EBOOK
What a Swell Party It Was!
Rediscovering Food & Drink from the Golden Age of the American Nightclub
Michael Turback2
(1)
About
Chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud once explained: "The future of cooking is about how we can rewrite the history of it-it's important to keep the memory and be entertained by it and inspired by it." What A Swell Party It Was! entertains and inspires with a delicious slice of nearly forgotten culinary history-an era that followed the Great Depression and prohibition's repeal, where America boomed and the nightclub scene flourished.
Opening this book is like swinging open the doors to another time and place, when big city life was a unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality. It spotlights twenty-five legendary clubs that thrived in the 1930s and '40s, just as Jazz exploded into mainstream popularity and alcohol was no longer illegal to serve. Through these pages and recipes, enter past the proverbial velvet rope into establishments forever-immortalized, such as Chez Paree in Chicago, Caf Trocadero in Hollywood, The Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, The Blue Room in New Orleans, and New York City's Cotton Club.
In addition to including entre, appetizer, dessert, and cocktail recipes from their original menus, each featured venue will be introduced with vivid anecdotes and history, narrated in a breezy style and illustrated with reproductions of vintage menu covers, beverage napkins, matchbooks, postcards, and rare photos.
An unabashedly joyful journey and a deeply authentic perspective on American culture in a rich, tumultuous age, What a Swell Party It Was! promises a cookbook/cocktail guide with a tip of the hat to history, crammed with details that bring life again to a fascinating American era.
Opening this book is like swinging open the doors to another time and place, when big city life was a unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality. It spotlights twenty-five legendary clubs that thrived in the 1930s and '40s, just as Jazz exploded into mainstream popularity and alcohol was no longer illegal to serve. Through these pages and recipes, enter past the proverbial velvet rope into establishments forever-immortalized, such as Chez Paree in Chicago, Caf Trocadero in Hollywood, The Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, The Blue Room in New Orleans, and New York City's Cotton Club.
In addition to including entre, appetizer, dessert, and cocktail recipes from their original menus, each featured venue will be introduced with vivid anecdotes and history, narrated in a breezy style and illustrated with reproductions of vintage menu covers, beverage napkins, matchbooks, postcards, and rare photos.
An unabashedly joyful journey and a deeply authentic perspective on American culture in a rich, tumultuous age, What a Swell Party It Was! promises a cookbook/cocktail guide with a tip of the hat to history, crammed with details that bring life again to a fascinating American era.
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Reviews
"Sip a Monkey Wrench cocktail at Ciro's. Order a Walter Winchell Burger at the Stork Club. Rub elbows with Joan Crawford or Clark Gable at the Mocambo. Dance the night away at El Morocco. What a Swell Party It Was! is a Polaroid snapshot of the best-of-the-best during the decade of decadence, the 1940s. . . Welcome to the party!"
Brian Van Flandern, Michelin three-star mixologist
"A delightful chronicle of a fascinating, dramatic, and glamorous time in America, an era of sophisticated menus and white-jacketed mixologists in the biggest, boldest, and baddest clubs in the country. Going back to that period gives us that escape fantasy that we all need from time to time. Thank you for this book, Michael."
Nathalie Dupree, celebrity chef and author of Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking
"Daiquiris, cigarette girls, brass horns and big bands, Dietrich and Sinatra, zebra-striped banquettes, booze, Marilyn and Joe, glassed-in aviaries, tuxedos and floor-length gowns, dancin' till dawn, the Copa and the Mocambo-all wonderful stops on a delightful memory-lane tour of America's Golden Age of Nightclubs, and all the stars that made it glitter! I love this book, and am jealous I didn't t
Rick Browne, host