No. really, this is an actual proposal by actual senators Max Baucus of Montana and Harry Reid of Nevada. The pair of lunch-loving Democrats is backing an economic stimulus package that would restore the full tax deductibility of business meals–which was the law until 1986, a year that is universally acknowledged as the nadir of American lunching.
Now, I won’t cast aspersions on Baucus or Reid. They think the best way to prop up the sagging U.S. economy is to encourage the consumption of extravagant midday meals and, for all I know, they may be right.
But are we as a nation prepared for this challenge? After all, America is 30 years out of practice from the heyday of the “three-martini lunch,” those skip-the-salad days when business executives would head out for a bite at 1 p.m., return to the office at 4, climb under their desks and catch the 5:05 home.
Blame Jimmy Carter for our decline as one of the world’s great lunching nations. In 1976, during the zenith of the alcohol-soaked midday bite, Carter campaigned on ending the tax-deductible business lunch. He never actually used the words “three-martini lunch,” but he traveled the country railing against the “$50 martini lunch” and complaining about fat cat businessmen getting a free meal while “a truck driver cannot deduct his $1.50 sandwich.” (Deduct it? I wouldn’t even want to eat a $1.50 sandwich!)
Meanwhile, President Gerald Ford was campaigning like Bob Hope in between wars, “The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency,” Ford said. “Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?”
History tells us–at least when we’re not too drunk to listen–that Ford lost that election (and re-dedicated himself to his first love, celebrity pro-am golf). Carter may have won that battle, but he lost the war against the business lunch deduction. But his call to austerity did forever alter big business’s sense of privilege. (What do you expect from a president who never served liquor in the White House and was frequently pictured drinking iced tea–and not the variety popularized in Long Island?)
“For Carter, it was never about the lunch itself, but the idea of government-underwritten extravagance,” said Barnaby Conrad, author of “The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic.” “And the best symbol of that was the martini, the ultimate urbane drink, a drink associated with luxury and the obliteration of good sense.” (Or, as the great quipstress Dorothy Parker once put it: “I like to have a martini, but only two at the most. After three I’m under the table. After four I’m under my host.”)
The fully deductible business lunch remained the law for another decade, but the trend away from boozy, midday indulgence had begun. “For most of the 1970s, there was a turn away from alcohol,” said Dale DeGroff, a respected cocktail expert (Mom, can I be that when I grow up?). “At most, all those ex-Hippies would drink a glass of Almaden Mountain Chablis.”
Although liquid-laced lunches returned during the “Greed is Good” era, the stock market crash in 1987 only strengthened today’s “I’ll just have a Perrier” ethos. “The crash changed everyone’s psyche,” said Tommy Sheridan, a host at New York’s Smith & Wollensky, a steakhouse that was once a three-martini bastion. “It wasn’t so much the money, but everyone realized they needed to be leaner and meaner at the office. They’d go out to extravagant dinners, but during the day, they had to stay at their desks making money.”
But today, our economy needs us! Problem is, we’re weak. Indeed, some commentators are claiming that our nation’s livers are simply not up to the challenge of restoring the economy.
“Americans are not capable of drinking three martinis at lunch,” New York Times restaurant reviewer William Grimes lamented. “Weakened by decades of white-wine spritzers and designer mineral waters, they can barely hoist a Bud Lite. A three-martini lunch would kill them.” I wondered. And when a journalist of my caliber wonders, he takes action. With Grimes’ words still echoing in my ear–“kill them … kill them … kill them”–I headed out to gauge the difficulty of the task before us. (And you thought that all the nation’s top “journalists” were risking their lives in Afghanistan. Well, some of us have remained on the homefront, staring down murderous lunches, toiling selflessly and eschewing glory even as we’re chewing steak.)
The first thing I learned was that they don’t make three-martini lunches like they used to. In the 1960s, a martini was typically three ounces, not the gargantuan six-ounce, SUV-sized tankards they serve today. And Jimmy Carter’s “$50 martini lunch” is now closer to $250 (it’s nearly $70 off the bat for the six martinis–three for you and three for the friend whose name you’re putting in the “Client” column on your expense form).
But that didn’t stop me from heading to Smith & Wollensky for an afternoon of serious economic recovery. Biff “Kill Them” Grimes wasn’t going to scare me out of doing my patriotic duty.
Martini 1: The alcohol quickly made myself and my “client” garrulous. We weren’t even halfway through the first drink before my accomplice, New York publicist George Shea, let loose with his first tirade. (He has a point. Who knew that pre-kindergarten in New York costs $14,000 a year?!)
After the first martini, a longtime Smith & Wollensky waiter named Pat Brennan (it may have been Matt Dressen; I can’t really read my notes) came over and told us a lot of things about the history of the three-martini lunch. I can’t remember much of it, but one thing he said really stood out: He blamed the Internet (of all things) for the demise of the multi-martini lunch. Considering the rapid pace of business on the Web, who can afford to have his business acumen drowned under a torrent of gin?
I’m practically there. After one martini, I was wobbly. In more poetic terms, I was one and a half sheets to the wind.
Martini 2: Shea’s tirades have given way to a weepy paranoia about the coming smallpox pandemic.
Despite a tolerance for alcohol that makes him the envy of every Australian journalist in town, Shea admitted that a mere two martinis had incapacitated him.
“I would not be comfortable talking to clients on the phone right now,” he said. I wouldn’t either. (Note to self: Time to eliminate all clients from my life; they’re getting in the way of my drinking.)
Martini 3: All pretense of returning to work was abandoned and we struck up boozy conversations with diners next to us. A couple from Buffalo said it was nice to see New Yorkers eating out and having a good time again. I responded by giving them the finger (hey, Mayor Giuliani said we should all “get back to normal,” right?).
With the milti martoonis downed, Shea claimed that Duluth was in Michigan. For my part, I was so wasted that I ordered pecan pie for dessert (I hate pecan pie) and so giddy that I didn’t even mind that they charged me $3.75 for a cup of coffee.
But dead? Sorry, Mr. Grimes, but I’m living proof that Americans will be able to thrive, despite the sacrifice of having to eat three-martini lunches for the good of the country.
Finally, drunkenness and patriotism unite for a common goal.
