Hubert Keller of Fleur de Lys also likes to stay up late at nightclubs. He too names Ruby Skye as a favorite venue, along with Matrix and Swig, in San Francisco, and the Tabu Ultra Lounge and Ivan Kane"s Forty Deuce in Las Vegas (where he recently opened a Fleur de Lys at the Mandalay Bay Resort).
"I often get my best inspirations for a new dish by listening to music. And when I develop a dish I tend to do that late at night."
Keller is not content to just go to nightclubs and let someone else do the DJing. "My wife, Chantal, bought me an incredible DJ setup a few years ago, truly state of the art. To my knowledge, Fleur de Lys in Las Vegas is the only four-star restaurant in the country that has a DJ booth. When I went to Vegas, my commitment to music was nonnegotiable. I insisted. Most people don"t know that on some Thursday nights, I actually take a turn as DJ."
Of those chefs who claim music as an inspiration, Rick Tramonto of Chicago"s Tru uses music to inspire not just his cooking but his spirit. Though he likes, on occasion, to go out to listen to blues at Buddy Guy"s or House of Blues, and says that, when cooking at home he listens to "Frank Sinatra when cooking Italian, rock and rolla"like Van Halen and Eric Claptona"when making Asian food," most of the time after work he says he listens to "contemporary Christian or gospel music."
It should be pointed out that chefs" hours are similar to musicians". Marcus Samuelsson of New York"s Aquavit says that not only is music "definitely an inspiration and helps [his] creativity on many levels" but that he listens to music "all the time. I go to listen to friends who play in bands. It"s part of my social scene as well as my professional life."
There are those chefs who are inspired by music and claim their after-work hours as a time conducive to a fertile imagination, and then there are those (like me) who seek only escape and distraction.
Tom Colicchio of Craft says that after work he goes out to New York"s Alphabet Lounge when Toke Squealy, the band of his guitar teacher, Alan Cohen, plays, or to Arlene"s Grocery "to check out [his] friend Becca"s band, Thin Wild Mercury." But, he adds, "I don"t think it has any effect on what or how I cook. But it does provide time away from thinking about food or my restaurants."
The more you"re chained to the stove, the less likely you are, it seems, to claim music as an inspiration. WD-50"s wildly creative chef-owner, Wylie Dufresne, who is still in nearly constant attendance at his sole operation, does allow music in his kitchen. "All day long," he says. The playlist is determined by "whoever gets to the radio or CD player first. It"s a democracy in the kitchen. It can be anything from hip-hop, the Grateful Dead, Wilco, reggae, lots of mixes made by those in the kitchen and friends." But after work, he confesses, "I don"t get out to see live music as I once did. But we do enjoy the jukebox at Doc Holliday"s [a neighborhood saloon] after a long day."
Maybe Norman Van Aken of Norman"s in Coral Gables best captures the enduring spirit of what music, and after-hours music-related activity, mean to chefs. Though he too plays in a band (with fellow chefs Dean Fearing and Robert Del Grande) when he can, in his hours away from his restaurant he says he likes to "go down to Key West and look around for stuff that happens off Duval Street, back in the alleys. I love jukeboxes, roadhouses, or dives. Doesn"t matter." He sums things up simply.
"After family, two things saved my life. And cooking was one of them."
THECOOK"S COMPANIONS.
cooking professionally hurts, i"m not just talking about the aching feet, the tormented back muscles, the burns and cuts; I mean also the spiritual pain, the disappointment and self-doubt that comes with being a cog in a large and ever-whirring machine, the crushing sense of futility one feels when working in an operation that is clearly doomed, or the feelings of isolation and frustration one experiences after a seventeen-hour day peeling shrimp and tourneeing vegetables in a less than hygienic cellar prep kitchen.
I"m not complaining, mind you. We"ve all been there, those of us who"ve chosen this life. We knew, or had a pretty good idea, what was expecteda"and chances are, the professionals who are reading this have spent plenty of time at one point or another in their careers hunched over a fifty-pound load of fresh squid, yanking quills and pulling out ink-sacs, or enduring the tirades of a despotic and unhinged chef. We"ve got the scars to show for it: grill marks on our wrists, pink and faded lines where knives nicked flesh, the telltale hump of yellowing callous at the base of the index finger of our knife-hands. We know what it"s like to work all day and all night, finally tumbling exhausted into bed, still reeking of salmon and garlic. We have, all of us, made careful observation of the hierarchy around us, wondered, in moments of extremis, why, for instance, the boss just bought himself a new Porsche Turbo when yesterday he said that checks would be late this weeka"and sorry, but we need to cut overtime.
We"ve all, at some terrible moment, peered through sweat and pain, and the constant noise and clatter of the kitchen, and wondered how come that lazy chef got to swan around the dining room in a spotless new Bragard jacket while we toiled and cursed and broke ourselves on the wheel of commerce.
At moments like this, I have always taken refuge in some old friendsa"in this case, four books whose simple existence has always given me comfort, books that every time I read them remind me that I"m not alone, that even with all the stupidity and occasional squalor one encounters in the span of a long career in the food-service industry, one is part of a grand tradition. It is nice, so nice, to find that one"s labors, even one"s early moments of abject misery as an overworked commis or prep drone, are part of a continuum. And it is pleasantly surprising, even rea.s.suring, to discover how little has changed since the early part of the century. After revisiting one or more of these old friends, I can again feel proud of what I do. I am reminded of what it took to get here, of what I have endured, and can breath the thick, steamy kitchen air again with a.s.surance, even defiance, because I"ve survived. Because I"m still here.
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell was a revelation to me when I first turned its pages and encountered Orwell"s descriptions of his life as a plongeur (dishwasher) and prep cook at the pseudonymous Hotel "X" in 1920s Paris, and of his later misadventures at an undercapitalized and slightly shady bistro. "I know these people!" was my first impression, drawing an immediate parallel between the gargantuan cellars of the Hotel X and the hangar-size kitchen of the 1970s Rainbow Room, where I was then working as a tournant, buffet cook, prep flunky, and general dogsbody. Here"s Orwell, describing after-work drinks with his crew.
We threw off our ap.r.o.ns and put on our coats, hurried out the doors, and when we had money, dived into the nearest bistro. . . . The air seemed blindingly clear and cold, like arctic summer, and how sweet the petrol did smell, after the stenches of sweat and food! Sometimes we met some of our cooks and waiters in the bistros, and they were friendly and stood us drinks. Indoors we were their slaves, but it is an etiquette in hotel life that between hours everyone is equal, and the engueulades [put-downs] do not count.
Sound familiar? Orwell goes on to describe, painstakingly, the elaborate and time-honored pecking order, which rang true to me even in 1978. The language and worldview of Orwell"s cooks matched perfectly with my experience of the time.
Undoubtedly the most workmanlike cla.s.s, and the least servile, are the cooks. They do not earn quite so much as waiters, but their prestige is higher and their employment steadier. The cook does not look upon himself as a servant, but as a skilled workman; he is generally called "un ouvrier" [a workingman] which a waiter never is . . . He despises the whole noncooking staff, and makes it a point of honor to insult everyone below head waiter.
Orwell"s later adventures in a faux-Normande bistro, a filthy, corner-cutting, ill-equipped cesspit, make for hilarious reading for anyone who"s worked in a failing Mom and Pop operation where sanitation and quality were not premium considerations; and his portraits of foul-mouthed cooks, nearly insolvent owners, opportunistic waiters, and oblivious customers strike a chillingly familiar chord.
Nicolas Freeling"s The Kitchen takes place in the late 1940s Grand Hotels in France. Describing his rise from lowly commis to chef, the author creates lovingly detailed portraits of chefs, sauciers, grillardins, entremetiers, patissiers, and commis. For its enduring relevance and accuracy to the world of cooks, Free-ling"s entertaining, near-perfect recreation might just as well have been written today.
The king-h.e.l.l, jumbo foodie bible, however, the Talmud and Dead Sea Scrolls combined, has to be Emile Zola"s gargantuan masterwork, The Belly of Paris, a work of fiction set in the then spanking new central market of nineteenth-century Paris, Les Halles. Our hero is an escapee from Devil"s Island, a starving, desperate ideologue and socialist who finds himself, improbably, a food inspector. Zola describes an entire universe of food, traveling through the bowels of the marketplace, describing, beautifully at times, the live poultry markets, the fishmongers, the produce vendors, butchers, charcutiers, and market gardeners of that time. Once again, the reader will be surprised by how little has changed. Anyone who has spent time preparing old-school bistro and/or bra.s.serie cla.s.sics will recognize, in a glance, the preparation of boudin noir or the marketing of tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, hooves, snouts, and offal as pates and galantines; and anyone who loves food for its own sake will find much enjoyment in Zola"s loving descriptions of meat, fish, and produce as they wend their way from source to market, from market to vendor, from vendor to customer. At times, it"s nearly food p.o.r.n, as Zola"s hero gazes longingly at unattainable heaps of perfect vegetables glistening in the early morning sunlight, plump sausages in the pork butcher"s window, the play of color and light on a still-living trout in the hands of an attractive fishwife.
Finally, there"s David Blum"s painfully hilarious Flash in the Pan, a savage and painstakingly doc.u.mented account of the life and death of an American restaurant. Owners Bruce Goldstein and Terry Quinn, rather inadvisably, allowed the author to sit in on the planning, staffing, equipping, and opening of their fashionable restaurant, The Falls, at one time situated on Varick and Vandam streets in Manhattan. Blum describes every step from empty construction site to jam-packed model and celebrity hangout to floundering failure. It"s an invaluable book for anyone who"s ever opened a restaurant, or worked on opening a restaurant, and a cautionary tale, filled with the kind of hubris, stupidity, vanity, and desperation many of us may have seen, at one time or another, in our own checkered careers. Agonize over the menu with an in-over-his head chef and a capricious but determined owner! Watch as floor staff are hired and fired!
Commiserate with unpaid vendors as they get the worda"after everybody elsea"that they won"t ever be getting paid! Dig in for hectic, overbooked dinner rushes, computer meltdowns, psychotic episodes, internecine squabbles, petty feuds, bizarre and obsessive behavior. This book actually saved a friend"s life. He was about to go to work for one of the princ.i.p.als in Flash in the Pan, long after The Falls had closed, and I said, "Maybe you"d better read this book first."
As is so often the case, the real joy is in the details. Here we have: A packed restaurant every night . . . a catastrophic service situation . . . a French laissez-faire personality managing the floor on busy nights . . . and an owner who is happiest ignoring both and fiddling with the dials on his stereo system . . .
Or, . . . they"ve been giving too much food away. "Comping" your friends is one guaranteed way to keep food revenues to a minimum . . . It is a practice that is widely discouraged in the industry. It is not, however, a practice that has been discouraged at The Falls. And yet, in the opening days of the restaurant, no doubt feeling generous and expansive, [the owners] have frequently given away food and drink. How much? Difficult to say, in that no one particularly wants to keep a close count of the giveaways. One night in the first week, Henry guesses that [the owners] gave away half the meals served.
And maybe some of you chefs have been here: [The chef] diligently follows Bruce and eagerly awaits his boss"s latest brainstorm. Bruce gets straight to the point. "I"ve got a great new dessert idea," he says. "Banana cream tart!"
"Banana cream tart?" [the chef] asks. "What exactly is that, Bruce?"
"It would be like a banana cream pie," Bruce explains, allowing his hands to form an imaginary tart-like circle, "which is everybody"s favorite dessert . . . only we"d make it into a tart, so it"d be smaller and healthier."
[The chef] has no response except to roll his eyes, which he can do subtly yet with precision.
After a long pause, he finally mutters, "I guess I can make that."
Having worked in a few knuckleheaded operations like this in my time, I can tell you, it"s fun reading Blum"s account in the cold, clear light of years later. I may come home after a particularly h.e.l.lish night feeling like a whipped animal, but hey, at least we"re busy! My current bosses may take an unusual and annoying interest at times in unpleasantly gamey wild hare and less-than-universally-popular organ meats, but at least they love food. They know what the h.e.l.l they"re talking about! The vodka we"re pouring at my restaurant is what it says on the bottle.
The function of all four of these old friends, tattered and broken-spined as they may be, is ultimately to make me feel better about myself and the way things are going. And to make me laugh. In our business, you"d better have a sense of humor. We flirt with disaster every daya"particularly during busy dinner rushes, when one screw-up, one mistake, one broken piece of equipment or ill-prepared cook can send the whole night"s service careening into nightmare. We chefs take pride in our work, both in whatever degree of artistry or craft we bring to our product and also in the grim business of cranking out table after table of hot, properly prepared food. We know the sheer terror of running out of food, of being short-handed, and if we can"t laugh about it when it happensa"afterwarda"we eat ourselves alive. The torment of seeing a witless customer destroy a cherished fish special with bizarre dietary requirements, or with ioo a misguided urge to design their own meal, can cut like a knife. A waiter who describes that lovely pheasant as tasting "kinda like chicken" can cause a chef"s brain to boil, pushing his pulse rate into that red zone where all humanity seems aligned against hima"every customer, every owner, every coworker an emissary of pure evil. A good laugh, a little context, they go a long way to bringing one back from the urge to shave one"s head, climb a tower, and start shooting at pedestrians.
We should know. As citizens of the world, we should know what came before. How we got here. Why we do things the way we do them. Where our food comes from. We should know what it was like for our humble predecessors, sweating and struggling in unrefrigerated larders, unventilated kitchens, the septic madhouse and twisting, low-ceilinged subcellars of restaurants past. We should remember the way it felt, sc.r.a.ping potatoes onto a garbage-strewn floor, scrubbing grease-caked pots with cold water, bending to the will of crazed and increasingly parsimonious masters. And we should understand not just how much has changed, but how much has stayed the same: the character of the business we have chosen as a lifestylea"the way people who do what we do have endured, have learned, have risen and learned to love this thing of ours.
ioi CHINASYNDROME.
finally. china.
I"d been nibbling around her edges for years, eating Chinese food in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipeia"and, of course, New York. But I"d never been to the mainland, to the Source. I"d been, to be honest, intimidated by the largeness and importance of the subject: the oldest, greatest, most influential and varied of the world"s mother cuisines. Unlike other places I"d written about, China, with her eight distinct regional cuisines, seemed a subject for whom enthusiasm alone would not be enough. A certain . . . expertise, surely, would be required.
I needn"t have worried. Few people on earth are as enthusiastic about food and eating as the Chinese. Show up with an open mind and an empty stomach, willing to try anything that comes your way, and enthusiasm is indeed enough. You will find yourself welcomeda"and well feda"again and again, a pa.s.senger on a deliriously colorful joyride.
The old joke that the Chinese will eat anything inadvertently reveals what is best about them: There are few "good" ingredients and "bad" ingredients in China. There are the often expensive ingredients that are easy to cook, and the other stuff, the tongues, feet, and odd bits that take a little timea"a few thousand years of trial and errora"to figure out how to make good. Like any great culinary tradition, the driving engine is the need to transform the humble, the tough, the unlovely into the ioz delicate and sublime, or to figure out what was good about an ingredient all along.
In this way, it can be said that deep inside every good cook, be they French, Italian, or American, beats the heart of a Chinese. With this in mind, I recently ventured my first few little bites out of a very large country.
At Huang Cheng Lao Ma restaurant, in Chengdu, Szechuan"s frenetically developing capital, a large cauldron of murky and bubbling palm oil sits center table: the notorious Szechuan hotpot. Bobbing on the roiling surface of the dark, viscous liquid is a logjam of tongue-scalding dried Szechuan chilies. Less noticeable, but just as plentiful, are a fistful of hua jiao, smaller, darker "flower" peppercorns. The dried chilies are pure burn. The peppercorns, though aromatic, are pure freeze. They numb the mouth, at times the whole face, as they go down (which explains why they are a popular remedy for toothache). My friend David, a Chengdu native, points at the spicy h.e.l.lbroth with his chopsticks and says, "It gets stronger as it cooks."
He points across the large communal table at a family of locals gathered around a similar witches" brew. The mother is red faced and holds a fist to her chest. The father is mopping sweat from his neck. David grins and dips a slice of raw beef into the hotpot, swirling it around to cook for a few seconds before a secondary dunk in cooler oil, then pops it in his mouth.
"Diarrhea tomorrow," he promises.
"For me, or for you?" I ask, a.s.suming that it"s my delicate Western metabolism he"s concerned about.
"Oh no. Everybody pays tomorrow," he laughs. "Still. We come back again. You"ll see. It"s addictive."
Plates of uncooked chicken, shrimps, sliced kidney, quail eggs, noodles, and vegetables arrive. Each will find their way in increments into the increasingly volcanic oil before disappearing down our throats. It"s like a lethal fondue. We"ve ordered the strongest, "hottest" variety, in a town famous for its profligate way with peppers, and it hurts so good. The perfect mixture of pleasure and pain. I feel strangely in compet.i.tion with David.
They say "never let them see you sweat," but it"s way too late for that. We"re both in full lather. David swallows another slice of kidney, rubs his solar plexus, and grimaces, and I feela"to my shamea"gratified by his pain. I"m surviving Szechuan. I"m making it through this most incendiary of incendiary meals in the fire capital of the world. And I"m loving it. The effect of all the peppers is almost narcotic in its endorphin-producing qualities. In fact, early hotpot chefs were rumored to lace their concoctions with opium, to keep customers coming back. It wasn"t necessary. Those who survive their initial exposure to the dish can"t help but return to it, like a beautiful but bad girlfriend. (Later, when I return to the States, I"ll secrete two kilos of those magical hua jiao in my luggage, wanting never to be separated from them again.) The next day, at Chen Ma Po Dou Fu (which translates loosely to "Pockmarked Granny"s Tofu"), I happily submit to another glorious if painful scourging and devour the restaurant"s namesake dish: a bowl of meat and spice-stippled tofu awash in more palm oil, named for its likeness to its creator. I pick cautiously through a Szechuan chicken that is easily 80 percent dried chilies (one tries to pick around them) and 20 percent chicken, and, like so much of local fare, awash in yet more pepper-infused palm oil. As David said, even knowing my inevitable unpleasant gastroenterological destiny, I don"t care. It"s too good. My palatea"if it doesn"t burn out of my skull entirelya"will never be the same again.
The relatively friendly flavors of Beijing are a welcome change. And I concentrate, in the limited time I have, on what the capital city is best known for: duck. Duck so crispy, flavorful, juicy, and unctuous that it will ruin you for "Peking Duck" anywhere else. Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant, located in an old hutong neighborhood near Tiananmen Square, is a crowded, ramshackle home turned eatery. Eager customers are squeezed around a central courtyard, jammed into small former bedrooms, their tables br.i.m.m.i.n.g with stacked plates of food. In the kitchen, the chef carefully positions head-on ducks over open peachwood flame in an ancient brick oven, turning them and moving them constantly to expertly crisp the skin. The meat is sliced and presented with the de rigueur pancakes, sliced scal-lion, and hoisin saucea"but it"s better, much better, eaten straight and unadorned. In keeping with the mantra of "nothing potentially delicious shall go to waste," a plate of savory duck tongues and fork-tender duck feet arrives hot on the heels of the duck itself, all of it revelatory in its wonderfulness.
I could easily have spent my entire ten-day trip to China eating ata"and writing abouta"one square block of restaurants, or a single strip of wet market, and never have scratched the surface. China is big. And one lifetime is not enough to fully or authoritatively explore her. But it appears increasingly likely that in future, more of us will have the opportunity to try. In modern China, there are construction cranes everywhere. Roads are widening, dams being built, hotels going up, Western businesses pouring in, along with dollars and more dollars. New street signs are in Mandarin and English, and China projects an impression that she"s getting ready to fully a.s.sume her role of financial superpower. So, perhaps it"s not necessary to go to China. She"ll be coming to you.
NOSHOES.
Understand this: I always hated those articles, like the ones in Vanity Fair, featuring the Lifestyles of the Rich and Despotic, where some chicken-brained Hilton kiddie, shriveled Sukarno relative, or Scientologist movie star lets us into their sw.a.n.ky digs to show off their collection of expensive motorcars and Tiberius-inspired plumbing. I don"t know why they really publish this stuff. Do the writers actually admire these no-accounts and wish us to emulate their wastrel behavior if we can? Or are the writers, in fact, hard-core Maoist provocateurs, hoping secretly to rouse us ordinary schlubs to a murderous rage with these glimpses into the profligate spending of capitalist grotesques?
That said, where I"m sitting right now is a rented villa on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. Directly in front of me, through open French doors, is a coconut palm, gently straining in the breeze, its fronds brushing against a whitewashed bal.u.s.trade. In the distance, green-covered mountains, a vast expanse of blue seaa"so many shades of blue it looks like a child"s crayon box (the jumbo collection)a"and beyond, the hazy, distant shapes of the islands of Saint Eustatius and Saba sit on the horizon under puffs of white, gold, and purple clouds. A rooster crows somewhere. Birds cheep in the garden. The caretaker"s dogs gnaw lazily on leftover bones outside the front door . . .
Jesus! I think I may have crossed the line into Terminal Michael Winner Syndrome. ". . . While Ricardo, the capable maitre d"hotel, had urged me to dine in the grill room, I opted instead for Le Bateau Rouge, a charming bra.s.serie by the port that Michael Caine had recommended on an earlier visit. I had the sole. And something white and starchy. I think it was a potato."
I"ve been in the West Indies for two months now, and for that entire time I have not once worn shoes or socks. I keep a pair of flip-flops in my rented Jeep, for when I have to pop into the market for some stinky cheese, or the local paper; but I have yet to eat even one meal in a restaurant that requires footwear of its guests. It has been my sole, overriding criteria for this vacation: I refuse to eat anywhere where shoes might be required.
In that wonderful, creamy, narcotized state of sunstroked semiconsciousness that comes from the drinking of alcoholic beverages in direct tropical sunlight, the idea of making it through multiple courses and a bottle of wine in a white-tablecloth restaurant, with its inevitable snail-paced service, does not tempt. I eat almost all my meals in barbecue shacks or lolos, little corrugated tin-roofed lean-tos with nearly identical menus of grilled chicken leg, barbecue ribs, grilled spiny lobster, spicy Creole boudin, conch sausage, grilled snapper, meat patties, johnny cakes, bullfoot soup, plantains, rice and pigeon peas, and beer. Cutlery is plastic, napkinsa"if anya"are paper. Music is provided by a boom box tuned to the local station. Food arrives when it arrives, in no particular order. There are usually some insects involved, but the 10-percent DEET I"m slathered in keeps them from eating me alive. Stray dogs hover by the table, waiting for an unfinished chicken leg or spare rib bone. There are always ashtrays on every table.
I am very happ here.
Largely, I am happy because while I eat, there is sand between my toesa"great pillows of it, large-grained, pebbly, with bits of surf-smoothed sh.e.l.l mixed in; or fine-grained, white, and powdery. On the rare occasions when the establishment has a floor, it"s either smooth, cool terra-cotta tile, or the weatherbeaten planks of an imperceptibly swaying dock, all very pleasurable, as if by brushing my toes constantly and directly against the surface of the earth, I tap into some primitive vein of perfect happiness.
Food tastes better without shoes, I have come to believe.
And I am considering testing my theory at a yet-to-be determined two- or three-star fine-dining establishment on my next trip to London. Surely my good friend Gordon would not eject me from his wonderful restaurant at Hospital Road if I showed up shoeless in Hawaiian shirt and cut-off jeans, would he? Not when I explain that my outfit has been strategically designed to enjoy his artistry to the fullest degree possible. Undistracted by underwear riding up in my crack, or the pinch of garters, I shall surely discover heretofore overlooked dimensions of his fine works. I"ll cite historical precedent, if need be, to keep the maitre d" from hurling me through the door: the Romans, for instance, who ate in the p.r.o.ne position, raised up on an elbow, dressed in comfortable garb)a"a toga thingie, easily pulled up mid-meal so as to allow a friend or paid companion to more easily fondle one"s genitals between courses. Who understood the elements of a good meal, or a good party, better than those kooky caesars? Who can deny the desirability of experiencing pure flavor, texture, and culinary technique free from the constraints and intrusions of restrictive modern garb? It"s an insult to the chef, isn"t it? Like trying to eat in a straitjacket or f.u.c.k through a shower curtain.
I don"t know.
Maybe I"d better pack one pair of Hush Puppies. Just in case.
THELOVE BOAT.
tomorrow, there will be blender drinks and citron presses and fluffy towels by the pool. Smiling attendants will cool us with chilled white washcloths and spray our overheated, sun-browned flesh with refrigerated mist. The New York Timesa"or the newspaper of our choicea"will be waiting in our mailboxes when we wake, our names printed on each page, and if we like, there will be tea and cakes, aromatherapy, a ma.s.sage. We will glance at each other briefly, wordlessly, across the cigar room or the library or the whirlpool and know that we have made it, that we have put aside the cares of the world, that we have only to rest, to read, to play, to sleepa"and that when we wake, we shall be in another time zone, another country.
But tonight, seventy-six very rich people are pressed deep deep deep into their custom-made Italian sheets, squeezed down into their mattresses by the rise and fall of the rooms around thema" then lifted, as if weightless, momentarily above their bedsa"then pressed down again. The vast living rooms, dining areas, foyers, bedrooms, and marble-appointed bathrooms that surround them tilt and sway, climb and dive as their floating condominiums negotiate force-seven near-gale-force winds and high seas of eighteen- to twenty-seven-foot swells. Mashed and elevated ever so gently in their beds, most surely sleep. The ship does not protest. No groans or squeaks or creaking beams. She handles like a brand new Mercedes 600a"large, yes, but solid, and smelling of new wood and new money. Through the airtight, soundproof sliding doors to our long outdoor private verandas, the wind and surf, the crash of waves against the hull are barely audible. The rat-tat-tat of raindrops on our outdoor Jacuzzis goes unheard.
I"m making os...o...b..co and wild mushroom-black truffle risotto. I"m chopping orange gremolata for garnish in my s.p.a.cious and well-equipped kitchen as the floor pitches and rolls and threatens to deposit me face-first in the simmering pot of veal shanks on my spanking new, four-burner range top. A load of laundry hums behind me. The dishwasher does its business beneath a long expanse of counter, and when I toss a few herb stems, orange sc.r.a.ps, and vegetable trippings into the food disposal, it devours them without complaint. Tasteful but efficient railings keep my saucepots, plates, and gla.s.sware in place while I pick and weave unsteadily to the refrigerator, where a vichyssoise cools beside a constantly restocked supply of imported beer and juices. In the sleek, comfortable Danish Modern bedroom, my wife watches a film from the double bed. In the large, well-appointed living room, on an enormous flat-screen TV set among book-lined shelves, a CNN anchor drones on about a world that seems, right now, very far away. A bottle of champagne chills in a silver ice bucket on the suitable-for-six dining room table.
But I don"t think I"ll be drinking it tonight.
Welcome to the world of ResidenSeaa"or The World, as our remarkable vessel is nameda"644.2 feet long, with 106 private residences and fifty-nine rental apartments and studios. Not a cruise ship. Not a mega-yacht. She is, as the literature proudly states, "a floating resort community of like-minded persons who will settle for nothing but the very best," the "ne plus ultra of voyaging," a self-sufficient neighborhood of luxury homes "at sea continuously circ.u.mnavigating the globe."
In short, it"s a big, sw.a.n.k, ridiculously well-fitted-out boat on which rich people can buy their own homes, dropping in or jetting off as they see fit as it wanders from continent to continent.
no "We"ll be trapped like rats," protested Nancy, my wife, when I told her where we were going.
"The rich are more boring than you and me," she said. "You want to be penned up in a floating prison with a bunch of mummies in cruise-wear? Are you insane? I am not playing shuffleboard. I am not going to see Red b.u.t.tons or Kathie Lee. And I am not contracting the Norwalk virus so you can write some stupid story. And I am not going to be your comedic device again." She was right in the middle of reading Mark Twain"s Innocents Abroad, about a luxury cruise with similarly grandiose claims, a book I now regretted giving her.
"This ain"t the Love Boat, sweetheart," I protested. There are no organized dinner seatings. No limbo contests on the Lido deck. Gopher and Julie are nowhere to be found. "It"ll be great, honey! And it"s free! The magazine"ll pay for it! C"mon! Think of it like . . . like Gilligan"s Island. Only it"ll be a five-day cruise, not three hours, and with what they charge, you can be a.s.sured we won"t end up trying to build a desalinization plant out of coconuts. You know how much money you gotta have to take a trip on this thing? C"mon! Let"s live large!"
Residents of The World, I hastened to point out, do not sleep in anything remotely resembling a "cabin." Residential apartments (and we"d be staying in one) range in size from 1,106 to an astonishing 3,242 square feet, each with "state-of-the-art kitchens," two to six bedrooms, living and dining areas, and a veranda. Four full-service restaurants, a gourmet market and deli, shops, numerous bars, a nightclub, casino, library, business center, theater, health spa, swimming pool, putting greensa"and, believe it or not, a tennis courta"awaited our attention should we care to make use of it.
"C"mon! We"ll pretend we"re a retired South American dictator"s idiot son and wife! Let"s live a little! Work on our suntans!"
The idea, I explained, was for me, loudmouth professional utility chef and obnoxious memoir authora"and wifea"to board this magnificent sea-beast at Curacao and spend five nights between there and Costa Rica, fending for ourselves: buying food at Fredy"s Deli, The World"s on-board market and provisioned and cooking in our "state-of-the-art" kitchen. We"d rough ita"as much as one can rough it in a multimillion-dollar apartment with twice-a-day maid servicea"buying groceries and then preparing our meals from scratch, and I"d report on the experience in the kind of sober, dispa.s.sionate, objective terms for which I am well known.
"If I see a limbo contest shaping up, I"m going over the side," said Nancy. "And if you come down with some ship-borne gastrointestinal complaint, I"m gonna be the first one to say "I told you so.""
Who, you might ask, would actually live on such a vessel? I think it"s fair to say you have to be very, very rich to own a home on board The World. How rich? Apartments run from 2.5 to 7.5 million dollars each, with residents having to pony up an additional 5 percent of purchase price per year to pay for fuel and operating costs. Imagine owning a Fifth-A venue apartmenta"only this one movesa"making leisurely ports of call in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, South Pacific, Asia, South America, and Africa, scheduling itself so as not to miss significant events like the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prix at Monaco, and the British Open in Saint Andrews. I was enthusiastic. My only reservation was that I didn"t think I owned the clothes for this venture. I couldn"t turn to Nancy and say, "Honey? Could you lay out my deck shoes, my blue blazer, my khakis, and my cabana wear?" I didn"t own any of those things. I thought I might have once owned a Greek fisherman"s cap, but I hadn"t seen it since I spilled bong water on it back in college.
I cheerfully signed on, and a few weeks before we were scheduled to join the ship, two sleek leather and woven-linen doc.u.ment cases arrived in the mail along with some briefing material.
"See, Nancy? See?" I said, waving the objects in front of her nose. "Cla.s.s."
On the date of departure, we flew to Curacao, were met by a ResidenSea representative at the airport, and soon got our first look at The World, an impressively big, newer, sleeker, more dramatically sharp looking version of the floating cities you see disgorging day-trippers all over the Caribbean. After being photographed and X-rayed, we were issued ID cards and escorted to our quarters.
There was a bottle of Piper on ice waiting in our s.p.a.cious two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment when we arrived, and, exhausted from the plane, we gratefully sucked it down before pa.s.sing out in the master bedroom. The next morning, after a room-service breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice and still-warm-from-the-oven croissants and pastries, I went out to explore.
Perhaps you remember the sixties television series The Prisoner} In it, Patrick McGoohan, a secret agent (only and forever referred to as "Number Six"), wakes up to find himself incarcerated in a kooky, futuristic, Utopian/totalitariana"yet very comfortablea"community-c.u.m-prison called "The Village." The similarities kept coming to mind as I wandered the mostly deserted halls, vast lobbies, lounges, and grand but empty s.p.a.ces of The World. Though there were seventy-six pa.s.sengers currently in residence, along with a something less than bare-bones complement of 260 plus crew, it didn"t feel like anywhere near that many. Pa.s.sengers apparently kept to themselves, and crew, when pa.s.sed in the common areas, gave brief, cheerful greetings, much like the "Be seeing you" and "Have a nice day" of The Prisoner. Like "the Village" on the series, The World publishes its own daily paper. As in "the Village," no currency is exchanged. One"s room number (as on the series) serves as credit reference enough, and one"s photo ID card serves as room key. As in "the Village," there is a general store, Fredy"s Deli, its shelves stocked with pretty much what you"d expect to find in a small Upper East Side gourmet shop/deli, with a friendly and obliging shopkeeper who is happy to provision you from the ship"s stores. There even is a village on the ship: a small cl.u.s.ter of shops and facilities along and above a wide walkway referred to as "The Street" where you can buy clothes or jewelry, smoke a Cuban cigar, check your e-mail. There are mapsa"as in "the Village"a"showing only the immediate community surrounded by water; and, like McGoohan"s apartment, The World"s apartments are impeccably, perfectly cleaned and maintained, modern and comfortable (as is everything on the ship). In fact, one thing I never fully understood about the prisoner on the show was why he wanted to escape so badly. He seemed to have it pretty good.
As the plan was for me to cook, I would not be dining at Portraits, The World"s "contemporary French Fusion" restaurant (jacket and tie or formal wear required), nor at The Marina, where "seafood, steak, and rotisserie specials" are the thing. And while I might give myself a break for lunch with "Mediterranean cuisine with a Northern Italian flair" at The Tides, I would certainly not be venturing the "oriental delights at East restaurant and sushi bar." As I was soon to have confirmed during a tour of the ship"s antiseptically clean kitchens and storerooms, The World may be a floating enclave of very rich people who expect and demand the very best, but in this case, the rich eat a lot of frozen food. Until I saw a sushi chef hanging a fishing line off the far end of the putting green, I was staying away from the sushi bar, thank you very much. Ironically, considering they are surrounded by water, shipsa"even luxury shipsa"are seldom good places to enjoy fresh seafood. At sea fo days at a time, they are provisioned at ports with varyin concepts of refrigeration and resupply. The bacalao and sal fish of earlier times has been replaced by frozen fish on large vessels. It may not be "the very best," but it"s safe.
When Nancy and I were summoned to meet with the safe officer, in the ship"s cinema/theater, and told him that I"d 1 doing a lot of cooking in the apartment, he explaineda"amor other useful things, like how to inflate our life vestsa"that at & first signs of smoke, our kitchen would automatically seal itse up Bond-villain-like behind sliding fire doors that would emer from tasteful concealment in the walls. Overhead sprinkle would discharge, and an alarm would notify the bridge.
instantly made a mental note to avoid making any dish requiring deglazing, or likely to create a lot of smoke. The safety officer seemed like a nice man. But I did not want to see him again in his pajamas wielding a fire extinguisher, an "I told you so" look on his face, in the middle of the night while holding a scorched pan or a burned bagel. That would be embarra.s.sing.
This consideration, and the fact that all the ranges were electric (there was, of course, no gas on board) were major factors in determining my menu and provision list. I"m a gas guy all the way, having worked exclusively with direct, immediately responsive flame my whole professional life. Because my only experience with electric stoves before my kitchen on The World had been in collegea"one of those hideous slide-out range tops with ancient coils that stank of old food and burning circuitry as it slowly, slowly came up to heata"I had nothing but bad memories and low expectations now. So I figured: a.s.sume the worst. Start slow and keep it simple. Steak and potatoes. Pan-seared entrecote, perhaps, with a baked potato.
I needn"t have worried. Our kitchen was larger and better equipped than most New York City apartment kitchens. The four-burner Schott range heated up very nicely, the burner glowing fiercely deep beneath s.e.xy-looking black ceramic, and was surprisingly responsive to every twiddle of the dial. Though the chef had kindly offered to "thaw out anything" from a vast walk-in freezer containing every conceivable cut of meat, poultry, fish, and game, my entrecotes were in fact faux-filets (sirloin), but I wasn"t bothered. They were nicely marbled and of good quality (if recently frozen) and seared up nicely in one of the thoughtfully provided nonstick pans, forming a lovely crust studded with brown sea salt and crushed black pepper. Any worries about smoke faded with the efficient whirring of the overhead stovetop range hood. I handled the gentle, slow-motion cantering of my kitchen floor well, I thought, for a landlubber, and when the time came, the steaks joined the potatoes in the rea.s.suringly named Competence B-300 oven until medium rare. Soon, Nancy and I, in fluffy white ResidenSea bathrobes, were sitting at our dining room table, a towering floral arrangement dead-center, eating perfectly respectable Black Angus steaks and crispy-skinned potatoes, accompanied by an astonishingly affordable bottle of Brouilly.
Emboldened by this early success, I rose early the next morning and confidently made omelettes aux fines herbes, chopping the fresh herb and parsley with the delightfully sharp knives provided. I"d seen a pretty impressive selection of stinky French cheeses at Fredy"s and had over-optimistically ordered an Epoisse and an Alsatian Muenster. But when I went to fold a slice of the Muenster into my omelette, it became clear that this particular cheese had seen better days. My omelette tasted like a dead man"s feet, with a dreadful ammonia aftertaste, and ended up in the food disposal (which worked like a charm). Nancy, however, was very pleased with her cheese-free omelette, happily poring over the day"s Times.
Later, in that happy, hazy, lazy, semisunstroked state that comes with too much time spent drinking banana daiquiris (made with real bananas) poolside, I was in no shape to cook much for lunch. I padded down to Fredy"s for a fresh baguette and some cold cuts. Though dress during the day was casual (there is a dress code after six), pa.s.sing a few silver-haired gentlemen in crisp khakis, handmade bespoke linen shirts, and thin timepieces, I felt like Gilligan, crashing a party for the Howells. Back in my apartment, I made sandwiches, soppressata and jambon blanc for me and sliced steak (leftover from the previous night) for Nancy. Suffering from an inferiority complex while shopping in my jeans and T-shirt, I"d overcompensated by buying a bottle of Roederer Cristal to wash the sandwiches down. I may not have been rich, but I was, after all, living as if I werea"if only for a few days. Feeling on top of the world as only the drunk can feel, a here-today-gone-tomorrow-what-the-h.e.l.l kinda rich, I finished my sandwich and the champagne and staggered through my living area, past the couches and armchairs and c.o.c.ktail table, out onto my veranda and flopped into my Jacuzzi. The perfect end, I thought, to a perfect meal.
Before dinner, Nancy and I watched a video from the ship"s extensive library on our big-screen TV, the wretched, incomprehensibly awful Arabesquea"the only positive effect of the film being that after eighty minutes with Sophia Loren, I was in the mood for Italian. (No matter that in the film she played some kind of weirdly generic cartoonish Arab character.) I made penne in fresh pomodoro sauce, preceded by woody but welcome steamed white asparagus. My knife was sure as I filleted perfectly acceptable plum tomatoes and slivered slightly older than vintage garlic. I picked fresh basil leaves, cracked a can of Italian plums, another can of paste, sweated, swirled, simmered, and seasoned, all without a moment"s seasickness, the kitchen behaving brilliantly. It had everything, didn"t it? A microwave with broiler, a food disposal that could have handled Jimmy Hoffa, a dishwasher, all the appliances and doodads one could hope for, including vertical slicer/grater, blender, food processor, manual juicer, and blending wand. And so clean! Always clean! How could it not be? The whole place was scrubbed down, polished, and tidied twice a day, first in the morning while we drank and sweated by the pool, and again later, by a hurrying duo of charming yet focused Scandinavian girls, cute as b.u.t.tons but with the work ethic of Sherpas, who"d arrive at six bearing chocolates, towels, and replacement staple items and give the whole place a quick going over. Fredy"s had been, on balance, very good to me, managing to come up with everything on my provisions list but fresh chives. For chicken stock, I received a fresh batch from The World"s kitchens. A "small amount of flour" arrived portioned in a paper cup, sparing me the burden of a five-pound bag.
The kitchen was pretty d.a.m.n stylish too. Recessed lighting, elegantly concealed washer and dryer, shiny new refrigerator with ice-maker. I cooked al dente penne in one of the heavy-bottomed sauce pots, drained it quickly into a colander, and dragged it, still leaking a little of the starchy pasta water, into the waiting sauce. A few tosses, that magic moment when the pasta took in the sauce, a last glorious shot of extra-virgin olive oil, and onto the plates. No one alive could have cooked better pasta that day. I was sure of it. As we ate, the sea moving by outside our long expanse of windows, the sun setting on the horizon, I felt like Emperor of the Sea. Not wanting this alcohol-inspired sense of mastery to end, when I finished my penne, I diced up the complementary platter of tropical fruit, tossed the mix in balsamic with a little fresh mint and sugar, and served macerated fruit salad for dessert.
Ham omelettes for breakfast the next day, followed by a visit to The Tides for a very decent lunchtime artichoke risotto for me and a gnocchi for Nancy. I made herb-roasted chicken and ratatouille for dinner and got ahead on the next day"s menu by preparing another blast from my personal past (a long-ago trip on the Queen Mary), vichyssoise, and socking it away into the s.p.a.cious refrigerator to cool overnight.
By now feeling perfectly (if artificially) at home with my sw.a.n.k surroundings, the next morning I again padded down to the neighborhood grocer for another freshly baked baguette and some cocoa powder. I had a plan, another cherished golden oldie from childhood. When I returned, Nancy had squeezed fresh orange juice, and we followed that up with steaming bowls of bittersweet hot chocolate into which we dipped long b.u.t.tered halves of the baguette. As a few drops of b.u.t.tery chocolate dribbled off my chin, I half-noticed the sky turning steel gray, the sea picking up, spindrifts of foam and spray beginning to trail off the tops of the swells. The up and down motion of the ship began to be more p.r.o.nounced, with an occasional dull thud as the ship"s bow muscled through a particularly big wave.
I did not, for some reason, feel like lunch that day.
It grew dark, then darker, rain becoming constant, the sea getting rougher by the hour. I woozily cleaned portobello, cremini, and oyster mushrooms and fine-diced black truffles for my risotto. I braised recently thawed veal shanks and made the sauce for my os...o...b..co. I zested orange and minced fresh herb for gremolata, all the while lurching dizzyingly around inside the s.p.a.cious but increasingly claustrophobia-inducing kitchen. Stumbling wearily to the bedroom for a brief lie-downa"as my stomach was beginning to feel less than terrifica"I felt the ship lean to one side, threatening to propel me through the windows. The ship"s movements didn"t seem to bother Nancy at all; she watched me moaning on the bed with a pitying look. As long as I lay there I was okay. But among my many unlovely aspects, I am a degenerate smoker, and as smoking is prohibited indoors (except in designated areas, my apartment not among them), I had to pay periodic visits to the now rain-swept veranda to smoke, huddling against wind and spray in a sodden deck chair or clinging to the rail before tottering back inside again to collapse. Feeling really wretched now, I tried to keep trips to the kitchen brief.
When the veal shanks were tender and the sauce reduced, I shut off the stove and put the pot aside to cool. I muttered something to Nancy about putting everything away for tomorrow as there was no way I was eating anything tonight. Thankfully, I had not started the risotto, or anything that wouldn"t be better tomorrow. As The World"s information channel informed us that winds were now approaching gale force and seas rising to eighteen feet, the captain"s voice suddenly issued from hidden speakers over my bed (more shades of The Prisoner), a.s.suring pa.s.sengers in a casual, conversational tone that conditions would "probably" not get too much worse and chiding those among us who had apparently been complaining that the seas had been too calm and unexciting. This is another difference between you and me and the very rich: The very rich, among them most residents of The World, for instance, have previously owned yachts. They know what it feels like to have your stomach rise up into your rib cage every few seconds while the floor heaves and pitches around you. And they seem to like it.
I have to admit, the ship managed the seas beautifully. Even when swells reached the occasional twenty-seven feet, my sleep was undisturbed by groaning or creaking, the shriek of protesting beams or stressed rivets. The hull, as if surrounded by shock absorbers, handled every crashing wave with a solid, well-m.u.f.fled authority. Nothing in the apartment moved or dropped save an occasional book flopping onto its side. Pots and pans stayed on the stove, lamps stayed on tables, doors remained shut, cabinets closed. As the ship rose and fell, the most violent movements were inside my stomach as I was squashed and lifted (rather gently I confess) above and into my firm and expensive bedding.
I don"t know that I would ever buy a residence on The World, regardless of what lottery I might someday win, or that I would ever book lengthy pa.s.sage in her rental suites or studios. Most of her residents own two or three homes, which suggests a net worth unattainable in my lifetime and the lifetimes of all my friends put together. As delightful as it sounds to drop by one"s floating home-away-from-home in say, Sydney, sail for Ho Chi Minh City, disembark for a few weeks, then rejoin her at some other port of call by planea"or private jet, as some surely doa"I am not, I think, a seafaring man. I wish The World well, and all the intrepid souls who sail within her. They know better than I the ways of the deep blue seaa"and how cruel a mistress she can be. They are used to solitude and are, I think, surprisingly self-sufficient for a demographic no doubt used to much pampering. Rather than living behind high walls on the Riviera, or in some faux agrarian-wonderland compound in Napa, or getting their faces and b.u.t.tocks stretched taut in LA, here they relax, read, spend time with a few select loved ones, looking comfortably untaut and unattractive in their swimwear by the pool: a little mist, a blender drink, a nice nap, some frozen fish for dinner, remaining in contact with their faraway empires via Internet and satellite phone. I will always remember an elegant, silver-haired Frenchman who, during lifeboat drill, looked warily at the rather extravagantly appointed emergency launches and wanted to know only if there was plenty of red wine stored among the provisions. I liked him for that.
We ate the os...o...b..co after the ship tied up at Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. And it was delicious.
My risotto was perfect.
o c ISCELEBRITY KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS?.