The Man Who Came to Dinner

The American Mother is a perfectly wonderful woman, wrote Cafe Columnist Paul V. Coates in the Los Angeles Mirror, but most of the time she is also a "perfectly lousy cook." So why all this sentimental drivel about "Food Like Mother Used to Make?" Give him a nightclub table any time and some breast of guinea hen.

For thus insulting Mom and Home Cooking, Columnist Coates last week was paying a heavy price. More than 260 readers had flooded the Mirror with letters challenging Coates to take potluck at their homes, and vowing to make him eat humble pie. A man with a cast-iron stomach and an eye for a circulation chart, Coates accepted most of the 260 invitations and offered prizes for the tastiest meals.

Hostess No. 1 was Mrs. Elizabeth LaPointe, a 56-year-old grandmother and telephone operator. The man who came to dinner sampled her fruit compote, eggs soaked in pickled beet juice, Norwegian meat sticks, Norwegian coffee, snowball cookies and cinnamon rolls. Only one course was a casualty; Mrs. LaPointe had let the lemon fluff collapse. Coates pronounced the LaPointe dinner "delicious."

A few nights later, after downing four predinner shots of bourbon at a Syrian home, Coates danced the dubbke ("No serious threat to the samba," he told his readers). He put away exotic dishes ranging from kibbee (lamb cake) and yabrac (grape leaves) to baklawa (pastry).

By week's end, 32-year-old Paul Coates had gained five pounds. He had sampled Scotch haggis (oatmeal and suet pudding), frankfurters & sauerkraut, spareribs, and potato latkes (pancakes), still had some 250 meals to go. A thoughtful reader had sent him a tin of baking soda, but Coates was no quitter. Gritted he: "I'll follow through."

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