A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [131]
‘Jesus,’ I sputtered, ‘Keller coming to New York . . . That’s an act of aggression! That’s like Wyatt Earp coming to town. Everybody’s gonna be gunning for him. Who wants that kind of pressure? He’s already got it all. New Yorkers go to him! Why come here and have to put up with all the nonsense?’
Needless to say, when the new place opens its doors, every chef, critic, food writer, serious eater, and casual foodie in the city will have been hyperventilating for weeks. To say the restaurant will be ‘eagerly anticipated’ would be an egregious understatement. I cannot even imagine what will happen. I’m afraid. I’m afraid he’ll fail (if that should happen, it would be for reasons having nothing to do with food, of course). But more, I’m afraid he’ll succeed. I like the idea of having to travel to experience a French Laundry meal. The journey is part of the experience – or was for me – an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent, and the otherness of everything Keller. I liked looking out the window and seeing hills and countryside. I don’t know if I want to be able just to pick up the phone, make a reservation, and, sooner or later, simply hop in a cab and zip down to Columbus Circle. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca. That experience, like the French Laundry, should be a pilgrimage. Not that that will slow me down in the slightest when the new place opens its doors. See you there.
Haggis Rules
‘We’re number two—behind Tonga,’ said Simon, talking about Scotland’s position on the scoreboard recording the incidence of heart disease worldwide. ‘We’ve got to get that sorted out. Where is Tonga anyway? I’ve got to go there!’
The Scottish, Simon tells me, will deep-fry anything. To prove his point, he was taking me to a chip shop for some ‘suppers.’ We were decidedly not in Edinburgh. ‘Too European . . . too . . . English,’ sneered Simon. They put brown sauce on their fish and chips there, Simon revealed, an outraged look on his face just from remembering the brown home-brewed Kitchen Bouquet or GravyMaster concoction.
‘Brown sauce on fish and chips? No, no, no, no, no,’ said Simon. It’s malt vinegar all the way, and plenty of salt for Simon, a proud Glaswegian with a typically sardonic sense of humor. He’d been feeding me Guinness all day and showing me around Glasgow, and now it was time, he said, to visit a proper ‘chippie.’ We ate the traditional fish and chips first, a batter-dipped and deep-fried filet of cod – or more and more frequently, now that the cod population is in decline, haddock – usually served in either a paper cone or a plastic to-go container. ‘You got to get a good bit of salt on it,’ said Simon, following a very healthy sprinkling with a long squirt of malt vinegar. ‘I could eat bloody Elvis – if you put enough vinegar on him . . . S’ magic.’ The fish was great, the chips, as everywhere in the UK, were needlessly substandard, limp and soggy. Few chip shop owners bother to blanch their fries in low-temperature oil before frying, so they are never, ever crisp. The appropriate beverage for this kind of on-the-run Glaswegian repast, said Simon gravely, is Irn-Bru, the popular caffeine-jacked orange-tinted soft drink.
We were not really here to do the fish and chip thing. The real wonders, the full potential of the Scottish chip shop, lay somewhere deeper: deep-fried haggis with curry sauce. The crispy cigar-shaped tube of sheep guts and oatmeal (more on that later) was wonderful – the perfect late-night munchie food after a long session drinking Red Bull and vodka, pints of heavy, or Buckfast (a cheap screw-top wine: the Ripple of Scotland). The ‘king rib’ – whatever that might be – was delicious, though its actual relationship to ribs seemed in doubt. Prefried orders of haggis, meat pies, sausages, and fish filets were crowded next to one another under bulb-lighted glass, ready to be snapped up by hungry drinkers.
Everything, everything at the chip shop, went into the same hot oil. Carlo,