| ||
More (Archives + Search) | Contact | Subscribe (it's free) | About Us | Wine Agents | Wine Reviews | Good Food Revolution | ||
| Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso: Interview with The Silver Palate Ladies
It's difficult to understand how pioneering The Silver Palate was in the early 1980s. All of it: the book, which has just been rewritten for its 25th ('Silver') anniversary, the store and the products. I remember the sauces in our cupboard and the book being pulled out for my parents' dinner parties. Owners and authors Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso changed the way North Americans ate in several important ways that we now take for granted: 1) They pioneered the take away meal concept in fancy food stores; 2) Their sauces, dressing and other products set the standard for fancy packaged food; and 3) The Silver Palate Cookbook (and subsequent imprints like The New Basics) introduced a casual and relaxed yet explanatory format, which taught millions how to cook and enjoy new ingredients. I met up with them on a recent tour. Gremolata: You wrote The Silver Palate Cookbook because you had the shop and you wanted to show your customers how to use your products, right? Sheila Lukins: Not necessarily. We had a newsletter that we published for the shop, and it was very chatty. It had drawings and a lot of information. And one of our customers, Barbara Plum who was in publishing, loved it and said, "Girls you should write a cookbook." Julee Rosso: I wasn't sure about it, with all the other cookbooks out there in the world. We were two girls from Columbus Avenue who had the newsletter where we talked about our line of products, but it was just another sales vehicle. G: A marketing tool. An afterthought, even? JR: Right. Sheila didn't want to write the book because she was afraid all the other shops would steal our recipes and we'd go out of business! We'd give it all away. SL: Well, it was filled with all the recipes from the store. G: All the prepared foods? SL: All the prepared food recipes from the store. And I thought, 'Oh my God if we give away the recipes, no one will ever shop in the store anymore.' [Laughs.] But it turned out to be quite different. JR: And it turned out that ideas were never in short supply. We always had new ideas about what to cook next. And people kept coming back. At the beginning it was interesting about the cross merchandising: some people knew about the book, some people new about the store and some people knew about the products, but it was rare that anyone knew about all three. SL: Well, I think the depended on each other. One would make the other more and more well known. So the store flourished and the book flourished and the products did as well. G: In some of the press around the anniversary edition, I've read that it was considered quite cutting edge for two women to own their own business then. Is that true? SL: Yes it was. Julee and I were very cutting edge. We were two of the first, really. And the Upper West Side of New York was very edgy at that time. It had been a nasty neighbourhood and we helped make it glitzy and prosperous. When we started our rent was something like $425. When we ended it was up to something like $5,000. JR: You know, take-out food is now the norm. There's something on every street corner, etc. But it was a brand new idea in those days. You could buy meats, cheeses, caviar, but there were no places where you could buy an entire meal. We had everything from salads to desserts. G: Was that something that you thought of right away when you opened? SL: It was the concept. Julee thought you cold stop by a store on your way home from work for a meal, or even to do a party. More and more women were working. They weren't staying at home to cook. G: That's how you met, right? JR: I'd be coming home from work and the whole neighbourhood would be locked-up tight - this is when there was graffiti on every corner. So, I thought there has to be an alternative for people like moi. SL: Now you find that so many supermarkets, even ones that are not specialty food stores, have prepared salads and things. JR: That's right; you can always get a chicken... SL: Roast chicken and maybe potatoes, or a macaroni salad. G: Te fact that North Americans aren't always cooking is always celebrated, though. So it's kind of ironic that The Silver Palate Cookbook actually taught a lot of people how to cook. SL: Yes it did. JR: And you can pick and choose. I mean, you can't eat a rich plate of chocolate cake every day. You've just got to learn that in life. Everyone's busy, so you can't cook every single day of your life. And people cook some nights, cook some of their meal others, or go to restaurants. It's a hodgepodge. So our store let you live your life and still eat well. And it made people comfortable with new things. I remember when balsamic vinegar came out. Even capers or Greek olives weren't readily available. Or fresh herbs. G: I can recall radicchio being very exotic. Did you know about them as professionals...? SL: I have to interrupt you. Excuse me. I want to say one thing. We have a different point of view, being in New York, where I have heard over and over again that people are not cooking any more. But since I've been on this book tour, I can absolutely say that it's simply not true. There are lots of places in The United States where people are cooking all the time. It's only in major markets where you have yuppie types who order in every night. They're affluent, they have a lot of money to dispose of, and they don't have kids yet. But the people we meet are cooking ever night all over the country. JR: And if you live in a small community, you have limited choices. There aren't that many restaurants. So if you want to try something new, you cook it. And that was big in our books: the recipes, the chattiness were there to make people feel comfortable to try new things and go and seek out new ingredients that they might otherwise not. Those ingredients were strange 25 years ago. Some of them were entertaining food then, but are everyday food now. SL: When people went into their markets to ask for a particular kind of mushroom, eventually their greengrocer would order it. And something like arugula would get into their store and they would keep it. It's ironic now that iceberg lettuce is making a big come back because someone started cutting it in wedges and putting Roquefort dressing on top of it. It's come full circle! JR: The wedge came back! SL: Yeah and every chef in the USA now has to have a steak restaurant. And they all serve iceberg lettuce. But anyway... JR: Used to be mesclun. SL: But those mesclun mixed got so tired and droopy. It's better to make you own. Just put together a bunch of different lettuces. JR: We really had to rewrite a lot of things for the new edition because things just were no longer true. G: Like what? JR: We said you had to make your bread because there was no good bread in the country! And now there are these artisanal cheeses being made across the country, made with loving care just down the street. And garage wineries, there's all these new small wineries. G: People might now about wineries and cheese makers, but do they know how to boil water? JR: There's always new people who don't know how to boil water. Everyone's got to learn. SL: I always tell young cooks to just learn to do a few things well. And little by little they can add something. I think of all the young men in college watching The Food Network. They'll pick up things little by little and they’ll learn how to boil water. JR: When The New Basics came out so many young men came up to us and said, "I need this to learn how to cook." And now they say, "Yu taught me how to cook. My mom gave me the book when I graduated after college." And that's a huge compliment. SL: It warms the cockles of our hearts! * * * |  Click here to find out what's going on at All The Best Fine Foods.   |
