ON A WAR earlier this summer, 16 of the 19 former owners of Moosewood Restaurant in downtown Ithaca, NY – widely recognized as the country’s oldest vegetarian restaurant – sat around three tables in the newly refurbished main dining room and dine on a range of home-style dishes. For starters, there are boards laden with local cheeses, pickles, Bing cherries and homemade cookies, from which to enjoy glasses of sparkling wine from Lakewood, a local vineyard. wafting from the kitchen smells of sautéed onions, saffron and tomatoes, the chickpea stew is served on withered sponge cakes accompanied by a plate of white beans and fresh bean hummus garnished with edible flowers. Okay. The energy is fun – while most attendees have worked together for decades, they haven’t gathered as a group like this in years – and the track, “The Bowie Variations” (2011) ) by pianist Mike Garson, is correct.
Moosewood was opened by seven food-loving vegetarian friends in a small shop in an old school in 1973, a year in which the US withdrew from Vietnam, Nixon’s presidency collapsed and Roe sued Wade to take over. permission. The country is also in the midst of a back-to-land movement that has seen masses of young people move from the cities to the countryside to experiment with communal living and take for Ithaca and the rest of the Finger Lakes region. is a center. The restaurant is an outgrowth of the push to build new systems and communities, more so after the original seven owners decided to pursue other careers in the late ’70s, and the staff The cafe’s dedicated staff joined in and turned Moosewood into a group without a hierarchy. . Wynnie Stein, who boarded the train in 1984. “We wore t-shirts that said ‘manager, worker,’,” recalls.
Some members also helped found Lavender Hill, a nearby gay and lesbian community, and made a point of promoting a similar inclusive atmosphere at the restaurant. “Moosewood has always been a place where you can be yourself,” said David Hirsh, an original member of Moosewood who still lives in Lavender Hill. Eliana Parra, another longtime member, arrived in Ithaca as a political exile from Chile. But just because it’s a place to live up to its values doesn’t mean it isn’t a demanding place either. “We are not a bunch of hippos cooking vegetables. Stein said we’ve worked hard and innovated the industry.
Members take turns collecting, cooking, and adapting recipes for dishes from their own origins, as well as from the cuisines of the countries that inspired them – anything from pumpkin pancakes nib to Cuban black bean soup. “Every dish has to be really tasty and really comforting,” says Stein, who has researched and tested several recipes from Jewish friends and family members. She has also worked on creating a line of Moosewood-branded frozen meals made with healthy ingredients – long before it was founded, the collective believed strongly in support local farmers. They eventually created Sundays at Moosewood, a dining chain where each event features a menu entirely influenced by a country, spanning more than 30 years.
Knowledge of the restaurant was spread by word of mouth and through “The Moosewood Cookbook” (1974), the restaurant’s iconic cover with a few essentials (a kale leaf, a slice of orange, a turnip) illustrated by its lead author, Mollie Katzen, another original collective member. It includes delicious and sometimes milky recipes for eggplant stuffed with mushrooms, onions, brown rice and Cheddar cheese; custard popovers; curry pumpkin soup; and many other things. And it remains one of the 10 best-selling cookbooks of all time, having sold more than two million copies since it was first published in 1974. (If you’ve eaten a mushroom or cauliflower moussaka, -cheese anytime since the mid-70s, it’s likely the chef is in debt to the book.) At a time when most popular restaurants served steak and potatoes or entrees. French cuisine, and when most home cooks don’t even know what tahini or tofu is, Moosewood marks a real turning point. As Christine Muhlke, a New York-based writer and culinary consultant, puts it, “They changed the way Americans think about food and put a lot of ethnic recipes and ingredients into their repertoire. of the country. It’s a popular American restaurant right up there with Chez Panisse. “
WEIGHT The restaurant’s history is not lost to Danica Wilcox, who, along with her husband, Nicholas Woods, and their friend and business partner Eric Rosenfeld, are among the new owners of Moosewood – the trio threw recent dinner at the restaurant to celebrate its past and future. Wilcox’s mother, Kathleen “Kip” Wilcox, became a member of the group in 1983; She started washing pots and pans and became one of Moosewood’s dessert chefs. For a while, Kip rented an apartment upstairs. As a result, Danica spent most of her childhood at the restaurant. “My mother breastfeeds me in the kitchen,” she said with a laugh. “And while she was checking the recipe, I ate pissaladière in my school lunch for three months straight. ” She said her memories of the place – “the smell of my mother’s macaroons, Ned [Asta, an early member] singing along to the Indigo Girls, arranging wildflowers in small ceramic vases on the table” – is what prompted her to take on. In 2019, with most members nearing or past retirement age, she began trying to help Moosewood find a buyer, someone who would stay true to the restaurant’s principles, until that happened. out with her, after a potential successor quit during the epidemic, that she’s probably the best candidate. So she and Woods, who were living in Mallorca at the time, packed up and returned to her hometown.
They have been working non-stop since taking over earlier this year. In the spring, they oversee the restaurant’s renovation, tearing down the carpets and polishing the concrete floors themselves. Woods, an artist who grew up in Spain, designed much of the lighting, including sculptural brass and marble standing lamps, and the walls are now hung with some dreamlike paintings. his. In the past, the restaurant has hosted rotating exhibitions of the work of local artists, but, in part because it now has only three owners – “If we decide to partner with anyone else, it would be with a farmer or a winemaker,” says Wilcox — and in part because “the climate crisis is so severe,” she and Woods decided to focus on food and “encourage people to geared towards local sourcing and being vegetarian for environmental and health reasons.” This is not a difficult sale. As Muhlke said, “After 50 years, the world has caught up with Moosewood.”
Therefore, it is not surprising that the restaurant’s food and service philosophy will remain the same, despite more vegan dishes. Wilcox, who worked here and there in catering and spent a summer as a private chef, and Woods brought in Adam Shafer, formerly of the Greens in San Francisco, a popular vegetarian restaurant. other, working as a consultant chef alongside chef Tim Mooney, who has been at Moosewood for 16 years. Despite the rising costs of everything from energy to ingredients, the team plans to continue the longstanding convention of offering a daily lunch special of soup, salad and bread. Last week’s selections included corn chowder and quinoa with preserved lemon.
After the group dinner’s dessert – a sour strawberry shortcake and a purple taro cheesecake – some of the attendees started dancing to the salsa music. “Moosewood is more than just a restaurant,” Parra said over her shoulder as she taught Asta and a few others some moves. “It’s a family.” In the end, the group submitted one by one, but not before packing the leftovers into takeout bins. “It’s a Moosewood tradition,” says Wilcox. “Anyone can get leftovers from the fridge at the end of the night.” It was something else she intended to hold on to.
