Duncan Hines (37 page)

Hines accumulated much credibility within the motel industry. Some years earlier, around 1946-1948, he had been approached by a group of highly reputable stockholders who had the idea of opening a chain of Duncan Hines Motels. Hines thought it over for a while but “regretfully declined to join the venture.” He felt that in doing so he would be getting away from his “original purpose of guiding people to the best places that were then already in existence.”
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About this time the public began to learn of his most recent hobby. A few years earlier, in 1948, Hines began developing a new bit of business to entertain the press—and, later, television audiences. He would empty his pockets and show off his large collection of unusual wristwatches. Whenever he and Clara would go anywhere, he would arm himself with at least a dozen timepieces, almost all of which made some sort of noise, and entertain himself and anyone else for long stretches of time. His wrists were usually adorned with his prized timepieces such as his handsome gold watch, which was a duplicate of President Eisenhower's, or his “regulation pocket watch with a fob made from a $50 gold piece.”
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It was not uncommon for him to carry fourteen wristwatches on his person wherever he went. While most of these devices were of modern design, one was 150 years old and was still in excellent operational condition.
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On his trips throughout the country Hines was constantly purchasing a new toy to play with, always a gadget of some kind, one which he was sure would also delight a friend or relative. He was enchanted by gadgets and acquired plenty of them. Their usual defining characteristic was their usefulness. Roy Park knew of his partner's watch hobby and made it a practice to give him a new one every year. One year Park sent Hines a watch with an alarm in it. As he tried it on, Hines made everyone laugh when he said that he was going to set its alarm off in church so the preacher would cut the sermon short.
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A few months later, when a reporter from the
Louisville
Courier-Journal
interviewed him, Hines pulled from his pocket the watch with the $50 Mexican gold piece fob and thrust it into the reporter's face, saying with characteristic humor, “This one is handy in case my wife takes all my money, so I'd still have the price of a hamburger for two.” Showing off his wrist watches, the alarms of which could sound off not only every hour but every fifteen minutes, he said as he pulled them from his left coat pocket, “These alarm watches sometimes come in handy. I can always set one or the other of them to go off and remind me of an important appointment any time an encyclopedia salesperson gets about ready to pin me down.”
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Still a child at heart, Hines sometimes played practical jokes. He was known to bring home from his travels little gifts for his employees. On one occasion, however, one of these jokes did not particularly amuse them. A few days earlier while he was in Chicago's Marshall Field department store, he spotted a can of “French-fried Mexican agave worms.” They were expensive, at two dollars per can. He ordered a couple of units and sent them to Bowling Green. Later, when he returned home, he opened the worm-filled containers, nicely arranged the edibles on a silver tray, and offered them to his employees. “They looked like big matches that cowboys use,” he said. “I told the girls in the office that it was a delicacy from France—and they ate them like candy—they loved them. Two days later I showed them the can—and they wanted to kill me. It was just the name. As long as they didn't know what it was, they liked it.”
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In the spring of 1954 Hines and Clara went to Europe for the first time, accompanied by their close friend, Nelle Palmer, the operator of the Lowell Inn in Stillwater, Minnesota.
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It was a “just for fun” trip, Hines told reporters as he prepared for his excursion,
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adding that he was not going to spend his time hanging around “crumbling castles or stuffy museums.” Instead, he said, “I want to see everything that is new and modern, including a few watch factories in Switzerland!”
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He and Clara took a train from Bowling Green to New York City, where they were met by Roy Park upon their arrival. Before heading off to Europe, however, Hines, Clara, Park, and a couple of reporters drove 30 miles into the New York countryside to dine in nearby Banksville. Their destination? La Cremaillere a la Campagne, a French restaurant owned and operated by Antoine Gilly in a 100-year-old home. As they headed toward their destination, Hines said with a wistful grin, “I can taste those cheese cigarettes of Antoine's right now. Heavy cream, egg yolks, grated Parmesan—”

“Duncan!” Clara blurted out, laughing, “Remember, you're supposed to be saving some space for Europe.”

When the party arrived at La Cremaillere a la Campagne, Hines asked M. Gilly what restaurants in Paris he should investigate,
remarking “that he was willing to try anything but snails.” Later, in the middle of their feast, one reporter asked Clara if her husband was a fussy eater. “Not at all!” exclaimed Hines, answering the question for his wife as he reached out to help himself to another cheese cigarette. “Take breakfast,” he said playfully but with a straight face, “One of my favorite breakfasts is ice cream and corn flakes. What could be simpler than that?”
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The Hines and Nelle Palmer set sail upon the French luxury liner
Liberte
for Paris on 8 April 1954. While on board they were treated to “floor shows, dancing, [an] orchestra, horse races, and bingo games.” While playing bingo, Clara won 72,000 francs, or a little over $200. Later, the chef on the liner “gave the Hines a special dinner in their honor.” The multi-course dinner was served over several hours in a very leisurely manner. The Hines dined on such delicacies as fresh Russian caviar; clear vegetable soup; lobster with an elegant, rich sauce; green asparagus with another rich sauce; broiled Porterhouse steak with the chef's own version of Hollandaise sauce; potatoes, which, in Hines's words, were “fixed up real fancy”; green vegetable salad topped with what Hines judged as “a super-duper dressing”; a souffle; assorted fruits; and a wine of a very good year. Hines was most impressed with the size of the asparagus; he recalled later that they were “served as whole spears and these spears were about eight inches around the base. They were either white, green, or green and white, tender from top to bottom and were served with delicious sauces. To eat them you dip an asparagus spear in the sauce and bite off a chunk and repeat until all is eaten, and it's quite a feat to eat them and not dribble the sauce on your face.”

At Captain Jacques Leveque's orders, the crew gave their honored guests a grand tour of the ship. They let Hines linger at great length in the ship's kitchen, or galley, where the master food critic found waiting for his inspection thirty-six “varieties of cheeses, eight kinds of fresh fruits and all kinds of fresh vegetables.” Hines especially appreciated the fact that “when chicken was on the menu, the first-class passengers were served French chickens, which are smaller but plumper than the American variety”; they
also had, he said, “a more delicate flavor.” Another observation that pleased Hines was that the ship's cooks prepared their meals “entirely with butter—no lard or grease.”

The manner in which his meals were served fascinated and delighted Hines. At the traditional ten-course “Captain's dinner,” he noted that one course of the meal, fois gras or goose liver, was served with truffles from a huge platter, the center of which featured “a unique barnyard scene. The figures of the various animals,” particularly the geese and the barn, “were made from a mixture of bread and lard, chilled and then painted…. The caviar was served from a boat carved from ice, and when time came for dessert, the cakes were served in lighted, colored, spun-sugar baskets.”
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When the Hines and Mrs. Palmer disembarked in France at LeHavre, they almost hated to leave, but there was the whole European continent ahead of them, so they boarded a boat train for Paris. Once inside the city limits of the French capital, the threesome began exploring the French restaurants of the famed metropolis. As they had hoped, no matter where they ate, they found good food. “All of the French food,” said Hines later, “was so wonderfully seasoned by the chefs that I never once reached for the salt or pepper during my stay in France.” However, to his discomfort, he noticed that the French liberally poured more sauce on their food than he cared to witness.
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The most memorable restaurant the threesome discovered during the next few days was the tiny Chez La Mere Michel, which specialized primarily in seafood; Hines swooned over their scallops.
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He later said of the owner, Maud Michel, “I had fun with that old lady that runs that place. She brought out some real old brandy. I kissed her on both cheeks and I got her around the waist and give her a slap and she said, ‘Oh, you're a nice man.'”
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Next the Hines and Mrs. Palmer dined at the Plaza Athenee, an elegant restaurant where they were the luncheon guests of George Marin. At this meal they savored the culinary joys of “melon with Bayonne ham, (thin, sliced raw ham),
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Turbot souffle, roast chicken with green beans and peas, fresh strawberries and pink
champagne.” At the small but intimate Reíais de Porqueralles, “they feasted on the famous bouillabaisse, made of all sorts of fish lobster, crab, mussels and shrimp and served, from a huge platter, with a thin fish soup.” Their greatest meal of the day came later at Laperrouse, where they dined on “duck and chicken, cooked with herb sauces.”

A day or so later Hines was the guest of honor at a nearly five hour luncheon in which he was made a member of the Parisian society of Cercie des Tourists Gastronomes. At this dinner, he and Clara were served large portions of “fresh truffles in pastry shells, broiled sole, roast duck with browned new potatoes and green peas, fresh strawberries on ice cream with spun sugar cookies,” or what the French prefer to call sweet biscuits.
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Hines enthusiastically approved of the manner in which the French consumed their meals. “Eating, to your Frenchman,” said Hines, “is not just a way of appeasing his hunger, but a gustatory experience. Each course—indeed, each mouthful—is savored and thoroughly enjoyed before he passes on to the next.” There was no bolting and beating it here. Hines was also greatly impressed by the attention that French restaurateurs paid to keeping their restaurants clean. “For example,” he observed, “as soon as there is a speck of ash in an ash tray, the tray is whisked away and replaced by a clean one.”

However, if the indoor restaurants of Paris gladdened Hines's heart, the ones on the city's sidewalks did not. “The famous sidewalk cafes were a disappointment to us,” said Hines later.

We'd looked forward eagerly to dining under the gay umbrellas and watching the
boulevardiers
and
demimondes
of Paris walking up and down, but alas for romance. A horde of flies, gnats, and other bugs that I couldn't identify swarmed over us and our table, and our sparkling bon mots were lost in the cacophony of sound the like of which I'd never heard. Every automobile in Paris seemed to have two horns and no muffler. Nell[e] and Clara shouted at me, I shouted at Nell[e] and Clara, and we all shouted at the waiter. We ate inside for the rest of the trip.
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Once outside of Paris, they quickly forgot the city's congested turmoil. In fact, they grew quite fond of everything they encountered. While the Hines and Mrs. Palmer spent a little time between meals visiting the usual tourist attractions that Americans frequent, they primarily concentrated their energies on eating the rich food for which French cooks are so famous. For the most part, they avoided eating establishments that were well known to American tourists in favor of the small, native restaurants “where unusual food was to be found.”
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After exploring the French countryside for several days, they crossed the French border into Belgium, where they made their way to Brussels and to L'epaule de Mouton, a restaurant well off the beaten tourist path. The restaurant, founded in 1660, still seated only twenty-eight persons, but it was, they discovered, well worth the trip. The restaurant's staff of four prepared and brought to their table “smoked ham from [the] Ardennes forest, consomme of black cherries, lobster bisque, filet cooked with white wine and tarragon sauce, chicken ‘flamed' at the table, [and] veal with cream sauce.” While in Brussels “they were met…by Paul Hebert, their driver from the travel agency in London, and a Humber Pullman limousine, by whom and in which they were driven during their remaining tour of the continent.” When they arrived in Amsterdam a day or so later, they dined on rijistafel, a rice-based Indonesian meal, in a Balinese restaurant. They also seated themselves at the table of one of Europe's famous restaurants, an establishment that had been in continuous operation since 1300 and had been located in the present building since 1627; amazingly, it had become a mecca for foreign tourists, even though it sported the unappetizing name of “The Five Flies.”
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The trio also dined at the Lido, which served 300 patrons on four floors and employed 140 persons, leaving a customer-employee ratio that guaranteed the finest in personal service. Though the food was marvelous and service spectacular, what most impressed Hines during his stay in the country was the dress of Belgium's waiters. He observed that,
no matter where he went, all the Dutch waiters, wore “long, dark Prince Albert coats.”
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