One of the last times they had a literary dinner event at Restaurant Eugene the meal involved 80 guests, a freshly butchered lamb and an open-air spit, fired up and ready to go.
It was a Buckhead barbecue of sorts to fete the award-winning New York restaurateur and chef Gabrielle Hamilton on the release of her bestselling memoir, “Blood, Bones and Butter.” She read. People ate. And by all accounts, there wasn’t much left at the end of the night but a carcass and full stomachs.
Had they known about it, Oleta Summers, Alice Hern and Martina Goscha would surely have been there. They are three Delta flight attendants who retired their wings awhile back. The only thing they love better than travel and a well-prepared meal is a compelling read. Which is why, on a bone-chilling evening last month, they drove over from Marietta to the acclaimed, farm-to-table establishment in Atlanta for the latest in its quarterly literary dinner salons.
Chef Linton Hopkins has been orchestrating the public dinners for the past year and a half. He used to work at Oxford Bookstore when he was in college. The store’s long gone. Hopkins remained a book worm. He might have gone on to own a small bookstore himself had he not turned to a career in the kitchen. He’s a voracious reader with a thing for the classics — think Homer’s “The Odyssey” — as well as science fiction, though less ants with ray guns and more epics like “Dune” and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Throw in some autobiographies, 19th century poetry, some cookbooks and he’s there.
“I always have books on my shelves at home mocking me, saying, ‘When are you going to read me?’” he said.
The author/dinner series, which he does in conjunction with A Cappella Books, represents a marriage of those two loves. It’s the sort of regular event that, though not unheard of nationally, is rare among Atlanta restaurants.
Sorry to have missed the lamb, Hern, Summers and Goscha were anticipating something equally hearty during their February visit: rib-eye. They hadn’t read a word of the featured book, “The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Memoir.” It’s supposed to be a tell-all by Randy Fertel, son of the founder of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House empire. All that Fertel didn’t tell in the elegant dining room that night, the trio figured they could read about later.
For them this was a chance to spend an evening with 10 people who loved to talk as much as they do about food, and the books they have already read. Precisely what Hopkins had hoped to achieve with the series; not exactly a book club in the living-room-wine-and-snacks sense, but camaraderie among strangers over a $100 meal and the written word.
“There aren’t a lot of these around town anymore, and it just crushes my soul,” said Summers as she took in the scene through her round, wire-rimmed glasses. By her guess she has 1,000 books at home. A few more fancy places to talk about them would be nice.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Hern said. “Anything to do with books, we’ll show up. Now, this is expensive so I can’t do it every week, but maybe once a year.”
“I know, I wish I could come here every night, but Social Security doesn’t pay that much,” Goscha said.
Southern kinship
After cocktails and fried pimento cheese balls were served and consumed, guests were seated. Summers, Hern and Goscha sat hip to hip on a banquette across from Rob and Peggy Whitsit who’d driven up from Newnan. Atop the white linen, where the plates would have been, were signed copies of “The Gorilla Man.”
Then, with the tap of a wine glass, Hopkins stepped forward to address his guests. Southerners find kinship in pork-back sandwiches, country ham and stories, he told them.
Fertel’s book was a story of his eccentric Southern family, one that could have easily inspired Flannery O’Connor or William Faulkner (long before the phrase “hot mess” entered the lexicon): a father who ran for mayor on the promise of bringing gorillas to the city zoo and a mother who was shot defending her restaurant from robbers and lived to tell about it. And there in the flickering candlelight sat one of their offspring, ready to tell the tale and to indulge in a tributary meal.
This night’s dinner was influenced by the original Ruth’s Chris menu. Randy’s mother, Ruth, launched the famous steak house chain in New Orleans almost 50 years ago. Shrimp remoulade, sweet potatoes dauphine topped with pecan dust, creamed spinach, bread pudding, sherry as thick as sorghum syrup, and, of course, red meat.
As waiters placed the tiniest morsels of brioche on bread plates, Hern jumped in to find out what everybody at the table was reading. “The Invincible Englishman” for Summers, though she’d just finished former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords’ book. Goscha, who is a member of three book clubs, was into a book by her favorite author, Daphne du Maurier. Rob Whitsit was in between books.
“Now, if I said John Gault to you, would you know what I’m referring to? ” Hern asked.
She didn’t wait for an answer.
“‘Atlas Shrugged,’ by Ayn Rand,” Hern said. “Because with the economic situation this country is in, I figured it was time I read it.”
By her own admission she didn’t discover reading for pleasure until she was 26. She’s come a long way. Not long ago she and Goscha went to England for the Daphne du Maurier Festival. That was something.
“I grew up in Kentucky and I thought reading was something they made you do in school, not something you did to enjoy,” said Hern, a dazzling woman with hair as big as Texas. “So I’m catching up.”
Over the next couple of hours the conversation turned from reading novels on an iPad — which Goscha loved and Peggy Whitsit could do without — to whether the smear of spinach on the main course plate was an actual leaf (it was creamed), to who wrote “The Bridges of Madison County,” which was infinitely better than the movie.
“It was Robert Waller,” Hern said.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Goscha, and as if for emphasis she adjusted her enormous squash blossom necklace.
“Yes, it was,” Hern replied, then promptly turned back to Summers to finish her point.
And by the time Fertel rose to read, at every table in front of him volumes had already been spoken.
Event preview
Literary Dinner Series
Quarterly. $100. 404-355-0321; www.restauranteugene.com
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