Reservations often attest a defining moment (such as a gathering) or a material qualm (such as a persona). In my experience reservations – whether bookings or scruples – mark engagement or disengagement of significant rank. A dinner reservation customarily signals a matter of especial social significance usually more than putting on the nose bag (“groups of ten or more should make reservations“). It is a practice we’ve frequently adopted over the years for family gatherings at the golf club when our numbers (with friends included) climbed surprisingly. Its substance clearly contrasts with those “dining” places which purposely do not accept reservations, itself a demur expressing an unqualified and vulgar dedication to retail advantage (not to mention snapping one’s fingers at those who are so equally selfish to abandon a commitment). In the result the dinner reservation is preserved for those instances which are anticipated to involve nutrition of more than the fleeting visceral imperatives.
Oddly enough I haven’t a broad recollection of dinner reservations. But of the ones I do remember, they are of undisputed amusement. In 1974 I recall having dined with James Carman Mainprize at what was once a private dining club (coincidentally called Carman’s Club) near College and Yonge Streets in Toronto.
The celebrity clientele once featured on the restaurant’s menu and Web site (no longer functional) included Al Green, Nat King Cole, Lorne Greene and Sammy Davis Jr., a sign that this was a boys’ club hangout for the real Don Drapers, not his modern-day fans. (Sara Waxman once wrote about being the only woman in the place.) The decor, as most people described it, was dark, medieval and, as another amateur reviewer writes, “something out of a vampire movie.”
Mainprize was a former master of mine at St. Andrew’s College where I attended boarding school. He came from a distinguished family and unhesitatingly manifested the legacy.
This Latin phrase, meaning “It is delightful to be foolish at the right moment”, is taken from the 4th book of the Odes of Horace (XII.28) and indicates Mr. Mainprize’s belief in the importance of taking a fanciful and good-humoured approach to life.
The white steps represent the shape of the Sharon Temple in Sharon, Ontario, the place of worship of the Children of Peace, one of whom was Mr. Mainprize’s ancestor William Mainprize, who came to Canada from Yorkshire in 1830. The triangular space represents the red buildings at Lunenburg harbour, Nova Scotia, an allusion to Mr. Mainprize’s ancestor Johann Christian Ernst, who came to Halifax from Saxony in 1750 and settled in Lunenburg shortly thereafter. The griffin heads serve as a reference to Mr. Mainprize’s wife Virginia, whose Hungarian ancestors named Banffy had griffins in their coats of arms, and whose birthplace of Budapest has a griffin as a supporter to its arms. The gauntlet refers to the name Mainprize, from mainprise, an archaic French word composed of main (“hand”) and prise (“taken”).
Mainprize taught history primarily. He had also been head of the theatre department. Through him I learned to do stage make-up; and, he introduced me to Malabar’s a supplier deep within Toronto’s financial district where by further coincidence I routinely purchased carmen (purple) chromatic colour for facial application on the actors. It was as a result of that cosmetic familiarity that I subsequently became head of the make-up theatrical crew for York University when I attended undergraduate studies at Glendon Hall.
Our dinner at Carmen’s Club was genteel and drunken. No indulgence was spared. To this day I fondly recall the chartered menu of filet mignon, Caesar salad and drippy buttery garlic baguette. For the life of me however I cannot recollect how I happened to connect with Mainprize. It was not normal to have realigned with a former schoolmaster after graduation from prep school. And I remember meeting his wife Virginia at their estimable digs in Rosedale. We must have had a common link that I’ve forgotten. At that time I had been engaged for the school year by Dean Charles Lennox as a Don of Devonshire House (a residence for professional students such as architects and engineers), University of Toronto while I attended the bar admission course at Osgoode Hall.
What however amuses me in particular about the evening is that years later in 1995 when attending the Barnes collection of impressionist paintings at the Ontario Gallery of Art with my companion John Francis Fitchett we again dined at Carmen’s Club. Though John and I enjoyed an equally tasteful and drunken meal on that occasion it was highlighted by an elderly guest having died at an adjoining table. The paramedics suddenly materialized with a foldable cart and wheeled the carcass out. Once again on this occasion as on the first we were visited at table by Carman (born Athanasios Karamanos). We shared the expected pleasantries though it was to be my last visit. I have since developed my own reservations. Carman’s Dining Club officially closed after fifty years in November, 2009.
It is another dinner reservation with John Francis Fitchett (and also with my partner Denis Joseph Arial) which comes to mind as a singular event. In 1999, John, Denis and I booked a large suite at the former Four Season’s Hotel (now part of the Omnia International chain) on Sherbrooke Street. I believe our putative ambition was another art show at Musée des Beaux-arts. In the interim for luncheon we visited the Neuvième restaurant at Eaton’s which, as the name implies, is located on the ninth floor of the old department store on St. Catharine’s Street. I am sad to report that the restaurant has since closed.
La PRESSE, détail d’une publicité du magasin Eaton invitant le public à la grande ouverture du Restaurant du 9e Étage, publiée le 24 janvier 1931
The restaurant, for those who are not familiar with it, was an historical venue and was in fact only recently the subject of an in-depth journalistic review for television. It was created very much along the lines of a stately dining hall in the Titanic, being long and relatively narrow, very high ceiling, and decorated with iconic lamp fixtures and wall sconces of the era. There was an elevated area at the far end of the hall, on which was located a grand piano. On the day we lunched there, a very accomplished young musician whom we later met at table and who informed us he was a music student at nearby McGill University, was performing the finest of classical pieces as background for the clatter of silverware, chatter of the regular blue-rinse crowd and noise of waiters and platters and so on. In keeping with what was an obvious custom of the regular patrons, we enjoyed a number of martinis before tucking into the regular fare of chicken pot pie, salmon in a cream sauce and the like. The linen service, the excellence of the attentive staff, and the entire exuberance and abundance of the scene made for a thoroughly enjoyable luncheon.
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I must interrupt this waffling and apologize for the languid and insipid nature of my dining accounts. Nature compels me to tell the truth. Following is a narrative of an identical outing to the one previously described, written some time ago, capturing more clarity. Detail is so often missing. But because of this additional account I am obliged for the moment to omit my characterization of personal reservations (misgivings, reluctance and skepticisms). That is a topic which will have to await further attention.
Carmen’s Club in Toronto (revisited)
I cannot, however, say that all our dining engagements have been as successful. Years ago when I attended Glendon Hall, and even before when I had been at St. Andrew’s College, I had on several occasions dined at what was then one of Toronto’s better known private dinner clubs, Carmen’s on Alexandra Street off Yonge near Carleton. Though I had heard that the Club was no longer private, when John and I made arrangements to visit Toronto for an exhibit of the Barnes collection of impressionist paintings at the Ontario Gallery of Art, I not unnaturally suggested we go to Carmen’s. I had, after all, celebrated my 21st birthday there when I was 18, and I had nothing but the fondest memories of the place, the thick smell of garlic bread, just dripping with the juices; the steaks and lobsters displayed in mahogany cabinets behind leaded windows, the quaint fireplaces in each of the various rooms, all housed in the beautifully maintained grand old Toronto home. Accordingly, I called ahead from Almonte, made the reservations by telephone, and confirmed them in writing. John and I were at the time staying at the Royal York Hotel, and in keeping with a tradition which John had established on previous outings, we enjoyed some whiskey and soda as “dressing drinks”, then headed off to Carmen’s, appetites whetted, full of anticipation. From the very moment we arrived at the restaurant, things got off to a bad start. First, when we materialized in the front hallway from the cab, there was no one there. When, finally, the hostess appeared, her unforgettable opening words were, “The name?”. This uncaring and unprofessional introduction practically put me through the roof, but rather than make a scene, we advised her of the reservation name, after which, without so much as inviting us to follow her, she headed off in what we only surmised was a direction we were to follow, which we did. There then ensued an unduly long time before we were even asked about a cocktail, and during which, being thus undistracted, I was able to observe to my horror that we were surrounded by people who were clearly not dressed for dinner as I remembered it at Carmen’s, but more for a bus tour outing to Howard Johnson’s. Even this, however, I was able to submerge, more, I am sure, because I did not want to draw John’s attention to it, though I would have been a fool to think he hadn’t noticed. Nonetheless, the evening proceeded. The next many minutes were drawn out with very slow service, but when we at last got through our hors d’oeuvres and onto our main course of filet mignon, we thought we might have some smooth sailing; but alas, such was not to be the case. When the waiter brought our bottle of wine, he dropped it onto the candlestick in the middle of the table. There was no great mess, other than the smashing of the glass candlestick, but it was disruptive. And, then, as if by sheer irony, when I looked up over John’s shoulder, I noticed a fully clothed fireman or two standing behind him. At first, I thought they had come as a result of our incident with the candlestick, but then I discovered to my complete astonishment that they were pitching about a stretcher, which they had now miraculously managed to expand in the limited space between our table and the one behind, and they appeared to be loading the lifeless body of an elderly lady onto it. She must have suffered a heart attack. It was all too much! The whole evening had acquired a none too pleasant dream-like quality, nursed along as it was by the numerous drinks John and I had consumed in the pregnant pauses between courses. So, you can imagine when all this was over, and Carmen himself drew up a chair at our table to ask us “How was dinner?”, I was more than prepared to tell him. Actually, I think he had asked John first, and John rather politely side-stepped the issue; I, however, let him know that I was only too willing to fill in the survey questionnaire, and I wasn’t about to succumb to the pusillanimity of John on this particular point. When I began with the problem with the hostess, Carmen interrupted me to ask if I would care to tell her to her face. John, I could see from the corner of my eye, knew this was not a good idea, but I saw little in the way, and I plowed forward. Well, to make a long story short, the evening ended by Carmen and the girl bolting abruptly from the table amid cries that he had one of the best restaurants in Toronto and invitations that we needn’t pay for our dinner, which, to John’s horror, I rebutted as an unnecessary and unwelcome charity; we stormed out of the dining room, halted long enough in the corridor to slap a wad of money into the hands of the pursuing waiter, and found ourselves quite energized once again on the wet autumn streets of Toronto wondering what the hell that had been all about.