A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [119]
But TV makes its own rules. When I get back to the Bao Dai Villas, still reeling from the feast, they’re preparing something for me in the kitchen. Chris is still out of the game for a while. (In coming weeks, he became thin and pale, unable to eat, constantly feeling ill.) But Lydia has arranged for a meal of the dreaded bird’s nest soup.
‘You’ve been dreaming of bird’s nest soup,’ she begins.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I say, interrupting her. ‘I don’t give a fuck about bird’s nest soup. I thought this was settled . . . I’m absolutely stuffed. I’m feeling a little seasick from the trip back. Please don’t ask me to choke down bird’s nest soup. I just had one of the great meals of my life. Don’t ruin it. Please.’
But Lydia’s like a dog with a bone between its teeth when she gets a concept in mind. She’s shot a lot of odd bits of film, close-ups, kaleidoscopic scenes on ‘progressive scan,’ which she’s convinced, after some additional Apocalypse Now-type footage of me lying in bed, shot from behind a slowly revolving ceiling fan, will make hilarious viewing.
‘You’ve been dreaming about bird’s nest soup,’ she begins again, undeterred. ‘It’s the dream sequence.’
Far be it from me to stand in the way of art. I like Lydia. At the end of the day, I always end up doing pretty much whatever she asks. Looks like I’m eating bird’s nest soup. And not just any bird’s nest soup. Bird’s nest soup from the same kitchen that put Chris on his back for the last twenty-four hours.
What the hell is in bird’s nest soup? Bird’s nest, for one. After cooking, it has the flavor, consistency, and appearance of overcooked angel-hair pasta or cellophane noodles, slightly transluscent and, overall, pretty inoffensive. The chunks are the problem. Bird’s nest soup is made by hacking up a whole rock dove (pigeon), putting the meat, bones and all, into a drained coconut, and then cooking it with the soaked nest, an assortment of Chinese medicinal herbs, dates, scallions, ginger, and the swallow’s eggs. The coconut milk is poured back in and the whole thing is steamed for four hours.
It’s disgusting. The nest tastes fine. The broth has a sweet-and-sour taste that’s not too bad. But I just am not ready for the chunks. Not after my enormous seafood lunch on the island. Not ever. I struggle with chopsticks to pick my way through all the hard-cooked eggs, slurp strands of nest dutifully, if unenthusiastically, managing to gnaw the meat off a few stringy bits of thigh and breast. But when the pigeon’s head, beak, eyes, and all, comes popping up between the eggs and dates and bones and the rubbery sheets of coconut meat peeling off the shell, I have had enough. Linh and Dongh are digging into theirs as if they, too, have not just wiped out a monster-sized seafood feast. I eat as much as I can and hurry back to my room to lie under the mosquito netting and groan and toss, feeling like I’m going to die.
Two hours ago, I was dancing on the moon. Now? The horror. The horror.
West Coast
San Francisco, as its residents like to remind you, is nothing like Los Angeles. Anytime a snide, wise-ass New Yorker like myself starts slagging California, someone points out that ‘San Francisco is different.’ It’s pretty. There are hills. Unlike LA, you can, on occasion, actually hail a cab by sticking a hand out in the street. Other than New York, it’s probably got more talented chefs, and a more vibrant culinary scene, than any other American city. A good argument could be made that the whole renaissance in American restaurant cooking emanated outward from San Francisco, starting with Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower. It’s got a shabby, bohemian appeal, a rich tradition of bad behavior, good local ingredients. ‘You’ll love