Some diners appeared to be students or faculty from Cornell University, up on the hill, or Ithaca College, others local professionals or tradesmen (and women). Women in either jeans or the Laura Ashley look appeared equally comfortable and at home. A table away under the ceiling fans was a diner in running shoes, shorts, sweat shirt and beard. Over along the front wall, below the large front windows was a man in a pin-striped suit. There is seating for slightly more than 50 people (another three dozen can be accommodated on the sidewalk terrace when the weather is nice), which is small as popular restaurants go but large enough that on a recent Sunday evening, the clientele seemed to include at least one of almost every kind. The restaurant is located in DeWitt Mall, a renovated downtown brick school building at the corner of East Seneca and North Cayuga streets.
It is perhaps the most famous, least known, most influential, least pretentious eating establishment in the country. Moosewood has arrived, but it doesn't seem to have changed. Now, with a mainstream publisher, Simon & Schuster, and with plans for yet another cookbook to follow, the collective has brought forth "Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant." In 1987, the collective itself authored "New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant" for Ten Speed.
By this time Katzen had long left the restaurant, but the connection remained among readers and Moosewood Restaurant was well on its way to amassing a cult following. Katzen and Ten Speed followed that in 1982 with "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest," which was done in the same style. The restaurant entered the consciousness of the outside world after Mollie Katzen, an original member of the collective, and Ten Speed Press brought out, in 1977, "Moosewood Cookbook," a compendium of quaint line drawings and hand-printed recipes adapted from Katzen's 4 1/2 years of cooking there.
It just doesn't seem likely that an offshoot of the counterculture could survive the materialistic '80s and, in fact, thrive, yet it has, and the proof is in the publication this month of the fourth in a continuing stream of cookbooks inspired by the restaurant. It is operated by a collective - 18 refugees from the '70s, hippies of the '90s - yet an important goal is to make a profit. The fare is vegetarian, yet the majority of its patrons are probably not vegetarians. Yet year after year for almost 18 years, the enchanted and the curious have gone out of their way to come here and eat. Moosewood Restaurant is located in a small college town in upstate New York, on the way between very few places. How it can, however, is truly difficult to explain.
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