NANCY SILVERTON TAKES A SHOWER
/BY JIMMY DOLAN., Mozza Tribune Staff Writer
Last fall, when Mozza chef Nancy Silverton, her director of operations Kate Greenberg and a journalist went to the Four Seasons Cabo Del Sol resort in Baja, Mexico, they were awash in luxury. From their huge showers, to the small wading pool adjoining their rooms to the warm, awaiting Sea of Cortez, they lived the good life as clean as could be.
The trio’s next trip together was the polar opposite. In fact, you could call it the polar bear opposite. It was on March 8th to Alaska to be a curious part of the famous Iditarod sled dog race. Nancy had been lured to the Winterlake Lodge, a luxury resort with Kirsten Dixon and her daughter Mandy Dixon, a Thomas Keller trained chef, in a town where the closest post office and market was an hour away by helicopter. She was to take park in what was billed as an “Ice Cream Social”, a gathering featuring her renowned Nancy’s Fancy gelati served in the main lodge.
The Winterlake is at the Finger Lake stop on the Iditarod, a nearly 1,000 mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome that always brings to my mind the wonderful 1903 Jack London novel “The Call of the Wild” about a dog named Buck from Santa Clara Valley, California who is dognapped, shipped to Alaska and forced to compete in a (fictionally) extremely brutal sled dog race.
Normally the Lodge would host this upscale event and have the dog sled drivers, their crews and those rich enough to stay at Winterlake. But, because of Covid, the lodge would only allow Nancy, Kate and Michael and the other six guests into the dining area.
The three of us stayed in rooms about 600 feet from the main lodge. And one of stunning features of the rooms is they had no running water. None. They turn off the water in the rooms this year because, I guess, they know they will burst. To shower, we would have to walk the 600 feet to a dining area, past the yoga room, past the main lobby, past the bar, past the music room and into a bathroom that had a shower.
In the five days they were there, Nancy, Kate and Michael took a grand total of two showers. That’s not two showers each, that’s two showers total for the three people. Nancy Silverton took no showers at Winterlake. None.
Now, if you know Nancy like this Tribune reporter does, you know she is one of the most carefully-cleaned, well-groomed and brilliantly dressed people on Earth. So, for her to go five days without a shower is unheard of.
Still, she somehow managed to look as fresh as the icicles hanging from the eves of the lodge every morning. She would almost brag to her entourage, “I’m not gonna take a shower today.” The trek to the shower was a turn off more than the temptation of hot water.
But, when she got home, Nancy Silverton took a shower. Still, to this reporter, she didn’t look any more beautiful than she did at our experience in the Call of the Wild.
EDITOR’S NOTE This story is the sequel to Nancy Silverton Has A Cold http://www.krikorianwrites.com/blog/2015/10/17/nancy-silverton-has-a-cold
Which was a take on one of the classics of new journalsim, April 1966 Esquire article by Gay Talese called “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold”
