A Celebration of Chefs and Others

Dear Madeleine,

You probably don’t remember me, but as you read this it may all come back to you after the leagues of students that you have mentored pass by in a blur. You changed my life and I’m sure there is a long line behind me. The first time that I came to your cooking school in Newton Center, Massachusetts with Heidi Wortzel to introduce me, I was where I had always dreamed of being.

The smells on the outside of the entrance pale in comparison to how wonderful it smelled inside. Students were whirling around, busy making puff pastry and tending to their pots on the  stove tops all with smiles on their faces. It was magical..I remember thinking you were so busy but so very welcoming as you talked about your school. The brick walls were covered with well-used, brightly-polished copper pots and oddly an upside down framed autograph from Paul Bocuse. It was where I wanted to be and I couldn’t wait to roll up my sleeves and learn all that I could.

More than thirty years ago I met John Takach, a retired small bluecollar bar and restaurant owner from Cleveland visiting his doctor son in Maine. He was rumored to be a gruff, remote  man so I was nervous. It was a beautiful warm August day when he arrived with his heavy vintage suitcase. After introducing myself and telling him how I had been looking forward to meeting him he looked at me and said, let's cook, I have much to teach you!

We were instant friends, as we picked cucumbers and told stories. That day is burned in my mind, we talked about the story of his life and love that he insisted on sharing with me. We chopped and sautéed and talked about life in the old country and coming to America. That night there was to be a gathering at his son’s house and we were expected to make a real Hungarian feast. He had brought along many brown wrapped packages filled with smoked hunks of fat, loops of freshly made sausages, good Hungarian paprika, and a special jug of Whiskey.

Though I am not a foodie, I like watching chefs on TV. They are the new "rock stars" and their antics are often equal amounts amusing, terrible and inspirational (in the kitchen, that is). It's hard to imagine a city's food lovers more connected to a chef than Los Angeles is to Ludo Lefebvre. Trying to get a reservation to his tri-annual, 6-week pop-up restaurant is harder than getting VIP passes backstage to U2. (I'm guessing, but I don't think I'm far off.) When out dining in LA, the conversation, if you're with passionate diners, inevitably turns to the hottest local chefs and eventually to LudoBites - how many you've been to (3), which incarnations (3.0, 4.0 and 6.0) and how much time/how many computers you had running trying to get one of the elusive reservations on OpenTable…before it crashed for those trying to get into 5.0 and 6.0. This last time for 007 (back downtown at Gram & Papas), it went off without a hitch – that is if you got into the system in the first 2 minutes, which by the grace of God my Man did.

It's probably unfathomable to those living outside our city – which is known for its over-hyping everything (see Carmageddon) – why people are so rabid to get into LudoBites. For all the great press he receives from local bloggers and a certain section of the food press, there's equal derision by more traditional outlets that seem to feel that if he is such a great chef he should have his own restaurant. That the "pop-up" thing is just a ploy to make him famous for fame's sake instead of for the quality and creativity of his food. All I can say to that is he's been cooking since he was 14 (he's currently 39) in some of the best French restaurants in the world, so the man has skills. Whether you like how he constructs his plates and flavors, well that's up to you.

Francois Truffaut has been famously quoted about the process of making a movie being similar to a wagon train crossing the country.  You start out the journey with high hopes and the spirit of adventure and halfway through, you just want to get there alive.

That’s pretty much what my journey with cooking has been like.  I seduced my husband with duck breast and wild rice pancakes with apricot sauce.  That was nothin’.  I really loved to cook.  People were always surprised by that and I was always surprised they were surprised.  What? Women in comedy can’t cook?  Every Hungarian Jewish woman has to be a good cook. It’s biological destiny.