Word: mcphee
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tell bistro dropper, McPhee protected his sauces, revealing only that his special place is "more than five miles and less than a hundred from the triangle formed by La Grenouille, Lutece and Le Cygne," three of Manhattan's starriest caravansaries. He did not so much as hint where it might be. In New Jersey? Upstate New York? Pennsylvania? Connecticut? Staten Island? A mirage...
...McPhee's piece was not so much a profile as a paean. At this "sort of farmhouse-inn that is neither farm nor inn," McPhee wrote, he had downed 20 to 30 of the best meals he had consumed anywhere, including France's most illustrious restaurants. The article, as if written by Brillat-Savarin and annotated by Asimov, recounted in minute and salivating detail Otto's preparation of dozens of dishes from his repertory of 600: coulibiac, the Russian hot fish pie; osso bucco; paella à la marinara; veal cordon bleu; fillet of grouper oursinade (with...
...great Otto flap caused almost as much consternation as the 1926 disappearance of Agatha Christie did in London. None of the professional eaters-out knew who Otto might be or where. Reporters pumped other reporters, chefs, food authors, anyone who might draw a bead on the wayward cuisinier. McPhee was besieged by calls; so was The New Yorker, which did not, in fact, know Otto's identity. The Washington Post published several guesses-one was correct-but did not pursue the story...
Mimi Sheraton, 53, the New York Times's remorseless food critic, and Frank Prial, 48, who writes about wine for the paper, deduced that Otto's place would most likely be fairly near McPhee's home in Princeton, N.J. They sicced a stringer onto the story, says Prial. "He called politicians in the area, figuring they like to eat, too." Indeed. The gastronomic gumshoe tracked down a Pike County Republican bigwig who confirmed the team's suspicion that the bistro described in The New Yorker was the Red Fox Inn, in Milford, Pa. However, the legendary...
...Yorker Editor William Shawn, 71-who eats faithfully at the Algonquin -maintains: "I look at McPhee's profile as a beautifully written literary piece, constructed on facts but still a literary piece." He has "no regrets." Nor does John McPhee. "The only reaction I might have," he says, "would be to the shocks we caused, and wonder over the results...