At the Pierre for a Salute to Chita Rivera

I thought it would be extremely interesting to attend the salute to Chita Rivera, a gala evening for the Drama League that was to be a black-tie dinner event at the Pierre Hotel. I wasn't exactly sure what the Drama League was but I imagined the members would include rather grand figures in the New York theater world, among them Jed Harris, Lucille Lortel, Bob Fosse, Laurette Taylor, the Lunts, Flo Ziegfeld and so forth.

I felt good about myself that night. I had on a pink flesh-colored dress with matching coat, from Shaw's of Roslyn, beautifully made with a knee-length chiffon flowing skirt, the top part of a heavier material perfectly draped with lead weights, and a matching belt with a diamond buckle that snapped open at inappropriate moments; the long coat of the same color had matching diamond buttons at the cuffs. And I wore my hair up in a mushroom formation that I believed to be highly effective, although I wasn't certain what effect I was aiming for, exactly.

The Pierre is a serious kind of place with mirrors and thick carpeting and vitrines displaying red kidskin slippers studded with beads and ladies' resort wear of the type you'd wear if you were going to go back to Atlanta, things like a beige jacket with no lapels to be worn with a large rhinestone pin in the shape of a butterfly. It was fun to watch the men and women arrive, the women dressed in huge voluminous skirts and fitted tops, in shimmery taffeta, blonde hair neatly coifed?it was a bit like going to another city in the U.S., maybe some gala charity event in Lexington or Louisville, KY, where people were still members of a country club although none of the people I mentioned were visible and to be honest none of them looked like theater people at all, but maybe doctors and doctors' wives who had all paid around 10 grand for a table here for the evening.

The drinks reception was held upstairs, but for the white wine there was only chardonnay, with which I have a problem, in that I won't drink it, and so I opted for a bloody mary; after the recent anti-hors d'oeuvres tirade I'd written for this paper, I was somewhat relieved that no hors d'oeuvres were being served, only that little tables around the sides of the conference or convention hall held bowls containing 1) mixed nuts 2) large blanched salted almonds and 3) potato chips. I found this unusual, although I very much admired the daring of serving two varieties of nuts. Normally even if there are no hors d'oeuvres served by waiters there is the customary large display of vegetables such as broccoli, carrots and radishes along with a rather liquidy unidentifiable dip.

For me the potato chip is one of the world's most perfect food products. One year however I canceled my subscription to Consumer Reports after they did a piece on potato chips and told the reader which was the best. I felt, truly, that Consumer Reports had no business comparing and contrasting the varieties of potato chips. I think the result was something like Pringles being given the top vote, on the basis of freshness and cost, but to my mind Pringles is not a potato chip, it is a potato food-thing. Maybe that was not their choice, but to me, the potato chip has always been a matter of personal taste and I would not be told which to buy. If a person really likes a sour-cream-and-onion-flavored potato chip, or barbecue-flavored, that is his or her problem, or they have inferior tastebuds, far be it from me to dictate.

The American potato chip is not the best in the world, though I have always been fond of Ruffles, and Cape Cod has also been mentioned as being highly rated; but the American potato is not so flavorful, at least not the ones used in chips; the oil is not the most flavorful; many times one might simply be munching on highly caloric deep-fried construction paper covered with salt. Each potato chip has 10 calories. Basic rules of mathematics would suggest that 10 potato chips will equal 100 calories in a matter of approximately seven to nine seconds. I like the idea of those potato chips made with indigestible Olestra, but in fact I don't think those are much less caloric and they don't taste right, really. I have found some of the world's best potato chips in England and even the flavors there seem interesting?salt-and-vinegar, lime-chili?or those small packets of chips (crisps, to citizens of the UK) containing, separately, a little parcel of salt. In addition there one might also find chips that are thick-cut, or with the skins left on and among them I would rate, internationally supreme, the premium Kettle Chips, and if I have found that brand here it doesn't taste the same as over there. Finally, I would also rate the potato chips of India, again, not simply for the quality of the potatoes, of which I'm uncertain, but rather for the interesting and pungent seasonings available, things that don't sound good (tomato ketchup potato chips, for example) but in fact do taste great.

At last it was time to shuffle into the other hall or ballroom for dinner. The first course was a thin plate-shaped-and-sized piece of salmon; four toast points; and a rather pretty arrangement of teaspoon-sized dollops of capers, pink roe, egg yolk and a couple of other things that I couldn't see because it was too dark. There was also a lovely lemon half in his or her own gauze bag, tied in a flounce at the top, which I initially thought was a beggar's purse or dumpling of some sort.

There actually wasn't anybody else at our table, so nobody besides my husband would have noticed, had I eaten it, but I didn't. We weren't even really expecting anyone else to join us at our table, either. That is because for many years we would go to some benefit or charity dinner and though the room would be full there was never anyone else sitting at our table. We have dined out alone at tables for 10 more times than we could count. Sometimes even others came, sat down at their assigned table (ours) and then left. But by now we were used to it. In any event, having the first course on the table when the diners arrived seemed to me to be a new trend in this country, but it was quite commonplace in Russia and even in Russian restaurants here?if you had a reservation for say, 10 people, at 8 o'clock, when you get to the restaurant, the first course of many appetizers and hors d'oeuvres will already be out on the table. Sometimes this is frightening, as if the food has been sitting there all day, or as if the table was hoping to lure some guests. Sometimes it is all even covered in plastic. But that is simply the style and eventually one comes to understand they want you to feel welcome, and expected. So now this custom appears to be befalling the city.

Then some others came and joined us. They were all young people, in their 20s, who vaguely might have been from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel if he were writing today, clean and glossy rich-appearing youth: a theater producer attempting to get a rock opera off the ground, who "already has 70 percent of the backers"; a publicist for a jeweler; a woman from a magazine; and a kind of Princeton type who claimed to be a hypnotist (shortly, however, he was made to leave because he wasn't meant to be there?or rather here?and he was replaced by a newspaper reporter). Nobody seemed to have much connection to the theater, apart from the faintly suspicious young producer. But I liked him because I told him I was a dog-groomer and he didn't flinch, but asked intelligent questions until I pointed out that I was a messy person who couldn't groom.

The next course was a large piece of meat, possibly filet mignon, in a brown sauce, accompanied by a tomato stuffed with something green and another thing, stuffed with other things, and three small puffy potatoes that were not stuffed with anything and in fact had nothing inside them. The problem was, it was good food for a gala dinner. Sometimes or usually at a gala dinner the food is either chicken in white sauce or salmon. But even though it was good food for a gala dinner, it was still not food I wanted to eat. How can anybody serve food simultaneously to several thousand people? Only by preparing all the food in advance and then somehow keeping it warm, which always gives the food to me a kind of dead taste?as if it's been on a steam tray, or microwaved. And the dessert was a pyramid of crispy pastry stuffed with some kind of flavored cream and accompanied by six pink halves of what might have been strawberries.

Then came the homage or salute or tribute to Chita Rivera. We didn't stay for the whole thing, but the parts I saw were 1) Elaine Stritch singing with Russell Nype and 2) a group of young men doing a strip act, which amused me. I didn't really have a clue as to what was going on or why I was there, which I could pretty much say about my whole life. But it did make me think about what I would serve if I was hosting a dinner for one thousand. Some dishes don't really mind the abuse of being reheated. Lasagna never seems to mind being reheated, although it is not fashionable?although for a time at Barocco they served a kind of lasagna that was very flat, solid and square, more like a little firm lasagna cake than a big oozing ricotta-and-mozzarella-with-spaghetti-sauce explosion. Indian food often does not mind being reheated.

Or I suppose one might serve little individual chicken pot pies, with crusts made of phyllo dough and interiors filled, not with a cream sauce, but with a reduction of butter, flour, broth and sherry (I know there's a name for this, but I don't know what). But the rule is always, chicken or meat and/or fish without any flavor, in case someone is allergic to garlic. (Or in case one person is allergic to peanuts, pepper, onion, shrimp paste, ginger?by the time the chef has ruled out the things one person in the thousand might be allergic to, he or she is left with nothing.)

So, I think, by trying not to offend anyone out of the one thousand people, here I am, offended by the fact that my night out becomes an airline-cuisine experience. But I still would like to try the real restaurant, in the Pierre lobby, with the thick rugs and little sofas and ceiling painted like the sky, and only the two of us at our table on purpose, so I could pretend to see Vivien Leigh and Cole Porter cross the room on their way to meet Tennessee Williams. And Leonard Bernstein.