A Cook's Tour Part 1

A Cook's Tour.

In Search of the Perfect Meal.

by Anthony Bourdain.

Dear Nancy, I'm about as far away from you as I've ever been a hotel (the hotel, actually) in Pailin, a miserable one-horse dunghole in northwest Cambodia, home to those not-so-adorable scamps, the Khmer Rouge. Picture this: a single swayback bed, a broken TV set that shows only fuzzy images of Thai kick-boxing, a tile floor with tiles halfway up the wall and a drain in the middle as if the whole room were designed to be quickly and efficiently hosed down. There's one lightbulb, a warped dresser, and a complimentary plastic comb with someone else's hair in it. In spite of the EZ Clean design features, there are suspicious and dismaying stains on the walls. About two thirds of the way up one wall, there are what look like b.l.o.o.d.y footprints and what do they call it, arterial spray? How they got there, so high up, I can only guess. The wall opposite has equally sinister stains evidence of a more opaque substance these suggesting a downward dispersal. Having seen the bathroom, I can't blame the perpetrator for anything. hotel, actually) in Pailin, a miserable one-horse dunghole in northwest Cambodia, home to those not-so-adorable scamps, the Khmer Rouge. Picture this: a single swayback bed, a broken TV set that shows only fuzzy images of Thai kick-boxing, a tile floor with tiles halfway up the wall and a drain in the middle as if the whole room were designed to be quickly and efficiently hosed down. There's one lightbulb, a warped dresser, and a complimentary plastic comb with someone else's hair in it. In spite of the EZ Clean design features, there are suspicious and dismaying stains on the walls. About two thirds of the way up one wall, there are what look like b.l.o.o.d.y footprints and what do they call it, arterial spray? How they got there, so high up, I can only guess. The wall opposite has equally sinister stains evidence of a more opaque substance these suggesting a downward dispersal. Having seen the bathroom, I can't blame the perpetrator for anything.

There are no smiles in this town, just glares of naked hostility. The clothing of choice is the moldering remnants of military-issue fatigues. There is a 'karaoke' booth in the lobby, next to the standard pictogram of an AK-47 with a red line through it (no Automatic Weapons in the Lobby). 'Karaoke' means, presumably, that the bison-sized women lounging around by the front desk with their kids are available for purposes of s.e.xual diversion. The best-looking one is a dead ringer for Hideki Irabu. (We traded that lox to Toronto, didn't we? Or was it Montreal?) My Khmer translator, who has hardly opened his mouth since we entered Khmer Rouge territory, says that the last time he stayed here, during the last coup, he got a terrible skin rash. He intends, he says, to sleep standing up. Now he tells me . . .

Could you maybe make a doctor's appointment for me for when I get back? I'm thinking a full workup, to be on the safe side. I've been wading in water and drinking it from the kind of worst-case scenarios you read about in the guidebooks and travelers warnings. Needless to say, some of the food I've been eating well, the food handling has been . . . dubious, at best. Is liver fluke curable? I don't think they gave me a shot for that. I miss you. I miss the cat. I miss my own bed, The Simpsons The Simpsons at 7:00 and 11:00. I could really go for a cold beer. A pizza. Some chopped liver from Barney Greengra.s.s. Toilets that don't double as showers. I'll call you when I get back to Phnom Penh or Battambang. at 7:00 and 11:00. I could really go for a cold beer. A pizza. Some chopped liver from Barney Greengra.s.s. Toilets that don't double as showers. I'll call you when I get back to Phnom Penh or Battambang.

Love you.

Tony

Introduction.

I'm sitting cross-legged in the bush with Charlie, deep in the Mekong Delta, drinking Vietnamese moons.h.i.+ne from a plastic cola bottle. It's dark, the only light coming from a single generator-powered lightbulb, and on the tarpaulin of st.i.tched-together fertilizer and rice sacks laid out on the hard jungle floor in front of me, dinner has just been served: a humble farmer's meal of clay-roasted duck, duck and banana-blossom soup, salad, and stuffed bitter melon. My host, affectionately referred to as 'Uncle Hai,' sits to my left, his right hand clutching my knee. Every once in a while he gives it a squeeze, just to make sure I'm still there and that I'm having a good time.

I am having a good time. I'm having the best time in the world. Across from me, a ninety-five-year-old man with a milky white eye and no teeth, who's wearing black pajamas and rubber sandals, raises a gla.s.s of the vicious homemade rice whiskey and challenges me to yet another shot. He's a war hero, I have been a.s.sured. He fought the j.a.panese, the French; he fought in the 'American War.' We exchange respectful salutations and both hammer back a shot.

The problem is, nearly everybody at this meal is also, apparently, a war hero. The delta was an incubation chamber a hotbed of VC activity during our country's time here and everybody, one by one, wants to have a drink with me. Grampa, directly across from me, his legs tucked comfortably under his body like a supple sixteen-year-old's, has raised his gla.s.s in my direction six times already, fixing me in the gaze of his one unclouded eye, before knocking back another shot. Almost immediately, someone else tugs on my sleeve.

'Please, sir . . . the gentleman down there . . . he is also a great war hero. He would like to drink with you.'

I look down the length of the makes.h.i.+ft picnic blanket to a tough-looking guy, fortyish maybe, with thick neck and forearms. He's staring right at me, not shy at all, this one. He's smiling, too though not exactly the same warm, friendly smile Grampa's been giving me. This smile says, I've killed a few of your kind, you know. Now, let's see if you can drink.

'I'm right here, Cool Breeze,' I say, trying not to slur. 'Come and get me.' Then I give him my baddest-a.s.s Dirty Harry, jailhouse stare while I drain another gla.s.s of what I am quickly coming to believe is formaldehyde.

Three Communist party officials from the Can Tho People's Committee, picking at salads with chopsticks, watch with interest as the silly American, who came all this way by plane, by car, by sampan to eat clay-roasted duck with a rice farmer and his family, slugs back his twelfth shot of the evening and looks worriedly around the clearing at all the other war heroes waiting to do the same. There are about twenty-five men crowded around the tarpaulin, sitting with their legs folded tightly, tearing at duck with their chopsticks and watching me. The women serve, looming up out of the darkness with more food, more liquor, and the occasional sharp word of advice.

Don't make him carve the duck! I imagine they're saying. He's American! He's too stupid and clumsy! In America, everything arrives carved already! He won't know what to do! He'll cut himself, the idiot, and shame us all! A paper plate arrives with a small paring knife and another sizzling-hot duck: head, feet, bill, and guts intact. I position the thing as best I can with burning fingers, wrestle not too gracefully with it for a few seconds, and manage to remove legs, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and wings in the cla.s.sic French tableside style. I crack open the skull so my friend Philippe can scoop out the brains (he's French; they like that stuff) and offer the first slice of breast to my host, Uncle Hai.

The crowd is pleased. There's a round of applause. Behind me, children are running around, playing in the dark. A while ago, there were only a few of them. But as news of the American visitor and his French friend spread, their number has swelled as has the number of dinner guests. They've been arriving all night from surrounding farms. In groups of two and three, they've been coming from the river, pulling up in their narrow boats and disembarking at Uncle Hai's tiny landing. They've walked single file down the packed-silt riverbank, the dried-mud causeway that serves as both jungle highway and levee, part of an intricate, centuries-old irrigation system that extends for hundreds of square miles. Occasionally, a small child will appear at my elbow to stroke my hand or pinch my skin, seemingly amazed at the color, the hair on my arms. There is a look of absolute wonder and confusion on his face, as if, perhaps, older friends dared him to go pinch the Giant American Savage who once bombed and strafed the village, but now comes in peace to eat duck and drink rotgut with these patriotic heroes. A while ago, I had my Sally Struthers moment, posing for a photograph with about twenty of them, before allowing them to chase me around the clearing with a lot of fake Hong Kong martial-arts moves, then letting them tie me up with a length of twine to much squealing of delight.

The duck is a little tough, and smoky-tasting from the mound of burning straw it's been cooked in; and the Mekong whiskey is going down like drain cleaner. I'm worried about what I'm going to do when all this alcohol hits me, how I'm ever going to get back on that narrow, wobbly boat in the middle of the night, make my way downriver through the absolute blackness of the jungle, disembark (while still retaining verticality) across a bamboo and mangrove monkey bridge to a sleepy Stone Age hamlet, then, in a shared car, bounce over twisting narrow jungle track and shaky wooden bridges to Highway 1 and Can Tho without blowing chunks all over the three representatives of the People's Committee.

I don't want to disgrace my clan. I don't want my gracious and genial hosts to see me stumble or fall. I don't want to get hauled away from this meal on a stretcher, my head hanging over the side of the sampan, drooling bile into the black water. I've got something to prove. We may have lost the war. We may have pointlessly bombed and mined and a.s.sa.s.sinated and defoliated before slinking away as if it were all a terrible misunderstanding but, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, we can still drink as good as these guys, right?

Looking across at Grampa, who's refilling his gla.s.s while a toddler crawls onto his lap, I'm not so sure. Screw it. I'm having a good time. I smile at the old man and hold up my gla.s.s. I like him. I like these guys. Since coming to Asia, I've never met such a great group of people. It's been food, folks, and fun like I've never experienced. These are, by Vietnamese standards, party animals warm, generous, thoughtful, kind occasionally very funny, sincere in both their hospitality and their fierce pride. I don't want to leave. I want to do this all night.

One of the younger war heroes at the other end of the tarp suddenly stands up, and the other guests stop chattering as he breaks into song. Accompanied by a clapped-out guitar, he sings, his palms held together as if praying, looking out over our heads, as if singing to someone in the jungle. It's beautiful, a heartfelt, sweet-sounding, absolutely haunting invocation, and in the dim light from the single bulb, he looks angelic. No one makes a sound while he sings, but I manage to whisper a question to the translator on my right.

'What's he singing about?' I ask.

'It is a patriotic song,' he says, 'about the people of this village, the farmers and their families who hid the soldiers and helped them during the American War. About the difficulties they faced. And their courage.'

'Oh,' I reply.

I know the song is basically about killing my kind and not too terribly long ago but I'm absolutely riveted. I'm charmed. I'm flattered. I have been treated, in the last few hours, with never-before-encountered kindness and respect. Uncle Hai gives my knee another squeeze. The old man across from me smiles and raises his empty gla.s.s to me, summons a younger man to refill it, gestures that he should do the same for me. A swollen moon appears from behind puffs of cloud, hangs heavily over the tree line beyond the river. Other guests are arriving. I can hear them in the distance, their sandals and bare feet padding softly along the hardened silt, emerging from the darkness to take places around the tarpaulin.

I wanted the perfect meal.

I also wanted to be absolutely frank Col. Walter E. Kurtz, Lord Jim, Lawrence of Arabia, Kim Philby, the Consul, Fowler, Tony Po, B. Traven, Christopher Walken . . . I wanted to find no, I wanted to be one of those debauched heroes and villains out of Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, Francis Coppola, and Michael Cimino. I wanted to wander the world in a dirty seersucker suit, getting into trouble.

I wanted adventures. I wanted to go up the Nung River to the heart of darkness in Cambodia. I wanted to ride out into a desert on camelback, sand and dunes in every direction, eat whole roasted lamb with my fingers. I wanted to kick snow off my boots in a Mafiya nightclub in Russia. I wanted to play with automatic weapons in Phnom Penh, recapture the past in a small oyster village in France, step into a seedy neon-lit pulqueria pulqueria in rural Mexico. I wanted to run roadblocks in the middle of the night, blowing past angry militia with a handful of hurled Marlboro packs, experience fear, excitement, wonder. I wanted kicks the kind of melodramatic thrills and chills I'd yearned for since childhood, the kind of adventure I'd found as a little boy in the pages of my Tintin comic books. I wanted to see the world and I wanted the world to be just like the movies. in rural Mexico. I wanted to run roadblocks in the middle of the night, blowing past angry militia with a handful of hurled Marlboro packs, experience fear, excitement, wonder. I wanted kicks the kind of melodramatic thrills and chills I'd yearned for since childhood, the kind of adventure I'd found as a little boy in the pages of my Tintin comic books. I wanted to see the world and I wanted the world to be just like the movies.

Unreasonable? Overromantic? Uninformed? Foolhardy?

Yes!

But I didn't care. I'd just put down a very nice score with an obnoxious and overtestosteroned account of my life in the restaurant business. Inexplicably, it had flown off the shelves. I was paying rent on time for the first time in my life. I had, amazingly, health coverage at long last. I actually had money in the bank and the goodwill of a publisher on my side. After a few months of traveling the English-speaking world, flogging my book, giving the same witless three-minute interview over and over and over again, I was no longer a useful factor in the day-to-day operations of my kitchen. My cooks had long since begun calling me 'Pinchay Famoso' and making fun of me when I'd show up slathered in TV makeup after yet another segment showing me warning the public about 'fish on Monday' and the 'perils of hollandaise.' I needed something to do. I needed another idea for a book preferably while I was still in good odor from the last one. I may love cooking, and I certainly love the life of the professional chef, but I did not, at age forty-five, forty-six, or ever again, want to find myself slopping out brunches in some West Village cafe when my knees went completely and my brain turned, finally, to mush.

'How about this?' I suggested to my editor. 'I travel around the world, doing whatever I want. I stay in fine hotels and I stay in hovels. I eat scary, exotic, wonderful food, doing cool stuff like I've seen in movies, and looking for the perfect meal. How's that sound?'

That sounded like a good business plan, right? I'd comb the world looking for the perfect mix of food and context. Upriver in Southeast Asia to eat snakes and bird's nests, back to La Teste for a bowl of soupe de poisson soupe de poisson, scale the mountains of the new haute cuisine the French Laundry in Napa Valley, I hadn't eaten there yet! That Arzak guy in Spain all the cooks are talking about him. I'd look and look, and eventually I'd find the best meal in the world according to me anyway and I'd write about it.

Of course, I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one. I knew how important factors other than technique or rare ingredients can be in the real business of making magic happen at a dinner table. Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life. I mean, let's face it: When you're eating simple barbecue under a palm tree, and you feel sand between your toes, samba music is playing softly in the background, waves are lapping at the sh.o.r.e a few yards off, a gentle breeze is cooling the sweat on the back of your neck at the hairline, and looking across the table, past the column of empty Red Stripes at the dreamy expression on your companion's face, you realize that in half an hour you're probably going to be having s.e.x on clean white hotel sheets, that grilled chicken leg suddenly tastes a h.e.l.l of a lot better.

I talk about these mysterious forces all the time with my chef cronies. Nothing ill.u.s.trates them more than the Last Meal Game. 'You're getting the electric chair tomorrow morning. They're gonna strap you down, turn up the juice, and fry your a.s.s until your eyes sizzle and pop like McNuggets. You've got one meal left. What are you having for dinner?' When playing this game with chefs and we're talking good chefs here the answers are invariably simple ones.

'Braised short ribs,' said one friend.

'A single slab of seared foie gras,' said another.

'Linguine pomodoro pomodoro, like my mother used to make me,' said another.

'Cold meat loaf sandwich,' said another, shuddering with pleasure. 'Don't tell anyone.'

No one I've ever played this game with came back with 'The tasting menu at Duca.s.se.' No one remembers their best meal ever as being consumed jacketed and tied, in a starched dress s.h.i.+rt, sitting bolt upright in a four-star restaurant. That particular combination of skill, technique, prime ingredients, and artistic genius was not really what I was looking for though I was determined to give it a shot now and again. There are other forces at work in the enjoyment of a truly great meal. Nice crystal, mood lighting, squeeze-bottle-applied sauces, good china, attentive service, spectacular wine I was already well aware of their strange and terrible powers to seduce and delight. Though not always capable of fully harnessing them myself, I was fully conscious of them. I knew how those things worked, the cla.s.sic interplay between food and service, the effects of low-wattage peach-tinted lightbulbs, the sound of well-polished sommelier's shoes gliding across a dining room. The entire food business as show business is what my friends and I have been doing our whole lives. I knew about that like I knew about the physical forces at play in the kitchen: gravity, decay, coagulation, fermentation, emulsification, oxidization, reduction, caramelization. I didn't want to think about those things. I wanted to detach myself from the hard wiring, the way my whole nervous system becomes aware of every movement in a crowded restaurant, habitually monitoring the busboys' progress in the neighboring station, eyeing an overflowing bus pan, a backed-up service bar, listening for the sizzle as my fish hits a hot pan in the kitchen.

I wanted magic. When is food magic? What are the common denominators? Certainly, when food is the result of a brilliant and obsessive personal vision, it can take on mystical, magical aspects. At their best, chefs like to consider themselves alchemists, and some of them, particularly the French, have a long and glorious tradition of turning lead into gold. For what is a humble shoulder or shank or strip of gut if not leaden and unlovely, and what is daube of beef Provencale or os...o...b..co when every bit of flavor and texture has been coaxed gently by skilled hands but pure gold? And it's not just magic for the person eating. It can be magic for the chef as well, seeing that tough, veiny, uncooked hunk of meat and bone going into the oven, swimming in purplish and not very distinguished red table wine, then seeing it, smelling it, tasting it only a few hours later, the sauce reduced, a hearty, thick, mellowed, and wonderful witches' brew transformed.

It's an understanding of this process that raised the French (and Italians) to the forefront of cla.s.sical cuisine. It's why we love them even when we hate them. Few sane persons enjoy French pop music or even the French much but they know what to do with every sc.r.a.p of hoof, snout, entrail, and skin, every bit of vegetable tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, fish head, and bone. Because they grew up with that all-important dictum. Use everything! Use everything! (And use it well.) (And use it well.) Why is that? Why them and not us?

The answer is, in many ways, to be found elsewhere in the world in Vietnam, Portugal, Mexico, Morocco because they had to. It was not in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France as it is not today in much of the rest of the world, an option whether to use the nasty bits. You had to.

They d.a.m.n well better have figured out something to do with calf's face, pig's feet, snails, old bread, and all those cheap cuts and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, or they'd go broke, starve, never be able to afford the really good stuff for special occasions. Sauces, marinades, stewing, charcuterie, the invention of the quenelle, the sausage, the cured ham, salted fish, confit these were strategies, the results of necessity and countless experimentation. Coq au vin? Tough oversized bird, marinated in red wine and braised long enough to be able to be chewed. Pot-au-feu? Boiled tongues, tails, bones, and cheap root vegetables. Pate? Sc.r.a.ps and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and fat, ground up and seasoned and decorated until somebody was interested in putting it in his mouth. Confit de canard? Confit de canard? I got no refrigerator and I got no freezer and all these d.a.m.n duck legs are going bad! Those shrewd and wily French toiled mightily over the years, figuring out ways to make just about everything that grazed, creeped, swam, crawled, or hopped, and every growing thing that poked through soil, rotted on the vine, or hid under dung, into something edible, enjoyable even magical. I got no refrigerator and I got no freezer and all these d.a.m.n duck legs are going bad! Those shrewd and wily French toiled mightily over the years, figuring out ways to make just about everything that grazed, creeped, swam, crawled, or hopped, and every growing thing that poked through soil, rotted on the vine, or hid under dung, into something edible, enjoyable even magical.

Long after the arrival of the refrigerator, while Americans ate plastic-wrapped fluffy white chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s and denied even the existence of legs or giblets, secure in the certain knowledge that sirloin, filet mignon, and prime rib were really the only 'good' parts of the steer, that everything else was hamburger, the French kept at it like nothing had happened. They'd come to love their hooves and snouts. They'd found something to love in every little bit if it was done right and, as with so many cultures on this big planet, they'd come to value, to cherish, the humble, poor man's fare of their past. Merchandising, once a necessary device for the transformation of the inedible to the edible, had fostered an entire cuisine, an approach, a philosophy, a way of life. And magic was the mainstay of the process a valuable arrow in any cook's quiver, even one playing with thousand-dollar-a-pound white truffles and torchons of foie gras.

Respecting the ingredient may no longer be an economic necessity in much of the emerging world; it is now a pleasure, to be experienced and enjoyed at one's chosen time and place. When everything is just right, a well-made tete de veau tete de veau can be not only a thing to be savored for its challenging yet simple combination of flavors and textures; it can, with the haunting power of sense memory, remind us of times and places long past. can be not only a thing to be savored for its challenging yet simple combination of flavors and textures; it can, with the haunting power of sense memory, remind us of times and places long past.

Think about the last time food transported you. You were a kid, had been feeling under the weather all week, and when you were finally getting your appet.i.te back, after a long, wet walk from school in the rain, mom had a big steaming bowl of homemade minestrone waiting for you. Maybe it was just a bowl of Campbell's cream of tomato with Oysterettes, and a grilled cheese sandwich. You know what I mean.

Your first taste of champagne on a woman's lips . . . steak frites steak frites when you were in Paris as a teenager with a Eurorail pa.s.s, you'd blown almost all your dough on hash in Amsterdam, and this slightly chewy slab of when you were in Paris as a teenager with a Eurorail pa.s.s, you'd blown almost all your dough on hash in Amsterdam, and this slightly chewy slab of rumsteck rumsteck (rump steak) was the first substantial meal in days . . . a single wild strawberry, so flavorful that it nearly took your head off . . . your grandmother's lasagne . . . a first sip of stolen ice-cold beer on a hot summer night, hands smelling of crushed fireflies . . . leftover pork fried rice, because your girlfriend at the time always seemed to have some in the fridge . . . steamer clams, dripping with drawn b.u.t.ter from your first family vacation at the Jersey sh.o.r.e . . . rice pudding from the Fort Lee Diner . . . bad Cantonese when you were a kid and Chinese was still exotic and wonderful and you still thought fortune cookies were fun . . . dirty-water hot dogs . . . a few beads of caviar, licked off a nipple . . . (rump steak) was the first substantial meal in days . . . a single wild strawberry, so flavorful that it nearly took your head off . . . your grandmother's lasagne . . . a first sip of stolen ice-cold beer on a hot summer night, hands smelling of crushed fireflies . . . leftover pork fried rice, because your girlfriend at the time always seemed to have some in the fridge . . . steamer clams, dripping with drawn b.u.t.ter from your first family vacation at the Jersey sh.o.r.e . . . rice pudding from the Fort Lee Diner . . . bad Cantonese when you were a kid and Chinese was still exotic and wonderful and you still thought fortune cookies were fun . . . dirty-water hot dogs . . . a few beads of caviar, licked off a nipple . . .

Nostalgia aside, good ingredients are not to be discounted. One tends to remember vividly one's first really fresh piece of fish, one's first taste of top-quality beluga, an early encounter with truffles, fresh baby peas right out of the pod, a perfectly marbled prime cote de boeuf cote de boeuf, an introduction to fresh morels, or stuff you'd just never tried before and maybe didn't even know existed, like a hunk of raw o-toro o-toro, or sea urchin roe. I wanted more memories like these. New ones. I knew time was running out. I was forty-four years old and I'd been basically nowhere. I was becoming a little slower as a line cook, a little bit crankier. When I got swamped on my station, when it seemed sometimes like every order was coming off my saute station, I began thinking it a conspiracy. The waiters were sandbagging me! Loading up Pops with saute items, just to see him sweat. Listen to his knees snap crackle pop when he bends down to that lowboy. Look at him, snarling and cursing under his breath he's losing it! While my Mexican carnales carnales soldiered quietly on under mountains of orders, I would rail at the powers that put me in this awful spot. It was getting to me: the pressure, the relentless nature of feeding that bottomless pit of hungry public, of every day sending out food into the Great Unseen Maw in the dining room, only to have to do it again and again, with no end ever in sight. Even my expediting was suffering. I hate admitting this. Because when you're done as an expediter, you are truly fit only for the glue factory (or a consultant's job). The realization came on a busy night at Les Halles, when after screaming loudly, 'Fire table eight!' my Bengali runner, Mohammed, gently nudged my arm and whispered tactfully, even pityingly, 'No, Chef, it's table seven.' I almost cried. My eyes actually filled. I was losing it. soldiered quietly on under mountains of orders, I would rail at the powers that put me in this awful spot. It was getting to me: the pressure, the relentless nature of feeding that bottomless pit of hungry public, of every day sending out food into the Great Unseen Maw in the dining room, only to have to do it again and again, with no end ever in sight. Even my expediting was suffering. I hate admitting this. Because when you're done as an expediter, you are truly fit only for the glue factory (or a consultant's job). The realization came on a busy night at Les Halles, when after screaming loudly, 'Fire table eight!' my Bengali runner, Mohammed, gently nudged my arm and whispered tactfully, even pityingly, 'No, Chef, it's table seven.' I almost cried. My eyes actually filled. I was losing it.

What the h.e.l.l. I'd eat my way around the world, right? Fearlessly, I'd look for magic in Vietnam, Cambodia, Portugal, Mexico, Morocco and anywhere else that occurred to me. There would be nothing I would not try. Okay: one thing. My wife, Nancy, already unhappy about me leaving her behind while I flew around the world, told me flat out, 'I hear of you scooping the brains out of some cute little monkey's head while he's still alive? It's divorce court. Got it? And try to lay off the dog and cat. You do still have a conscience, right?'

No problem. The novelty value of tormenting a little monkey (not to mention the risks of some simian spongiform bacteria) did not, to my mind, offset the cruelty factor. I don't know if that even qualifies as a meal.

I would, however, revisit j.a.pan. Do it right this time and try that poisonous blowfish I'd heard about. In France, I'd eat an oyster, fresh out of the water, from the same oyster beds where I'd had my first as a kid and see if there wasn't some magic to be had there. I wanted to find out if all my cogitating on memory and context was on target or not. I'd go to rural Mexico, to the little town in the state of Puebla, where all my cooks come from, maybe have their moms cook for me, find out how come they're all so d.a.m.n good at what they do, what the roots of their particular kind of magic powers might be.

When I told my boss at Les Halles, Jose, about my plans, and that we'd be needing a new chef de cuisine while I bopped around the globe, there was not the weeping and rending of garments and the 'Oh my G.o.d! No! Noooo! What will we do without you?' that I'd been secretly hoping for. The first words out of his mouth were, 'Ah! Then you must go to Portugal. I will call my mother and tell her to start fattening a pig.' I cleared my schedule, prepared to cut myself loose from everyone and everything I knew and loved.

Full Disclosure Here's the part where I reluctantly admit to something about which I'm deeply conflicted even ashamed. I'd lie about it if I could. But you're probably going to find out about it anyway, so here's a little preemptive truth telling: Almost the entire time I would travel, there would be, somewhere in the vicinity, at least two people with digital cameras. They'd be wearing headphones. One set of phones would be recording, or at least monitoring, every word, curse, and belch issuing from my mouth. When I went to the bathroom, I would have to remember to turn off the little clip-on mike attached to the transmitter on my hip. I had, you see, sold my soul to the devil.

'We'll follow you around,' said the nice man from the television production company. 'No lighting equipment, no boom mikes, no script. It'll be very in.o.btrusive. Just be yourself.'

'It'll be good for the book,' said my editor.

'We'll take twenty-two episodes,' said G.o.d help me the Food Network.

Okay, it would make things easier. In Russia, for instance, when I wanted access to a Mafiya nightclub, it helped to have television producers from New York Times Television making the arrangements. The words New York Times New York Times, particularly when traveling in Communist countries like Vietnam, or in de facto dictators.h.i.+ps like Cambodia, tend to open doors that might otherwise remain closed.

But you want to know what it's like making television? Even a completely nonscripted, cinema verite, make-it-up-as-you-go-along travel and food show, where you do whatever the h.e.l.l you want and hope the cameras can keep up? It's being poked in the head with shotgun mikes so often, you feel like the leading lady in a late 1970s Ron Jeremy flick. There is no halfway. You don't, it turns out, sell out a little bit. Maybe you thought you were just going to show a little ankle okay, maybe a little calf, too but in the end, you're taking on the whole front line of the Pittsburgh Steelers on a dirty s.h.a.g carpet.

There's a punch line to a joke 'We've already established you're a wh.o.r.e. Now we're just haggling over price' that fairly describes my predicament. I sold my a.s.s. When I signed on the dotted line, any pretense of virginity or reluctance of integrity (I don't even remember what that that is) vanished. It means when the shooter says, 'Wait a minute,' you wait to enter the restaurant, jump in the river, or light a cigarette, so he can get the shot. When they want you to enter the restaurant again, shake hands with the owner, tell him how delighted you are to be eating fish head at his establishment even though you just did that five minutes ago, when you meant it you do it. is) vanished. It means when the shooter says, 'Wait a minute,' you wait to enter the restaurant, jump in the river, or light a cigarette, so he can get the shot. When they want you to enter the restaurant again, shake hands with the owner, tell him how delighted you are to be eating fish head at his establishment even though you just did that five minutes ago, when you meant it you do it.

I've had a lot of fun tras.h.i.+ng Emeril and Bobby and the Food Network's stable of stars over the last few years. G.o.d, I hated their shows. Now I've gone over to the dark side, too. Watching Emeril bellowing catchphrases at his wildly barking seal-like studio audience, I find myself feeling empathy for the guy. Because I know, I think, how it happened. One sells one's soul in increments, slowly, over time. First, it's a simple travel show ('Good for the book!'). Next thing you know, you're getting dry-humped by an ex-wrestler on the Spice Channel.

I don't want you to think I don't like the camera crews that followed me around the world. As TV people go, they were pretty d.a.m.n cool. Most of them had been shooting doc.u.mentaries in hospital emergency rooms and trauma units before coming aboard my project, so they knew how to stay out of the way in crowded kitchens and how to behave around people with knives. They ate the same terrifying food. They stayed in the same at-times-septic hotels I did. They braved minefields and roadblocks to get their shots. They stood close, cameras running while, drunk off my a.s.s, I wildly and irresponsibly discharged automatic weapons and high explosives. They froze when I froze, suffered the antimalarial drugs, the food poisoning, the bugs, the vegetarians that I had to. When challenged by locals to contests involving tequila, they did not let the side down. As I, from time to time, crawled, vomiting into some drainage culvert, so did they. They, too, were showered with blood, watched pig-fisting, throat-slitting, force-feeding and filmed every second. They managed to shoot all day in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen without causing injury to themselves or others. And they did it with considerable good humor. But when you hear me carping about how lonely and sick and frightened I am, holed up in some Cambodian backwater, know that there's a television crew a few doors down the hall. That changes things.

All told, however, the writing of this book has been the greatest adventure of my life. Cooking professionally is hard. Traveling around the world, writing, eating, and making a television show is relatively easy. It beats brunch.

Where Food Comes From

'The pig is getting fat. Even as we speak,' said Jose months later. From the very moment I informed my boss of my plans to eat my way around the world, another living creature's fate was sealed on the other side of the Atlantic. True to his word, Jose had called his mother in Portugal and told her to start fattening a pig.

I'd heard about this pig business before anytime Jose would hear me waxing poetic about my privileged position as one of the few vendors of old-school hooves and snouts, French charcuterie and offal. Chefs adore this kind of stuff. We like it when we can motivate our customers to try something they might previously have found frightening or repellent. Whether it's a stroke to our egos or a genuine love of that kind of rustic, rural, French bra.s.serie soul food (the real stuff not that tricked-out squeeze-bottle chicanery with the plumage), we love it. It makes us proud and happy to see our customers sucking the marrow out of veal bones, munching on pig's feet, picking over oxtails or beef cheeks. It gives us purpose in life, as if we've done something truly good and laudable that day, brought beauty, hope, enlightenment to our dining rooms and a quiet sort of honor to ourselves and our profession.

'First, we fatten the pig . . . for maybe six months. Until he is ready. Then in the winter it must be the winter, so it is cold enough we kill the pig. Then we cook the heart and the tenderloin for the butchers. Then we eat. We eat everything. We make hams and sausage, stews, ca.s.seroles, soup. We use' Jose stressed this 'every part.'

'It's kind of a big party,' interjected Armando, the preeminent ball-busting waiter and senior member of our Portuguese contingent at Les Halles.

'You've heard of this?' I asked skeptically. I like Armando and he's a great waiter but what he says is sometimes at variance with the truth. He likes it when middle-aged ladies from the Midwest come to the restaurant and ask for me, wanting to get their books signed. He sidles over and whispers in confidential tones, 'You know, of course, that the chef is gay? My longtime companion . . . a wonderful man. Wonderful.' That's Armando's idea of fun.

'Oh yes!' he said. 'Everyone does it in my town. Maybe once a year. It's a tradition. It goes back to the Middle Ages. Long time.'

'And you eat everything?'

'Everything. The blood. The guts. The ears. Everything. It's delicious.' Armando looked way too happy remembering this. 'Wait! We don't eat everything. The pig's bladder? We blow it up, inflate it, and we make a soccer ball for the children.'

'What's with the soccer ball?' I asked David, also Portuguese, our bar manager and a trusted friend. He shrugged, not wanting to contradict his countryman.

'That's in the north,' he said. 'But I've seen it.'

'You've seen it?'

David nodded and gave me a warning look that said, You don't know what you're in for. 'There's a lot of blood. And the pig makes a lot of noise when you . . . you know . . . kill it. A lot lot of noise.' of noise.'

'You can hear the screams in the next village,' Armando said, grinning.

'Yeah? Well, I'll bring you the bladder, bro,' I said, deciding right then and there that I was going to do this, travel to Portugal and take part in a medieval pig slaughter. Listening to Jose's description, it sounded kinda cool. A bunch of villagers hanging out, drinking, killing things and eating them. There was no mistaking Jose's enthusiasm for the event. I was in.

Understand this about me and about most chefs, I'm guessing: For my entire professional career, I've been like Michael Corleone in The G.o.dfather, Part II The G.o.dfather, Part II, ordering up death over the phone, or with a nod or a glance. When I want meat, I make a call, or I give my sous-chef, my butcher, or my charcutier a look and they make the call. On the other end of the line, my version of Rocco, Al Neary, or Lucca Brazzi either does the job himself or calls somebody else who gets the thing done. Sooner or later, somewhere whether in the Midwest, or upstate New York, or on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, or as far away as Scotland something dies. Every time I have picked up the phone or ticked off an item on my order sheet, I have basically caused a living thing to die. What arrives in my kitchen, however, is not the bleeding, still-warm body of my victim, eyes open, giving me an accusatory look that says, 'Why me, Tony? Why me?' I don't have to see that part. The only evidence of my crimes is the relatively antiseptic boxed or plastic-wrapped appearance of what is inarguably meat. I had never, until I arrived on a farm in northern Portugal, had to look my victim in the face much less watched at close range as he was slaughtered, disemboweled, and broken down into const.i.tuent parts. It was only fair, I figured, that I should have to watch as the blade went in. I'd been vocal, to say the least, in my advocacy of meat, animal fat, and offal. I'd said some very unkind things about vegetarians. Let me find out what we're all talking about, I thought. I would learn really learn where food actually comes from.

It's always a tremendous advantage when visiting another country, especially when you're as uninformed and ill-prepared as I was, to be the guest of a native. You can usually cut right to the good stuff, live close to the ground, experience the place from a perspective as close to local as you're likely to get. And Jose Meirelles makes the word foodie foodie or or gourmet gourmet woefully inadequate. Jose comes from a large family that, like its prodigal son, loves food. He went to New York, became a cook, and chef, and then made a rather spectacular success in the restaurant business. Jose may be quite comfortable, even pa.s.sionate, about dining at Duca.s.se or swapping recipes with Boulud or cooking at James Beard House or trying out hot new restaurants in Manhattan, but you've got to see him at his family's dinner table, eating woefully inadequate. Jose comes from a large family that, like its prodigal son, loves food. He went to New York, became a cook, and chef, and then made a rather spectacular success in the restaurant business. Jose may be quite comfortable, even pa.s.sionate, about dining at Duca.s.se or swapping recipes with Boulud or cooking at James Beard House or trying out hot new restaurants in Manhattan, but you've got to see him at his family's dinner table, eating bucho recheado bucho recheado (stuffed pig's stomach), to see him at his happiest and most engaged. From my vantage point behind the line at Les Halles, I was always intrigued by the look of pure joy on Jose's face as he'd plow through my kitchen (usually leaving a wake of destruction), hurriedly a.s.sembling a Portuguese-style ca.s.soulet: a heap of (stuffed pig's stomach), to see him at his happiest and most engaged. From my vantage point behind the line at Les Halles, I was always intrigued by the look of pure joy on Jose's face as he'd plow through my kitchen (usually leaving a wake of destruction), hurriedly a.s.sembling a Portuguese-style ca.s.soulet: a heap of boudin noir boudin noir, chorizo, pig's feet, pork belly and jowl with white beans baked in a pastry-topped earthenware dish. I was disarmed and bemused by his insistence on buying salt cod for our brandade de morue brandade de morue only from the Ironbound section of Newark, where there's a large Portuguese population, and presumably they know about such things. His mania about top-quality fresh codfish (I'd never seen Jose yell until a seafood purveyor sent us cod that he found wanting), his love of high-test canned tuna in olive oil, white anchovies, costly sea salt, specially chiffonaded kale, dried chorizo, fresh and only fresh, wildly expensive whole c.u.min seeds from Kalyustan all this made my food costs jump every time Jose walked through the door. He'd insist I buy specialty items for a rigorously French bra.s.serie, things I'd have no idea what to do with; he'd get sudden compulsions to call D'Artagnan in the middle of the night and buy whole free-range pigs. For the first few months working with the guy, it used to irritate me. What was I going to do with all that quince jelly and weird sheep's milk cheese? What the h.e.l.l is Superbock beer? Jose would go into these fugue states, and the next thing you knew, I'd have buckets of salted codfish tongues soaking in my walk-in. You know how hard it is to sell codfish tongues on Park Avenue? only from the Ironbound section of Newark, where there's a large Portuguese population, and presumably they know about such things. His mania about top-quality fresh codfish (I'd never seen Jose yell until a seafood purveyor sent us cod that he found wanting), his love of high-test canned tuna in olive oil, white anchovies, costly sea salt, specially chiffonaded kale, dried chorizo, fresh and only fresh, wildly expensive whole c.u.min seeds from Kalyustan all this made my food costs jump every time Jose walked through the door. He'd insist I buy specialty items for a rigorously French bra.s.serie, things I'd have no idea what to do with; he'd get sudden compulsions to call D'Artagnan in the middle of the night and buy whole free-range pigs. For the first few months working with the guy, it used to irritate me. What was I going to do with all that quince jelly and weird sheep's milk cheese? What the h.e.l.l is Superbock beer? Jose would go into these fugue states, and the next thing you knew, I'd have buckets of salted codfish tongues soaking in my walk-in. You know how hard it is to sell codfish tongues on Park Avenue?

And he talked continually about the pig slaughter as if it were the World Series, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and a Beatles reunion all rolled into one. I had to take his enthusiasm seriously. Not just because he's the boss but also because along with all that Portuguese stuff that would mysteriously arrive came food that even I knew to be good. Food I could identify and understand as being part of a tradition of glorious excess, French-style: fresh white asparagus, truffles in season, Cavaillon melons, fresh morels, translucent baby eels, Scottish wild hare, gooey, smelly, runny French cheeses, screamingly fresh turbot and Dover sole, yanked out of the Channel yesterday and flown (business cla.s.s, I think, judging from the price) to my kitchen doors. I had more than enough evidence that Jose knew how to eat. If he told me that killing and eating a whole pig was something I absolutely shouldn't and couldn't miss, I believed him. It's very hard to not be hungry after talking to Jose for any length of time.

So it was with a mixture of excitement, curiosity, and dread that I woke up on a cold, misty morning in Portugal and looked out the window of my room at orderly rows of leafless grapevines, the fires from distant hearths issuing smoke into a gray sky over the valley. Where I was staying was a bed-and-breakfast, a seventeenth-century quinta quinta (a private home turned country inn) about half a mile from the Meirelles farm. It was set back from a twisting country road, past an arbor, surrounded by fields and orange groves and mountains, looking in every way as it must have four hundred years ago. Three young women looked after a few guests. There was a chapel, and a large dark country kitchen with a constantly burning wood fire and a long table. A vast carbon-blackened hooded chimney allowed most of the smoke to escape. The predominant smell in Portugal, I had quickly found, is wood smoke. The only source of heat in the large house in my room, as well was a burning fire. When I'd arrived late the previous night, there was one going in my room, creating a nice toasty zone, just large enough to undress and climb into the high four-poster bed. Jose's family, in addition to their farm, have a home in nearby Amarante, and another residence in Oporto. (a private home turned country inn) about half a mile from the Meirelles farm. It was set back from a twisting country road, past an arbor, surrounded by fields and orange groves and mountains, looking in every way as it must have four hundred years ago. Three young women looked after a few guests. There was a chapel, and a large dark country kitchen with a constantly burning wood fire and a long table. A vast carbon-blackened hooded chimney allowed most of the smoke to escape. The predominant smell in Portugal, I had quickly found, is wood smoke. The only source of heat in the large house in my room, as well was a burning fire. When I'd arrived late the previous night, there was one going in my room, creating a nice toasty zone, just large enough to undress and climb into the high four-poster bed. Jose's family, in addition to their farm, have a home in nearby Amarante, and another residence in Oporto.

By the time I'd arrived here, I'd already gotten the picture that Portugal has plenty of good stuff to eat. I'd eaten head of pescada pescada (a sort of oversized whiting), roast kid goat cooked in an old wood-burning oven, the doors sealed with plaster (they used to be sealed with cow dung), an incredible octopus risotto, and, of course, (a sort of oversized whiting), roast kid goat cooked in an old wood-burning oven, the doors sealed with plaster (they used to be sealed with cow dung), an incredible octopus risotto, and, of course, bacalhau, bacalhau, bacalhau bacalhau, bacalhau, bacalhau (salted codfish). I'd spent a night in a roundhouse on a mountaintop in the Douro Valley, awakened in a torrential rainstorm to descend quickly (before the roads washed out) to a (salted codfish). I'd spent a night in a roundhouse on a mountaintop in the Douro Valley, awakened in a torrential rainstorm to descend quickly (before the roads washed out) to a quinta quinta at the bottom, where I had roast loin of pork, potatoes roasted in pork fat, and azeito cheese. I'd visited the open markets in Oporto, where I'd met fishwives whose skills with profanity would put any cook of my experience to shame. With Jose translating, I'd listened for a while to the back-and-forth between fishwives and customers, amazed that sixty-five-year-old ladies who looked like Martha Was.h.i.+ngton could make me blush. at the bottom, where I had roast loin of pork, potatoes roasted in pork fat, and azeito cheese. I'd visited the open markets in Oporto, where I'd met fishwives whose skills with profanity would put any cook of my experience to shame. With Jose translating, I'd listened for a while to the back-and-forth between fishwives and customers, amazed that sixty-five-year-old ladies who looked like Martha Was.h.i.+ngton could make me blush.

On the day of the slaughter, we drove to the Meirelles farm, a stone and mortar farmhouse with upstairs living quarters, downstairs kitchen and dining area and adjacent larder. Across a dirt drive were animal pens, smokehouse, and a sizable barn. Jose's father and cousin grow grapes, from which they make wine, and raise a few chickens, turkeys, geese, and pigs. A few hectares of grapevines and multiuse plots of land stretched over gracefully sloping fields beneath tree-covered hills and mountains, a few church spires and smoking chimneys just visible among leaves and branches.

It was early morning when I arrived, but there was already a large group a.s.sembled: Jose's brother Francisco, his other brother, also Francisco (remember the wedding scene in Goodfellas Goodfellas, where everybody's named Petey or Paul or Marie?), his mother, father, a.s.sorted other relatives, farmhands, women and children most of whom were already occupied with the early preparations for two solid days of cooking and eating. Standing by the barn were three hired a.s.sa.s.sins, itinerant slaughterers/butchers, who apparently knock off from their day jobs from time to time to practice their much-called-upon skills with pig killing and pork butchering. They were a likable bunch: a red-cheeked old man in vest and s.h.i.+rtsleeves, sporting a black brim hat and dapper mustache, two younger men in sweaters and waterproof boots. Looking amiable and unthreatening, they shook my hand over early-morning gla.s.ses of vinho verde vinho verde, a barely fermented white wine made from the family grapes.

Cousin Francisco positioned a sequence of bottle rockets and aerial bombs in the dirt outside the farmhouse and, one after the other, let them fly. The explosions rocked through the valley, announcing to all who could hear news of the imminent slaughter and meal to follow.

'Is that a warning to vegetarians?' I asked Jose.

'There are no vegetarians in Portugal,' he said.

The mustachioed man I took to be the chief a.s.sa.s.sin he was holding the knife, a nasty-looking blade with a slot in the middle and a wooden handle began his approach to the barn. Everyone joined in the expedition, a look of neither sadness nor glee on their faces. Only Jose's expression was readable. He was watching me, a wry smile on his face, curious, I was guessing, as to how I'd react to what was about to happen.

At the far end of the barn, a low door was opened into a small straw-filled pen. A monstrously large, aggressive-looking pig waggled and snorted as the crowd peered in. When he was joined in the confined s.p.a.ce by the three hired hands, none of them bearing food, he seemed to get the idea that nothing good was going to be happening anytime soon, and he began scrambling and squealing at tremendous volume.

I was already unhappy with what I was seeing. I'm causing this to happen, I kept thinking. This pig has been hand-fed for six months, fattened up, these murderous goons hired for me. Perhaps, had I said when Jose first suggested this blood feast, 'Uh no . . . I don't think so. I don't think I'll be able to make it this time around,' maybe the outcome for Porky here would have been different. Or would it have been? Why was I being so squeamish? This pig's number was up the second he was born. You can't milk a pig! n.o.body's gonna keep him as a pet! This is Portugal, for Chrissakes! This porker was boots and bacon from birth.

Still, he was my pig. I was responsible. For a guy who'd spent twenty-eight years serving dead animals and sneering at vegetarians, I was having an unseemly amount of trouble getting with the program. I had to suck it up. I could do this. There was already plenty in my life to feel guilty about. This would be just one more thing.