The Delectable M.F.K. Fisher

I don’t remember exactly when I first stumbled upon her writing, though I know it was several years ago. I think it was a list of best Travel Writing books, and I was looking for texts to use in my class. I picked up As They Were, a collection of memoir-like essays and remembrances, of growing up in California, of her place on the northeast coast, of time spent in France. It is a beautiful little book. Any work that within the first few lines discloses, “It was a vivid period of slow wandering” will generally hook me. 

This led to the large book The Art of Eating, which is a collection of five of her longer writings, of which I’ve read Serve It Forth. 

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The first thing you notice about M.F.K. Fisher is that she is a fantastic writer. Her word choice, her sentences, the mix of dialogue and narration, her desire to pay attention, to know everything, how well-read she is. 

In Serve it Forth there are essays on the merits of dining alone, the social status of vegetables, the essential elements of a good and functioning kitchen; she briefly and swiftly courses through the gastronomic development of several cultures, going back a few millennia, then hits on the the diets of Elizabethan England and development of French restaurants following the Revolution. She approaches the preparation and serving of food as others approach the study of world wars or political revolutions or the development of language. As if there could be no greater use of her time and talents than reading and writing about food. 

One essay I underlined and notated significantly is about the development of a man’s diet, from birth to old age. “By the time a man is ten or twelve…he is hungry and he wants to be full. It is very simple.” Even when of college age, “gastronomic perceptions are non-existent, or at the most naive.” But then, at some mysterious point, and often quite slowly, thoughts turn to experimentation, even if such ideas may stem from “snobbishness” or “showing off,” yet it is such experimentation that indicates “what kind of an older person a young one may become.” There comes a time, Fisher says, somewhere between the ages of twenty and fifty, where man considers how much time he will spend preparing and eating food, and to some, this realization leads to another: “To eat is necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” She continues: 

“We must grow old, and we must eat. It seems far from unreasonable, once these facts are accepted, for a man to set himself the pleasant task of educating his palate so that he can do the former not grudgingly and in spite of the latter, but easily and agreeably because of it. Talleyrand said that two things are essential in life: to give good dinners and to keep on fair terms with women. As the years pass and the fires cool, it can become unimportant to stay always on fair terms either with women or one’s fellows, but a wide and sensitive appreciation of fine flavours can still abide with us, to warm our hearts.”

Well noted. 

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But my favorite piece of the collection concerns Fisher’s return visit to a favorite French restaurant after being away for six years. After stopping to talk with the owner to see about a last minute reservation for two, she makes one additional request: to have the waiter she remembers from previous visits. The owner, momentarily nonplussed, assures her it will be no problem. Charles will be ready. 

Upon arrival, she finds only one empty table in the entire restaurant, located in the corner of the room, the only table hosting a small vase of plebeian flowers. And Charles is there. But Charles doesn’t seem himself, and she quickly realizes he is drunk. He spills the soup. All three are embarrassed and Fisher makes excuses to her friend. But then Charles recovers and settles in. The meal is splendid, as good as, nay better, than any she can remember here. Charles has outdone himself. 

Eventually, Fisher and her guest are the last two diners in the entire restaurant. But six years. When will she return? She has an idea. She wants a glass of marc. But before that, she asks Charles if he doesn’t mind staying a bit longer. 

“Madame, you must know that for you to have another good meal chez Ribaudot, and go away remembering it and me, I would gladly stay here until morning—no, until tomorrow night, by God!” 

And Charles knows the perfect bottle. A few minutes later he returns with one that looks not “picturesquely crusted, but filthy.” The good stuff. He pours a sip. She winks slightly at Chexbres, her tablemate, and takes up the glass. “I tried to look like a connoisseur, a little pompous probably. I sipped, and then I could only look beatifically delighted, for it was the cleanest, smoothest distillation that I had ever met. Charles sighed. I had told him.”

“Dear sweet gentle Jesus,” Chexbres remarked upon his first sip. More pleasantries and acknowledgements are passed. Charles is deeply touched. She cannot know what it means. Though shortly she finds out. 

When collecting her coat, which has been moved to the owner’s office, Ribaudot tells her that shortly before she requested Charles for the evening, he had been fired. She departs into the Burgundian night, deeply touched, holding Chexbres’s hand. 

Hemingway didn’t do it any better. 

Though with Fisher it’s a celebration. And she’s so sneaky about it, too. You think she’s just writing about food, about extravagant, four-hour meals and expensive wines and cognacs, but then it hits that she’s really writing about life, about love. God in the details. It’s Muir or Thoreau appreciating a walk in the woods, or Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard’s rapturous devotion to and fear of everything wild, or David Foster Wallace and tennis. Fisher does it with food. And people. And beautiful places. French hotel rooms, even in winter. 

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“The chairs squawked widely as we stood up. The sound was almost good in that silent room,” Fisher says, when she and Chexbres at last finished their second glass of marc. The noise was just as jarring for me; I had been there with them, consuming and imbibing. One of the best meals of my life. 

The pull quote from the NYT Books Review on the front cover of As They Were says, “In a properly run culture, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher would be recognized as one of the great writers this country has produced in this century.” Newsweek calls her a national treasure. The Chicago Sun-Times says she deserves the widest possible audience. In my humble opinion, they’re all correct.