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There are many ways to run a restaurant,
and Baker's is probably not on any list of them. He has owned Chez Josephine
for nearly 13 years, but to say that he runs it would be to suggest that you
could draw a firm line delineating where he ends and it begins. Baker simply
is Chez Josephine. Even when he takes a day off, the restaurant
glows with his radioactive half-life. One can search in vain to find where
notions of culinary ambition, the bottom line, concept, strategy, marketing,
or design fit into his scheme. Instead, there is only what he calls "the circus
of my life," absorbed, like coffee into a hungry sugar cube, by every molecule
of the place. As evening settles in, the staff at Chez Josephine is milling about, setting tables, straightening their ties, preparing for the evening like an orchestra tuning up before a performance. In the fading light, the blue ceiling has turned almost black, the red ostrich feathers attached to the chandeliers have become ferociously bright, and a small lamp on the bar, a Moorish figure with legs kicked up à la Josephine Baker, is lost in gloom. For Baker fils this is the cue to start playing with the dimmers, an activity that will be |
| part of his agenda until the last guest leaves. "Every five minutes I'm playing with the lights, the temperature, to create the mood," Baker explains. "I want it to be a little bit warm but not too warm, a little bit cold but not too cold. The music cannot be too loud, too fast, too slow. If you come to my palace, to my home, to my heart. It's really a love story. There is no school for that, I tell you. I am one of the few dinosaurs left." Jean-Claude Baker - born Jean-Claude Tronville in a small village near Dijon, France - was 14 years old, fleeing an unhappy childhood, and working as a bellhop at the Hôtel Scribe in Paris when he met Josephine Baker. Called up to her room to run an errand, he immediately bonded with the black performer who, against the odds, had extricated herself from a difficult childhood and repressive society to become a Jazz Age goddess. "She didn't give me a tip, but she did become my second mother," he says. "I loved her daringness against society. She showed me that there is a place in the world for everyone, that you don't have to be ashamed and it doesn't matter who you are - if you really believe in yourself, you can make it."From Josephine, he learned the importance of unlocking the personality in people, places, things. Following her advice, he moved to Liverpool to learn English, where, as luck would have it, he fell in with The Beatles in their early days. From there, he moved to Berlin and opened the most famous nightclub in the city, The Pimm's Club. |
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"It was wonderful, wonderful. But he could have used me." |
| "I was with
her a very short time in Paris," explains Baker, "then we talked and wrote
letters in between, but it really wasn't until the last seven years of her
life that we spent time together." When they were reunited in Berlin, Jean-Claude
was already a selfmade success. But he gave up the club in order to tour with
Josephine and manage her career. "And suddenly it was something different,"
he explains, "and that's the beauty of it. Very often, she would talk to me
at night when she was in bed. And no, I was not all over her - I must say
it since everyone asks that question. But as soon as the lights went out,
it was like the lid on a kettle when it starts to boil too much, the lid
on the pot of her own life, and she would tell me about wonderful things.
'You remember Jean-Claude when we first arrived in Brazil in 1928...' How
could I remember? I was born in 1944. But, 'Yes, Mother...' She was living
with these memories of being a goddess and I felt very priviledged, getting
this from the person who lived it. Can you imagine, seeing through her eyes,
sharing that fabulous life? And I have brought all of that to this little
hole here." The walls of his "little hole" on 42nd Street read like a visual biography of that life. "When I did the decor I thought of Josephine and her first club in Montmartre in Paris 1926, called Chez Josephine," says Baker. "There is no architect, no decorator. It's me. I put some red - I love red because it is the tradition of the theater and the color of love. A little white here, a little blue, a little simple chair, a nice table, a painting of Josephine in the '20s. Everyone said, 'Jean-Claude, you need a chef.' I said, 'No, first I must make the design of my restaurant.' Then I found a chef and said: 'You cook for that.'" The menu , too, evolved in its own singular fashion. "This is a bistro," says Baker. "I don't want the food to be pretentious. I am allergic to garlic, and I know nothing about wine." He developed the restaurant's wine list phonetically, constructing it like a poem, rejecting bottles - no matter how good or appropriate they might be - whose names he didn't like. |
| When the chef insisted they serve
cassoulet, he found the prospect boring. "But cassoulet is the magic word,
so I said we are going to do a 'transvestite' - a parody of the cassoulet,
with lobster and white beans." Baker didn't try it himself (it has a pinch
of garlic), but thinking it looked too bland, he changed the white beans to
black. Thirteen years later the lobster cassoulet is still one of the main-stays
of Chez Josephine's menu. "So I created a dish without even tasting it,"
Baker says, "and I give credit to my artistic sense." Realizing that his
personality tends to overshadow the food, Baker is in the habit of underplaying
his intuitive culinary sense. So he was gratified that the 1999 Zagat Survey
finally noted "the bistro fare is 'very good too.'" As he puts it, "I don't
want to be a restaurateur, but this is a restaurant, you understand."
Perhaps because he approaches food from an unusual perspective, Baker has
been something of a culinary enfant terrible. His was among the first bistros
in New York City to serve blood sausage. "Bryan Miller (former restaurant critic for the New York Times) gave me two stars for my boudin noir, and I love it," he says. "Even my friend the famous Sirio Maccioni and many famous chefs would come after work because they wanted to have my boudin |
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| noir - I say it's wonderful. They serve the elite of New York with all that chichi - the foie gras and all those boring things - and then they come here for my boudin noir." Never one to be tied by tradition, Baker serves blood sausage not with classic mashed potatoes but with red cabbage and fries, as a souvenir of his time in Germany. The menu also peppers its French bistro fare with a touch of soul food. There is fried chicken named in memory of Josephine's grandmother Elvira, served with corn bread and - another innovation available at Chez Josephine long before anywhere else - sweet potato fries. The short ribs are very popular, as is the shrimp/scallop risotto with collard greens. |
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Whether in memories, the decor, the menu, or among the staff, Baker's genius is his ability to let personality flourish. He makes his kitchen staff memorize the restaurant's floor plan, telling them, "When you cook, I don't want you to be in the kitchen, in the stove, in jail, behind bars. I want you to see in your head that you are cooking for table 10, for Lauren Bacall." He realizes that engaging other personalities enlivens the whole restaurant, and is a way of creating peace rather than disputes. At one time, for example, the menu offered both a homemade bombe pralinée and one bought from the New York City bakery Grossinger's. "I had a chef," Baker explains, "Jean-Claude Teulade, a terrible Frenchman with a big moustache. I got my two stars because of him. He was insulted that I served an outside bombe pralinée. But I refused to remove the Grossinger's from the menu, so for a time we had bombe pralinée from Grossinger's and one from chef Jean-Claude. I preferred the Grossinger's." |
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fare like choucroute garni (below). Photos by Liz Steger. |
| Who knows what the guests made of the choice, but it's the kind of gesture that makes Chez Josephine Chez Josephine. This knack for cultivating personalities - passed as we've seen from Baker to Baker to baker and on to the restaurant's guests - is what struck Jean-David Bordonaro when he started as Chez Josephine's maître d'. With 20 years in the business (mostly in France) and a dramatic slash of a moustache, he knows what people want and what they expect. Before landing at Chez Josephine, he worked at both Daniel and Payard Pâtisserie & Bistro. "They are very nice places," he says, "but the crowd is very demanding. It was hard to have fun. If you were nice to people, they'd eat you." At Chez Josephine, he credits Baker with creating a feeling of openness that disarms the clientele. "This reminds me of France - the point is to make people happy. You can be very professional and give a lot to people - it's like a show." The first customer arrives, alone - his friend will be along in a little while. Oh, and he doesn't have a reservation. "Don't feel guilty!" Baker entreats, "I need your money. You are welcome!" He marches the man through the empty room to a table for four, one of the best in the restaurant. "I hate those places that say to you with arrogance as if, well, you should thank us that we accept your reservation - what a scandale!" he explains. "You have to be thankful for the people who come through your door. Let me tell you the secret of my business," Baker confides. "And I hope when we are done with this interview you won't call me a frustrated actor anymore. I am an actor, and Chez Josephine is my stage. I am at the door. I say, 'Good evening, how are you? What are you going to see?' They say they are going to see The Lion King or Irma Vep. Why do I ask? I whisper to the maître d', 'Broadway' or 'Theater Row' or 'No theater - table 32' (indicating whether they are going to a show at one of the Broadway theaters a few blocks away, to one of the smaller theaters on the block or nearby, or to no show at all). Then, I don't want the maître d' to say, 'Good evening, how are you?' I |
| just did it! So, take it from there,
'Oh it's nice tonight, wonderful, good weather...' And I don't want the waiter
to come a minute later and say, 'Good evening...' Are you crazy? Nuts? On
each order to the kitchen, we put 'B' for Broadway, 'T' for theater on this
block, or 'NT' for no theater - B to be served first, T second, and the third,
we don't give a damn. But that's not true. What if the NT arrives first? That's when I do my trick, go into the kitchen and scream, and the three tables are served at the same time. The seating is very important. You know right away when you look at people if they want to be close to the piano, if they want the window, or if they prefer to be more private inside. If you seat people at the wrong table, it disrupts the whole restaurant. It's psychis - you feel it in the air. Another thing I always know - I'm not expensive, I'm moderate-priced, but some people have to save to come to my restaurant. I sense it, and I treat those people like kings. I send special appetizers, I know, I care. |
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| "And sometimes for the pre-theater, people are having a good time, they talk, and I go to them and say, 'Excuse me, you must finish your dessert now because the curtain is giong to rise in 10 minutes and I want you to be there.' And I do it in a way so that at first they're offended - I love that, I love the shock - he's a famous lawyer or something and thinks, 'How does he dare talk to us like that!' And then they realize - 'Oh yes, we have to go, thank you so much, we had forgotten, we were having such a wonderful time.'" |
| It may be show biz, but for Baker it's heartfelt and soulful. He has actually timed the walk from his place to all the neighbouring theaters - paced for both a slow walker and a fast one - so his guests are certain to be comfortable in their seats before the other show begins. He also keeps the kitchen open until 1a.m., because he realized that Broadway shows are running later and later. "And I don't want people to come and feel, 'Oh the kitchen is going to close at 12 o'clock!' I want them to come and forget about the time and enjoy what they are doing. Like Josephine used to say about the original Chez Josephine, 'I like people to shake off their worries like a dof shakes off its fleas, but..." |
| But the goal remains complete satisfaction. Baker remembers one time when state secretary of treasury Robert Rubin was coming to dinner. Baker had heard he liked apple sorbet - but there was no such thing on the menu. The bombe pralinée would just not do. So, Baker called his "good friend Daniel Boulud, who makes a wonderful apple sorbet." Boulud sent the sorbet over in a taxi, and, when it was served, Baker introduced the dessert with a flourish, "courtesy of my good friend Daniel Boulud." Some restaurants might not so readily share the spotlight. "I am not jealous," Baker says. "Let people go everywhere, but let them come once in a while to my place - that makes me happy." |
Josephine Baker (center) helps a tableful of game dogs (including, on her lft, then-manager / homme de coeur Pepito Abatino) "shake off some fleas" at the original Chez Josephine, 40 rue Fontaine, Paris, April 12, 1927. |
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