I’ve been very cautious this past year, staying home except for necessary grocery runs and even more necessary daily walks around Griffith Park. I love going to restaurants, but for months I would pass by all the weird makeshift patios around the city and wonder why these people were risking their health, not to mention the restaurant employees’ safety, in order to have the same meal they could just as easily order for takeout and eat comfortably at home. I’m not the type of person who craves big social situations very often and it took me a long time to start to slowly go crazy from the repetition and isolation. Well, I finally made it!
Something shifted for me when the vaccines started rolling out. Seeing a possible end in sight made me suddenly impatient, feeling acutely trapped in a different way and needing a change of scenery, even for a day or two. I convinced my husband to go to Palm Springs for a couple nights, and I drove to the desert hoping to shake myself out of the mental funk I’ve been in. Just being in a hotel room did a lot to cheer me up, and getting to swim in a pool felt truly restorative. On our second night, knowing we would have to drive home the next day, I had a crazy idea.
“Let’s go out to dinner. Would you be comfortable with that?” I brought it up without any premeditation. I didn’t even know I wanted to go to a restaurant, but after I mentioned it I couldn’t think about anything else.
“Sure,” he said with no hesitation.
It felt slightly transgressive even though we would be outside taking all the usual precautions. The risk to ourselves and others would be minimal, but it wouldn’t be nothing. We were on the road immediately, heading to one of those mid-priced, vaguely gay bar/restaurants that haven’t changed their menu since 1997. They usually have short catchy names like “Vynl” or “Toast”, serve upscale comfort food dripping with truffle oil, and their bartenders don’t smirk if you order a Cosmo. They were once common in neighborhoods like Hell’s Kitchen and Weho before everyone suddenly became rich and healthy. They still thrive in resort towns like Palm Springs, but it’s only a matter of time before they’re all replaced with something fancier or more trendy.
This particular dinosaur is called “Trio”, its motto “Robust Flavors with a Twist” and its patio 3/4 full at 5:30pm. I knew exactly what I wanted, a French Martini and a Chicken Piccata. French Martinis are not French and Chicken Piccata sure as hell isn’t Italian. They both fall into that nebulous American culinary tradition once called “Continental,” fashionable in the decades between Julia Child and Alice Waters, when spending serious money on food could only be justified if one received a sufficiently European experience. Regional specificity wasn’t necessary, local ingredients weren’t available, and “New American” was a phrase describing Cadillacs, not restaurants.
A French Martini contains vodka, pineapple juice and Chambord, a French black raspberry liqueur in an extremely pretentious bottle. The drink was invented even later than I thought, in the 1980s at one of Keith McNally’s New York bars, and popularized at Balthazar. I first got into them around the corner at MercBar in about 2006, when I worked as a bellman at a Soho hotel and didn’t want to go home with a stack of 1s burning a hole in my pocket. They never got quite as ubiquitous as Cosmopolitans so they never got quite as embarrassing to order, but they serve the same purpose. Sweet and just a bit tart, with a little burn from the vodka so you know they’re working.
The one at Trio burned more than a little. I suspect the well vodka wasn’t quite up to par, but also that the bartender gave me an extremely generous pour. A stiff, bordering on painful drink is an expected act of kindness at a gay bar. A well balanced cocktail has its place, but in this context booze is meant to be palliative, and this really hit the spot.
Next was the Piccata, which I’d had before at Trio when we were in Palm Springs last February, right before lockdown. Maybe that memory elevated the dish, but it felt triumphant to eat the same meal at the same restaurant just over a year later. Chicken Piccata and its problematic predecessor Veal Piccata predate the French Martini but feel spiritually similar. I couldn’t find a Googlible origin story but I have to assume this dish comes from the Northern Italian craze of the ‘70s and ‘80s, your Il Tinellos and your Mezzalunas, catering to Boomer yuppies raised on spaghetti and meatballs and wanting something a little lighter to pair with their cocaine habit. The dish hints at Milan or Venice but was probably invented no more than a mile from Central Park. There are a ton of different recipes out there but all of them center around a lemon/butter/white wine sauce dotted with capers, spooned over a chicken cutlet and served with pasta or, if you’re really unlucky, potatoes. The briny capers are what makes the dish unique and firmly places it in the late 20th Century, when acidity in white middle-class American food was revolutionary.
Trio, in the parlance of Smith professors and TikTok teens, “queers” the Piccata by mixing cream into the sauce (an ancient gay trick dating back to James Beard) and adding exactly four phallic asparagus spears nestled beneath the chicken breast and angel hair. Yes the chicken was overcooked, the cream dulled the sharpness of the lemon and capers, and March 1st asparagus felt a tad presumptive, but Trio promised “Robust Flavors with a Twist” and they absolutely delivered. I can’t think of a more soothing food. It’s a dish that is maybe almost a half century past its heyday, but has stayed around and become a classic for a reason.
Things I read this week:
I finished Joan Didion’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean. I really enjoyed the later essays included, especially the ones on Martha Stewart and Ernest Hemingway. The book is very short and I wanted more Joan, so I started The Year of Magical Thinking but the first chapter is so intense I don’t know if I’m in the right mental space to continue.
The LA Times is COVERING the Tom Girardi (Erika Jayne’s rich lawyer husband) fiasco. Crossing my fingers for a jam packed season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
More tennis! Roger Federer is coming back after two knee surgeries. He won his first match in over a year yesterday.
Bagel clickbait from the Failing New York Times. I really love Belle’s in Highland Park but wish they would make a cinnamon raisin.
A New Yorker article about how music streaming services are doing away with the Gen X/Millennial definition of “genre” and catering to those kooky, omnivorous Zoomers.
The Father - slightly better than I expected. Three-and-a-half stars.
Minari - slightly worse than I expected. Three-and-a-half stars.
Coming to America - I was MUCH too young for these 80s comedies the first time around and honestly don’t vibe with many of the Reitman/Landis/Ramis “classics” I have seen. This, however, is great!
Tenet - zzzzzzz…
Can’t Get You Out of My Head - I loved the new, extremely long Adam Curtis documentary. He challenges Neoliberal (a term he smartly refuses to use) orthodoxy without seeming polemical or at all conspiratorial. I hope some MSNBC fans will watch.
Twin Peaks The Return - We finished. It’s just as astonishing as the first time I watched it, and I’m maybe even more confused by the ending. Was in a r/twinpeaks hole until 1am.
Dickinson - Finished Season 2. Maybe even better than season 1. It’s the best of the revisionist, deliberately anachronistic period pieces that have been so trendy the past few years. And the costume design is unreal.
Wandavision Ep 9 - This show has somehow made Marvel even more central to the cultural conversation. Sort of terrifying.
Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Harry - Two women who can really craft a narrative. And Harry.
The Critic’s Choice Awards - My love for awards shows was tested by this three hour abomination hosted by the charmlessly smarmy Taye Diggs.
Drag Race UK and US - both seasons have been so fun.
Real Housewives (A, D, NJ) - thank God for Atlanta because Dallas and NJ have been rough.