And How It Happens to a Cook by Peter Meehan It, You Don’T Have to Deconstruct It,” She Tells Me
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And how it happens to a cook by Peter Meehan it, you don’t have to deconstruct it,” she tells me. She is downplaying her “Was there life virtuosic skill, ignoring how hard it is to make simple food beauti- before Gramercy?” ful enough to be served with noth- ing to hide behind, and absolutely not addressing how she yanked New Claudia Fleming York restaurant desserts out of the ’!"s and into the modern, season- ally-informed style that is still dom- laughs my question inant today. Not that she would take the credit, sitting there on a weather- about her training beaten folding chair in the grassy green backyard of the inn on Long back at me. “I think Island that she now runs with her husband, Gerry Hayden. Claudia won the James Beard Foundation’s I was born there.” Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef at the turn of the century after nominations two years in a row before that. Bon Appétit lauded her in the pre-Bro Appétit era (Best Pastry Chef #""#); she was routinely fêted by Food & Wine until a falling out with the magazine’s editors around #""$. Her name has receded from the conversation about pastry except when chefs like Brooks Headley of Del Posto or Nicole Krasinki of State Bird Provisions cite the influence of her desserts or her out-of- print cookbook, The Last Course, co-written with Melissa Clark. “I don’t care about dessert,” she says. I will note that she is telling me this while I am stu%ng my face full of her pastries, scarfing them like a sunburned little fat boy in a pie- eating competition. You know the But there was. Life before and Danny Meyer from savants to lumi- Pinterest-perfect confections of after her nine-year tenure as the naries. Her desserts were a philo- all the little artisanal pastry shops celebrated pastry chef of Gramercy sophical wrecking ball that toppled that have opened in the last decade? Tavern, during the era that perma- the spiraling spun-sugar artifices Right now one of Claudia Fleming’s nently installed that restaurant at and architectural pastry excess of crostatas is lifting its leg on those the top of tourist itineraries in New mid-nineties New York. amateur-hour concoctions in a York and elevated the statuses of “I was putting two things on a show of shaming dominance. When chef Tom Colicchio and restaurateur plate: there’s dessert, you can eat I was a dumb kid just moved to New !" Lucky Peach York from the Midwest, anytime got to share the same hallways as she recalls. “Jonathan and Melvyn”— somebody’s parents came to town Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Twyla the chef and his business partner, with money to throw down, we’d Tharp. (At fifty-five, after nearly Melvyn Masters—“would rack up a make them take us to Gramercy, three decades of professional ice $"),))) lunch bill in a month at La and the desserts—as plain Jane as cream and cookie making, she still Goulue. They were drinking Cristal they pretended to be—always hit has the lithe build of a dancer.) at breakfast.” me like the moment when Doro- She gave herself until twenty- Fleming eventually became the thy’s world goes from sepia toned five to “make it” in a major dance o*ce manager, and was often told to to color, or when Kelley LeBrock company, waitressing a bit along the lock up the credit cards, only to be came alive in Weird Science. way to pay the bills. She was wait- bribed into releasing them when she “My best days are behind me,” ressing at a dive restaurant on the was invited to come along to lunch, Claudia tells me, dismissing the West Side when a coworker’s hus- too. But the Bright Lights, Big City flaky, buttery evidence to the con- band introduced her to some guys excess isn’t why Jams was an impor- trary that has made a mess of my who were opening a restaurant on tant station on her journey. It was shirt. “Let people take the mantle the Upper East Side. “I wasn’t in the the food, which was called Califor- and do what they’re going to do. It’s food world,” she says. “I wasn’t read- nian at the time. “There was grilled a young person’s game. To be good ing magazines or anything. I was just pork tenderloin in a salad,” she told at it you can’t really have too much digging the restaurant business and me with honest reverence and still- other stu! going on. I used to go it turned out to be Jonathan Wax- preserved enthusiasm, even though to sleep thinking about things and man and Jams.” that sounds très Olive Garden today. wake up thinking about flavor com- Jams is a restaurant of legendary When she saw I was unmoved, I binations. Do you know what a lux- excess and wide influence; Claudia think she felt the generation gap ury that it is? You’re sealed o! from was on the opening team in "#$%. It between us. “People weren’t doing shit—good shit, bad shit. But I don’t was the first place where a real in- that at the time. I come from an feel competitive any more. I don’t the-flesh disciple of Alice Waters— Italian family, so good food was have the fire in my belly, you know?” Jonathan Waxman, the first chef at always in my life—but not di!erent She says sincerely, “Life happens.” Chez Panisse—brought (some) of good food.” the ideas of the covenant of Berke- Then there was the kitchen, ley to New York. “So we had free- where three women held positions range chicken. Organic baby veg- of power. “Stephanie, Helen—who etables. Laura Chenel goat cheese— was later married to Alfred Por- who knew about goat cheese at the tale—and Gale. I loved them. It was time?—all FedExed from California very much a man’s world and they every day.” made me think I could do it,” she I had a hard time picking my said of kitchen work, which she was jaw up o! the lawn. This is a busi- slowly being seduced by. “They were ness where the talk of margins is incredibly inspirational. Every bit JAMS typically accompanied by modifiers as e!ective and e*cient as a man, leming was born on Long like “razor-thin” or “non-existent.” especially Jonathan, who was any- Island (“Brentwood, right in Really FedExed? thing but e!ective and e*cient.” the middle, horrible place, “Those were the heady days of She still has great a!ection for not at all nice”) but spent as grilled chicken and french fries for Waxman—now the chef-owner Fmuch time in New York City as she $&',” Fleming says, citing Jams’ most of Barbuto in the West Village— possibly could. By her late teens, in famous dish. (That would be a $(" as does nearly anyone I’ve ever the seventies, she’d moved there dish of chicken and fries in ')"&.) “It met who has worked with him. He and was studying dance, landing was fun, fun, fun. There were Hock- knows everybody, or somebody eventually at the American Ballet neys on the wall and Ginori china on who knows the person you’re look- Theatre at the time when “all the the table. The waitresses wore white ing for. He regularly helped open Russians were defecting” and she bucks. Mick Jagger came for dinner,” doors for Claudia as she made her Lucky Peach !" way. But once it was clear that the says she is and was too old to deal “And I didn’t get it, not at all,” cocaine-fueled rocket ship that was with the immaturity. Claudia says. I think it’s a telling Jams wasn’t going to stay aloft for- After Union Square she went nugget about New York restaurant ever, Claudia found new employ as a to work at Tribeca Grill, where she culture around "##$. California server at Union Square Café shortly reported to Gerry Hayden, whom had rediscovered nature, and after it opened, when Danny Meyer she would marry a little over a dec- found the writings of Richard was still working the floor and wet ade later. Gerry is the sort of cooks’ Olney and probably Patience Gray, behind the ears, before he became cook who mastered both the pas- had embraced simplicity and a burger baron. “He was Mr. Nerd try and savory sides of the kitchen what we generally shorthand as compared to the two guys I’d been and could run either (and at Tribeca “Mediterranean” ideals. New York working for,” she says, “and the food Grill, he did, under the stewardship was still chained to the hierarchical, wasn’t great.” But the restaurant was of executive chef Don Pintabona) male-centric conception of still white hot. making him a perfect fit for Claudia, kitchens and chefs; manipulation Fleming dabbled in the kitchen a de facto pastry chef, not someone trumped simpler pleasures on at Jams, and as she neared thirty, born to it. the plate. she realized she wanted to get more Soon enough, phone calls started Claudia had been hounding serious about it. As she saw it, wait- to trickle in: pastry chef job o!ers. Maury Rubin to hire her at City Bak- ing tables was a dead-end game. She Even though she’d barely been in the ery, New York’s hottest bakery at nurtured a daydream of a sand- kitchen a couple years, she’d worked that time, and while he repeatedly wich shop that supplied the Jit- at the right places, met the right told her no (“He said I’d take every- ney buses that connect the city to people.