Eating With the 'Times' and Its Fancy Friends
It can be a challenge, sometimes, to wait all the way till Wednesday for the chance to let Alex Kuczynski tell us how rich people shop. The Dining In/Dining Out section, which appears a full day earlier, on Wednesdays, feels our pain. Starting today, it introduces a new, monthly column by Alex Witchel — a.k.a. Mrs. Frank Rich — that will instead tell us how rich people eat. In the first installment of Feed Me, Witchel regales with tales of her hoity-toity dinner party (the foie gras that is apparently now served instead of caviar, of which the rich have tired, the lamb chops so exquisitely tiny they could have been another appetizer, the conversation of "the late great society walker Jerry Zipkin) and explores the mystery of the finger bowl.
An embossed sterling silver bowl sitting on a plate, flanked with a knife and spoon. I deluded soul had assumed it was about to be filled with dessert. After all, a waiter hovered behind me with a silver tray and after making a few guttural noises, after poking the bowl once or twice, which he seemed to hope would nudge my memory, give me an "aha!" moment to do ... what, exactly? Well, that's when the scolding began. Because I, veteran of hundreds of New York dinner parties (it only feels like thousands) did not recognize a finger bowl.
It was, we're sure, horrible for Witchel when she realized her faux pas. But we're also sort of unsure what to do with this information. Does she tell us when fingers are used and by what sorts of people? How to use one? How to avoid situations in which snooty hosts will expect you to do one? Nope, nope, and nope.
But at least — and unlike Alex K. — she makes fun of her chichi hosts rather than simply celebrating their pretention. For that move alone — increasingly unusual in the Times's plutocrat-friendly features sections — we kind of dig this Feed Me.
