Wrong. He found some hole-in-the-wall diner in New Jersey that a friend told him about that had an authentic Chinese restaurant in the back. He also wrote a story on a famous actress who grew up in a Detroit bakery and included her favorite recipe for bread, as well as some as-yet-undiscovered restaurant in New York City.
To his surprise, Curtis hired him. He remembered sitting with Curtis and Claiborne in the Times cafeteria, and he asked the great food writer for any piece of advice he could give him.
“Steal the menu,” was what he said. “It’s filled with invaluable information; it prevents you from having to take notes while eating or having to ask how much an entrée costs; and you just slide it onto your lap, roll it up and shove it in your briefcase. If a waiter notices, he might think you’re playing with yourself, but he’ll hardly beg the question.”
Sokolov wrote for approximately two years for The New York Times, then took a position with benefits at the Wall Street Journal, which had decided to start a weekly Book Digest insert. Sokolov described it as a “wretched knockoff on Reader’s Digest, which folded very quickly, as we all knew it would.” Luckily for him, he was the sole survivor of the Book Digest team, and was offered a position as the editor of the Journal’s Leisure and Arts page: a job that he continued to do for the next 20 years.
When Rupert Murdoch bought the Journal, Sokolov was “bought out,” and he took that time to pursue his PhD, which he had abandoned in 1965. He began writing food columns for Natural History magazine, which took him “all over the country” to backwoods farm tables, five-star restaurants and everything in between.
During those years, he and his wife had visited friends in the Ulster County region and had saved enough money for a down payment on a house. After months and years of searching, they found and purchased a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in Gardiner that had been passed through generations by the DuBois family. When Johanna finally retired from her longstanding job as the curator of sculpture for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the couple began to spend most of their time at their home in Gardiner, meeting neighbors, making friends and taking a great interest in the local culture, history, politics, planning issues, open space initiatives and so on.
“We actually switched our voting registration from Greenwich Village to Gardiner, even though we had an apartment there, because our votes here would have much more impact than they would there. In Greenwich Village the candidates mostly agree on the issues; the only difference might be to what degree they champion gay rights,” he said with a smile. “Here, one vote, as we all know, can change the course of an election or a bond resolution!”
Having attended many meetings and being educated on the political goings-on about town, Sokolov threw his hat into the ring when a Planning Board alternate position opened up.
“For some reason, three of the board members voted for me, which I’m very appreciative of.”
He said that he has a lot of learning to do, reading a binder about four feet thick on the town’s zoning code, but also that he’s enjoying the learning curve and hopes that his service will be of some use.
Johanna Sokolov is also very entrenched in the local community, as she is the longest-serving board member of the Wallkill Valley Land Trust and helps put together the organization’s fascinating annual historic house tour. “I think we represent a balance in Gardiner. We’ve owned our home here for years, spend most of our time here, but we did not go to kindergarten or graduate from the New Paltz School District. We’re also not ‘new weekenders.’” He prides himself on maintaining all five acres of their land, mowing, cutting down dead trees for firewood, even purchasing a hunting rifle so that they can occasionally hunt a rabbit for dinner. Ray Sokolov is about as charming and lovely as they come.
For those who would like to learn more about Sokolov and his fascinating years as a journalist and food columnist, his book is due out in March and can be preordered on Amazon.com.
