Delectations

Just to forestall charges of reverse snobbery, let me make it clear that when it conies to food and drink I can ooh and aah over fancy foreign things along with the best. My heart leaps up when the shining cover is whisked away and I behold my blanqnette de veau, couchant on a field of gleaming china and snowy napery; I fall suitably reverent when the cobwebby bottle of Chateau Whatsitsname is produced. I am known at La Grenouille and Nicola Paone, at the Oak Room and The Leopard (“It’s him,,, they say, “and he’s got them with him!”). I am downright notorious at the Cape Cod Room of the Drake in Chicago, where one memorable night I ordered another Lobster Cardinal (for dessert).

But come with me now, down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn or Clayton Road in St. Louis or North Clark Street in Chicago, to the underworld of worn Formica counters, unmatched silverware, Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer and Crisco. Dining on the cheap has charms all its own that the jaded do not know —and probably never will, because good bad food is an acquired taste.