Gourmet Business October 2016

During my years living in New York, I would occasionally treat myself to a meal at E.A.T., the wonderful Madison Avenue bistro owned by Eli Zabar (situated on the opposite side of Central Park from his family’s eponymous delicatessen, the initials supposedly stood for “Eli’s Across Town”). At the time there was simply nothing like it – Eli’s famous breads emerging directly from the basement ovens, the pots of house- made strawberry jam on the tables along with ramekins of fresh creamery butter, and my usual order, decadent creamy scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. The décor – white subway tiles and mirrors – was continuous from the deli/bakery on one side through to the bistro on the other side of the two- storefront establishment, and metal hat racks from another era were mounted on the walls over the tables. But for all its unique attributes, one of the things that was most remarkable to me were the Perfex peppermills that sat on each table. First, as a housewares buyer who imported the classic mills from France, I was impressed that they had so many of them, and second, as a former server I was surprised they were allowed on the tables at all. For you see, the reason it is such common practice in restaurants for servers to grind pepper tableside rather than simply having peppermills available on the table so you can do it yourself is because they routinely get stolen. For Eli to be brazen enough to leave a relatively expensive peppermill on each table was just another example of the kind of bravado that has made him so successful and his establishments – both retail and foodservice – so extraordinary. 

Of course, all this came to mind because of our feature this month by Joanne Friedrick about seasoning at the table and the tools available to do so (pg 7). I have several such implements for seasoning in my house, including both my trusty Perfex peppermill and my equally trustworthy 10-inch tall Peugeot peppermill (both, I might add, over 30 years old now and still working perfectly), as well as other well-made tools for grinding, grating and generally dispensing flavors at the table. It’s especially important at our house to have these tools at table because I love freshly ground black pepper on many foods and my wife does not. In this way we give our guests a choice, too. I hope you find our October issue of value. Cheers. 

James Mellgren 

Managing Editor, Gourmet Business 

jmellgren@gourmetbusiness.com