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June 29 - July 12, 2018
I bridled bitterly at the smothering chokehold of love and normalcy in my house—compared to the freedom enjoyed by my less-welllooked-after friends.
I’d wanted to become a junkie, after all, since I was twelve years old. Call it a character flaw—of which drugs were simply a manifestation, a petulant “fuck you” to my bourgeois parents, who’d committed the unpardonable sin of loving me.
I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy.
They circled each other still—waiting to identify a weakness—looking for somewhere and some way to strike. People jockeyed for position, cut each other’s throats over the most petty, nonsensical shit imaginable. This from the people who, it gradually began to dawn on me, actually ran the world.
I stayed home, avoiding bars, brothels, and even beaches for the rest of my time on the island. I’d had enough. Somewhere along the line, I’d stared Evil in the face and it had frightened me to my core. I don’t know whether it was something I saw on St. Barths—or in the mirror during the worst year of my life—but something had to change. I knew that now.
The simple fact is that I would be—and have always been—inadequate to the task of working in the kitchens of most of my friends, and it is something I will have to live with. It is also one of my greatest regrets.
It’s a little sad sometimes when I look out at a bookstore audience and see young fans of Kitchen Confidential, for whom the book was a validation of their worst natures. I understand it, of course. And I’m happy they like me.
Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.
I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.
Cooking has already become “cool.” So, maybe, it is now time to make the idea of not cooking “un-cool”—and, in the harshest possible ways short of physical brutality, drive that message home.
I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able—if called upon to do so—to make them a proper omelet in the morning. Surely that kind of civility and selflessness would be both good manners and good for the world. Perhaps omelet skills should be learned at the same time you learn to fuck.
Everyone should be able to roast a chicken. And they should be able to do it well.
The fundamentals of braising would serve all who learn them well—as simply learning how to make a beef bourguignon opens the door to countless other preparations.
What to do with bones (namely, make stock) and how to make a few soups—as a means of making efficient use of leftovers—is a lesson in frugality many will very possibly have to learn at some point in their lives.
People will continue to pay for quality. They will be less and less inclined, however, to pay for bullshit.
A future scenario where meat and bone would be used more as flavoring agents than as the main event, Chang proposed, would not necessarily be a bad thing.
It ain’t a counterculture, however, unless you’re “against” something. And the first thing to go, I hope, will be bullshit.
I believe that the great American hamburger is a thing of beauty, its simple charms noble, pristine. The basic recipe—ground beef, salt, and pepper, formed into a patty, grilled or seared on a griddle, then nestled between two halves of a bun, usually but not necessarily accompanied by lettuce, a tomato slice, and some ketchup—is, to my mind, un-improvable by man or God.
Call me crazy, call me idealistic, but you know what I believe? I believe that when you’re making hamburger for human consumption, you should at no time deem it necessary or desirable to treat its ingredients in ammonia. Or any cleaning product, for that matter.
In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product only to grinders who agree to not test their product for E. coli contamination—until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources.
McDonald’s and most other fast-food retailers test the finished products far more frequently than the people who sell the stuff to them—and much more aggressively than school systems. Which, while admirable (or at least judicious on their part), seems somehow wrong.
I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph—much less the same sentence. Unless you’re talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.
With the hot dog, there was always a feeling of implied consent. We always knew—or assumed—that whatever it was inside that snappy tube, it might contain anything, from 100 percent kosher beef to dead zoo animals or parts of missing Gambino family.
I’m beginning to think, in light of recent accounts, that we should, on balance, eat a little less meat.
I don’t want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them provably less delicious. And, often, less safe to eat.
A while ago, the guy behind the counter (and he sure as shit wasn’t called a “barista”) asked you for five bucks for a cup of coffee—any coffee—he’d better expect an argument, at least. Now? You wouldn’t blink. The entire valuation of coffee has changed while we weren’t looking.
A six-ounce tataki of real Wagyu steak, seared rare and sliced thinly, is about all you want or can eat in a sitting. It’s that rich. It’ll flood your head with so much fat you’ll quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. Even an eight-ounce “Kobe burger” made from real Wagyu would be an exercise in futility—and pretty disgusting.
everything new is old again. Only it’s 26 dollars now.
Order a Heineken in Portland or San Francisco—or just about anywhere, these days—and be prepared to be sneered at by some locavore beer-nerd, all too happy to tell you about some hoppy, malty, microbrewed concoction, redolent of strawberries and patchouli, that they’re making in a cellar nearby. Unless, of course, you opt for post-ironic retro—in which case, that “silo” of PBR will come with a cover charge and an asphyxiating miasma of hipness.
As any conscientious father knows in his bones, any remaining trace elements of coolness go right out the window from the second you lay eyes on your firstborn.
Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a “decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention.”
The essence of cool, after all, is not giving a fuck.
As my friend A. A. Gill points out, after your daughter reaches a certain age—like five—the most excruciating and embarrassing thing she could possibly imagine is seeing her dad in any way threatening to rock.
I was the star pupil at Lamaze class. If your water ever breaks at the supermarket and I’m nearby? I’m your boy. I know just what to do.
John F. Kennedy said something truly terrifying—guaranteed to make every parent’s blood run cold: “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.”
In the best-case scenario, you shouldn’t be intellectualizing what you’re eating while you’re eating it. You shouldn’t be noticing things at all. You should be pleasingly oblivious to the movements of the servers in the dining area and bus stations, only dimly aware of the passage of time. Taking pictures of your food as it arrives—or, worse, jotting down brief descriptions for your blog entry later—is missing the point entirely. You shouldn’t be forced to think at all. Only feel.
“For me … it wasn’t … enough,” he says cryptically. “I used to give a shit about God … but if God were to exist, I’d rather burn in hell. If he failed, he failed by putting the message in human hands. I guess I’m pretty pissed at God. The Crusades … Pol Pot … Hitler … Stalin. The same time all these terrible things were happening, people were bowing their heads and thanking God before they ate.”
The eye-searing “Kwanzaa Cake” clip on YouTube, of Sandra Lee doing things with store-bought angel food cake, canned frosting, and corn nuts, instead of being simply the unintentionally hilarious viral video it should be, makes me mad for all humanity. I. Just. Can’t. Help it.
