Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.misc From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Penn & Teller & Mo & me Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 16:20:05 EST Message-ID: Lines: 156 \SE F;FOOD;OLNEY IN AMERICA \HD Penn & Teller & Mo & me \BY Judith Olney \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES "She's back! She must like it here! She must love it!" sings out Mo Sussman as he bounces up and down in the gallery of celebrity photographs that circle his vestibule. That's Mo of formerly Joe & Mo's, now renamed Mo Sussman's Restaurant. Joe has disappeared. Penn & Teller, the famous celebrity magicians, are standing in the vestibule with Mo and looking puckish. Maybe they made Joe vanish. I don't know. They have just named Mo's restaurant one of the 16 coolest fancy restaurants in the world in their new book, "How to Play with Your Food" (Villard Books, $20). This book is exactly what your parents were afraid of when they said, "Don't play with your food." Parents spend years civilizing children at table, teaching them to conform to societal norms so they can go out to restaurants someday and not embarrass anyone. Then along come these two loons with their sugar packets that won't open, their insulting fortune cookie inserts ("The chef spit in your food."), their bleeding Jell-O molds. Eat ants, they say. And do. "That we can throw food around is a product of our maturity," says Teller, the curly-haired one who is mute on stage. "When you're a child, you don't have the tools to rebel. Kids play cowboys and they have fingers for guns. Our book has some tricks for kids - their goal is always to make other children throw up - and some tricks for adults." "We want to teach skepticism, a certain sense of goofiness," says Penn, the tall one with the ponytail and the red-lacquered fingernail. "So little of what might happen does happen, as Dali said. It's rare that fate hands one the opportunity for the perfect joke. Madonna's fans live vicariously through her. Our fans live through us. The less you are like us, however, the better the jokes from our book will play, because no one will be expecting staid old you to pull such tricks." So here we are at Mo Sussman's, a hot spot for lunch these days. Just about any noon you can see big-shot lawyers, lobbyists, pols. Ed Rollins, Lyn Nofziger, Bill Bennett sit around a table. They eat Mo's good juicy hamburgers, his comforting meatloaf and terrific, crusty potato pie and try to figure out how to make Democrats disappear. They look glum. Maybe they should come in on Saturday night when Eric Felten's band plays wonderful swing music and everyone dances. Maybe they should learn Teller's trick of carving orange rinds into funny teeth and make faces at one another. If Mr. Bennett had a ponytail, a silver alligator ring and a bondage bracelet, he would look like Penn. Maybe he could learn to make the heart-shaped gelatin dessert with the corn syrup blood inside. He could bring it to table, pretend it was a bleeding-heart liberal, stick a knife in it and make Mr. Rollins smile. We are eating up lots of Mo's good pumpernickel bread and sweet butter now. The bread plate is levitating because Teller is pumping away under the table with a little bulb. "Makes you hungry pimping a book," says Penn. He and I are digging into the fresh house salad, with its blue cheese, tomatoes and radicchio, which is better than the Caesar salad with its dry croutons. I like the little wilted salads of skate and spinach or endive and sauteed shrimp that are on the menu sometimes. "Used to be you could just throw a big slab of meat on the grill, pour a stiff drink, and that's all customers needed," says Mo as he prowls by the table. "Times have changed. People don't know what they should eat." "I'll have the duck braised with fresh plums and spring onions," says Penn. " 'Albino King Salmon (One in a Thousand Found)' for me," says Teller. "Do they deliver the other 999 to prove that?" "Are we featuring disadvantaged species this week?" I chime in. "Wingless birds? Emus?" Mo swears this is not a joke. The fish comes sweet and white to table, with a pretty sauce and a twirl of the buttery shoestring vegetable "pasta" that happily accompanies many of the dishes. The new chef, James Pelosky, does good things with fish, and breaded monkfish fillet slices have crust and crunch and still are moist. An amazing and difficult trick. "The duck is very good," says Penn. "It wasn't humiliating. I thought it might be hard to cut, and if it fell off the plate, I might have embarrassed myself in front of you." This, as a mother, makes me feel better about Penn. There must be some little recidivist bit of manners left deep in his core, but what to think about Teller. He has just performed linguini a la stigmata - stabbed himself to all appearances in his palm over a bowl of dry noodles and mixed in a sauce made from his own blood. He actually sits there and eats the heart-shaped Jell-O mold, laps up the "blood." "I got used to it when I tested it for two days in my kitchen," he says. "Gross," say two ladies at a nearby table. The comment seems to please Teller. "Cow-blood flavor," he informs the ladies. Penn and I eat the tasty white chocolate mousse, the only made-in-house dessert. Penn teaches me how to let it drool attractively out of the side of my mouth. "Cool," says Teller. "Very nice," says the waiter. The waiters are well trained here. They are funny and give good service, and you should especially ask for droll Andrew or bumptious "Fergie." I break a spoon with my psychic powers alone; then Penn excuses himself to go to the men's room. Teller and I have a chance to talk. "What a bore he is," says Teller. "What a relief to have a moment without him." No, he isn't frustrated at having to keep quiet all the time. He likes the luxury of not talking, the fact that there is no frantic competition on stage. "I love to hear Penn talk," he says. "We fought for the first seven years of our partnership, but now we truly respect each other. I'm more the director who wants to block, plan, intellectualize the acts. Penn just wants to jump in and perform them." "What a jerk," says Penn when Teller goes out to wash the blood from his hands. "There are no more teams working in show business. The last one was the Smothers Brothers. Nobody wants interdependency these days. Our act works because we trust each other." "Ha, she didn't notice," says Teller when he comes back to the table. "My parsley is on your plate. I palmed it there when you weren't looking." Maybe he spit on it. I don't know. What I do know is that you can go to Mo's, and, in addition to having a good meal, you can order up a pack of cards after learning in Penn & Teller's new book how to palm the three of clubs and then have it appear under your dining partner's crab cakes. Mo & the chef & the waiter are all in on it, and they'll do it to the end of time or until Ed Rollins smiles, whichever comes first. ***** TWO STARS RESTAURANT: Mo Sussman's, 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW; 202/659-1211 HOURS: Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., dinner, 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner, 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday; music and dancing until 1 a.m. Closed Sunday CARDS: All major credit cards COST: Averages $15 lunch, $35 dinner (excluding drinks), per person MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. 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