Gossip Friday: Gable the Gourmet

From August 1950:

When the gourmets of Hollywood go out to entertain with food, and want to do it properly and impressively, they leave the menu to Chef Robert Kreis. In the private dining room of one of the Brown Derbies, where Chef Robert is the head kitchen man, a visiting millionaire is entertaining for 20. There will be a bar, “naturally,” and the same menu Chef Robert ran up for Clark Gable’s party last week.

The appetizers will consist of some very appetizing stuff: Alaskan Crab, smoked oysters, pate de foie gras, caviar and cherry tomatoes, stuffed with ground anchovies.

Gable and many others and the unnamed millionaire have full confidence in Robert because they knew he will prepare something very edible. The Gable meal started with Dungeness crab meat en cocetti (baked in little dishes) and next was onion soup au sherry.

Then the piece de resistance, coq au vin–a three pound rooster cooked in a sauce of burgundy and brandy. It is most unusual to fix white meat in red wine. Each guest gets half a rooster, along with carrots, onions, celery and potatoes Parisienne, which have been cooked in the sauce. After that, fresh chilled asparagus vinaigrette. For dessert: strawberries romanoff–which consists of berries, brandy, kirschwasser and curacao poured over vanilla ice cream.

Appropriate wines are part of the meal. Without cocktails and no wine, the meal costs $12.50 per head.

Kreis, a very happy and well-fed Frenchman, has been catering to the eating habits of Hollywood for more than 20 years, He knows what everyone in town likes. Most of the girls are finicky eaters because they have to watch their pounds. Esther Williams usually orders fish. Bob Hope eats anything from steak to enchilada.

When Gable orders he asks for ground round steak, into which a raw egg and ground onion are mixed before it is charcoal broiled. With it, a one pound baked potato drowned in butter.