My Great-Grandmother's Name was Kay Williams, but everyone that knew her called her Kitty and she love the hospitality business. Winter was spent in service at the grand hotels in Florida and summer in legendary sea side palaces like the Monmouth and the Essex in Spring Lake New Jersey. In her "dotage" she returned to her native Cambridge , Massachusetts to become the night room service manager at the venerable Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston. As a very small girl I would visit this enchanted place. I discovered the "back of the house" there and have happily never been the same.
Nana Kitty, how we knew her and loved her, spent her day-off with us. She would get a club sandwich boxed lunch from the kitchen staff, a jar of "Stingers" from the barman, a racing form from the newsstand, and a cab at the corner. She would travel out to Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Boston to stay with us and help my young Mom with the house while she was going "back-to-school". Her "day-off" was filled with chores. But it was filled with bedtime stories of glamorous life in the golden age of the great hotels. Nana Kitty always stayed in my room with me in the small house on Moody Street. She was a Great Dame, and even if I didn't fully comprehend the unique mix of hardworker & Auntie Mame whose savoire fare, panache, and infectious belly laugh began to rub off. I have a dozen or so pictures of her, and in every one she looks to be in mid-belly laugh. She looks like she loved life, It also looks like life was hard too, but she bore the load with incredible gusto & grace.
When I began to find my own self as both a hardworker and a connoisseur, I did so with the legacy of Nana Kitty in my heart. The long-retired doorman who used to give me a penny upon my arrival was gone, and a penny no longer got you a gumball, yet I looked forward to my Ritz visits as a homecoming. Later in my life on return annual visits to the blue crystal & gold dining room at the old Boston Ritz Carlton for my birthday dinner, "Tito"the Captain , who was himself a young man during Nana Kitty's tenure always greeted us like long lost family. And in the manner of authentically warm welcoming that pros know how to offer when favorite customers return whom one is genuinely happy to see, I became spoiled.
Nana Kitty has been gone for over 30 years, but I cherish the mementos of our connoisseurs collaboration. It spawned a collection of culinary artifacts that inspire, inform everything I do on The Food & Wine Radio Network, on TV, in my consulting, writing, speaking, teaching & tasting. If you enjoy what you discover, go to the best hotel in town tonight and order a Stinger and make a toast to Kitty. She would really like that.
Nana Kitty, how we knew her and loved her, spent her day-off with us. She would get a club sandwich boxed lunch from the kitchen staff, a jar of "Stingers" from the barman, a racing form from the newsstand, and a cab at the corner. She would travel out to Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Boston to stay with us and help my young Mom with the house while she was going "back-to-school". Her "day-off" was filled with chores. But it was filled with bedtime stories of glamorous life in the golden age of the great hotels. Nana Kitty always stayed in my room with me in the small house on Moody Street. She was a Great Dame, and even if I didn't fully comprehend the unique mix of hardworker & Auntie Mame whose savoire fare, panache, and infectious belly laugh began to rub off. I have a dozen or so pictures of her, and in every one she looks to be in mid-belly laugh. She looks like she loved life, It also looks like life was hard too, but she bore the load with incredible gusto & grace.
When I began to find my own self as both a hardworker and a connoisseur, I did so with the legacy of Nana Kitty in my heart. The long-retired doorman who used to give me a penny upon my arrival was gone, and a penny no longer got you a gumball, yet I looked forward to my Ritz visits as a homecoming. Later in my life on return annual visits to the blue crystal & gold dining room at the old Boston Ritz Carlton for my birthday dinner, "Tito"the Captain , who was himself a young man during Nana Kitty's tenure always greeted us like long lost family. And in the manner of authentically warm welcoming that pros know how to offer when favorite customers return whom one is genuinely happy to see, I became spoiled.
Nana Kitty has been gone for over 30 years, but I cherish the mementos of our connoisseurs collaboration. It spawned a collection of culinary artifacts that inspire, inform everything I do on The Food & Wine Radio Network, on TV, in my consulting, writing, speaking, teaching & tasting. If you enjoy what you discover, go to the best hotel in town tonight and order a Stinger and make a toast to Kitty. She would really like that.
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