William Grimes, Times restaurant critic. (5) - By William Grimes

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Entry 5

Posted Friday, Dec. 21, 2001, at 11:17 AM ET

The electronic display is up and running on the Reuters building, just a few steps away from the increasingly archaic-looking Times headquarters. The display is mesmerizing, a nonstop upward flow of colored dots and stock prices. It's like a glass of champagne filled with electronic bubbles. An information cocktail. It makes me feel like an old holdover from the pre-electronic age.

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One of my now frequent trips to the library takes me even further back. I've been working on an exhibition tracing the history of dining out in New York. It started with an uncataloged collection of old menus that the library would like to show off. My idea was to make it part of a continuous narrative. The research is fascinating. Life magazine used to send its photographers to hot new night spots, and back in 1947 one of its subjects was a Village restaurant called El Borracho. The big draw here was the Kiss Room. Female guests were invited to leave a bright red lip-print on a 3-by-5 card. The cards were then pinned to the walls and ceiling. The Life photo, of a chic young woman sipping a martini, surrounded by a swirling nebula of crimson lips, brilliantly captures the romance of postwar Manhattan. These days, the equivalent is Hogs and Heifers, a reverse-chic biker joint in the meat-packing district where celebrity babes dance on the bar and take off their bras, which the management then displays on the wall. Not quite the same.

I'm trying to do the shopping for Christmas dinner. A meal at home is a double luxury. In the old days, Nancy and I used to plan a big, ambitious meal for the weekend. We'd gather the food during the week, assemble a couple of good wines, and celebrate the weekend in fine style. Those projects are but a distant memory. By the time we get to Sunday, my sacred non-restaurant day, we have just about enough energy, imagination, and appetite to order a small pizza. But the holidays present an opportunity. The menu shapes up like this: salmon rillettes with green chutney to start, then venison with a cherry and madeira sauce, brussel sprouts, two-potato gratin, and, for dessert, miniature mince pies and Gentleman's Pudding. The theme is British. Even the rillettes, a kind of French hash, have been Anglicized with the kind of spices you find in potted shrimp.

As my colleagues all slip away for the holidays, I have to deliver one last blast for the year 2001, a backward look at the year in dining. It's worth doing, because, at least until September, New York was getting one terrific restaurant after another, soft economy notwithstanding. I may have to declare 2001 the best restaurant year in living memory. It had everything. We even got a little Dutch restaurant, NL.

Next year will be a different story. Wall Street, whose money pumps blood into high-end restaurants, has a feeble pulse these days. Chinatown is in dire straits after Sept. 11, and the rest of downtown looks shaky. It takes a brave soul to open a restaurant right now. I get pleading letters from owners who say they'll go under without a big, happy review. The implied argument is that it's my duty to support the industry in this time of crisis. My own feeling is that it's my duty to turn a deaf ear to these appeals, no matter how sorry I feel for the people involved. A good meal is a good meal, and a bad one is a bad one. Nothing's going to change that. I hope I get a good one on Christmas.

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