Monday, February 18, 2013.
Brisket And Steven Latter: A Strange Coincidence.
Mary Ann enjoyed dining at home so much in the past two days that she wanted to do it again tonight. Specifically, she wanted a New England-style boiled dinner. A New Orleans version of that idea--boiled beef brisket--was exceedingly popular in restaurants when I started writing about this stuff in the 1970s. Brisket was most common in the oldest restaurants, which makes me think that it has been a favorite for perhaps a century. It has been fading in recent years, enough that when you say "brisket most people think of the barbecued kind. Few restaurants run boiled brisket as a lunch special anymore, and that's a pity.
But there is always Tujague's. A big cube of brisket has been at the center of the table d'hote dinner at the ancient (1856) restaurant for as long as anyone alive can remember. I always loved it, and learned long ago how it was prepared.
Mary Leigh made the store run for the brisket, celery, onions, carrots, turnips, and Brussels sprouts. All but the carrots and sprouts went into a big pot of simmering water. So did some peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, and parsley stems. The two-pound piece of brisket was cut from the flat end, with very little fat left on. In it went. I put the lid on and got back to work. It wouldn't require any further attention for four hours, except for an occasional glance--and that was only out of curiosity.
While the brisket simmered and I talked on the radio, an email came in from my friend Vicki Karno. It said that Steven Latter died in his sleep last night.
What a weird coincidence! Here I was, boiling a brisket, something I do maybe once every two or three years, in the style of Tujague's. On the very day when Tujague's owner leaves us.
Steven Latter came across as a quiet person, waiting to hear what you had to say before he spoke up--if he did even then. He didn't seem to be the gregarious restaurateur type. His previous careers were in entirely other arenas. He told me once that he worked for Wembley Ties when they were still based locally. That seemed more like him--and not only because he always wore a tie in public.
But Steven understood the big picture of running any kind of business, and he applied that skill to the restaurant. It can't have been easy. Tujague's was 120 years old when he took over, and had so much momentum that it and its staff surely resisted change. The customers wouldn't like that, and the employees even less.
Steven's predecessors were of the mind that customers should adapt to the restaurant, and if they didn't like that, they could eat somewhere else. The wait staff, famous for its terrible attitude, reinforced that approach. At the time Tujague's offered only one menu: shrimp remoulade, salad, soup, brisket, entree of the day (there was only one), dessert, and coffee.
That concept was historically accurate but hysterically out of line with eating habits of the day. Steven reworked the menu to offer several entrees. Then he straightened out the waiters' indifferent habits.
It took a couple of years, but Steven made Tujague's into a much better restaurant. He did this without ditching the unique cooking and serving styles of Tujague's. His success can be summed up by the comment I heard most often about Tujague's: "It's just like I remember it! Wonderful!" In fact, it was quite a bit different, but it seemed the same, and that's what was wonderful about it.
Steven's idea of the restaurant was best expressed when he and I talked during a radio remote broadcast last year. I asked him whether Tujague's kitchen would make up a platter of--and he stopped me right there. "You can have anything you want at Tujague's," he said. That was a long way from the way things were when he took over.
Steven came across as very serious, but in fact he had a subtle sense of humor that often caught you off guard. The most interesting to me was his collection of little airline-style bottles of liquor from all over the world, including some products that were hard to believe ever were bottled in that format. He had thousands of them--enough to make the collection funny. Anyone who investigated it would walk away with a smile.
The brisket we made at home was excellent, if I say so myself. The only thing missing was horseradish for the Tujague's-style sauce. (Whose other two components are ketchup and Creole mustard). I should have gone out to get some, but it was raining.
