 30 minutes longer than the recipe said. This may be because I cut the cubes of potato too large (they said 1/2”) or didn’t parboil them long enough—or both. But, even though the onions were dark, it was crispy and delicious and the boys ate all of both hash brown discs.

While the hash browns were cooking, I made the Brown Sauce. Then I started to grill the “21” Burgers in butter in the cast-iron frying pan on the stove. As a person whose mother cooked lean beef burgers in salt with no fat, cooking a hamburger in butter is the most sinful thing I can think of. But, like other sins I’ve committed, I only regret it after it’s been done; while I’m doing it, it’s fantastic.

While the burgers finished in the oven, along with the hash browns, I whipped up the creamed spinach.

Robert contacted Chef Lomonaco on Instagram via direct message with questions about the burger, spinach and hash browns. He replied, “The 75 burger was really two patties cooked on a stovetop. Spinach on the side. But always creamed spinach.” [At press time, we were still waiting to hear about the proper way to serve the hash browns.]

We served just one patty per plate, which was still a whopping half-pound of meat. To serve two would have been a full pound and seemed excessive. We weren’t sure how to serve the circular hash browns, so we put the disc on its own plate and scooped up individual servings from it for each person’s dish. The spinach was put in a small bowl, one for each dish.

Robert said it the meal smelled like “21” when it was done and my son Richard loved it and kept saying how amazing it was. This is pretty much the reaction you want, but this version of “Making History” was a bit tricky. I didn’t realize cooking a meal from a restaurant that we greatly miss would make me miss it even more, but I do.

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The 1975 “21” Burger

We used store-bought chicken broth for this recipe, and bread crumbs bought from our local bakery.

• 1 stalk celery, diced (about 1/4 cup)

• 1/4 cup chicken stock or canned broth

• 2 pounds ground top sirloin

• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

• Dash Worcestershire Sauce

• 1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 3 tbsps. unsalted butter

In a small saucepan, poach the celery in the chicken stock for 20 minutes. Drain, cool, and finely chop the celery. In a mixing bowl, combine the beef, nutmeg, Worcestershire Sauce, breadcrumbs, and chopped celery by hand, using rapid motions, without overworking the mixture. Shape it into 4 round patties. Season the patties with salt and pepper, cover, and refrigerate until ready to cook.

Heat the 3 tablespoons butter for cooking the burgers in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat until it begins to brown. Add the beef patties and brown them about 6 minutes on each side. Place the burgers, still in the cast-iron skillet, in the over and continue to cook 6 to 8 minutes more for medium rare. Remove and serve, with Brown Sauce* drizzled over the burger.

*Brown Sauce

While the “21” cookbook listed this sauce as “optional,” we found it to be critical to the success of the burger. Otherwise, it’s just a piece of unadorned meat. The sauce also goes well on the hash browns.

• 3 tbsps. cold, unsalted butter

• 3 tbsps flour

• 1 cup beef and veal stock**

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the over to 350.

To prepare the Brown Sauce, knead 3 tablespoons butter and flour together into a paste. Bring the Beef and Veal Stock to a boil, whisk the paste into the stock, and continue to cook 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. Season with salt and pepper and reserve.

**Beef and Veal Stock

You can make a 1/2 or 1/4 version of the recipe by just adjusting the measurements. We made a 1/4 recipe, using only 4 pounds of beef soup bones, which resulted in a quart of stock. We could not locate veal soup bones, but managed just fine with only beef bones. If you can’t find them in the supermarket, your local butcher will have them. We recommend you make this stock the day before you plan to make the burgers.

• 8 pounds each, veal and beef soup bones

• 2 large onions, washed but unpeeled, steam and root ends cut off

• 4 carrots, washed and roughly chopped

• 4 stalks celery, washed and chopped

• 3 leeks, split, washed and sliced

• 1 cup canned crushed plum tomatoes

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

• 2 tablespoons dried thyme

• 3 bay leaves

• 1 teaspoon each salt and black peppercorns

• 6 quarts water

Preheat the oven to 375. Roast the bones and the vegetables 1 hour before placing all the ingredients in a large stock pot. Cover with water to a depth of 2 inches above the bones, and quickly bring to a boil. When the water reaches a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, and continue to cook 8 hours. If more time is available, you can cook 10 to 12 hours to extract the maximum flavor from the bones and vegetables. When the stock has finished cooking, remove from the heat, strain the liquid through a fine sieve, and cool rapidly in a cold water bath before refrigerating.

“21” Traditional Hash Brown Potatoes

According to the cookbook, this recipe dates back to “21”’s speakeasy days.

• 3 cups peeled, 1/2-inch-dice Idaho potatoes (about 2 pounds)

• 2 large onions, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch dice

• 1/4 inch vegetable oil

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Parboil the potatoes approximately 5 to 6 minutes in salted water. Drain and cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, sauté the diced onions in the oil plus 1 tablespoon of the butter until richly browned and caramel colored. This step ensures that all of the onion’s sweetness is developed. Cool the onions, then mix with the potatoes.

Preheat the oven to 350. Melt half the remaining butter in a 10-inch nonstick sauté pan over medium heat, and add half the diced potato/onion mixture. Take care to pack the mixture tightly in one neat layer to sauté and brown.

Using the back of a spoon, form the potato and onion mixture into a rounded cake. When the potatoes and onions begin to adhere and brown, flip them over using a large spatula or the back of a plate. Brown the second side, then transfer the hash-browned potatoes to a cookie sheet and reserve while you cook the second half of the potato/onion mixture. Add the second batch to the cookie sheet and bake 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, season with the salt and pepper, and serve.

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“21” Traditional Creamed Spinach

According to the cookbook, this recipe was a favorite of “21” founder Jack Kriendler. Be sure you have enough spinach. Otherwise, the dish will not be thick enough. The nutmeg is optional in our opinion; Mary Kate didn’t like it; I didn’t mind it.

• 1/2 cup heavy cream

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

• 1 pound fresh spinach leaves, thoroughly washed, with stems removed

Heat the cream and butter together. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg and set aside. Steam the spinach leaves in a vegetable steamer or a covered pot with 1/2-inch boiling water in the bottom until the spinach has wilted—about 3 to 4 minutes at most. Empty the hot spinach into a colander and, with the back of a spoon, try to push out the excess water to drain the spinach as much as possible.

Put the still-warm spinach into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Pulse three or four times to begin chopping the spinach. Then, while still pulsing, add the hot cream in a steady stream. Reheat briefly and serve the hot creamed spinach in small dishes with a pinch of freshly ground nutmeg on top.

“21” Southside Cocktail

This recipe comes direct from Tara Wright, a longtime bartender at The “21” Club during its final decade. The equal-parts formula is somewhat surprising; it is noticeably sweeter and less boozer than your typical Southside recipe. But all I can remember is how delicious the Southsides were at “21,” and Wright made me quite a few. Said Wright: “We also made a mint simple syrup to punch up the mint in the drink, but a simple simple will do. When I first started at ‘21,’ we did not use simple syrup at all. We put about 6 spoons full of white sugar in with the gin and lemon juice and shook until one’s arms felt like they would fall off! Also, vodka was then the liquor used. So much better with gin!” (The Southside recipe in the cookbook differs from Wright’s, using two ounces of gin or vodka, but I trust Wright over the book. Also, the book says “21” invented the drink, so…)

• 2 ounces Tanqueray gin

• 2 ounces lemon juice

• 2 ounces simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water)

• Mint leaves

Muddle mint leaves in the bottom of cocktail shaker. Add ice. Pour fresh lemon juice, Tanqueray gin, and simple syrup over the ice. Shake heartily and pour into a highball filled with ice. Do not strain it; there should be large flecks of green mint floating in the glass.

I did some research, trying to track down the timeline of all of “21”’s chefs. As far as I can tell, this is how it went (with some gaps). If any out there can help me fill in the gaps, or correct the dates, please leave a comment.

• Henri Geib: 1930-1947

• Yves Louis Ploneis: 1947-1966 (he was still chef at the time of his death, at age 53)

• Anthony Louis Pedretti: 1966-1986

• Anne Rosenzweig and Alain Sailhac: 1987

• Daniel Bruce: 1988

• Michael Lomonaco: 1989-1999

• Eric Blauberg: 1999-2003

• John Greely: 2007-2014

• Sylvain Delpique: 2014-2020

You can’t visit vanished restaurants. You can read about them, look at photographs and study menus. You can even talk to older relatives who dined there back in the day. But you can’t know what they knew first hand: what the atmosphere was like, what kind of service the staff offered, how a meal there made you feel, the business’ particular magic.

However, you can experience their food, after a fashion. At least, you can for some of them, those that left behind a written account.

I own a lot of cookbooks. A good many of them are testaments to the fare of one particular famous restaurant, a place that no longer exists—indeed, did not exist when I bought the books years ago. I made these purchases to better understand iconic restaurants whose timeline on this earth sadly did not coincide with my own.

Most of these books begin with a little history of the restaurant, before the book gets into the recipes. This bit of text is largely why I bought the books in the first place. But, over time, I became interested in the recipes themselves. And, occasionally, I have tried to recreate entire meals from them.

I did this on a regular basis when I authored the blog Lost City in the aughts and early 2010s. Beginning in 2009, I ran an occasional column called “Recipes of the Lost City.” I’d attempt dishes once served at famed eateries, following the recipes to the letter, and then report on my success or lack thereof. I made Tavern Chestnut Dressing from Tavern on the Green; Chicken Manhattan House from Longchamps; Crabmeat a la Dewey from Gage & Tollner; Braised Striped Bass from Le Pavillon; and many more.

This pastime lasted only a year or so, petering out in 2010. Perhaps I traded in my interest in vanished meals for a similar one in vanished cocktails, as my career as a drinks writer advanced. But my interest in bygone restaurants remained, and I continued to add out-of-print restaurant cookbooks to my library.

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Today—with Lost City long gone, but The Mix present and reporting for duty—it seemed like a good time to go back through that time portal into the kitchens of yesteryear. This is the first edition of a new occasional feature on The Mix called “Making History,” in which we’ll crack open those dusty accounts of a once-renowned restaurants and see if their bill of fare still holds up.

And this time there are two cooks in the kitchen.

Few New York restaurants have managed to retain as strong a grip on the public imagination as Lüchow's, which stood on 14th Street near Broadway for exactly a century, from 1882 to 1982.

August Guido Lüchow, an immigrant from Hanover, Germany, opened his eponymous restaurant with the help of fellow countryman, William Steinway, who extended him a $1,500 loan. Steinway Hall was right across the street and the Academy of Music, a then-prominent opera house, was nearby.

Lüchow’s was the preeminent German restaurant in the city for most of its existence. And, given its choice location, it was also a show business hangout, a sort of Sardi’s during the days when Union Square was the center of New York's entertainment world. Regulars included most of the luminaries of the music world, including Oscar Hammerstein (the elder, not his son, the writing partner of Richard Rodgers); Victor Herbert, who founded the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) at a corner table; Tin Pan Alley tunesmith Gus Kahn, who wrote the lyrics to “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” there; Enrico Caruso; Sigmund Romberg; Anna Held; Irving Berlin; Ignacy Jan Paderewski; and Richard Strauss.

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Also a habitué was the inevitable “Diamond” Jim Brady, the financier who could not be kept from the tables of any noted restaurant of his day, and was often in the company of actress Lillian Russell.

Mary Kate and I have a special connection to Lüchow's. Both of our parents dined there. Mine ate there in 1964, during a trip to New York when my mother was pregnant with me (perhaps this is why, of all my siblings, I ended up in New York). Mary Kate’s parents dined anywhere that was anyplace in the New York City of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Their list was long and Lüchow's was on it.

Lüchow's German Cookbook came out in 1952. It was authored by Jan Mitchell, then owner of the restaurant, who was trying to reignite interest in his property and its legacy. The illustrations were by Ludwig Bemelmans, of Bemelmans Bar fame. I bought the book about twenty years ago. If you want a copy for yourself, they are easy to find online.

The dish we decided to tackle is one of the most complex in the book, and the one with the most ingredients: Roulade of Beef, August Lüchow. It’s even named after the founder. Hey, if you’re going to take this journey into the culinary past, you may as well go all the way back!

We also made the two side dishes that the book recommended accompany the roulades.

—Robert Simonson

So we begin.

Mary Kate here!

Whenever I begin cooking from these old books, I feel like I don’t speak the language. What I do know, is that what part of the language I do speak is missing a lot of nuance. The book makes assumptions that the recipe’s reader already knows certain things about how to cook then and—flash forward seventy-five years—I really don’t have a very good idea of what things were like back then.

How were the meals served? What did the finished product look like? There are no photos in the Lüchow's book. And somehow Bemelmans’ drawings aren’t very helpful. So, I googled things, I looked at old ladies’ magazines and books about entertaining. And, boy, did we luck out, because roulades, while tasty, are really unattractive! The bar was low.

I have never “rouladed” anything. I’m not sure why. My sister was the Buche de Noël girl (a traditional Christmas cake), and my friend Alison’s mom made Braciole, so I know what it means to have a flat food surface, cover it with something and then roll it up. But I hadn’t done it. So, when Robert and I decided to make Roulade of Beef, it was exciting.

We asked the butcher to cut up the beef into 6 pieces for us (aka step #1 in the recipe) and pound it out thin, though I would probably do this myself next time—maybe after we purchased sharper knives.

(Note: the key to this recipe is definitely in the prep. Measure everything, chop it and get it ready in bowls first. I got everything out—the pots and pans we would use; the serving platter; everything I could think of. Though we still ended up rummaging around for additional items at the last moment, you definitely don’t want to “prep as you go” here.)

The butcher didn’t pound the meat. At Staubitz, our preferred local butcher, when Robert asks them to pound the veal for schnitzel, it comes out beautifully thin. But we didn’t use Staubitz this time. So, we pounded the meat ourselves with a big wooden mallet until it was 1/4 inch thick. We then slathered it with the meat mixture, rolled the meat it and tied it with cooking twine. (step #2)

But then we realized that we forgot to add the encircling slice of salt pork to each roulade before we tied it. So we had to cut the strings and untied the roulades. Then we rolled on the (in our case) slices of bacon and tied it up again. At this time, I noticed we were getting better at tying.

After browning the meat on all side in the pot, we covered the roulades with the vegetables and the liquids. We really needed a bigger Dutch Oven than we had, or fewer roulades so the veggies could have browned too (step #3). We let it cook over the high heat for 10 minutes and then placed it in the oven for 45 mins (step #4). Step #5 was very difficult, as I did not want to throw out all the vegetables, which are there only to flavor the broth; I wanted to eat them out of the pot. (I’ll call this step #5.5—but I’ve gotten ahead of myself.)

While the roulades were cooking we moved on to the potatoes—which I would NOW like to remind you to begin BEFORE you start to roll the roulades because the potatoes have to soak in cold water for an hour. Also, “pro-tip”: the French Cutter you need to cut out the potato balls is just a big melon baller. Please have a good, sharp one ready (potatoes are much harder to ball than melons). Parboil the potatoes, and then brown them in fat. Once the potatoes are browning and getting crispy in the oven, it’s time to move on to the peas.

Making the peas was easy, except I wish we had had fresh peas. But it’s not pea season, and we couldn’t get any. So we used frozen. Oh, and I wish we had used more scallions. But I am glad we used more than a tablespoon of herbs.

I began to get very nervous as we waited for it all to finish in the oven. Was it going to be terrible? Did we just waste a Sunday afternoon? Just then, my son Richard, who was visiting that day, emerged from his nap and said, “Wow! That smells amazing!” and I knew everything would be alright.

And it was. In fact, it was delicious. Everything we had spent hours making was gone within 30 minutes. Lüchow’s lived again, for one night.

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And Now the Recipes (also Odds and Ends follow):

Roulade of Beef, August Lüchow

• 2 pounds top round of beef

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

• 1 medium-size onion, chopped fine

• 1 shallot, minced

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1/4 pound beef, ground fine

• 1/4 pound veal, ground fine

• 1/4 pound pork, ground fine

• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

• 1 tsp chopped chives

• 2 slices bread soaked in milk

• 1/2 cup cream

• 6 think slices fat salt pork (or bacon)

• 1/4 cup flour

• 2 tablespoons beef fat, butter, or margerine

• 2 large onions slices thin

• 2-3 carrots slice thin

• 1/2 teaspoon powdered cloves

• 1/2 teaspoon thyme

• 1 bay leaf

• 2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped

• 1 cup burgundy wine

• 1 cup veal or beef stock

1. Wipe top round with damp cloth. Cut beef in 6 slices about 2 1/2 inches by 4 inches and 1/2 inch thick. Place on board and pound well to about 1/4 inch thickness. (Or have your butcher do it.) Season with salt and pepper.

2. Combine medium onion, shallots, garlic, ground beef, veal and pork, parsley, chives, bread and cream. Mix well. Spoon generous amount of mixture onto each piece of beef. Roll up beef, wrap with slice of salt pork or bacon, and tie with cooking twine or fix together with toothpicks. Sprinkle each roulade lightly with flour.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease deep heavy pot or Dutch oven with beef fat, butter or margarine. Place roulades in the pot. Cook over high heat to brown on all sides. Cover roulades with sliced onions and carrots. Add cloves, thyme and bay leaf. Add tomatoes, wine and stock. Cover and cook over high heat for 8 to 10 minutes.

4. Set covered pot in oven and cook until roulades are well done, between 30 and 45 minutes.

5. Remove roulades from oven and place rolls on warmed serving dish. Remove skewers or twine. Set pot on high heat and boil sauce rapidly to reduce it. Strain the vegetables from the sauce. (You discard the vegetables.) Reheat the sauce if necessary, and pour over the roulades.

6. Serve with hot vegetables such as glazed onions, new peas and Parisienne Potatoes. (Recipes below.)

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Potatoes Parisienne

• 8 large new potatoes

• 2 tbsps butter or bacon drippings

• Salt

• Paprika

1. Wash potatoes; peel. Cover with cold water and let stand 1 hour.

2. Drain and cut potatoes into balls using a French cutter. (A large melon baller will do.) Cover potato balls with boiling salted water and cook until almost tender, about 25 minutes. Drain

3. Preheat oven to 400 Fahrenheit. Melt butter or drippings in a frying pan; cook potatoes until light brown. Season with salt and paprika. Place in shallow pan in hot oven to crisp and brown further. Add more butter to finished potatoes if needed. Serves 6.

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New Peas With Onions, Fines Herbs

• 1 pound fresh young peas (or frozen, if fresh not available)

• 6 young scallions

• 1/2 tsp salt

• Dash of pepper

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 2 tbsps butter

• 3/4 cup boiling water

• 1 tbsp mixed chopped parsley, tarragon, chives and chervil

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit. Wash and shell peas. Wash scallions; cut white part in 1-inch lengths. Combine with peas in small casserole dish. Add salt, pepper and sugar. Mix. Add butter and flour. Mix. Add water. Cover and place in over until peas are tender, about 30 minutes. Stir herbs into peas. Serve from casserole. Serves 3 to 4.

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Odds and Ends…

Bartender and brand ambassador Chris Patino passed away on Oct. 18 after a years-long battle with cancer. As an early brand ambassador of Plymouth gin and later working within the larger Pernod Ricard liquor conglomerate, Patino was a one of the prominent figures during the early cocktail renaissance on the liquor brand side of things. He was also visible as the flamboyant MC of the Speed Rack cocktail competitions during the charitable organization’s early years. He was the founder of a trade-focused marketing agency, Simple Serve, and a partner at Californian cocktail bar, Raised by Wolves. He was named 2023's Best U.S. Bar Mentor by Tales of the Cocktail’s Spirited Awards. Patino is survived by his wife Heather and three children. He will be missed.… Eric Simonson (my brother) will be hosting two book events in the Midwest in November. First up is a discussion of Chicago theater in the ‘80s and ‘90s and his new memoir Between the Lines, held on Nov. 11 at 7 pm at Chicago Dramatists. The second is Nov. 12 at 6:30 at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, where he will discuss his book with Mark Clements, the artistic director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater.… Friday lunch and weekend brunch is back at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn. Dishes include a Golden Mushroom Rarebit, Fried Ipswich Clam Po'Boy, Hot Ham & Cheese, a hamburger and steak and eggs… Adam Montgomerie has left his position as beverage director at the New York branch of Hawksmoor. He has been at Hawksmoor since the restaurant opened. No word on what he will be doing next… Julie Reiner is spearheading Blitzen’s, a new Christmas pop-up bar that will debut this fall at various Omni Hotels and Resorts, including the Omni Berkshire Place. Blitzen’s will open to the public Nov. 15 at 13 different locations… Underberg, the longstanding, cultish brand of German bitters, has introduced a rare line extension, Underberg Espresso Herbtini, which is a mix of the bitters and espresso. I guess everybody wants some of that Espresso Martini money… Noted whiskey writer Lew Bryson is working on a new book about whiskey… The 50 Best Bars list for 2024 was announced in Madrid last week. Handshake Speakeasy of Mexico City topped the list. Sips in Barcelona, last year’s No. 1, dropped to the No. 3 spot. The top-placing U.S. bar was Double Chicken Please at No. 14. Among the special awards, Caretaker’s Cottage in Melbourne won the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award and Monica Berg won Industry Icon… The Holiday Punch Release Party will take place at Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee on Nov. 27. The old cocktail bar is famous for its holiday punch, which is only servedduring the holidays.

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