Gut Feeling

How one longs for a cast-iron stomach!

One of the great achievements of the food writer Mimi Sheraton, especially for women food writers, was her pioneering stint from 1976 to 1983 as the first woman restaurant critic for The New York Times. It’s difficult to overestimate her impact on the city’s culinary culture. One example: people used to line up at newstands late on Tuesday night to obtain the early edition of The Times’ Wednesday food section just to read where Sheraton had eaten and which chef and cuisine she was dissecting. By the morning her words reached the rest of the country with influential consequences. Forthright and a straight-shooter, Sheraton was just as apt to criticize the latest hot Nouvelle Cuisine restaurant as she was a local deli. You either adored and respected her or feared and loathed her. Readers of the first opinion tended to be the general public, the second disgruntle chefs and restaurateurs. One was just looking for a decent meal, the other grumbled that her opinions played too much of a role on their reputation and bottom line. Neither could not deny that she came at her craft with enormous dedication and grit, visiting places at least six times, conducting deep research, and eating her way through entire menus.

“The longer I reviewed restaurants, the more I became convinced that the unknown customer has a completely different experience from either a valued patron or a recognized food critic. For all practical purposes, they might as well be in different restaurants.” Mimi Sheraton, Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life, 2004, William Morrow Cookbooks.

I was a very young fledgling writer and critic in New York at the same time she was at The Times and looked up to her as a model for style and honesty. I tried—and too many times failed—to emulate her. At most I simply learned how to be fair, a conscientious researcher, and an adventureous eater and cook. One example: assigned to report on the many Indian restaurants opening up throughout Manhattan and Queens, I ate at one or three, every day for several months. I read every cookbook that I could find and worked my way through recipes to understand the heart of the cuisine. Several assigments later I was sent out to cover old-guard classic French and Italian restaurants, bastions of butter, cream, cheese, and pâté. My beat grew to include every restaurant—new and old—in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, and the Financial District. Someone (I can’t remember who) once said that if you want to get to know a city, sit in its restaurants and eat among its people. I did but years of this resulted in my desk being overloaded with economy-size bottles of Pepto-Bismol and whatever else there was in the market to tend to a crumbling stomach.

Mimi Sheraton possessed what is called an iron-clad stomach. I have the complete opposite—a broken china plate. This is not a happy state to be in if you are a cook, let alone someone who sees the world through what we eat. The current sorry state of my stomach is the result of eating two Oreo cookies last Friday afternoon. Other things are not helping the matter but the Oreos kicked the stomach rolling downhill. If you stop by my little house you will find Costco-sized stashes of Pepto, Gas-X, Gaviscon, Lactaid, probiotics, ginger and pepperment teas. Currently on my desk sits two bottles of bitters and a very large one of Fernet-Branca.

It’s usually not this messy.

A bartender turned me on to bitters to relieve menstrual cramps when he needed me to work the morning waitress shift. My sister introduced Fernet after a particulary exuberant family dinner. The 44.7% alcholo content of Angostura and 35% of Peychaud’s bitters was discovered one afternoon at work when I needed help after loading too many hot peppers on a tuna sandwich: I had to ask a co-workers to take my place at an impromptu meeting in the afternoon. Fernet is only 39% but such a large bottle doesn’t fit very well in a desk drawer or a handbag.

The alcohol content is only a side benefit of these elixirs. The two bitters have a regional connection in the western hemisphere. Angosturain was first brewed by Dr. Johann Siegert in1824 to treat stomach ailments among Simón Bolívar’s armies in Venezuela. His sons later moved the manufacturing of the bitters to Trinidad where it is still made today. Antoine Amédée Peychaud, a Creole apothecary from Haiti, mixed his namesake bitters after he settled in New Orleans sometime between 849 and 1857. Both concoctions contain gentian, a herb used for generations to treat not only digestive problems but fever, muscle spasms, wounds, and sinus infections. Peychaud’s adds to the mix aniseed, a dash of saffron, and citrus.

Fernet-Branca from Milan is a humdinger, containing 10 herbs and spices used medicinally for thousands of years. Four are specific digestive remedies: cinchona bark, rhubarb, iris, and zedoary. Three are sedatives and cures for insomia: camomile, linden, and myrrh. Two have antiseptic and antibacterial properties: myrrh and cinnamon. The final two promote sexual vigour: saffron and galingale, the last with the added benefit of warding off evil spirits. Regular readers of America Eats! may know by now that Fernet covers not only my stomach but my bumpy mental health which makes it my drug of choice.

In so many many way, I wish I possessed the moxi and constitution of Mimi Sheraton. Occasionally, and with a little help, though, I manage to wing it.

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Pause this topsy-turvy world for a minute to watch these two marvelous interviews Sheraton gave in 2016 when she was 96—we should all be in such fine form at 96. The first part is a walk through her early years in the food world and her experience of becoming a critic. Stay on for part 2 which will infinitely broaden your knowledge and understanding of the culture and history of many recipes, the restaurant business, and the joys of being a voraciously curious eater.