The headwaiter at Kan’s could not decide immediately where to seat the Child party. One table was too small, another too far from the windows. Chinese waiters flew about in response to his urgent commands. Mrs. Kan, the proprietor, hastening to the scene, exchanged ceremonious greetings with Paul and Julia Child and was introduced to Rosemary Manell and Elizabeth Bishop, who would be assisting Julia throughout the next week in a series of cooking demonstrations for the benefit of the Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco. Mrs. Kan was deeply honored by the presence in her restaurant of Julia Child, whose television show, “The French Chef,” is well known in San Francisco, but also deeply distressed, for she had not expected the visit. At length, the Child party was seated at a large table near the center of a big, elegant second-floor room that overlooks the city’s Chinese quarter.

“Julia would like it if you ordered for all of us,” Mrs. Manell said to Mrs. Kan. Julia nodded, beaming. She had lost her voice two days before, in Seattle, where she had given a series of four cooking demonstrations for the benefit of St. Mark’s Cathedral. At a cocktail party following one of the demonstrations, she had swallowed an hors d’oeuvre that contained a very hot pepper, and a doctor she consulted seemed to think this might have been the cause of it. She was not supposed to use her voice, and she was communicating with facial expressions, gestures, and notes written with a felt-tip pen on a white pad. Whenever she scribbled a note to Mrs. Kan, Mrs. Kan took the pad and pen and wrote out her reply. Mrs. Bishop explained that this wasn’t really necessary, since Julia could hear perfectly well, but Mrs. Kan seemed to think it impolite to reply orally to a written message.

Mrs. Kan’s selections began with barbecued spareribs, served as an hors d’oeuvre, and progressed to fried squid. “Fresh frying fat makes all the difference,” Julia wrote when she had tasted it. Mrs. Kan wrote back, “An expert such as you knows!” The squid was followed by diced-winter-melon soup, pale green and delicately flavored (“Does it look like cat vomit?” Julia inquired in a note not shown to Mrs. Kan), and then by lemon chicken, Kan’s special noodles flavored with chicken and coriander, asparagus with beef, and bean cake with barbecued pork. Two other diners sent complimentary greetings to the Childs’ table, and their waiter told them that everyone wanted to know what Julia was having (nobody in America calls her anything but Julia). As the meal continued, Julia scribbled faster and faster, and asked the others to read her notes aloud, so there could be the appearance of conversation. “Isn’t this far better than that hot Szechwan stuff?” she wrote. “Paul and I lived 1½ years in China and never had it. I wonder if it really exists there.” The Childs lived in China during the Second World War—Kunming, in fact, was the scene of their courtship, while they were both working for the Office of Strategic Services—and they have retained ever since a keen interest in Chinese cooking. Julia Child does not do any Chinese cooking herself, because she feels that one lifetime is hardly sufficient to encompass the cuisines of France, her specialty, but she loves to go to Chinese restaurants. “I would be perfectly happy w. only Chinese food,” she wrote. “Either French or Chinese. Could live w. only Chinese.”

Mrs. Kan wanted the Childs to see the kitchen. She also wanted to take their picture, and she refused to let them pay for the meal. Paul Child made certain that the photo would not be used as an endorsement for Kan’s—“We never do that”—and he said that they always paid for meals in restaurants. “We must be very careful, no payola,” Julia wrote on her pad. “Remember Watergate!” Mrs. Kan smiled firmly. Everyone got up and went into the kitchen, where Julia inspected mysterious vessels and vats, and put her arm around the chef. The chef, who stood a good eighteen inches short of Julia’s six feet one and a half, seemed absolutely delighted.

Going back to the hotel in a taxi, Paul was upset that he had not been permitted to pay for the meal. “She was so determined,” he said. “I didn’t want to do battle over it.

“We’ll send her a book,” Julia wrote. And a little later, in a note to Mrs. Bishop, “We must all help to cheer up Paul. He gets depressed when anything wrong w. wife.”

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