A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [132]
‘Careful,’ said Simon. ‘Inside, it’s bloody napalm.’
Mmmm. I like grease. I like chocolate. And I like sugar. After addressing any concerns about potential mandibular or maxillary facial damage by allowing the thing to cool down a bit, Simon sawed off a half and presented it to me. It was still tongue-searingly hot – and not bad at all. Simon flashed me an evil smile and enjoyed telling me what was next. ‘Deep-fried pizza?’ I said, ‘Oh . . . I don’t know . . . That’s maybe . . . I don’t know, it seems somehow . . . unnatural.’ I had a hard time believing that anyone would even consider such an atrocity. Sure enough, Carlo took a cold slice of premade frozen pizza, dipped it cheese side down into the batter, and dropped it into the all-purpose trough of grease.
‘Not bad,’ I said.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Simon as I made to leave. ‘There’s this one thingy we have to try.’ He told a skeptical-looking Carlo to drop a pickled egg into the batter. We were breaking new culinary ground.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t . . . know about this.’
‘This is where my granny would go “Holy Mary, mother of God,”’ said Simon, taking a bite and handing me the rest. It was edible. I think one’s enjoyment of the chip shop’s more esoteric delights has a direct relationship to the amount of alcohol consumed prior to eating. Hot, salty, crunchy, and portable, the previously awful-sounding collection of greasy delights can become a Garden of Eden of heart-clogging goodness when you’re in a drunken stupor, hungering for fried snacks. At that precise moment, nothing could taste better.
Glasgow has a working-class vibe and the familiar feel of parts of Brooklyn or the Bronx. In many ways, it’s the antidote to everywhere else in the world, a city filled with gruff, no-bullshit, often very funny citizens with impenetrable but beautiful accents. On my way into town on the train, I fell asleep near a large group of Glaswegian football fans. When I woke, for a few disconcerting minutes, I thought, listening to the people talking and shouting around me, that I’d somehow stayed on the train too long, maybe slipped across the sea to Lithuania or Latvia or Finland. Only the repeated exclamations of ‘Fook!’ and ‘Shite’ brought me back to the correct time and place. (Note to travelers: Your choice of football team is an important one in Glasgow. Generally speaking, it’s a Catholic versus Protestant thing, I think. Aligning yourself with one team over the other is a ‘once in, never out’ lifelong commitment. They take their footie seriously around these parts. It’s a good idea to sound out one’s friends carefully before saying what might well be the wrong thing.)
Edinburgh is, in my opinion, one of the most strikingly beautiful cities in the world. There’s a castle sitting on top of a big rock promontory right in the middle of town. The place drips with history, a crowded tangle of cobblestone streets, ancient buildings, beautiful monuments, none of which weigh the town down. It’s got good pubs, and bright, shrewd, very sophisticated, and often lavishly educated folks. I love it there (though I feel more at home in Glasgow).
This is mean of me, because I’m not going to give you its name – and I’m certainly not gonna tell you where it is – or next time I go, there’ll be a bunch of ‘bloody Yanks’ at the bar – but a friend of mine took me to his local awhile back, on a narrow cobblestone street in Edinburgh. My friend writes very fine novels set in the city, and his fictional hero, a mildly alcoholic civil servant, hangs out at this very real pub – in between murders. If there is a perfect place in the world to drink beer, this is it. It’s a modest, unassuming corner pub with a small sign and smoked windows. One can’t see the interior from the street. Just inside the door are an ancient small bar, weathered wood floors, hand-pumped beers