Peggy Olson started her career at Sterling Cooper as Don Draper’s secretary, but she quickly proved herself to be creative and ambitious. She’s promoted to copywriter and by the time Don, Bert Cooper, Roger Sterling, and Lane Pryce start their new firm, she’s Don’s top creative assistant.
For her birthday in May 1965, Peggy’s boyfriend, the nerdy Mark Kerney, tells her he’s taking her to the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, one of New York’s most over-the-top concept restaurants. What he doesn’t tell her is that he has invited Peggy’s mother Katherine, her sister Anita Olson Respola, her brother-in-law Jerry Respola, and her roommate Veronika to join them. That night, as Peggy is about to leave, Don insists Peggy work late on an ad campaign he’s not yet satisfied with. Having reached a nadir in his personal life, he’s impatient, irritable, and desperate for company. He’s also mildly inebriated. Peggy calls the restaurant and we see a waiter bring a phone to the table. She’ll only be fifteen minutes, she tells Mark, but she never makes it.
The Forum of the Twelve Caesars was the brainchild of Joseph Baum, a hotel and restaurant man, who helped turn Restaurant Associates from a purveyor of coffee, beef stew, doughnuts, and pies into a major force in New York’s fine dining scene. “Baum developed some highly unusual ideas about restaurants and how to make them appealing,” wrote William Grimes, a former New York Times restaurant critic, in Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York (North Point Press, 2009). “His philosophy was a blend of showmanship and mysticism, backed up by intensive research, endless attention to detail, and exhaustive recipe testing.”
Restaurant Associates was looking to open a new restaurant in a Rockefeller Center location in 1956. Rockefeller Center, writes Grimes, was “a crossroads where the radio and television industries met advertising and publishing” and “suggested to Baum…the idea of a forum.” Serendipitously, one of Baum’s designers had recently purchased a set of large portraits of the twelve Caesars—Julius and the first eleven emperors of Rome—and the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, one of the most extravagant restaurants ever to grace New York City, came to life. “In dead earnest,” says Grimes, “Baum set about creating an amusement park for the senses.” Managers were dispatched to Rome, Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. The first century writings of Apicius, a Roman epicure, were studied. Classics professors lectured the staff on Roman history and culture. The menu was indulgent and pompous (“Filet Mignon, Caesar Augustus, with a Rising Crown of Pâté and Triumphal Laurel Leaf”), the décor decadent, and the wait staff clad in purple and red velveteen jackets meant to evoke the togas worn by Roman rulers. “The table is set with brass and copper plates,” wrote Life magazine’s associate editor in the April 7, 1961 issue. “The ashes from cigaret [sic] are deposited in porcelain trays inscribed with Caesar’s head.”
As Mark, Veronika, and Peggy’s family wait in vain for Peggy, Jerry studies the menu and remarks on “the oysters of Hercules, which you with sword will carve,” reading verbatim from the real menu. We’ve selected another Roman extravagance from the Forum of the Twelve Caesars to add to our appetizers: the Golden Eggs of Crassus. This egg, sherry, and lobster meat concoction was named after Marcus Licinus Crassus, one of the richest men to ever walk the plazas of ancient Rome.
ADAPTED FROM AMERICAN GOURMET: CLASSIC RECIPES, DELUXE DELIGHTS, FLAMBOYANT FAVORITES, AND SWANK “COMPANY” FOOD FROM THE ’50S AND ’60S BY JANE AND MICHAEL STERN (HARPERCOLLINS, 1991)
NOTE: You will need only six soft-boiled eggs in the recipe; two spare eggs are also soft boiled in the event the eggs break during preparation.
9 eggs (8 for soft boiling, 1 for the coating) (see note above)
3 tablespoons butter
1⁄2 pound lobster meat, chopped very fine
2 tablespoons sherry
1⁄2 cup tomato purée
11⁄2 teaspoons paprika
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
Oil for frying
3⁄4 cup plain bread crumbs
6 pieces white bread, crust removed
YIELD: 6 SERVINGS
Every table at the Forum of the Twelve Caesars included a silver bowl filled with a wide variety of olives to whet the diners’ appetite while they perused the menu or waited for a late-arriving guest—or even a no-show like Peggy. “There might be tiny black olives from Nice, no larger than a peanut,” wrote James Beard about the Forum of the Twelve Caesars in Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking (Bloomsbury, 1974). He went on to describe “huge luscious green Spanish olives stuffed with pimiento and the little manzanilla olives stuffed with anchovy; the long, pointed kalamata olives from Spain and California, sometimes called queen olives; and the soft Greek or Italian black olives preserved in olive oil after they are dead ripe.”
The Forum of the Twelve Caesars “is a very fancy, plush place and the prices are very, very, high,” wrote Minnesota restaurateurs George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter in their self-published Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices (1961–1963). “[We] would not advise going there unless you have money to throw away on very elaborate atmosphere.” As for the olives, “they serve their olives…in the ancient Spanish tradition which is a good trick to know.” We share the recipe from the Herters’ book here. Just don’t bother saving any for Peggy; she isn’t going to make it tonight either.
ADAPTED FROM BULL COOK AND AUTHENTIC HISTORICAL RECIPES AND PRACTICES BY GEORGE LEONARD HERTER AND BERTHE E. HERTER (HERTER’S, 1961-1963)
1 7-ounce jar green olives, pitted, stuffed or unstuffed
1–2 teaspoons olive oil
Garlic powder or onion powder
YIELD: ABOUT 60 OLIVES