Snack to the Future Algonquin hotel sends diners back to the 1940s. By Tad Wilkes
"Waiter, there’s a McFly in my soup."
Okay, so no one actually overheard a guest say that. But just as Dr. Brown tweaked a DeLorean into a time machine and shot Marty McFly to another era, last spring Executive Chef and F&B Director Alex Aubry sent diners at the Algonquin Hotel back to the 1940s using the famous French cookbook Spécialités de la Maison.
The inspiration for the "new" menu is the Algonquin's rich history. A New York City landmark recently named to the National Trust Historic Hotels of America, the 174-guest-room Algonquin is home to Dorothy Parker’s famous Round Table (hence the name "Round Table Room" for the hotel's lunch and dinner restaurant) and is the birthplace of The New Yorker magazine. Using menu selections from the Collins Design reprint of Spécialités de la Maison—which originally appeared in 1940 and features recipes from luminaries including Robert Sherwood, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, Charlie Chaplin, and Tallulah Bankhead—Aubry and company debuted a special menu in the Round Table Room.
The Algonquin’s menu was priced at $22 for lunch and $29 for dinner. Aubry says coverage in The New York Times, The New York Post, and other media spread the word, and the Algonquin averaged about 120 covers a week, 20 to 30 of them being lunches. For parties of five or more, the staff gave each guest a free reprint of the book, thanks to a partnership the hotel formed in with Harper Perennial, parent of HarperCollins Publishers and Collins Design. Guests were able to take advantage of digital book downloads and custom events created exclusively for the Algonquin by Harper Perennial.
"[The publisher] gave us the book and marked which of the celebrities actually stayed at the hotel," says Aubry, who then began using recipes by those guests. The offerings rotated for four weeks, with each week bringing a new appetizer, entrée, and dessert selection from Spécialités de la Maison.
"The first week, the appetizer was Mrs. George Washington’s Crab Soup by Eleanor Roosevelt, the entrée was Southern Fried Chicken by Tallulah Bankhead, and the dessert was Salamander Pudding (which Aubry says is similar to crème brûlée) by William Vanderbilt," Aubry explains. Some modifications were necessary to make the 1940s dishes more accessible for modern palates, and some ingredients of that era aren’t available, such as certain types of flour. For instance, Aubry eschewed lard and bacon fat and cooked fried chicken without the skin. For other recipes, he used clarified butter instead of margarine.
For the side dishes, he also went with comfortable, familiar modern choices, such as wilted spinach alongside the Southern Fried Chicken, "to capture the eye and make it more attractive." No special period serveware or presentation was used; Aubry let the food tell the stories.
"The menu met with success because people could relate to it, they knew about it, and many people probably brushed off their original copy and then came in to see how the Algonquin would interpret it," says Gary Budge, the hotel’s general manager.
The Algonquin’s partnership with Harper Perennial proved so successful that the hotel worked with them for another promotion tying F&B to books, which ran in November. Tonic & Tomes is a menu of food and drink pairings inspired by literature. The menu, specifically inspired by How to Booze by Jordan Kaye and Marshall Altier, featured three specialty cocktails and food items connected humorously to life situations for which they are appropriate. Additional book-menu pairing promos are scheduled to follow.
Thurston E. (Tad) Wilkes III is managing editor of HOTEL F&B. Formerly editor of NIGHTCLUB & BAR Magazine, he has covered on-premise bars and outlets for the past decade.
