Then things got weird.
An old, old man, referred to as "el Nino" ("the Baby"), on account of his advanced age, sat down at an old upright piano and began pounding out what was clearly the introduction to the evening"s entertainment. I broke out in a cold sweat. My most terrifying nightmare scenario is that I might someday be trapped on a desert island with only a troupe of cabaret performers for diversion and menthol cigarettes to smoke doomed to an eternity of Andrew Lloyd Webber and medleys from South Pacific South Pacific. A guy in a dirty ap.r.o.n stood up and launched into song, his tenor voice impressive. Okay, I thought, opera, I can handle this. I had to hear this at home when I was a kid. I should be able to handle it now.
What I was not prepared for was the chorus. Suddenly, everyone in the room began pounding their fists on their tables, rising, then sitting down in unison to provide alternating verses of chorus. This was the wackiest thing I"d seen in quite awhile. It was a little frightening. Then, one after the other, every man in the room tenors, baritones got up to sing, belting out arias and other solos in heartfelt, heart-wringing renditions. Then came a really creepy but funny duet between two lumberjack-sized fellows, one doing what was clearly the male part, the other doing the female in a scary but good falsetto, accompanied by appropriate gestures and expressions. You have never seen such sincere, evocative grimacing, agonizing, chest pounding and garment rending, such earnest cries of feigned torment, pain, and bold challenge. These men could cook. They could drink like heroes. And every d.a.m.n one of them could sing like a professional. I gathered they practiced a lot.
Just when I was beginning to fear that soon we"d all be stripping down to our Skivvies for a little towel snapping in the steam room, the mood became decidedly nationalistic. No more opera. Instead, l.u.s.ty anthems of Basque independence, marching songs, songs about battles won and lost, loud homages to dead patriots, nonspecific vows to take to the streets in the future. The men were all lined up together now, two rows of raised fists, swinging in time, feet stomping, shouting triumphantly. A few more gla.s.ses of patxaran patxaran and I"d be storming the barricades myself. It got only louder and more festive (and my table wetter, from all the high pouring) as the evening progressed. The ranks of empty bottles near me grew from platoon to company strength, threatening to become a division. and I"d be storming the barricades myself. It got only louder and more festive (and my table wetter, from all the high pouring) as the evening progressed. The ranks of empty bottles near me grew from platoon to company strength, threatening to become a division.
"We don"t do this in New York," I told Luis.
I don"t remember much after that.
I woke up in the Hotel Londres y Angleterre, one of the many Victorian piles built on San Sebastian"s English seaside-style strand, which curves around a beautiful scallop-shaped bay. Should I tell you about castles and forts and Crusade-era churches, the unique and lovely facades on the buildings, the intricate wrought iron, the old carousel, the museums? Nah, I"ll leave that to Lonely Planet or Fodor"s. Just believe me when I tell you that the city is beautiful and not in the oppressive way of, say, Florence, where you"re almost afraid to leave your room because you might break something. It may be beautiful, but it"s a modern city, sophisticated, urbane, with all the modern conveniences artfully sandwiched into old buildings. The French vacation there in large numbers, so there are all the fashionable shops, bra.s.serie-type lunch joints, patisseries, nightclubs, bars, Internet cafes, and cash machines you"d expect of a major hub along with the homegrown cider joints, tapas bars, small shops selling indigenous products, and open-air markets you hope for. As San Sebastian is still Spain, there is the added benefit of being part of a society that has only recently emerged from a repressive dictatorship. If you"re looking for hard-living, fun-loving folks, Spain is the place. During the days of Franco"s dictatorship, the Basque language was illegal writing or speaking it could lead to imprisonment but now it"s everywhere, taught in schools, spoken in the streets. The supporters of ETA, as in any good independence movement, are profligate with the use of graffiti, so there"s an element of Belfast to the walls and parks and playgrounds except they"re serving two-star food across the street.
With a crippling hangover, I limped out of the hotel and back to the parte vieja parte vieja in search of a cure, noticing a few surfers getting some nice rides off the long, steady curls in the bay. in search of a cure, noticing a few surfers getting some nice rides off the long, steady curls in the bay.
Chocolate and churros churros. A thick, dark, creamy cup almost a bowl, really of hot chocolate, served with a plate of deep-fried strips of batter. Churros Churros are kind of like flippers: sweet dough forced through a large star-tipped pastry bag into hot oil and cooked until golden brown, then piled onto a plate, powdered with sugar, and dipped into chocolate. The combination of sugar, chocolate, hot dough, and grease is the perfect breakfast for a borderline alcoholic. By the time I was halfway through my cup, my headache had disappeared and my worldview had improved dramatically. And I needed to get well fast. I had, I suspected, a big night ahead of me. I"d seen that look on Virginia"s face before, when she"d told me that I"d be going "out with the girls". It was a look that made my blood run cold as the memories came rushing back. Va.s.sar, 1973. I was part of a tiny minority of men, living in a little green world run by and for women. I"d fallen in as I always do with a bad crowd, a loosely knit bunch of carnivorous, brainy, gun-toting, c.o.ke-sniffing, pill-popping manic-depressives, most of them slightly older and much more experienced than I was at seventeen. Sitting each morning in the college dining facility and later the neighborhood bar with eight or ten of these women at a time, I"d learned, painfully at times, that women have nothing to learn from men in the bad behavior department, particularly when they travel in packs. They drank more than I did. They talked about stuff that made even me blush. They rated the s.e.xual performance of the previous night"s conquests on a scale of one to ten, and carved up the cla.s.s of incoming freshmen ahead of time drawing circles around their faces in the are kind of like flippers: sweet dough forced through a large star-tipped pastry bag into hot oil and cooked until golden brown, then piled onto a plate, powdered with sugar, and dipped into chocolate. The combination of sugar, chocolate, hot dough, and grease is the perfect breakfast for a borderline alcoholic. By the time I was halfway through my cup, my headache had disappeared and my worldview had improved dramatically. And I needed to get well fast. I had, I suspected, a big night ahead of me. I"d seen that look on Virginia"s face before, when she"d told me that I"d be going "out with the girls". It was a look that made my blood run cold as the memories came rushing back. Va.s.sar, 1973. I was part of a tiny minority of men, living in a little green world run by and for women. I"d fallen in as I always do with a bad crowd, a loosely knit bunch of carnivorous, brainy, gun-toting, c.o.ke-sniffing, pill-popping manic-depressives, most of them slightly older and much more experienced than I was at seventeen. Sitting each morning in the college dining facility and later the neighborhood bar with eight or ten of these women at a time, I"d learned, painfully at times, that women have nothing to learn from men in the bad behavior department, particularly when they travel in packs. They drank more than I did. They talked about stuff that made even me blush. They rated the s.e.xual performance of the previous night"s conquests on a scale of one to ten, and carved up the cla.s.s of incoming freshmen ahead of time drawing circles around their faces in the Welcome to Va.s.sar Welcome to Va.s.sar pamphlet introducing the new fish like gangsters dividing up building contracts. pamphlet introducing the new fish like gangsters dividing up building contracts.
I was afraid. Very afraid.
When I showed up at the cooking school, a whole posse of women was waiting for me: Luis"s daughters Virginia and Visi (also a chef), and three friends, their faces br.i.m.m.i.n.g with mischief. I"d compounded the danger factor by bringing along my wife, Nancy, a woman with her own limitless potential for causing mayhem, and I knew, just knew, that the all-male adventure the night before was a trip to Disneyland compared to what was in store for me now. There"s an expression in Spain that translates as "a little bit often," a phrase usually invoked before setting out on a poteo poteo what we might call a "bar crawl." Essentially, the way a what we might call a "bar crawl." Essentially, the way a poteo poteo works is this: You bounce around from one tapas joint to another, eating what they call works is this: You bounce around from one tapas joint to another, eating what they call pinchos pinchos (the local term for tapas) and drinking (the local term for tapas) and drinking txacoli txacoli, red wine, in measured amounts. Drop in, eat what"s great and only what"s great at each particular bar, then move on.
We had the TV crew lurking ahead and behind us as we set out through the streets of the parte vieja parte vieja, and I was keeping a sharp, worried eye on Nancy, who hated the idea of making a television show, hated being near a camera, and had already taken a serious dislike to the producer for keeping me busy most of the day shooting "B-roll," meaning scenery, shots of me walking around and pretending I was thinking deep thoughts, while she stewed, neglected, in a hotel room. If the producer elbowed her out of a wide shot one more time, I knew, she was going to sock him in the neck. I"d seen her use that punch before on a too-friendly woman at a sailors" bar in the Caribbean. She"d leaned behind me, drawn back, and walloped a much larger woman two stools down, straight in the carotid. The woman went down like a sack of lentils. I didn"t want to see that again. I made out Matthew, the producer, walking backward in the darkness and decided there would be no contest. Nancy could take him with one arm behind her back. Besides, she already had allies. She was now commiserating with Virginia and Visi and their friends behind me. I could hear them all laughing, the other women immediately sympathizing. If things degenerated into senseless violence, I"d just walk away and leave Matthew to his fate. Besides, I was still p.i.s.sed about the Jerry Lewis incident.
The girls that"s how they referred to themselves were all sharp, attractive, fiercely independent women in their mid to late thirties, happily single and totally unneurotic about s.e.x. When a camera guy, making casual conversation, asked one of the friends if she liked to dance, she shrugged and said, "I like to f.u.c.k" not an invitation, by the way, just a casual statement of fact. I felt, in spite of the lingering potential for violence, reasonably comfortable and among friends. These women acted like . . . well, cooks.
It takes experience to navigate the tapas bars of San Sebastian the way we did that night. Temptation is everywhere. It"s hard not to gorge too early, fill up too soon, miss the really good stuff later in a haze of alcohol. The first place was a good example: Ganbara, a small semicircular bar with no seats and room for about twenty people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Laid out in a breathtaking display on clean white marble was the most maddeningly enticing spread of bounty: snow-white anchovies glistening in olive oil, grilled baby octopus salad, roasted red and yellow peppers, codfish fritters, marinated olives, langoustines, pink-red fat-rippled serrano, pata negra pata negra and Bayonne ham, stuffed chilis, squid, tarts, empanadas, brochettes, salads and the most awesome, intimidatingly beautiful mountain range of fresh wild mushrooms: gorgeous custard-yellow chanterelles and hedgehogs, earth-toned cepes, morels, black trumpets. Cooks seared them to order in black pressed-steel pans and the room was filled with the smell of them. Visi cut me off before I started blindly eating everything in sight; she conferred with the cooks for a moment while a bartender poured us small gla.s.ses of red wine. A few moments later, I had a pungent mound of searingly hot sauteed wild mushrooms in front of me, crispy, golden brown, black and yellow, with a single raw egg yolk slowly losing its shape in the center. After a toast of red wine, I ran my fork around the plate, mingling yolk and fungi, then put a big forkful in my mouth. I can only describe the experience as "ready to die" one of those times when if suddenly and unexpectedly shot, at that precise moment you would, in your last moments of consciousness, know that you had had a full and satisfying life, that in your final moments, at least you had eaten well, truly well, that you could hardly have eaten better. You"d be ready to die. This state of gustatory rapture was interrupted by more wine, a tiny plate of tantalizing baby octopus, and a few s.e.xy-looking anchovies. I was at first confused by an offer of what looked to be a plate of fried zucchini sticks, but when I bit inside and found tender white asparagus, I nearly swooned. and Bayonne ham, stuffed chilis, squid, tarts, empanadas, brochettes, salads and the most awesome, intimidatingly beautiful mountain range of fresh wild mushrooms: gorgeous custard-yellow chanterelles and hedgehogs, earth-toned cepes, morels, black trumpets. Cooks seared them to order in black pressed-steel pans and the room was filled with the smell of them. Visi cut me off before I started blindly eating everything in sight; she conferred with the cooks for a moment while a bartender poured us small gla.s.ses of red wine. A few moments later, I had a pungent mound of searingly hot sauteed wild mushrooms in front of me, crispy, golden brown, black and yellow, with a single raw egg yolk slowly losing its shape in the center. After a toast of red wine, I ran my fork around the plate, mingling yolk and fungi, then put a big forkful in my mouth. I can only describe the experience as "ready to die" one of those times when if suddenly and unexpectedly shot, at that precise moment you would, in your last moments of consciousness, know that you had had a full and satisfying life, that in your final moments, at least you had eaten well, truly well, that you could hardly have eaten better. You"d be ready to die. This state of gustatory rapture was interrupted by more wine, a tiny plate of tantalizing baby octopus, and a few s.e.xy-looking anchovies. I was at first confused by an offer of what looked to be a plate of fried zucchini sticks, but when I bit inside and found tender white asparagus, I nearly swooned.
"Let"s go," said one of the girls, tearing me away from a long, lingering look at all that ham. "Next place is famous for fish cakes." We walked six abreast down the cobblestone streets, the girls laughing and joking already best pals with my wife who speaks no Spanish and certainly no Basque. I felt like part of the James/Younger gang. At the next joint, Luis"s former student recognized me from the street, entered, took one look at the female desperadoes I was keeping company with, and bolted immediately from the premises, badly outnumbered.
"This place is famous for hot food especially the fish cakes. You see? Nothing on the bar. Everything here is made to order in the kitchen," said Visi. We drank more red wine while we waited for the food. I was soon digging into a hot, fluffy fish cake of bacalao bacalao, onions, and peppers, smeared onto a crust of bread, followed by the even better morro morro, a braised beef cheek in a dark expertly reduced demiglace. Yes, yes, I was thinking. This is the way to live, perfect for my short attention span. I could easily imagine doing this with chef friends in New York, ricocheting from tapas bar to tapas bar, drinking and eating and eating and drinking, terrorizing one place after another. If only New York had an entire neighborhood of tapas bars. The whole idea of the poteo poteo wouldn"t work if you had to take a cab from place to place. And the idea of sitting down at a table for wouldn"t work if you had to take a cab from place to place. And the idea of sitting down at a table for pinchos pinchos, having to endure a waiter, napkins, a prolonged experience, seems all wrong.
Another joint, then another, the red wine flowing, the girls getting looser and louder. I don"t know how one would translate "Uh-oh, here comes trouble," but I"m sure we heard it in our rounds as our crew swept into one tiny bar after another. I remember anchovies marinated in olive oil, tomato, onion, and parsley, cured anchovies, grilled anchovies, fried sardines, a festival of small tasty fish. More wine, more toasts. I recall stumbling through an old square that had once been a city bullring, apartments now overlooking the empty s.p.a.ce. Past old churches, up cobblestone steps, down others, lost in a whirlwind of food.
At San Telino, a modern, more upscale place (inside an old, old building), I found a more nouvelle take on pinchos pinchos. Wine was poured as soon as we entered. I had, I recall, a spectacular slab of pan-seared foie gras with mushrooms and, glory of glories, a single squid stuffed with boudin noir boudin noir. I hunched protectively over my little plate, not wanting to share.
More wine. Then more.
The women still looked fresh. I felt like I"d awakened under a collapsed building, the room beginning to tilt slightly. I was speaking Mexican-inflected kitchen Spanish, which is always a bad sign when wondering if I"m drunk or not and the girls had only begun.
After a few more places, I finally called it a night. Somehow, we"d gotten into the tequila by now. I"d seen a chunk of hash cross the bar, there was a fresh row of shot gla.s.ses being lined up, and Nancy was looking at one of the crew"s idle cameras like she was going to use it as a blunt object. It was time to go. One seldom leaves a good impression on one"s hosts by suddenly sagging to the floor unconscious.
It"s great, sometimes, to be a chef. It"s even great, sometimes, to be a well-known chef even if one is well known for things completely unrelated to one"s skill in the kitchen. There are perks. It"s even better when you"re with a better-known chef, a longtime resident of the community in which you"re eating, and you"re looking to get treated well in a really fine restaurant. No one gets fed better in good restaurants than other chefs. And when you"re really, really lucky, you get to sit at the chef"s table, right in the kitchen, attacking a three-star Michelin tasting menu in the best restaurant in Spain.
Which is where I was, sipping from a magnum of Krug in the kitchen of Arzak, a family-run temple of Nouvelle Basque on the outskirts of San Sebastian, the best restaurant in town, I was a.s.sured by just about everyone I"d met which, of course, meant it was also the best restaurant in Spain, and therefore the world. I"m not going to weigh in on the "who"s best" issue, but I will tell you that it was a flawless, remarkable, and uniquely Basque experience. Yes, yes, there is that other place, where they serve the seawater foam and the desserts look like Faberge eggs, but I wasn"t going there, so I can"t offer an informed opinion, though I"m happy to sneer at it in principle.
Chef/owner Juan Mari Arzak was one of the fabled "Group of Ten," back in the heady, early days of French nouvelle cuisine. Inspired by the pioneering efforts of French chefs like Troisgros, Bocuse, Verge, Gurard, et al., Arzak and a few others had determined to move the traditional elements and preparations of Basque cuisine up and forward, refining it, eliminating any heaviness, redundancy, silliness, and excess. He took a much-loved, straightforward family restaurant and turned it into a cutting-edge three-star destination for serious gourmets from all over Europe, a must-see whistle-stop on every self-respecting chef"s world tour. And he did it without compromising, without ever turning his back on his roots or on Basque culinary traditions.
Luis and Juan Mari greeted one another like two old lions. The chef showed us around his immaculate white-tiled kitchen as if we were guests in his home, sitting down at the table with us while the chef de cuisine, his daughter, Elena, took charge of the cooking. Apologies to Elena and Juan Mari but I have to tell you, just to set the scene properly, that later, back in New York, when I raved about the meal I had at Arzak to a tableful of multistarred New York chefs (all of whom had already eaten there), they wanted to know only one thing: "Was Elena there? . . . Ohhhh G.o.d." There is nothing s.e.xier to many male chefs than a good-looking, brilliantly talented young woman in chef whites, with grill marks and grease burns on her hands and wrists. So Elena, if you ever read this, know that thousands of miles away, a tableful of New York Times New York Times stars were moved to spontaneous expressions of puppy love by the mere mention of your name. stars were moved to spontaneous expressions of puppy love by the mere mention of your name.
Elena walked us through each item of food in near-perfect English, apologizing (needlessly) for her accent. The kickoff was pumpkin ravioli with a squid-ink sauce infused with red pepper. Next, little toast points with a puree of Basque sausage and honey, a tiny cup of sheep"s-milk yogurt with foie gras almost obscenely good. Like all my favorite haute chefs, the Arzaks don"t mess about with the extraneous or nonsensical. Presentations represented the food to best effect and never distracted from the ingredients. The Basque elements were always front and center; you knew, at all times, where you were. There was crayfish with eggplant caviar, olive oil, and parsley, and then an alarmingly shrewd yet deceptively simple creation I"d never seen nor even heard of before: a fresh duck egg, whole, yolk and white undisturbed, which had been removed carefully from the sh.e.l.l, wrapped in plastic with truffle oil and duck fat, then lightly, delicately poached before being unwrapped and presented, topped with wild-mushroom duxelles and a dusting of dried sausage. It was one of those dishes that, while absolutely eye-opening and delicious, inevitably makes me feel small, wondering why I could never have come up with such a concept. Eating it was bittersweet, the experience tinged as it was with the certain knowledge of my own bad choices and shortcomings. How did they come up with this? Did the idea appear like the theory of relativity appeared to Einstein in dreams? What came first? The egg? The duck fat? It was so good. It hurt to eat it.
The menu kept coming. A vegetable tart with chestnuts, white asparagus, baby bok choy, and wild mushrooms; sea ba.s.s with a sauce of leek ash, a green sauce of fresh herbs, and garnish of one flawless diver"s scallop; wild duck, roasted in its own juices, the defiantly fat-flecked jus allowed to run unmolested around the plate; a duck consomme with roasted tomato. It was one of the best meals I"d ever had. In one of those "It can"t get any better than this" moments, an ashtray appeared, allowing me to enjoy a postmeal cigarette inside a three-star kitchen. Life was good.
Listening to Luis Irizar and Juan Mari Arzak discuss cuisine, the things they"d accomplished, was like listening to two old Bolsheviks reminisce about storming the Winter Palace. I envied them that they were so good at what they did, that they were so firmly grounded in a culture, a place, an ethnoculinary tradition, that they were surrounded by such limitless supplies of good stuff and the clientele to appreciate it fully. Would such advantages have, in my time, changed my own trajectory? Made me a better chef? A better cook?
As another American writing about Spain famously said, "Isn"t it pretty to think so?"
How to Drink Vodka
Wrapped up against the cold in the small outer entryway of the midnight train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, I watched the faint shaking of the silver samovar of hot tea and hand-wrought silver cup holders and gla.s.ses at the end of the first-cla.s.s carriage. Snow collected in narrow drifts on the floor and around the window gla.s.s as I smoked.
It was February of the coldest, snowiest winter in Russia for a hundred years. Out there in the hinterlands of snowed-over farms and disused factories, people were dying in droves, heating oil was short, and President Putin was talking of arresting and indicting a few provincial governors who"d mishandled supply. In the news, an American graduate student had been detained for marijuana possession, the charges suddenly and ominously upgraded to espionage. A Russian colonel, charged with rape and murder, implicated directly by forensic evidence and the testimony of his fellow officers, was arguing for acquittal and garnering considerable support from the remnants of Commie hard-liners.
Outside the window of my snug sleeping compartment with its triple locks, mile after mile of birch forest, snow-covered farmland, and frozen lakes swept by, glimpsed for a second and then gone. So far, Russia had been everything I"d wanted it to be.
It was the Russia of my dreams and adolescent fantasies that I was looking for: dark, snowy, cold, a moody and romantic place of beauty, sadness, melancholy, and absurdity. In Moscow, the white-topped minarets and onion domes, the tall redbrick battlements of the Kremlin, the imperious, gloomy facades of GUM department store, the snow-smeared cobblestones of Red Square they all looked exactly as I"d hoped they"d look. The Lubyanka KGB headquarters and the site of the notorious prison where a countless number of Stalin"s victims had been tortured, coerced, interrogated, and finally dispatched with a single gunshot to the neck looked strangely neutered now that Dzerzhinsky"s statue no longer gazed down on its square. There may have been slot machines on the subway, casinos everywhere, prowling hookers, and street signs sponsored by Western brand names Gorky Street Brought to You By the Fine Folks at Philip Morris! but this still looked like the Russia of my fevered imaginings: dead drops, brush contacts, burst transmissions, betrayals. It was where Kim Philby, Donald MacLean, and Guy Burgess had spent their days in pampered limbo. This had been the epicenter, ground zero for all the evil in the world (according to my kindergarten teacher and most right-thinking Americans) back when I was a little kid, crouching under my desk during duck-and-cover drills, the cause of or justification for all sorts of dimly remembered madness: the Cuban missile crisis, my neighbors" backyard bomb shelter, Vietnam, JFK, CIA, LBJ, Nixon all the purported saints and boogeymen of my youth. I grew up thinking the Big One could come at any moment, and this country or fear of it, the way my country reacted to the threat radicalized, marginalized, and alienated me in ways that still affect me.
And there was "Dimitri," my first and most important mentor and partner in the restaurant business. The first professional I knew who was actually pa.s.sionate about the craft of cooking, a guy who cooked on his day off. Romantic, curious, literate, maudlin, gregarious, mercurial, he had been my first glimpse of Russia"s beating heart and dark, tormented soul. As the train chugged through the snow, I wanted a closer look at that soul. I wanted borscht, zakuski zakuski, caviar, black bread, and vodka. I wanted a big furry hat and snow on my boots.
A lightly padded fist crashed into the nose of an overweight lug with a crew cut, flattening it with a sickening, wet Whapp Whapp sound. The larger of the two men in the cage dropped back onto the canvas; blood spread across his face, running off his chin onto his chest. His opponent, a ripplingly muscled young fellow in clapped-out tube socks and faded athletic shorts, didn"t hesitate he drove his knee twice into the fallen man"s liver and began pounding mercilessly at the side of his skull with both fists. sound. The larger of the two men in the cage dropped back onto the canvas; blood spread across his face, running off his chin onto his chest. His opponent, a ripplingly muscled young fellow in clapped-out tube socks and faded athletic shorts, didn"t hesitate he drove his knee twice into the fallen man"s liver and began pounding mercilessly at the side of his skull with both fists.
The mood in the room was controlled but festive, kind of like a company c.o.c.ktail party. Well-dressed women in short short skirts and backless dresses looked on from their tables, expressionless behind carefully applied makeup. Next to them, their male friends, most of a type and appearance described in Russia as "flathead" big, bordering on huge, with monster muscles bulging through elegant dark suits, low brows, brush cuts, and the eyes of underwater predators sipped drinks and talked among themselves, the women largely ignored. The venue? I"ll call it "Club Malibu." (I still have friends who live there.) It was a modern black and chrome nightclub/disco/restaurant complex built inside an older building, sort of goombah chic, circa 1985 (like the China Club), with recessed lighting, glitter b.a.l.l.s, big noise, and nice clothes. I was sitting ringside on a high leather-backed stool with an older guy with shoulder-length hair and one of those denim brim caps that Freddie Prinze might have worn. He spoke not a word of English and I spoke no Russian. An apparently well-known singer/songwriter, he shared the VIP table with me, close enough to the ring to catch the blood spray. I was at the VIP table because that"s what it took for me to get a glimpse of what my Russian friends sarcastically call the "new Russians," the mad, bad, and very dangerous to know successors of old Russians. In the new Russia, everything is possible. And nothing is for certain.
It had taken some arranging to pull this evening off, and a lot of very diplomatic and circ.u.mspect negotiation. After a late-night meeting with a rough-looking but willing intermediary, and a lot of talking around the issue with middlemen, finally "Gregor" showed up at a midnight rendezvous with a photo alb.u.m. After a few shots of vodka and some zakuski zakuski, he proudly walked me through a collection of photographs depicting him with various thick-necked gentlemen holding automatic weapons; in some shots, they were stripped to the waist, their bare chests and backs decorated with tattoos of cathedrals, minarets, and Cyrillic lettering. Hearing that my a.s.sociates would like to shoot video of whatever ensued, he became excited, a.s.suring me that should we want to shoot a major Hollywood production in Saint Petersburg or Moscow, he could "provide security," make sure there were no "difficulties or red tape." He"d done it before, he boasted, naming two recent film productions. I looked closely at the photographs, determined never to make any of these guys mad at me.
Club Malibu was set back from Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, easy to find by the rows of gleaming Jaguars, BMWs, Porsches, and Mercedes parked illegally out front. After pa.s.sing through a metal detector and undergoing a thorough, somewhat intrusive pat-down and frisk as well as a few gruff questions in Russian followed by a hushed phone conversation, I was led up thickly carpeted steps, vibrating from loud techno music. At the foyer to the main ballroom, where tonight"s event, No-Holds-Barred Caged Extreme Fighting and Senseless Brutality, would soon be under way, Gregor approached me like an old friend, giving me a big warm for-show hug and kisses on both cheeks before deferentially showing me to my reserved table. This demonstration of closeness and friendship, I"d been told, was very important to how welcome I"d be there. I"d worn my best Crazy Joe Gallo outfit for the occasion: black fingertip-length leather jacket, black silk shirt, black silk tie, black pants, pointy black shoes, my hair gelled into what can best be described as late Frankie Avalon, doing the best I could to look like a person who could realistically be introduced as "a friend of ours from New York."
For two hours, I sat and drank and nibbled caviar with blini, watching the most outrageously ugly and pointless violence I"d ever witnessed. The well-dressed audience, some of whom seemed in mute collusion with some of the contestants (I saw at least two blatant dives taken), consisted of a mix of flatheads and older, more distinguished fellows, most accompanied by tall, high-cheekboned, long-legged, and invariably blond women with spectacular b.r.e.a.s.t.s and cold, cold eyes. When one of the contenders in the ring caught an elbow to the face, foamy red sputum bubbling from his lips, I was reminded of the farm kids in Portugal at the pig slaughter as I glanced around the room. The women stared blankly at the sickening carnage.
One poor brute after another stepped into the ring and was quickly pounded into submission. Choking, kicking, kneeing, flying elbows, head b.u.t.ts almost every bout ended with one man on the mat, the other"s arm around his throat, choking off his air supply and simultaneously stomping his abdomen with both knees. I counted, at the end of the evening, two KOs, two fixed fights, and ten TKOs all concluded by near asphyxia. It was nauseating. It was ugly. It was kinda cool.
My local contact, translator and fixer in Russia was the amazing Zamir, a genial, funny, well-informed guy with a dark mustache, a three-day-old growth of beard much of the time, and a fur-lined hat with earflaps. Worldly, experienced, fatalistic about the way things were going in his country, Zamir, on this subzero afternoon, was taking me out to experience a much-beloved Russian inst.i.tution, a traditional banya banya, or sauna, the place Russians of all ages have relaxed with family or friends on weekends for ages. In this case, it was a small sweatbox in the middle of the snow-covered countryside, next to a frozen lake in the woodsy community of Shuvalovo, about thirty miles outside of Saint Petersburg. Zamir"s friend, Alexej, a musician, drove, while Zamir sat in the pa.s.senger seat. We weren"t even out of town yet, taking the corner by the Hermitage onto the road that runs alongside the Neva River, when we were pulled over by a traffic cop.
"Where are your papers?" went the routine. Apparently, there never are the appropriate papers in these instances. The cop didn"t even wait for Zamir or Alexej to search. "Fifty rubles," he announced. Grumbling, Alexej gave him a few notes, and the cop simply wrote down the amount in a small lined notebook before putting the money in his pocket and waving us along.
We stopped at a market on the outskirts of town for some traditional banya banya treats to take along. Soon, we were driving past apartment blocks of worker flats, looking like inner-city projects of the 1950s and 1960s, and then empty s.p.a.ces appeared, punctuated by swatches of birch forests, the country dachas of old apparatchiks, run-down gingerbread houses, set back from the road on untended plots of woodland behind peeling picket fences. treats to take along. Soon, we were driving past apartment blocks of worker flats, looking like inner-city projects of the 1950s and 1960s, and then empty s.p.a.ces appeared, punctuated by swatches of birch forests, the country dachas of old apparatchiks, run-down gingerbread houses, set back from the road on untended plots of woodland behind peeling picket fences.
The wheels of our car crunched over thick hard-packed snow as we left paved road and wound slowly through forest, finally arriving at the edge of a vast frozen lake. A worse-for-wear wooden house sat next to a small log-and-shingle cabin, smoke rising from a chimney. A rickety ice-encrusted walkway with a shaky-looking railing extended out over the lake, then descended down thickly glazed steps to an eight-by-four-foot hole in the ice, a black oblong of water one degree above freezing, already hardening at the surface.
We were met by a red-cheeked woman in sweater and overalls. She ushered us inside and showed us into one of three tiny wood-planked rooms, each with its own inner sauna, where Zamir and I quickly stripped, wrapped ourselves in towels, and broke out the drinks and snacks: beer, vodka, dried, salty sprats, a few smoked sable fish, stiff, pungent, and still on the bone, a little dried sausage, and a loaf of dark bread. After a beer, Zamir and I stepped into the closet-sized sauna, took our places on the higher, hotter of the two wooden benches, and started to sweat. Coals glowed in the corner of the tiny room. A battered pitcher of water stood by, a thick bundle of birch branches protruding, their leaves submerged and soaking. We sat in there for a long time, sheets tucked under us, groaning and breathing loudly, and when it seemed that any second I"d pa.s.s out, we retired to the outer chamber to devour the food. The deliciously oily, salty fish and a few beers renewed us enough to venture inside again.
Twenty minutes later, Zamir asked me if I was "ready for my interrogation." I warily a.s.sented, having a pretty good idea what was coming. Our thick-wristed hostess entered the sauna, motioned for me to lie naked on my stomach, and began savagely flogging me with the foliage ends of the birch branches. WHACK! . . . WHACK! . . . WHACKWHACKWHACK! I started with each blow not too painful in and of themselves because my bare chest was being scalded through the thin sheet on the skillet-hot upper bench. But it is one of my many failings that I don"t want to look like a wuss, even when medical imperative and good sense dictate otherwise, so I gritted my teeth and endured without complaint. Dead leaves flew everywhere, clinging to my flesh as she whipped and whipped, the blows coming more frequently now, more forcefully, as she informed me in fractured English of the many health benefits this treatment provided. When my whole body was a glowing, irritated red and my chest covered with angry, soon-to-blister burns, every pore on my body open to the elements, she stepped back, opened the door, and pointed to where I"d known from the beginning I"d eventually have to go.
I paused long enough to throw on a bathing suit. While the prospect of exhibiting my genitals to Food Network viewers, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, had a perverse appeal, I preferred that they not be pignoli-sized when I did. I hurled open the outer door, jogged carefully in bare feet out onto the slippery walkway to the lake, lowered myself down two icy steps, and dropped into the frozen lake.
To say that the experience was shocking, that it knocked the wind out of me, that it was cold would all be grievous understatements. It was like getting hit by a phantom freight train every cell, every atom of my body went into mad panic. My b.a.l.l.s scrambled north, headed somewhere around my collarbone, my brain screamed, my eyeb.a.l.l.s did the best they could to pop out of my skull, and every pore, wide open only a few seconds earlier, slammed closed like a plugged steam pipe. It was a punch to the chest from G.o.d"s fist. I sank to the bottom, bent my knees deeply, and pushed up, breaking the surface with an involuntary high-pitched shriek that must have sounded to residents across the lake like someone had just hooked their cat up to a car battery. I struggled for purchase on a guide rope completely glazed over with an inch of ice, my hands unable to grab hold, and floundered, slipped, and finally managed to clamber up a few steps and flop onto the snow-covered ice.
Strangely, once out of the water, I felt fine. In fact, I felt incredible. I wasn"t cold at all. With a confident, even jaunty, spring in my step, I walked along the surface of the frozen lake, ankle-deep in snow, feeling as toasty and comfortable as if I"d been sitting in front of a fire in a big woolly sweater. I walked around the cabin for a bit, pausing to chat with a barrel-chested naked Russian hockey coach, who informed me that he didn"t even bother to use the sauna before jumping in the lake. He came only to swim. Every few seconds, there was another splash as a naked Russian flopped into the water. The coach wanted to talk about American hockey, but as my bare feet were beginning to stick to the ground, I stepped back inside. I sat with Zamir and gratefully slugged back a mouthful of vodka. I felt good. Really good. So good that after a bit more of the black bread and sausage, a few nibbles of fish, and lots more beer and vodka, I was ready to go again.
I was drunk. I was happy. If not the the perfect meal, this was, in many ways, a perfect one. Good food, good company, exotic ambience, and an element of adventure. perfect meal, this was, in many ways, a perfect one. Good food, good company, exotic ambience, and an element of adventure.
Back in Saint Petersburg, we turned the corner by the Hermitage, only to get pulled over once again by a traffic cop. "Aw, this isn"t fair," complained Alexej. "We just got shaken down in the same place a few hours ago. We paid already!"
The cop considered this for a moment, peered into the car, and agreed. "You"re right," he said. "It"s not fair." He closed his little pad, withdrew his hand, and waved us along.
In a well-worn rabbit-fur coat, Sonya pushed her wide shoulders through the crowded entryway of the Kupchina market. This was a working-cla.s.s district, and the other customers around her, also in ratty furs, bore the same resigned expressions and stooped postures you see on the IRT train bearing pa.s.sengers in from Queens for morning shifts at city restaurants the look of hardworking people going to and coming from unglamorous jobs. Given her dark mascara and rough Slavic features, her less-than-diminutive size, and the seriousness of her intent, the others got out of Sonya"s way as she approached the long row of butcher counters. She was a woman on a mission, a heat-seeking missile, a professional at shopping. "What"s this?" Sonya inquired of a leathery-looking man in an ap.r.o.n as she disdainfully fingered a perfectly fine-looking pork shoulder draped over his countertop.
"Beautiful pork shoulder," said the butcher, already wary. He knew what was coming.
"It looks older than I am," sneered Sonya, easily in her late thirties. "How much?"
After getting an answer, she spun away without a backward glance, her eye already on another piece a few yards down. The butcher called her back, the pork suddenly cheaper by a few rubles. I traveled slipstream in Sonya"s considerable wake, doing my best to keep up as she barreled from vendor to vendor in the hangar-sized unheated s.p.a.ce, keeping my eyes constantly on the ma.s.sive rabbit coat and the mop of red hair as she careened purposefully down the crowded aisles, collecting meat, root vegetables, herbs, and mise-en-place mise-en-place for our lunch. Few running backs ever had it so good. People saw Sonya coming and moved quickly aside. I didn"t know what she was saying to these people, but I had a pretty good idea. Sonya examined a bunch of beets, hefted a couple of them, then launched into a gruff interrogation of the merchant. Unsatisfied with the response, she headed for another neatly arranged pile, muttering something over her shoulder that was certainly not a compliment. for our lunch. Few running backs ever had it so good. People saw Sonya coming and moved quickly aside. I didn"t know what she was saying to these people, but I had a pretty good idea. Sonya examined a bunch of beets, hefted a couple of them, then launched into a gruff interrogation of the merchant. Unsatisfied with the response, she headed for another neatly arranged pile, muttering something over her shoulder that was certainly not a compliment.
I had been led to believe that Russia was all bread lines, shortages, empty shelves, produce rotting in the train yards, oranges only a rumor. And surely that must have been the case elsewhere. The country, as we are constantly reminded by panicky anchormen, is in financial shambles. The army hasn"t been paid. Most people live on about a dollar a day. Gangsters roam at will, bombing, a.s.sa.s.sinating. Saint Petersburg itself is the contract-killing capital of Russia which is perhaps why so many flatheads are able to find steady employment as bodyguards. Mail arrives or it doesn"t. Farms lie fallow, factories molder. So why, in a not at all well-to-do neighborhood, is there a public market that could give Dean & Deluca or Zabar"s a run for their money? In front of me lay counter after counter of pristine-looking vegetables: yellow peppers, melons, fresh herbs, bananas, pineapples, tubers, root veggies, lettuces. Butchers broke down on site whole sides of beef, lamb, pork, whacking away with heavy cleavers against deeply bowed and scarred chopping blocks. Beautiful free-range chickens, head and feet still attached, were arranged in orderly and attractive rows over deli counters. Little of it was refrigerated but it was cold in there and the stuff was moving fast. There was a customer for every steak, hoof, sc.r.a.p, bone, foot, and jowl. Women in heavy coats and babushkas considered single squares of pork fat as if shopping for a new car. People didn"t so much haggle as argue, delivering impa.s.sioned rants about the virtues and deficiencies of a slab of bacon, which almost always ended in a sale.
What the Kupchina market lacks in foreign specialties and produce, it makes up for in homegrown exotica: yard after yard of brightly colored homemade pickled vegetables; every variety of absolutely gorgeous-looking smoked fish sturgeon, sable, salmon, sprats, chubs, sterlet (a cousin to the sturgeon), herring heaped one on top of the other inside gla.s.s display cases; tubs of caviar and fish roe; a dairy section where white-uniformed, white-kerchiefed women offer varieties of fresh and aged farmer cheese, yogurt, sour cream, hand-churned b.u.t.ter, curds, and sweet condensed milk.
Sonya, however, was not impressed. She did not look around. She knew what she wanted. She finally found some potatoes she liked and loaded them into the growing cargo of plastic shopping bags under her arms, then clomped across a few feet of concrete floor to lift a bunch of carrots with a skeptical pinkie finger.
"You call this a carrot?" she challenged. A few moments later, she was bullying an old woman over a bunch of fresh dill. Having given another butcher a few moments to reflect on her requirements, she veered back in his direction, settling after more bitterly fought negotiations on a slab of pork belly, some lightly cured bacon, and a fat beef shank. She counted out each ruble as if giving away nuclear codes.
I was in love. If I could ever fall for a woman who reminded me of Broderick Crawford, it would be Sonya. She"s a fabulously imposing, nonstop talker, a great cook, a survivor, an artist, a hard drinker a force of nature. There"s a whiff of Janis Joplin about her. Unflappable, been around the block, she"s a woman of surprising dimension and abilities. Her shopping list nearly complete, she stepped out into the cold, picked her way across a thick layer of soot-covered ice, and bought half a handful of fresh garlic from one of the impoverished-looking babushkas lined up outside.
"I live this way," she barked, in heavily accented English, beckoning with her head.
I followed obediently.
Sonya lives with a roommate in a walk-up apartment, which she reaches by climbing up a flight of unlit concrete stairs. The kitchen is cramped but homey, with cracked linoleum floors and a Sputnik Sputnik-era TV set, small gas stove, sink, refrigerator, and a little round table that doubles as a prep bench and serving area. The common areas are filled with the acc.u.mulated possessions of many years: shoes, boots, knickknacks, photographs, weathered furniture, a Commie-period poster of a kerchiefed female factory worker with her finger to her lips, the Cyrillic admonition clearly stating something like "Loose lips sink ships." One thing you get plenty of in Russia, no matter what your economic circ.u.mstances, is irony.
Sonya takes photographs in her spare time. The walls are decorated with her work severe yet strangely beautiful studies of a now nearly invisible feature of Russian urban landscape: the air vents and entryways to Cold War bomb shelters. They sprout like toadstools from vacant lots, poke up through the weeds of public parks, and in the crumbling corners of Stalin-age housing developments. She has self-published a calendar, each month represented by a mushroom-shaped cylinder of concrete and metal grillwork.
"I like Texas," she said as we stood in her kitchen. "You like Texas?" She had recently traveled across America on a Greyhound bus, visiting friends. "Also I like Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, and Miami. Miami is very nice." She had seen far more of my country than I had, I told her.
"This is a lot of work," she said. She"d been rolling out dough for pelmeni pelmeni, meat-filled dumplings a distant relative of the wonton, a legacy of one of the long-ago Mongol incursions and would like it very much if Mr. Famous Traveling Chef Author Guy or somebody, anybody anybody would pitch in. I stepped in, helping her to spoon dots of the meat into the dough on an octagonal cutter. Sonya laid on a top layer of dough, clamped down on the cutter, and about sixteen would pitch in. I stepped in, helping her to spoon dots of the meat into the dough on an octagonal cutter. Sonya laid on a top layer of dough, clamped down on the cutter, and about sixteen pelmeni pelmeni at a time dropped through the other side. I tamped them closed, pinched and shaped, then placed them on cookie sheets in neat rows. She kept up a steady stream of patter in Russian and English, bopping back and forth between the two languages, making use of whichever was most comfortable at the time. Zamir sat next to me, filling in the blanks in her English, offering explanations when needed. Alexej sat across from me, looking morose. Outside the kitchen door, Igor, a hired cameraman from Moscow, hovered, filming or not according to his own mysterious agenda. at a time dropped through the other side. I tamped them closed, pinched and shaped, then placed them on cookie sheets in neat rows. She kept up a steady stream of patter in Russian and English, bopping back and forth between the two languages, making use of whichever was most comfortable at the time. Zamir sat next to me, filling in the blanks in her English, offering explanations when needed. Alexej sat across from me, looking morose. Outside the kitchen door, Igor, a hired cameraman from Moscow, hovered, filming or not according to his own mysterious agenda.
When the pelmeni pelmeni were a.s.sembled, Sonya swung her attention over to the borscht simmering on her stovetop. I had been looking forward to this. In Russia, as my old friend Dimitri memorably pointed out to me, borscht is barely a soup; it"s d.a.m.n near an entree: a chunky hot stew of meat, onions, carrot, cabbage, beets, and potatoes, a rib-sticking dark red concoction perfect for filling the belly cheaply on an icy winter night. The cold, watery bright pink puree you might have seen in the States is barely related. Sonya had made a stock from selected cuts of meat in a pressure cooker, a piece of kitchen equipment, by the way, that, while rarely seen in America, is viewed as a G.o.dsend by much of the rest of the world. Then she began sauteeing onions, carrots, and bay leaf, added the stock, threw in the meat and potatoes, then the cabbage, and finally, so as not to discolor or overcook it, grated in the peeled beet at the last minute. I saw some caraway seeds and a few other herbs go in, but when I asked her what they were, she pretended not to understand me. Cooks. The same everywhere. were a.s.sembled, Sonya swung her attention over to the borscht simmering on her stovetop. I had been looking forward to this. In Russia, as my old friend Dimitri memorably pointed out to me, borscht is barely a soup; it"s d.a.m.n near an entree: a chunky hot stew of meat, onions, carrot, cabbage, beets, and potatoes, a rib-sticking dark red concoction perfect for filling the belly cheaply on an icy winter night. The cold, watery bright pink puree you might have seen in the States is barely related. Sonya had made a stock from selected cuts of meat in a pressure cooker, a piece of kitchen equipment, by the way, that, while rarely seen in America, is viewed as a G.o.dsend by much of the rest of the world. Then she began sauteeing onions, carrots, and bay leaf, added the stock, threw in the meat and potatoes, then the cabbage, and finally, so as not to discolor or overcook it, grated in the peeled beet at the last minute. I saw some caraway seeds and a few other herbs go in, but when I asked her what they were, she pretended not to understand me. Cooks. The same everywhere.
"A drink," Sonya said pointedly, "for the workers," casting a skeptical eye at the inactive Russian contingent in her kitchen. Soon we were all toasting with tall shot gla.s.ses of her homemade cranberry vodka, and readying ourselves to eat. Sonya dropped table settings and condiments around the wiped-down table as if she were dealing a hand of blackjack. A heaping bowl of fresh sour cream appeared at the center of the table, along with bowls of fresh chopped dill, chopped scallions and parsley, and some bottled condiments for the pelmeni pelmeni: horseradish, mustard, and, unexpectedly, a bottle of catsupy stuff that tasted like Heinz chili sauce.
We wiped out the cranberry vodka as Sonya ladled big chunky portions of hot borscht into chipped bowls; she demonstrated how to complete it by heaping a huge spoon of sour cream into mine, topped by a fistful of dill and scallion. Just before sitting down to eat, she reached into the freezer and extracted a full bottle of Russian Standard vodka, plunking it down without comment.
"No one drinks water in this country," I said to Zamir.
"Not advisable," he replied. "The tap water here is very bad for you. You don"t drink the water in Russia. Not that we would . . ."
Another toast to hands across the water, another to the spirit of international cooperation, a toast to the chef, a toast to the guests and we were off.
The borscht was sensational. I worked my way through two bowls, noticing that the wiry Alexej finished three. The pelmeni pelmeni were up next. Sonya cooked them in boiling water until tender, fished them out with a strainer, and deposited a pile on each of our plates. One dresses one"s own, according to preference, from ingredients at the table. I selected a little sour cream, dill, mustard, and horseradish. To my surprise, the Russians all went for the catsup. were up next. Sonya cooked them in boiling water until tender, fished them out with a strainer, and deposited a pile on each of our plates. One dresses one"s own, according to preference, from ingredients at the table. I selected a little sour cream, dill, mustard, and horseradish. To my surprise, the Russians all went for the catsup.
I ate my way around Saint Petersburg for a week, with Zamir, Alexej, and Igor coming along. Alexej had loosened up considerably around me. One night, he invited me back to his flat, where his wife had made blintzes. It was in an uninviting-looking workers" block, with thick graffitied concrete walls, and dark hallways. But behind the multiple door locks, Alexej lived like a New York City nightclub owner: raised carpeted floors, recessed lighting, an enormous bathroom with hot tub, Jacuzzi, and full sauna, a wet bar, home recording studio, wide-screen TV, and entertainment center. My Russian driver lived far better than I do! I was introduced to his lovely wife, and his young son, who, along with his father, treated me to some Stevie Ray Vaughn covers on a brand-new drum kit and Stratocaster guitar.
On another night, we ate braised reindeer in juniper at the Povorodye restaurant, a steeply gabled log structure on the outskirts of Pushkin Park, where Catherine the Great"s gaudy summer palace still stands. Gaping at the gigantic gold and pastel-colored behemoth set in a wooded estate and surrounded by the stately former homes of n.o.bles and retainers, one could easily understand the rage of the peasantry in pre-Revolution days. The palace must have been a grotesque affront to a largely starving, uneducated, downtrodden peasantry, people who were struggling even for bread. Looking at this gorgeous Italian-designed abomination, where maybe ten people and their servants lived, one could understand the blind exultation they must have felt when the Romanovs were brought down.
At Povorodye, while a Georgian folk band played, Zamir showed me, step by step, how to drink vodka while we waited for our reindeer to be served. First, if at all possible, make sure you have food present. Even a simple crust of bread will do. We had an enticing selection of traditional appetizers in front of us: pickled garlic, cuc.u.mbers, mushrooms, some smoked eel, a little sturgeon, some salted salmon roe, and a loaf of heavy country bread.
Step one, demonstrated Zamir, is the toast. To others present, to your parents, to your country anything will do. Hold a full shot of vodka in one hand and food bread is easiest in the other hand. Exhale. Inhale slowly. Knock back your entire shot in one gulp, immediately inverting your gla.s.s over the table to allow the microscopic last drop to fall out, proving you"re not a wuss or a reactionary revanchist Trotskyite provocateur.
Then take a bite of food. If you don"t have any food, a long, lingering sniff of your wrist or cuff will do. (I know it sounds strange, but trust me.) Repeat the procedure up to three times every twenty minutes throughout the drinking period. This is about as fast as your system can absorb all that alcohol. If you follow this regimen carefully, you can and will retain a state of verticality throughout the entire meal and into the postmeal drinking.
In all likelihood, you will make it away from the table without disgracing yourself. You will probably make it home without help. After that, however, you"re on your own. Remember: They"re professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don"t forget that the Russians any Russian can drink you under the table.
Be prepared, by the way, no matter how bad you might feel when you wake up, to do it again with breakfast.
Zamir and I finished our reindeer (which tasted like slightly gamier venison) and strolled outside in the knee-deep snow. Near the restaurant, an area had been cleared and iced for skating. Kids played around a straw figure representing winter; it would be burned in effigy that night at the Farewell to Winter festivities. Families with children and toboggans and sleds slogged in heavy overcoats and fur hats from nearby homes, looking cheerful and excited, red-faced in the cold.
"I should put reindeer on our Christmas menu," I mused out loud. "Can you picture it? All those crying kids, wondering if that"s a chunk of Rudolph or Blitzen lying on their plate?"
"I take it you don"t have children," observed Zamir.
We ate piroshki in town, at a Russian fast-food joint. Adorable-looking women in white-peaked caps and spotless red-and-white uniforms with low decolletage dished up pastries filled with meat, fish, cabbage, and sausages. Put out of your mind, by the way, any idea that Russian women are all wide-bodied babushkas with faces like potatoes. They"re not. I"d never seen so many tall, beautiful, well-dressed women in one place in my life. That they seem about as soft and cuddly as a fistful of quarters is beside the point they"re gorgeous. At a blintz place, My Mother-in-Law"s Blintzes, more creamy-white-breasted girls behind a spotless counter efficiently prepared and served made-to-order crepes wrapped around various sweet and savory fillings.
We ate ukha ukha, a clear fish soup, and wood-roasted trout on Krestovsky Island, a two-story structure by a frozen pond. The cooks were out back, dressed in paratrooper camos in the snow, feeding fish into wood-burning ovens in a windblown lean-to. We drank tequila in a cellar bar filled with Russian kids, a band playing phonetic English versions of ska, country-western, and blues standards. I bought the obligatory fur hat, then went ice fishing on the frozen Neva River, my two companions factory workers who came a few times a week to get away from their families. When I saw their catch tiny whitebait-sized fish, which they said they gave to their cats I got the idea that these guys weren"t there to catch the big one. When one of them cracked open a lunch box at eight o"clock in the morning and offered me a slug of vodka, I got the full picture.
"Zamir," I said, "you"ve been dunking me in frozen lakes, involving me in reindeer killing, poisoning me with vodka. Let"s go someplace nice and eat some high-end stuff. Some fish eggs. Let"s dress up and go out for one last blowout."
That night, we trudged through the snow and a vicious wind on Vasilevski Island (Saint Petersburg is made up of about 120 islands). It was dark and extremely cold.
Zamir and I stepped into the Russkya restaurant, a cavernous but cozy, rustically elegant s.p.a.ce with wide wood floorboards, a plain plaster interior, dramatic ceilings, and a big brick and mortar oven in the dining room. A relaxed flathead in a tight jacket sat by the coat check, providing security, a suspicious-looking bulge under his left shoulder. We were greeted right away by a friendly host, who helped us peel off our layers and then showed us to two large gla.s.s jars of homemade vodka and another jar of cloudy greenish liquid.
"Homemade mustard seed and horseradish vodka," I was informed. The greenish liquid was "cuc.u.mber juice," essentially pickle brine. The idea was to down a shot of the spicy, throat-burning vodka, then chase it immediately with a gla.s.s of brine. Sounds pretty loathsome, right? And either element alone would indeed have been troublesome. But in correct order, the searing neutral spirits followed by cooling and oddly mellowing brine was delicious, sort of like my earlier experience at the banya: banya: sweating and burning, followed by dunking and freezing. Together, somehow, it works. sweating and burning, followed by dunking and freezing. Together, somehow, it works.
We sat down and had a few more of these "one-two punch" concoctions and some bread. Our waitress, a cute but unusually a.s.sertive young woman, seemed to materialize regularly with more of the stuff. "Don"t vorry," she said, "I am strong. If you get drunk, I can carry you home." She was fairly pet.i.te, but I believed her.
Now, I famously hate salad bars. I don"t like buffets (unless I"m standing on the serving side: buffets are like free money for cost-conscious chefs). When I see food sitting out, exposed to the elements, I see food dying. I see a big open petri dish that every pa.s.sing serial sneezer can feel free to drool on and fondle with spittle-flecked fingers. I see food not held at ideal temperature, food rotated (or not) by person or persons unknown, left to fester in the open air unprotected from the pa.s.sing fancies of the general public. Those New York delis with the giant salad bars where all the health-conscious office workers go for their light, sensible lunches? You"re eating more bacteria than the guy standing outside eating mystery meat on a stick. I remember my own words when designing buffets at a large club: "Fill "em up on free salads and bread, so they go light on the shrimp."
Russkya"s first-course salad bar, however, was not bad. It helped that the restaurant was empty and the food looked fresh. A long white table was covered with goodies: pashket pashket (a liver pate), (a liver pate), grechnevaya kasha grechnevaya kasha (buckwheat groats with mushrooms and onions), pickled beets, smoked fish, pickled herring, potato salad, potato latkes, and shaved paper-thin slices of chilled, uncooked pork fat. It was the perfect accompaniment to the early stages of what I was beginning to understand would be a marathon vodka-drinking session. A full bottle of Russian Standard had already hit our table when Zamir and I returned from the buffet, and our waitress, watching us like a severe schoolma