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There's nothing like "real" American food-the satisfying, down-home stuff that people used to eat before radicchio replaced lettuce and Cheddar gave way to chevre. But the new incarnations of luncheonettes, diners and backwoods food stands seem to satisfy every sense except taste. The visual ironies are on target, the oldies soundtracks playing in the background feel right, yet you usually leave such a place wondering if it's just false nostalgia, a cover-up for what is, in the end, bad cooking.
But at Gage & Tollner, a refurbished landmark restaurant in Brooklyn that features working gas lamps and waiters so attentive they seem transported from another century, the food is the real thing: Charleston she-crab soup, crab cakes "Freetown," Smithfield ham with corn pudding and long-cooked beans, pan-fried quail with julienne ham and spoon bread, and barbecued spareribs with red rice.
The soup boasts a velvety essence of crab. The ribs have not only a Sunday-dinner elegance but a spicy and succulent taste as well. It is a challenge to select one dessert from a sumptuous list that includes bitter-chocolate souffle, double chocolate cake, lemon meringue tart and pies galore: Tyler, sweet potato, pecan and apple.
The woman behind the food at Gage & Tollner is a national treasure named Edna Lewis, a 74-year-old chef who is also the author of three cookbooks. As any reader of the cookbooks or visitor to Gage & Tollner will discover, Lewis' work is about fullness and directness of flavor. This isn't chic "retro" cooking. "I never tire of finding new ways to do things," she said about the cuisine she has spent a lifetime exploring.
Peter Aschkenasy, one of the new owners of Gage & Tollner, thought he'd just renovate the spacious interior of the 110-year-old restaurant when he took over last year. But he soon realized that the Southern-style food that had been served for years also needed some updating. He sought out Lewis after having admired her work at Middleton Place in Charleston, S.C., and Fearrington House in Pittsboro, N.C.
Lewis is the quintessential "natural" in the kitchen, primarily because she was raised eating and cooking this food. Unlike most of today's celebrity chefs, who learned their techniques at culinary schools, Lewis was taught her trade...