By BOB GREENE Updated March 14, 2014 1:05 a.m. ET You have to wonder what Wolfie Cohen would make of it. Duck confit. Miso glazed cod. Roasted bone marrow. Octopus with white beans. Mussels with cilantro. Squid ink. Ricotta gnocchi. Just a few of the items currently featured on the menus of fashionable restaurants in south Florida as cusp-of-spring vacationers arrive. Those kinds of exotic, epicurean-global-safari meals are the trend these days, and south Florida is seldom behind the times in such matters. But there once was a man in Miami Beach whose taste in food defined Florida dining for the rest of America. Wolfie Cohen was not just a restaurateur, he was a destination. His establishments—Wolfies, Pumperniks, Rascal House—were the end of the rainbow. Northerners headed for Miami and Wolfies, not necessarily in that order. What he offered the customers sitting in those bright-red booths was the stuff of dreams (and of cardiologists nightmares). Today, his enormous laminated menus might very well be confiscated as prima facie evidence by the surgeon generals office. Pastrami, turkey, swiss cheese, onion, tomato and chopped-chicken-liver sandwiches. Not separate sandwiches—all of those ingredients, hulking towers of them, between two overmatched pieces of rye bread. Fortresslike stacks of potato pancakes accompanied by mountains of sour cream; complimentary overflowing bread baskets, complete with a multiplicity of sweet rolls, to start each meal, with enough calories and carbohydrates (before the first course even arrived) to exceed the aggregate weekly requirement for a family of 12; cheesecakes as big as truck tires displayed in glass cases by the front door—strawberry cheesecakes, cherry cheesecakes, blueberry cheesecakes, pineapple cheesecakes. . . . Wolfie might as well have given away discount coupons for burial plots with each meal. But in those Florida years, his loyal customers didnt mind that the food was probably bad for them—they rejoiced in the fact. This was vacation. This was Miami. This was living. Wolfies places—beginning in the 1940s he would build one, sell it, then build another—were, like his meals, intended to take the concept of size and scale to ridiculous extremes. In the 50s, when Wolfie ruled the beach, the garish architecture of his structures, each as expansive as an airport terminal, was to dining what the Fontainebleau was to hotels or the colossal-finned Cadillac Eldorado was to automobiles: too much, on purpose. Soaring Las Vegas-style signs told diners they had arrived at a Wolfie Cohen establishment, adorned with movie-theater-inspired marquees bearing messages that changed from day to day: The Smell of Pickles Brewed in Brine, and Cabbage Soup That Tastes Like Wine. And the people would line up. Literally. There were rope lines on the sidewalks outside, where the throngs of customers desiring brisket or blintzes would wait, sometimes for an hour or more. Three distinct lines: the first for parties of one or two, the second for parties of three or four, and the third for parties of five and more. The third line was always the shortest. One March my college roommate and I, long on vacation aspirations but short on funds, managed to eat for free just about every night. We would walk from our motel to the Rascal House, find a pair of retired couples stuck near the back of the three-or-four-person line, catch their eyes and nod conspiratorially toward the sparse five-and-more line. The foursome would gladly abandon their seemingly endless wait, get into the short line with us—now they were a party of six, counting us—and soon we all would be inside at a table, the intermingled fragrance of corned beef, rice pudding and chocolate phosphates enveloping us. Let us buy you boys dinner. How could we refuse? The dining choices in 2014 Florida may be more sophisticated and esoteric, but at Wolfies various outposts around the state, dinner was not intended to leave you enlightened or emotionally transformed. It was intended to leave you bloated, and glad of it. The phrase gluten-free was never heard, although Glooten, party of three, your table is ready may have been. Wolfie died in 1986 at age 74. After decades of eating his own food, its surprising he made it that far. Some of his former restaurants, under different ownership, survived him into the first years of the 21st century, but theyre all gone now. He is missed. In our health-and-fitness-obsessed culinary era of kale and low-fat yogurt and raw juice bars, he might have had trouble fitting in, but a question hovers in the air on warm Florida nights: Would you prefer to live a longer life while eating that good-for-you fare, or live a little less long while eating Wolfies pineapple cheesecake? As youre pondering your answer, enjoy the bread basket. Mr. Greene, a columnist and commentator for CNN, is the author, most recently, of Late Edition: A Love Story (St. Martins Griffin, 2010).
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 23:23:55 +0000
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