When the dinky elevator stopped at the third floor of the Stapleton Building in the 1970s, what people found was chintz, charm and food worth remembering.

In 1969, Marie Halone opened the Level 3 Tea Room in downtown Billings.

A feminine oasis, the room was decorated with patterned wallpaper and ivory-colored, tied-back drapes. Although men might have felt a bit ill at ease with the tea room's ladylike atmosphere, its desserts often lured in downtown businessmen for their daily fix of lemon meringue or sour cream raisin pie.

Halone, an energetic, effervescent 93-year-old, has finally turned those long-sought recipes into a cookbook, "Level 3 & Me." On Sunday, a book signing and tea party at the Yellowstone Art Museum launches the book's release.

The book includes frequently requested recipes from the tea room, her catering business and cooking classes, along with personal stories from her days in the kitchen and recipes from friends and family.

Tea room regulars are bound to notice one omission. The recipe for her marinated mushrooms remains a closely guarded secret.

"She makes it every Christmas for everybody that she knows and gives it out in these lovely little jars that you can have for your Christmas meal," said Rhonda Molloy, a friend who helped cut recipes down from restaurant quantities to family-size portions.

Molloy and her daughter, Marne, spent a year field-testing recipes.

Halone's nephew, Daniel "Nathaniel" Anthony, the cookbook's publisher, anticipates a genteel "firestorm of protest" over the mushroom recipe's absence. The protest may die down somewhat in December, when jars of the mushrooms will be door prizes during a no-host luncheon using Halone's recipes at Enzo restaurant.

Halone, who grew up in a poor family in Thermopolis, Wyo., gave many Montanans their first taste of French cooking. Anthony, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., ate his first quiche at the tea room.

"The things she did 30 years ago were big news in Billings," said Liz McCall, who did the cookbook's design work.

After selling the tea room to Patricia Boedecker in 1980, Halone worked as a caterer and offered cooking classes in her home. She retired at the age of 85, after seven summers working as a chef on the ranch of the Collier-Read family in Cody, Wyo.

"The cooking classes were the best. I loved them better than anything I did," Halone said.

When she gets the yen to spend a day in the kitchen, she heads for Abby's Catering, where she'll sit and chop vegetables, enjoying the camaraderie of other cooks.

"Their kitchen is just bubbly. People are going, and they're maybe doing something for 150 people the next day and they're laughing and talking," Halone said. "It brings back so many memories. … I don't work there, but I'm there a lot."

Catering is the hardest work in the cooking business, she said.

"It's just so much work to make up everything and get it ready and set up," she said. "And then you look at it, and have people ooh and aah over it. You're just busting your buttons, everything is so wonderful.

"You're putting yourself in everything that you do, to show off to all these people how good you are and how nice things are. It's your time to shine. It's your time to feel like you really are somebody."

Halone has always approached life with gusto. When Anthony was studying in Italy after graduate school, Halone and her husband, Eugene, came for a visit. She arrived armed with highlighted passages from Bon Appetit magazines.

"We sort of ate our way around the boot of Italy, and she sort of gathered up recipes as we went," Anthony said. "And we gathered up a few pounds eating."

One memorable bistro was run by an Italian-Swiss family that had a farm outside of Rome.

"We ate one whole four- or five-course meal. And then we started regretting that there were all these things on the menu we still wanted to try. So we started over and ate a whole other dinner," he said.

Earlier this week, Halone bustled around the kitchen in tailored trousers and sneakers. Her mixer whirred in the background while she fixed her signature popovers.

With the popovers in the oven, Halone bent to rummage through the full refrigerator for an elusive container of arugula. As she reached toward the back of the fridge, she muttered about where the leafy greens were hiding.

Using arugula and iceberg lettuce as a base, she made an impressive salad tossed with champagne mustard dressing and sprinkled with Vegetable Supreme, a McCormick spice that Halone also uses to lend a wonderful flavor to cantaloupe, as well as other vegetables such as green beans and asparagus.

Before the luncheon, when she saw the cheery gingham checked pattern of the cookbook cover for the first time, tears rolled down her cheek.

When the book's first pages came off the press, McCall noticed one of the pressmen reading the recipes.

Pointing to the beef casserole recipe, he said, "I'm making this tonight."

Contact Donna Healy at dhealy@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1292.