Bruce Montgomery
STEVE presents as a big shot. His sports coat, shirt and tie are classy, watch gold and ostentatious. His dress, gold-framed spectacles and demeanour suggest he is, if not a big shot, then a mid-range executive, the sort who might seek to attract conventions to a hotel.
Steve swans into the foyer of the New York restaurant Zoё a bit after six, loud and visible. These are not unusual traits among New Yorkers and can be quite endearing.
Steve has a look of expectation. He seems to know the boss. He wants to make it inevitable he will be offered the best table in the house, one of those next to the big window facing out onto Prince Street, a place to see and to be seen.
Nice part of town this. This part of Prince Street is described as “between Broadway and Mercer in SoHo”. The translation of that is between Broadway and Mercer Street in the area of Manhattan just south of Houston Street (SoHo means South of Houston).
Zoë’s cuisine and décor are contemporary American — folding glass, terracotta columns, mosaic tiles, timber, stone and marble detail. In Australia we would call it upmarket Tuscan.
Prince Street is a good street in a good area. It speaks money: fashion boutiques, jewellers, hand-made leather bags, South African silver, good coffee and an Apple Store.
There are two Apple Stores in New York, one here and the other in Fifth Avenue at 59th Street. Ostensibly you go into an Apple Stores to feign interest in buying an iPod or the latest iMac or to make an appointment to get advice from one of their resident, black-shirted geniuses. In reality, travellers and local office workers go to the Apple Stores to check their e-mail. They never take their backpacks off. New York is not well supplied with Internet cafes.
It’s early evening in the beginning of the Fall, there’s plenty of action in Prince Street among the well-heeled, the smart and the well-connected.
Steve is well-connected. He announces he’s going to wait for another big shot to join him. It’s pre-arranged. Steve has sent him an e-mail, we hear him tell the boss of the restaurant. The whole restaurant hears him tell the boss of the restaurant.
Best table in the house
My partner and I are sitting at the bar. Over our glasses of Chicago beer (Goose Island nut brown ale) and a bowl of tempura calamari with Vietnamese dipping sauce we are debating whether to stay and eat at the restaurant or stick to a list provided by our gourmand advisers back in Hobart, Sue Dyson and Roger McShane. Zoё had not been on the list but, we find out, it has had good reviews in New York.
Steve does score the best table in the house and the one next to him is available so we take it. We eavesdrop. Steve’s dinner companion has not turned up.
“I been stood up,” explains Steve to the person on the other end of his cell phone, presumably his PA. “I don’t know where he is. Should I worry?”
He worries.
“He’s not here,” he says. “Sure I told him where t’eat. He should be here. I been here a half hour. So what’s his number?”
He gets the number, ends the call and presses in the number on the cell phone keypad.
“It’s Steve. How’re ya doin’? I’m at Zoё’s. So where are you?
“You thought it was tomorrow? No, it’s today. I said Toosday. It’s in the diary, Toosday. I thought you had forgotten.
“You’ve eaten already? Look, no problem. Should I worry? I’m here with a superb bottle of pinot noir. I have it to myself. I should be so lucky. The best bottle in the house, all to myself. I got these Australians to talk to. I should worry.”
Steve worries.
“No, please, don’t go out of your way. You’ve eaten already. We can meet tomorrow.
“Are you sure?”
His companion is on the way.
As we tuck into a main course of slow-roasted Long Island duck (honey-glazed, roasted corn and sweet pepper pancake, Tuscan kale and local blueberry sauce) and line-caught Massachusetts cod (English peas, Chanterelle mushrooms, house-cured bacon and sauce Gribiche), we engage Steve, now working his way steadily through the bottle of pinot. Ours is an ordinary bottle of Californian red.
Touch base with Bill Clinton
The day before we had visited President Clinton’s new offices in Harlem. Bill and Hillary don’t share offices in New York, we’d discovered. She’s in Third Avenue, Midtown. He’s in Harlem. We didn’t get to see Bill, but we got to see where he hangs out. African-Americans love Clinton. That’s why his office is in Harlem.
“He was our JFK,” says the salesman in the Harlem Body Shop. “Bill’s at home here.”
To touch base with Bill Clinton is important for many of us in our late 50s who pine for the vision of men like Clinton and Keating.
Back at Zoё, we tell Steve about visiting Clinton’s office. Turns out Steve knows Bill. They were nearly neighbours, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, Steve says, but it fell through. Clinton didn’t buy the house.
“Bill Clinton was going to live opposite me.
“I live in a conservative place. The locals weren’t happy (about Bill moving in). He went elsewhere.
“Some time later I sat next to him in an aircraft from Washington to New York. I told him we were nearly neighbours. ‘We were nearly neighbours,’ I said. I described where I lived. He seized on it immediately. He described my house to me. Bill Clinton described my house to me. Can you imagine? This guy is amazing.”
Steve must be a big shot. He has a range of transport at his disposal.
“I have a Morgan. That’s a beautiful English car, but I drive a Porsche. But I don’t drive them when I come to town. I think I came in the Mercedes today.”
He thinks he came in the Mercedes today. We hope he is not driving home tonight in the Mercedes.
“I also have a motor bike. It’s one of those big ones. I offered my motorbike to my son. I need a new one. He said no. Can you imagine? My son said no.”
Steve wants a bigger, better chopper.
I mention the guy with the handlebar moustache in Orange County, whom I have seen on satellite TV. He built Lance Armstrong a yellow and black motor bike.
“That guy in Orange County would charge me more than $100,000. At least $100,000,” says Steve. “I know a place where I can get it done for a half that price, a quarter that price.”
Steve is distracted by a woman in a black limousine outside the restaurant. She has spent 25 minutes applying her make-up.
“She has spent 25 minutes applying her make-up,” says Steve in that form of New York speak where they tend to drop apostrophes and give you the sentence in full.
“This is some guy she is going to meet.”
We suggest it may be that she is preparing for a fashion parade under way at Replay, a chic store just across the road. The models are New York girls on roller skates — big New York girls, with bodies, modelling street gear. A go-go dancer in black fishnet stockings with holes big enough to liberate a cock-eyed salmon dances with her back to us in the shop window.
Steve’s dinner companion arrives, sheepishly. We shake hands and leave them to it. Big shot talk. We call for the bill. It’s $US130, including the beers and the appetiser. That later translated to $173 on the Aus credit card.
The entertainment was free.
Checklist
Zoё: 90 Prince St, SoHo, New York. Phone: +1 212 966 6722; www.zoerestaurant.com
Open: Monday to Friday for lunch, noon-3 pm; Tuesday to Sunday for dinner from 6 pm. Weekend brunch, 11.30 am-3 pm
Cost: Bar and dinner and very modest red for two, $173.
Reason to return: To ask the boss if Steve really is a big shot.
