At the Table: Valentine’s at L’Auberge

The special day for lovers is coming up, and if your thoughts are turning to romance, think of reserving at L’Auberge Chez François. Owner and chef François Haeringer, born in Alsace, founded the restaurant more than 50 years ago in downtown D.C., eventually moving it to Great Falls in the Virginia countryside. His son Jacques Haeringer, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, is the author of Two for Tonight, a cookbook with a definitely aphrodisiac slant--if you’d like to cook the Valentine’s dinner yourself. Or attend one of Jacques’ 11 a.m. cooking lessons, the “Seafood Lovers’ Valentine” on February 13 or the “Carnivore Lovers’ Valentine” on the 14th, each followed by a five-course, three-wine lunch.

He is a television personality as well as a chef and author. His Web site, ChefJacques.com, includes video demonstrations, archived recipes, a newsletter, and upcoming events at the rustic Alsatian inn.

“Engagement parties, weddings, and anniversaries are our raison d’être,” says Jacques. He sees a definite and intimate connection between food and love. “The pleasures of the table, fine food and wine, are an essential part of a passionate life.”

He explains just how you might bring this passionate state about in the comments he adds between his cookbook’s easy-to-follow recipes. Chapter titles include “Breakfast in Bed,” “Tête-à-Tête,” and “Love in the Afternoon.” Along with cooking tips on his culinary creations, he dispenses ample history and lore. Convinced that cooking for one’s love is an amorous act in itself, he tells that in ancient Rome cooking eggs--those erotic ovals of legend--for your lover was a sign of deep affection.

The Incas considered avocados a stimulant, he says, and one of his recipes, for the best of all possible worlds, combines them with eggs in Avocado Crème Brûlée.

Some of his recipes include a touch of those other amour-inducing eggs: fish eggs. He prefers caviar from the osetra sturgeon, but includes, for the poorer of purse but the hopeful of heart, salmon eggs as well.

His cooking tips are often tongue-in-cheek Gallic. Referring to the nervousness home cooks feel over a soufflé--can they get it to the table before it falls? will it rise high enough?--he divulges this mock-culinary secret: “Many chefs are now adding a little Viagra to their soufflés, for greater staying power and heightened presentation.”

Two for Tonight and an earlier book, The Chez François Cookbook, are available from local publisher Jeremy Kay of Bartleby Press. (Among his books: Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express, a biography of the Heisman Trophy winner that provided the basis for the film “The Express.” Released last fall, it came out on DVD this past week.)

Capital Diary: Two Fun Inaugural Balls

Ed Perez, chairman of the Texas State Society’s Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball, said, “There may not be a Texan in the White House, but that doesn’t stop Texans from throwing the best party in town.”

Partying like they were out to prove him right, 11,000 people whooped it up at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor.

Cowboy-hatted, boot-wearing, formal-gowned revelers seemed to be pouring hot sauce on everything except the cupcakes, using individual little bottles of it that were thoughtfully provided in the chow lines.

At the ball’s Texas State Fair, you could buy all things Texan, from boots to buckles. At booths in the ballroom, Native American women sold handcrafted items. Everywhere you looked there was Texas food galore and endless groups of down-home bands (I spotted Asleep at the Wheel).

Compared with most of the ten official balls, watching the varied crowd here was more fun. I saw knockout women in Neiman Marcus gowns and gorgeous Native American women in updated, 21st-century tribal outfits. Many of them, as well as their majestic escorts in full regalia, wore massive turquoise jewelry.

At the Lincoln 2.0 Inaugural Ball, held a night earlier at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, many of the guests wore hoopskirts or Civil War uniforms. But if that sounds sedate, the evening was far from it, especially with a champagne reception in a Victorian parlor and a room dedicated to Knob Creek, a nine-year-aged Kentucky straight bourbon, in addition to the many bars in the ballroom.

The Knob Creek bunch was disappointed; they couldn’t serve the snazzy drinks they had designed because the fruit juices would have stained the white marble floors, but they made the best of it by pouring with a generous hand.

One treat was the chance to roam this fine museum and the National Portrait Gallery without the usual crowds. On exhibit at the Portrait Gallery was an important new acquisition: a large-scale collage of “Hope,” the Shepard Fairey poster that played such an important role in President Obama’s campaign.

Musical groups were tucked away in different rooms of the huge building, but the main show was in the Great Hall. Eight-time Grammy winner Anita Baker warbled to the crowd’s delight, and blues guitarist and songwriter Keb’ Mo’ performed special songs to honor Obama.

From Hawaii, musician-singer-songwriter John Cruz, acclaimed as the best in the islands by Hawaii magazine, gained new fans here on the mainland.

Many guests were touched that they were attending a ball on the very spot where Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural was celebrated in 1865. We marveled that in this city about to observe the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth we were paying tribute to the election of an African American to the highest office in the land--unimaginable in Lincoln’s lifetime or even a few decades ago in ours.

Capital Diary: Inaugural Parties Kick Off

Watch your step! You could trip over a celebrity anywhere in Washington these days. You could perhaps even hear them, like the lucky listeners near the Lincoln Memorial when Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp did sound checks prior to their official performances. Astronaut and moon-walker Buzz Aldrin (photo) is also in town for the inauguration. He came without his wife, Lois, who had to stay in California. The 380 or so listed inaugural events got off to a great start Friday night with two terrific parties that had many of the guests gravitating from the Westin Fairfax Hotel to Café Milano.

At the Fairfax, Washington Life’s Nancy Bagley and her husband, Soroush Shehabi, hosted “A Musical Celebration of the Inauguration.” The D.C. Capitals, the National Journal, Celebrity Service, and the Atlantic co-sponsored the event with the magazine. (The magazine’s 2009 Social List and its who’s who in the new administration, which I wrote about last week, are now available online.)

Headliner Warren Hayes of the Allman Brothers provided the music, but two political headliners provided the clout: John Podesta, co-chair of the presidential transition team, and Nancy Pelosi.

In his introduction, Soroush lauded her as the first woman to hold the post of speaker, the third highest member of the government. She and Podesta, who is rumored to be under consideration for a Cabinet post, both addressed the crowd. Among the avid listeners: Rima Al-Sabah and Anne Nitze, who were deep into conversation, but broke off to hear them.

Many of the guests went on to Franco Nuschese’s Café Milano, including Arianna Huffington, Esther Coopersmith, and Smith and Elizabeth Bagley.

At the party Franco hosted at his chic restaurant/nightclub, distinguished speakers included Mayor Adrian Fenty, James R. DeSantis, the executive director of the Italian American Foundation, and Dr. Robert G. Gallo, who spoke about AIDS. The co-discoverer of the HIV virus, he heads the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland.

Café Milano rocked on until the late, late hours. Raising the glamour quotient were Bo Derek and Yvonne Baki, the former ambassador from Ecuador. Everyone wanted to talk to Buzz Aldrin. He told me he is continuing his work to advance space travel (see his Web site, BuzzAldrin.com), and we reminisced about the evening a few years ago when he and Lois--his adorable, pocket-Venus wife--took me to the opening of the Florida museum planetarium that was named after him. As Lois proudly says: “He is the only astronaut who is a rocket scientist!”

Seen among the two celebrations: Michelle Fenty, Catherine Reynolds, Ina Ginsburg, Kristina McLaughlin, Janet Donovan, CNN’s Ed Henry, Charlie Rose, Tracey Ellis, Chris and Kathleen Matthews, Mark Ein, Annie Totah, Carol Randolph, Dan and Rhoda Glickman, Joe Roberts, the Honorable Jaime Aparicio, Aziz Mekouar, the ambassador of Morocco, Said Jawad, the ambassador of Afghanistan, and his wife, Shamim, Congressman Roy Blount, Hilda Brillembourg, Juleanna Glover, Kevin Chaffee, Shane Doty, Michael and Meryl Chertoff, former California governor Jerry Brown, Amanda Downes, Ann and Lloyd Hand, Sam Donaldson, and Diane and Charles Bruce (just off the plane from England, who reported the Londoners’ enthusiasm for Obama, just as I found optimism about his presidency last month when I was in Peru).

Other guests included Susan Eisenhower, Nancy Brinker, Maximo and Sedi Flügelman, newlyweds Jamie Bowersock and Amin Salaam, BET’s Robert Johnson, Arnaud and Alexandra de Borchgrave, Alexine Jackson and her daughter Julia, Bobby and Mary Haft, Ann Geracimos, Roland and Diane Flamini, John Pyles and Barbara Harrison, Michael and Linda Sonnenreich, Kathy Kemper and Jim Valentine, and Norah O’Donnell and Jeff Tracy.

Now that’s your celebrity fix for this issue!

Plan Ahead: The Inaugural

Time clarifies all things, sort of: Seems that the inaugural crowds will be only half the original estimates of 4 million visitors, but even City Administrator Dan Tangherlini won’t predict how many will come to the city. Just know that Washington is going to be crowded.

Check the Washington Post’s Inauguration Central for event tickets, balls and traffic postings. The site is regularly updated.

Don’t even think of bringing a car into the city; taxis will be scarce and traffic jams interminable. Expect long, cold waits on Metro, with escalators turned off for safety. Is watching it on TV starting to look good?

Discount those early no-rooms-available reports that spurred Craigslist ads offering lodgings in private homes. More offers than takers.

Still available: Acclaimed New York Philharmonic conductor Lorin Maazel’s Virginia estate can lodge 50 guests luxuriously. He’s offering it to groups for $50,000 per night, including transportation and a private concert. Proceeds to benefit young musical artists through his nonprofit organization, The Châteauville Foundation.

For a guide to power players in the new administration, order Washington Life’s 2009 Inauguration Special. Limit five per buyer. This collector’s edition of the magazine, with an Obama cover by renowned artist Shepard Fairey, includes the 2009 Social List.

After the hectic hubbub of January 20, Helene Tartakowski of the Russian Chamber Art Society suggests that January 22 you relax and let music waft over you at the Austrian Embassy. With a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a baritone and a bass, the much-lauded Society offers the Washington premiere of “Russian Fairy Tale Operas,” seldom-heard arias and duets by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A narrator will keep us clued in on the musicians, the singers and the action.

Spotlight On: Frida Burling

“Frida is the sexiest 93-year-old I’ve ever seen,” said a guest at the Georgetown House Tour Patrons’ Party. “No one ever says no to Frida. She’s flirtatious and charming even while she’s twisting your arm,” he added, speaking of her ability to persuade hesitant Georgetowners to open their cherished homes for the hundreds of strangers who troop through on the annual tour. For more than 60 years, Frida has focused intensively on the St. John’s Church-sponsored tour, along with all the other good causes she has helped. Monies from the fundraiser help many social service agencies.

This fall she was an honoree for the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s Black and White Ball for her years of community work for her beloved neighborhood. But her influence has spread even farther, raising her to iconic status for many organizations.

Her life did not always enable her to have the means and time for causes, as she noted recently when the United Way of America gave a luncheon honoring her in New York, at the United Nations.

In her autobiography, Finally Frida, she mentions early years when, because of a mostly absentee father, Laurence Frazer, both she and her interior decorator mother worked, barely managing but helped by Frida’s scholarships and by friends, who gave them boxes of outgrown clothing.

Her life changed after her mother married again, to wealthy Randolph Leigh. Frida was much photographed and written about as a high-spirited and pretty debutante. One fascinating item was in the first column ever by Igor Cassini--later the legendary New York columnist “Cholly Knickerbocker”--whose brother Oleg became Jackie O’s favored designer.

Igor described a pre-WWII Chevy Chase Club evening when Mussolini’s visiting son, Vittorio, was lionized by all the debs, but only spent time with Frida Frazer. He went back to Italy, so the romance never blossomed further, but it is intriguing to think that if it had continued until Il Duce had an American daughter-in-law, Frida might have changed the course of history!

Brian Gallagher, president and CEO of the United Way of America, spoke at the United Nations of the significant impact of Frida’s lifelong work on such issues as affordable housing, child health, and care for homeless children. (Diane Lebson of the United Way of the National Capital Area told me of Frida’s great energy, and her readiness to help whenever needed.) Civil rights have always been important to her also. Both she and her mother carried signs on the Mall among the throng hearing Martin Luther King’s speech in 1963. In 2003 she again hoisted placards, marching against starting the war in Iraq.

Frida says that her own difficult childhood has given her empathy with the needy and taught her the importance of helping others. She began her philanthropic career aged 20, as a Junior Leaguer whose first assignment was to gather contributions, door-to-door, for the precursor to the present United Way. “I had no idea 73 years later I’d still be fundraising for them at 93.”

Her interest in charitable initiatives was deepened on marriage to Thacher Winslow, a Roosevelt-era New Deal arrival in Washington. He worked for the International Labor Organization, and died suddenly at only 47, leaving Frida with three young children. She has written of her grief, quoting Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Life goes on; I forget just why…”

She then worked in real estate, spending long days to support her family. She rebuilt her life and struggled to help her children adjust to being without their father.

Four years later, she married handsome and very successful Ed Burling, of the prestigious Covington & Burling law firm (whose officers, ever supportive of Frida’s endeavors, turned out at the UN for her special day).

Her second marriage was a happy one, as her first had been. She and Ed successfully combined their families. He has since passed away, and Frida now has five children, 14 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

When I asked her about the title of her fascinating, no-punches-pulled Finally Frida, she said, “I was always somebody’s daughter Frida, then somebody’s wife Frida. Now I am just myself, just--finally--Frida.”

I can’t agree. She has always been unique and multifaceted, and has always known exactly just who Frida is.

Quick Notes 1/11

Among the guests admiring Blake Ashburner’s collection of Baroque paintings at his holiday luncheon were three Washington doyennes--Gertrude d’Amecourt, Lolo Sarnoff and Françoise Ellis--who are all widely admired themselves for their charm and chic.

If you’re clearing out your closet to make room for inaugural togs, Heather Dawn Thompson urges you to make prom night magical for the girls of the Cheyenne River Reservation, a Lakota community in Eagle Butte, South Dakota.

Help provide happy memories of this big event in the girls’ lives by sending the things they need but have no money to buy: prom dresses (up to size 24), evening bags, shoes, jewelry and cosmetics. Send by February 23 to the Cheyenne River Youth Project.