Part 28

Since 1963, Tiffany has opened branch stores in five other cities. Several floors in the Fifth Avenue headquarters house artists, engravers, clockmakers and jewelry craftsmen. There is also a Tiffany factory in New Jersey.

The author of two best-selling books, Your Career in Business and Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers, Hoving is a deeply religious man who has long been actively involved in charitable work. He is a co founder of the Salvation Army Association of New York, and gives his time to the United Negro College Fund, the United Service Organizations, and, most recently, a home for heroin-addicted girls in Garrison, New York, which has been named in his honor.

When a friend at St. Bartholomew's Church asked Hoving to make her a pin reading "Try God," he got the idea of selling the pin at Tiffany's and giving the proceeds to the Walter Hoving Home. So far, 600,000 have been sold.

Jane Pickens Hoving, his wife since 1977, is the founder and chairman of an organization known as Tune in New York, which matches volunteers to jobs best suited for their talents and interests. It is about to open a headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue, across from Tiffany's.

His son Thomas Hoving served as commissioner of parks for New York City and for many years was director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He recently wrote a book on Tutankhamen and has another book in the works.

An Eastsider for over 50 years, Walter Hoving walks more than three miles a day between his home and office. He frequently mixes with customers in the store, and one of his favorite anecdotes is about the time he spoke with a woman who was registering her daughter for wedding presents. "The woman said that she and her husband wanted everything to come from Tiffany's because they were sure if it was from Tiffany's it would be all right," relates Hoving. "I said, 'What does your husband do?' She said, 'He is a letter carrier.' Well, I felt better than if I had sold Mrs. Astorbilt a million-dollar diamond ring."

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EASTSIDER JAY JACOBS Restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine

2-9-80

It is a familiar scene to New York restaurateurs: an out-of-town visitor arrives clutching a magazine, turns to an article, and orders the items that have been underlined. Whether the magazine is current or several years old, the chances are that it is Gourmet and that the article is a review by Jay Jacobs, Gourmet's New York restaurant critic since 1972.

Its monthly circulation of 600,000 makes Gourmet the most widely read food publication in the English-speaking world. But Jacobs, who is responsible for writing three lengthy reviews per issue, is quick to point out that, in spite of his knowledge of the business and his love of cooking, he would never consider opening a restaurant himself.

"I think everybody born in this century has fantasized about a restaurant, but I think it would be insane," he says in a voice as rich and mellow as vintage port. "One of the great tragedies of the restaurant business is that people who cook well at home often think that's all it takes. ... If you've got any interest in food and the least bit of talent, you can probably cook a better meal for four people than you'll ever get in any restaurant in the world -- if you want to invest that kind of labor and time, and concentration. But there's a huge gap between doing that and serving anywhere from 70 to 130 people at night, all wanting different dishes. It becomes a tremendous problem of strategy and logistics."

Affable, low-keyed, and very small of stature, Jacob displays a wry wit while telling how he began his career as a painter, cartoonist and illustrator before turning to full-time writing in 1956. For years he worked mainly for art publications, and he still writes a bimonthly column for theArtgallery magazine. His first book, a quickie titled RFK: His Life and Death, came out in 1968. He is also the author of A History of Gastronomy, New York a la Carte, and Winning the Restaurant Game (McGraw-Hill, 1980).

Winning the Restaurant Game is an extremely humorous and entertaining volume that is notable for its exotic vocabulary. However, the book's message is not to be taken lightly -- that restaurant dining is a complex game in which the best players can expect better service, better food, and the lasting affection of the owner. All the conventions of dining out, including who to tip and how much, are discussed in depth. Among the subchapters are "Humbling the Opposition," "The Uselessness of Menus," "Addressing Flunkies," and "Securing Advantageous Tables."

His next book, Winning the Kitchen Game, is due from McGraw-Hill next winter.

Jacobs dines out at least once a day while in the city. He visits restaurants several times before doing a review -- always anonymously, and generally accompanied by others. "My job," he says, "is to find worthwhile places that our readers will want to go to. The magazine's policy is not to do unfavorable reviews. If I think a place stinks, I don't go back and I don't review it. ... Most of our readers are knowledgeable about food, somewhat self-indulgent, affluent, and well-travelled. When they come into New York, they don't want to find some cut-rate taco house, and they don't want to know about the bad places. They're only in for a few days, and they want to hit the high spots.

"The daily press have a different readership and a different function. ... When they do a favorable review, it can damage a restaurant in that it generates a sudden spurt of interest that the restaurant can't handle."

The father of four boys, Jacobs is a very sociable person who enjoys throwing parties for 50 to 60. To prepare the food, he says, "I lock myself in the kitchen for three or four days."

His Gourmet reviews are so detailed that Jacobs gets letters from readers across the country who tell how they have recreated a night at the Four Seasons or 21 "by analyzing what I have written, and approximating the dishes." But what makes his job particularly gratifying is the restaurant people themselves.

"I'm very impressed by these restaurant guys. If you travel in Europe you see them when they're 13 years old, schlepping suitcases in some motel and dreaming of the day when they open their own restaurant. They usually come out of small towns or even villages, and don't have the benefit of birth or upbringing or schooling. And the next thing you know, it's 30 years later and they can converse very adequately with Henry Kissinger or Jackie Onassis or anyone else, and maintain a business and make it work."

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WESTSIDER RAUL JULIA Star of Dracula on Broadway

5-26-79

"It's nice to be a vampire eight times a week," says Raul Julia, the star of Dracula at the Martin Beck Theatre. Last October he took over the role made famous by Frank Langella, and now Julia -- pronounced "Hoo lia" by his Puerto Rican countrymen -- has developed a cult following of his own, in this classic remake of the 1927 Broadway hit.

Some critics have said that the sets and costumes by Edward Gorey are the centerpieces of the show, more so than any of the performers. But Raul Julia is rapidly becoming a local matinee idol, drawing fan mail by the bagful and constantly meeting crowds of autograph seekers outside the stage door.

In his portrayal of Count Dracula, Raul takes on many characteristics of a bat. He hangs over the mantlepiece at strange angles and whips his dark cloak through the air like a bat's wings. When entrapped by three desperate men holding protective crosses and religious relics in front of them, he changes into a bat and flies out the window at the stroke of dawn.

In the dressing room prior to a performance, without his makeup, he looks neither sinister nor magnetically attractive, but seems almost boyish. His wit is matched by his humility: Raul is aware that his name is not yet a household word. Not many people realize, for example, that his natural speaking voice has the same lilting Puerto Rican accent heard everywhere in the streets and subways of New York. When asked how he accounts for his flawless onstage pronunciation, Raul shrugs and says with a grin, "Well, that's acting."

Like Richard Chamberlain, who in 1970 played Hamlet with great success on the British stage, Julia is equally at home in British and American plays. He has starred in many of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival productions, and has received three Tony nominations for his dramatic and musical roles on Broadway.