Mr. Pots and Pans

There is no accounting for tastemakers. To Craig Claiborne (The New York Times Cook Book), "Fred Bridge is the enormously kind Mr. Pots and Pans." To James Beard (Beard on Bread), "Fred Bridge is a son of a bitch. I won't set foot in his place."

Then again, there is no accounting for the Bridge Kitchenware Corp. The Manhattan emporium contains enough implements to satisfy all the descendants of Brillat-Savarin. Yet its owner, Fred Bridge, keeps the store looking more like a warehouse than a house of wares, and when nonbuying shoppers browse through the overcrowded aisles, he makes a fetish out of insulting them.

Familiar and Exotic. Longtime customers have learned never to cross that Bridge when they come to it, for beneath the beefy, abrasive exterior is a beefy, abrasive interior. Neither the rich nor the famous escape his wrath. He recently demanded that a millionaire yachtsman put away his crummy checkbook, pay cash or get out. Last week a stroller who was killing time before a matinee was loudly condemned as "your typical woman shopper." She retorted with "sexist clod"-- but only when she was safely out of earshot.

Every clod has its silver lining, and for each insultee there are thousands who would not light a stove without consulting the proprietor. Jackie Onassis is a devoted customer, as are Johnny Carson, Nelson Rockefeller, Danny Kaye and the Kennedys. The Waldorf Astoria Hotel buys supplies from the store; so does Pan American Airways.

When Mr. Pots and Pans is not on one of his frequent buying trips to Europe, he patrols four floors of highly variegated merchandise. His cheapest item is a 5-c- cork, his most expensive a $500 copper pot suitable for an entire sheep. Between these terminals is a treasury of the familiar and exotic. Prosaic pepper mills and soup bowls huddle with sophisticated croissant cutters and the French Cuisinart Food Processor, a $160 Rube Goldberg contraption for slicing and pulverizing just about anything. No device, no matter how arcane or costly, sits around for long.

"These days people would rather cook in than go out," theorizes Bridge, 59. "Quiche pans I can't keep in stock. Omelette makers won't quit. And bread! Bread is unbelievable. Why not? For $25 you can get a stainless steel bowl, a pastry cloth, a dough cutter, a bread pan, and you're in business. Forever."

So, apparently, is the proprietor. An ex-Army cook who started with $1,800 in 1946, he now gleefully watches some competitors approaching bankruptcy --while his business enjoys a six-figure gross, much of it in mail orders. Other kitchenware sellers may receive orders from out of town; only Bridge regularly gets them from Paris, where gourmets request recherche items like his tiny pea-size melon scoops. Yet despite the curmudgeonly manner, Bridge has permitted success to go only to his wallet, not his head. He refuses to open a branch store, for example, because quality controls could not be maintained. Such elevated standards recently led TV Chef Julia Child to pronounce the Bridge company "reasonable, personal and full of things you just can't get anywhere else." Many of those things are devices that Bridge designs. Solingen steelmakers in Germany produce his oversize all-purpose kitchen knife. Marble quarries in Carrara, Italy, supply him with the special slabs that he specifies for kneading dough. A French factory manufactures his unique upright asparagus cooker. These bestsellers are delivered--and sold--a thousand at a time. That largesse may give patrons great entrees, but it also gives Fred Bridge new impatience with sluggish buyers--and fresh skepticism about the current headlines.

"I don't get it," he says, frowning at hesitant consumers. "I keep reading about trouble. All I know is, I never made so much money in my life. Is there really a recession out there?"

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