Craig Claiborne Exhibit Lost In Transit

Seems one of the oldest excuses around is to blame for stalling East Hampton Historical Society’s summer exhibit originally set for on the life and work of cookbook writer and food critic Craig Claiborne: It got lost in the mail.

“Well, we got one of the boxes,” said Liz Neill, assistant to the historical society’s director, though it arrived nearly five weeks behind schedule.

To make matters worse, the package that was delivered, containing some belongings and vintage photographs of Claiborne and his friends cooking and picnicking near Gardiner’s Island, was badly damaged.

The other box— one containing a number of informative panels detailing Claiborne’s biography— ended up in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Apparently even the tracking numbers were incorrect.

Here are some things the Craig Claiborne exhibit would have told you, had it not been lost in transit on its way from the University of Mississippi’s Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics.

Claiborne was born in Sunflower, Mississippi, following his military service in both WWII and the Korean War, he moved up north to work for the New York Times in 1956.

According to Historical Society Executive Director Richard Barons, Claiborne was a new sort of food critic for the era. “Claiborne liked anonymity, especially in restaurants,” he said, stating that he was one of the first undercover restaurant reviewers— passing under the radar as just another patron to get a restaurant’s real dining experience.

In our modern era of Food Network television, specialized health food diets and strawberries year round, it’s hard to imagine the culinary scene as Claiborne found it in the late 1950s. Almost all gourmet dining in New York was classic French, and most of it wasn’t very good.

Claiborne is credited with inventing not only the modern model of restaurant criticism, “Actual criticism, not just pandering,” as Barons put it. He also invented the restaurant star rating system we still use today. Though famous for once eating a $4,000 dollar meal that even the pope denounced, Claiborne remained a southern boy at heart— introducing many readers to southern cooking and other ethnic flavors. Barons himself uses Claiborne’s waffle recipe.

Moving to East Hampton in the 1960s, he remained between New York and the East End for several decades before dying in 2000.

If everything goes smoothly, Barons said, “Hopefully it will be here by the end of next month.”

The tentative date for the Claiborne opening is now July 26.