I’ve never met anyone over the age of thirty who has fond memories of school cafeteria food, except my wife, who grew up in Paris, where a school lunch was three courses, including cheese.  Indeed, school food usually compares with airline and hospital food, and in primary and secondary schools mandated healthy food options are usually trashed by students consuming chicken fingers and burgers on a daily basis.
        On the college level, however,  I have noticed significant changes.  Under student persuasion, food service has generally improved—every college now seems to serve sushi at least once a week and vegetarian options are now a given. But I was not prepared for the breadth, depth and high quality of the food service at Yale University, where a $7,000 food plan is included in the $80,000 tuition.
        On my visit to New Haven my tour took me into the two new colleges (which are dormitories) of Franklin and Berkeley, where three meals a day are offered. By 12:25 these beautiful new dining halls, done in the Oxford-inspired neo-Gothic architecture of the rest of the school, are thronged with ravenous students whose options range from house-made bread, sandwiches, soups, salads and pasta to desserts.   
        There are even two pizza options derived from the New Haven styles featured at Frank Pepe’s and Sally’s Apizza. There is even a kosher kitchen at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life (right).      
        As much as possible the food served is based on as much local product as possible, and in 2020 a survey of students showed that they wanted a better understanding of carbon emissions associated with food intake, with  86 percent of respondents in favor of posted  environmental impact ratings.  (A minority said they were offended by the poster because the ratings wrongfully made them feel guilty about their dining choices.)
    At all the colleges students dine with teachers, and, if you are invited in by either, the public can, too; at the largest, oldest dining hall, called the Schwarzman Center, anyone can walk into the Commons and pay for a meal, which includes Persian-spiced rotisserie chicken, saffron butter fingerling potatoes, roasted tomato with feta,  pork with black bean sauce, spicy noodle salad, wok-fired dishes, Chinese dumplings and warm chocolate chunk cookies.
            So large and grand is the Center’s dining hall that Stephen Spielberg took it over for weeks in 2007 to film a scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, wherein a character escapes through it on a motorcycle.
        Within the Center, there is a pay-as-you-go room not on the meal plan where fresh gelato, pastries and espresso can be enjoyed before a fireplace and farther on The Ivy is a late-night venue where students with the munchies can order tacos, sliders, Ghanian beef chili and sushi rolls.  Then there is The Well, a pub (you need to be 21 to drink in Connecticut) for beer and wine and tidbits of Wok-Fired Peanuts with Thai Chili, Lemon & Basil Salt, Truffle Grilled Cheese on Rye, even a Cheese & Charcuterie Platter.
            The Center is named after Yale grad Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group, who gave the university $150 million for food service facilities.

        Serving 15,000 meals a day is a daunting process, overseen by a staff of 800 within the Yale Hospitality group, which supports over 14 residential dining halls, 13 restaurants and cafes and extensive catering facilities.  (No students are employed by Yale Hospitality.) Without being doctrinaire about it, their intent, according to Associate Vice President Rafi Taherian, is to make “good for people and good for the planet.” Hamburgers are only occasionally on menus, though the excellent fried chicken is one of the best sellers each day.
        Working closely with the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, and Johnson & Wales in Providence, RI, the company brings in celebrated chefs to share their expertise with the culinary team, and has collaborated on “Ingredients for a Sustainable World: The Chef’s Good Food Handbook” and the 2019 Food Forward Forum with the Good Food Fund in China and partnering with the Mediterranean diet round table to create plant-forward menus.
        During the pandemic, with Yale closed, the group had to shut down its catering department but retained all employees, who were kept busy with developing new approaches, economies and menus.
        That all this costs a fortune for a non-profit-making organization has not been a problem, since Yale, with a $41.4 billion endowment, can well afford to subsidize food service and do so with a commitment to variety, quality, sustainability and service.

        One would think that’s a reasonable expectation for an $80,000 tuition, but payment is based on need, so that 45% of Yale’s students do not pay a dime, and a majority receive financial aid. (The New York Times reported the median family income of a student is nearly $200,000, with 19% coming from families in the top one percent of American wealth distribution.)  And it’s why Yale’s eating facilities are called “dining halls.”  No one would ever dare call them a “college mess.”

 

NEW YORK CORNER

EVEN THOUGH though the story of Michael McCarty has been told many times, his breakthrough on the California restaurant scene was nearly half a century ago and his New York appearance thirty-three years ago, so there’s little news to report. Which is really the point of doing so. As the enduring popularity of McCarty’s two Michael’s restaurants proves, their longevity alone is worthy of high praise. 
       Both restaurants look similar and are hung with the works of once struggling artists that now command millions of dollars, in New York the walls are hung with paintings by David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, and watercolors by McCarty’s wife Kim.
McCarty, who proudly accepts the moniker wheeler-dealer, readily claims to be a pioneer of California cuisine and style with his big white umbrellas, big white plates, white walls, contemporary jazz and waiters in Polo by Ralph Lauren chinos, pink Oxford shirts and knit ties. Right from the beginning, 1979, Michael’s in Santa Monica took off, manned by young, often inexperienced chefs like Ken Frank and Jonathan Waxman and attracting a celeb clientele that had rarely ventured over the hills (Beverly, that is, and BelAir) to laid-back (gritty) Santa Monica. 
      The food was French, based on the lighter cuisine of the Riviera, whose climate and laid-back ambience were similar to Santa Monica’s.  McCarty, born in Briarcliff, New York, and trained in France, was 24 when he took out a $250,000 bank loan he and his wife repaid in 18 months. He bought the New York restaurant location in 1989 after ten years of haggling with its former owner of the Italian Pavilion.
        All that’s history, but after all these years, through all the fads and fancies of American gastronomy—the NY Times called Michael’s New York a “trend-immune institution”—Michael’s on both coasts are doing as well or better than ever (after closing in March 2020 on Friday the 13th during the pandemic for 13 months), and McCarty still splits his time between his namesake restaurants, bouncing from table to table to greet and kibbitz with long-standing regulars that in New York have long been the titans of the various media, at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
            So, not having been back since before Covid hit, I thought a return to Michael’s New York was a good idea as a venue in which to interview a  visiting California winemaker (who didn’t know anything about McCarty and had never eaten at his California restaurant).
        Within minutes of our arrival at a packed house, with a private party going on in the rear garden, McCarty was at our table, a good deal heavier but just as ebullient as when he was the skinny 24-year-old in the Armani suits and leopard print shoes he sported when we first met back in 1979. He was quick to tell me his Executive Chef Kyung Up Lim has been with him for eighteen years; Manager Steve Millington has been there for 23.  Little, it seems, ever changes much at Michael’s. It’s a tact that Jonathan Tisch, CEO of Loews Hotels, described with the Yiddish word heimisch, “homey.” “Michael has this ability to be very heimisch.”           
            The 600-label wine list is as strong as ever, favoring California bottlings, including some from his own Malibu vineyard, and sommelier Mario Molise is as affable as he is helpful.  The lunch and dinner menus are the same, changing seasonally, and still contain signature items. If little of it seems innovative now, it’s like asking why the Eagles keep singing the same 20 hits on tour, which have been covered by countless others.
        The yellowfin tuna tartare with jalapeño, avocado, Hawaiian ginger and carrot dressing ($26) still seems a textbook version of a dish now ubiquitous. The kale salad is Caesar-style, with fennel, pistachio and Parmesan breadcrumbs ($20), and a new special that evening was luscious, very rich butternut squash ravioli ($28). There are three pizzas listed, and none would win a pizza contest in New York, but the mushroom pie with fontina, Vidalia onions and thyme and Iberico salami ($24) is worth sharing.
            It bears repeating that dishes perfected over 43 years at Michael’s other chefs have tried their hands at, but the crisp-skinned roasted free- range chicken scented with tarragon and sided with spinach ($36) is still a paragon of how all the elements of flavor, texture and juiciness should coalesce in the style of France’s “poulet au grandmère.”  The same goes for the massive, tiered burger, which is made with ground ribeye and served with arugula, tomato, onion and pickle on a sesame bun, with either cheddar or Gruyère cheese ($38) that comes with frites that evoke everyone’s guilty pleasure over McDonald’s fries, though these have much more potato flavor.  Grilled branzino with capers and spicy salsa verde and charred lemon ($38) was very good, too.
            Desserts ($14) are few in number (there’s a cheese selection too), including a flourless dark chocolate cake with whipped cream; a fine crème brûleé; and an Eton mess of autumn berries, crumbled meringue and vanilla ice cream.
            Decibel levels have increased everywhere and have done so at Michael’s. Americans didn’t used to be so damn loud, and McCarty believes it’s because they were for so long pent-up inside and get excitable at a restaurant. But the crowd dissipates around 8:30, when the atmosphere becomes more comfortable. And in the garden and outside tables, the noise is considerably dampened. 
            At a time when so many chefs/restaurateurs are looking to expand operations they have little interest in ever being at, McCarty is seemingly omnipresent in Santa Monica and New York. There had been ups and downs with some projects that didn’t pan out over the years, including a bankruptcy in 1994, aborted plans for a hotel, a devastating fire in 1993 that burned his Malibu house and vineyards down, and a withering Times review in 2008. Asked about that review’s effect, McCarty shrugs:  “Five days later Lehmann Brothers collapsed and Bernie Madoff  pushed us off the front page, so it had zero effect.”
        Now, at 69, McCarty seems as content as a man can be in what he’s called  “the biggest nickels-and-dimes business you’ve ever seen,” secure in playing the congenial host every night to people who have been coming for decades and know him on a first name basis.
            And so, Michael’s goes on its way and so does McCarty, still boyish in his demeanor, yet a canny professional who has achieved the status of eminence gris without a hint of world weariness. If you like the celebrity aspect to restaurants, his 2007 book Welcome to Michael’s: Great Food, Great People, Great Party! teems with stories, photos and blurbs from the rich and famous.  “What I describe as a defining moment is when Michael went from gel in his hair to the dry look,” said Tom Brokaw, “He knew he arrived.”
    And somehow, even if you only drop into Michael s’ every five years for a Cobb salad or steak frites, you’ll feel time stand still for two delicious hours.

 


Open Mon.-Fri. for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sat. for dinner.

 

 

To read previous chapters of ANOTHER VERMEER, go to the archive

 

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE