First Stop New York
Todd Quackenbush/Unsplash
Barely a week after I posted my Abroad in Bordeaux story, The New Yorker ran a story about the comeback of the venerable French restaurant, Le Veau d'Or. The description of the Upper East Side classic brought back memories of my return to the States after nearly a year in France, when I stayed with my Uncle Eddy in New York City and dined at Le Veau d'Or.
When the academic year ended at the Université de Bordeaux, I traveled to Greece for a month with a group of American friends. Then it was time to go home. On July 3, 1970, I flew from Paris to Newark and took a bus to the Port Authority in New York City. How I managed to move with all of my belongings from a year away including two suitcases and a French Army surplus backpack, I cannot imagine. But I did and hailed a cab to take me to my Uncle Eddy's apartment at 66th and 3rd. I was going to stay with him for a week before returning to my family in California. The next morning before he went to his office at Texaco headquarters in the Chrysler Building, he gave me some money and general directions to the city's attractions.
Luca Brava/Unsplash
After my time abroad I had visited several European capitals—Paris, London, Rome, Athens—yet I was still stunned by New York. Big, loud, busy, everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Knowing that Eddy would quiz me about my day over dinner, I walked and walked. To the Met, to the MOMA, to Bloomingdale's, stopping in dozens small shops and reacquainting myself with the American way of doing things.
My uncle was not my only relative in New York City. Several of my grandfather Jerry Egan's brothers and sisters emigrated from Dromcollogher, County Limerick and settled in New York. My father had stayed with family in New York when he was in training with the Navy before WWII and spoke warmly of the Donnellans and of his Uncle Ed. I knew their names and their stories. Some had come to Ventura when I was growing up. Uncle Will, a widower, overstayed with us for some time in the late fifties. Father Tom and Nancy Donnellan, the children of sister Margaret, came to visit, and Tom, who would later become the Archbishop of Atlanta, gave the one of the best sermons I ever heard on a Mission Sunday at Our Lady of the Assumption Church.
On this my first visit, Eddy made sure that I had the opportunity to meet his favorites. Nancy Donnellan invited me to lunch at a restaurant near Grand Central Terminal and later in the week she hosted Eddy, me, and Uncle Ed at her home in the Bronx. Getting to know the family was important to my uncle. I have written before about Eddy introducing me to Sullivan cousins in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and in Ireland.
Me, old Uncle Ed and Uncle Eddy at Nancy Donnellan’s home.
Every evening, true to form, Eddy would interrogate me about my wanderings over dinner in one of his favorite neighborhood restaurants—P.J. Clark's on Third, Longchamps, and Le Veau d'Or. Once he had a sip of his Perfect Rob Roy, he would begin asking questions. He loved to challenge us, to help us grow. At Le Veau d'Or he decided it would be interesting to see just how fluent my French was. Once he told the maître d' that I had just returned from a year in Bordeaux, the man spoke to me only in French and bought the waiters over to our table to chat with me. After we finished our truly wonderful meal, he came back to our table and invited me to come with him to the kitchen to meet the chef and kitchen staff. All of them were at their charming best, asking about my time in France and complimenting me on my French. Uncle Eddy took it all in smiling, at once amused and proud.
Reading about the restaurant's recent revival, I was the one who was both amused and proud of my young self on a long-ago night at Le Veau d'Or in New York.
