A Cook's Tour (42 page)

     I’m leaving Vietnam soon, and yet I’m yearning for it already. I grab a stack of damp dong off my nightstand, get dressed, and head for the market. There’s a lot I haven’t tried.

     I’m still here, I tell myself.

     I’m still here.

Perfect

The whole concept of the ‘perfect meal’ is ludicrous.

     ‘Perfect,’ like ‘happy,’ tends to sneak up on you. Once you find it – like Thomas Keller says – it’s gone. It’s a fleeting thing, ‘perfect,’ and, if you’re anything like me, it’s often better in retrospect. When you’re shivering under four blankets in a Moroccan hotel room, the perfect meal can be something no more exotic than breakfast at Barney Greengrass back in New York – the one you had four months ago. Your last Papaya King hot dog takes on golden, even mythic, proportions when remembered from a distance.

     I’m writing this, these words, from a beach chair somewhere in the French West Indies. My hand is actually scrawling in wet black ink across a yellow legal pad. I’m not here to eat. I’m here to write, and relax, untroubled by phone calls, shoes and socks, visitors, E-mails, or obligations of any kind. I’m here because I’ve been on the road for over a year and I want desperately to stay put, to dig in, to remain in one place and maybe reacquaint myself with my wife.

     I’ve been coming to this beach for a long time. The first time I visited, back in the eighties, I was still kicking dope, and the blood-warm water felt cold on my skin. My wife and I honeymooned here, blowing every cent of wedding loot on a two-week kamikaze vacation, which left us tanned, happy, totally in love with the island – and utterly broke. Down here, I like to think that I’m not the brutish, obsessive, blustering blowhard control freak, Chef Tony; nor the needy, neurotic, eager-to-please, talk-in-sound-bites Writer Tony – but the relatively calm, blissed-out, sunstroked, amiable Husband Tony – the nicest version of me Nancy is likely to see for forty days at a clip.

     After a few lazy hours bobbing around in the warm, gin-clear turquoise water, and dozing on the beach, Nancy was reading me the police blotter from the local paper.

A man, ‘G,’ from Saint Peters, was detained last night on the Pondfill Road. A gentleman from Domenica complained that ‘G’ had mistreated him with a pair of nail clippers after a dispute over a game of dominoes at the Dinghy Dock Bar. Dutch side police arrived at the scene and gave ‘G’ a stern warning and he was released. Two youths from Back Street, ‘P’ and ‘D’, were arrested after stealing a gold chain from Kun Shi Jewelers on the Old Street. The youths asked to see a chain in the store, then ran away without paying for it. They were arrested at the bus stop on the Bush Road as they tried to make their escape by bus.

     ‘Jesus,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s a crime wave.’

     A while ago, I looked up from my pad, wiped the sweat out of my eyes, and, after consulting my watch, turned to Nancy and said, ‘Hungry?’ She said yes, as I knew she would. We’re creatures of habit down here. We have a routine. That meant a short walk across the hot sand to a thatch-roofed hut with a smoking barbecue grill, a rudimentary bar with five or six kinds of liquor, and two coolers of iced Caribs, Red Stripes, and baby Heinekens. Gus, the proprietor, has known us since 1984, and he had a pretty good idea what we wanted. By the time we ducked under the palm fronds into the shade, he’d already cracked two Caribes.

     I ordered the barbecued ribs. Nancy went for the cheeseburger. The service at Gus’s is never quick. Our order took about half an hour – normal waiting time on this island. But, uncharacteristically, I wasn’t impatient at all. I didn’t fidget. I didn’t look nervously around. I didn’t listen for the telltale sounds of a spatula lifting Nancy’s burger off the grill – or the bell signaling an order was ready. I knew Keesha, the woman working the grill, and was aware that she did things at her own pace. I didn’t care how long it took. I was happy to wait, drinking the beer in the shade of Gus’s makeshift frond-covered shelter, sand between my toes, hair still wet from the sea, Nancy looking brown and happy and a little bit drunk across from me.

     My ribs were tender, slightly crispy on the outside and seasoned with the same adobo spice that Gus puts on everything. If the ribs were marinated in something before grilling, I knew not what. Nor did I care. Any critical sensibilities had long ago been put on hold. Nancy’s cheeseburger was small, cooked completely through, and topped with a single Kraft cheese slice and a too-large bun, also seasoned with the ubiquitous adobo. She never finishes her food, so I knew that I’d get at least a bite. Both plates were white – plastic, garnished with soggy french fries – just as I’d expected them to be. Gus’s new Shaggy CD played on the sound system for at least the fourth time that day. It will, of course, remain the music from this time on the island. From now on, that CD will always and forever bring me right back here to this time and place, the taste of crispy pork and adobo seasoning, Gus’s Beach Bar, the look on Nancy’s face as she sighed distractedly, yawned, stretched, and then tossed one of my rib bones to a stray dog that’d been lurking by our table. The dog knew the routine.

     I’ve learned something on the road. It doesn’t do to waste. Even here – I use everything.

– August 2001

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to: Karen Rinaldi, Joel Rose, Rosemarie Morse, Kim Witherspoon, Panio Gianopoulos, Lydia Tenaglia, Chris Collins, Matt Barbato, Alberto Orso, “Global” Alan Deutsch, Bree Fitzgerald, Michiko Zento, Shinji Nohara, Dinh Linh, Madame Ngoc, Khoum Mang Kry, the incredible Zamir Gotta, Scott Leadbetter, Simon McMillan, Lu Barron, Edilberto Perez and family, Martin Vallejo, Abdou Boutabi, Luis and Virginia Irizar, Chris Bourdain, Jose Meirelles and family, Philippe Lajaunie, Colin and Isabella Cawdor, Mark Stanton, Abdelfettah and Naomi, Jamie Byng, Fergus Henderson, Gordon Ramsay, Thomas Keller, Juan Mari Arzak, Dan Cohen, Kim Martin, Liane Thompson, Christian Gwinn, Dan Halpern, Anya Rosenberg, Sarah Burns, Scott Bryan, Eric Ripert, Michael Ruhlman, Mark Peel, Tracy Westmoreland, and all the people who helped me on the way.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN is the author of
Kitchen Confidential
, two satirical thrillers,
Bone in the Throat
and
Gone Bamboo
, and the urban historical
Typhoid Mary
. A twenty-eight-year veteran of professional kitchens, he is currently the ‘Executive Chef’ at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan – meaning he gets to swan around in a chef’s jacket taking credit for others’ toil. He lives – and always will live – in New York City.

By the same author

Medium Raw

No Reservations

The Nasty Bits

Typhoid Mary

Les Halles Cookbook

Bobby Gold

Kitchen Confidential

Bone in the Throat

Gone Bamboo

Copyright © 2001 by Anthony Bourdain

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

Whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief

Quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address

Bloomsbury, 175 fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have changed the names of some of the individuals

and some of the restaurants that are part of my story.

Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London

Cataloging in Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 1-58234-140-0 (hardcover)

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2001

This e-book edition published in 2010

E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-517-6

www.bloomsburyusa.com