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By Root 688 0

me! Loading up Pops with sauté items, just to see him sweat. Listen to his knees snap crackle pop when he bends down to that lowboy. Look at him, snarling and cursing under his breath – he’s losing it! While my Mexican carnales soldiered quietly on under mountains of orders, I would rail at the powers that put me in this awful spot. It was getting to me: the pressure, the relentless nature of feeding that bottomless pit of hungry public, of every day sending out food into the Great Unseen Maw in the dining room, only to have to do it again and again, with no end ever in sight. Even my expediting was suffering. I hate admitting this. Because when you’re done as an expediter, you are truly fit only for the glue factory (or a consultant’s job). The realization came on a busy night at Les Halles, when after screaming loudly, ‘Fire table eight!’ my Bengali runner, Mohammed, gently nudged my arm and whispered tactfully, even pityingly, ‘No, Chef, it’s table seven.’ I almost cried. My eyes actually filled. I was losing it.

What the hell. I’d eat my way around the world, right? Fearlessly, I’d look for magic in Vietnam, Cambodia, Portugal, Mexico, Morocco – and anywhere else that occurred to me. There would be nothing I would not try. Okay: one thing. My wife, Nancy, already unhappy about me leaving her behind while I flew around the world, told me flat out, ‘I hear of you scooping the brains out of some cute little monkey’s head while he’s still alive? It’s divorce court. Got it? And try to lay off the dog and cat. You do still have a conscience, right?’

No problem. The novelty value of tormenting a little monkey (not to mention the risks of some simian spongiform bacteria) did not, to my mind, offset the cruelty factor. I don’t know if that even qualifies as a meal.

I would, however, revisit Japan. Do it right this time and try that poisonous blowfish I’d heard about. In France, I’d eat an oyster, fresh out of the water, from the same oyster beds where I’d had my first as a kid – and see if there wasn’t some magic to be had there. I wanted to find out if all my cogitating on memory and context was on target or not. I’d go to rural Mexico, to the little town in the state of Puebla, where all my cooks come from, maybe have their moms cook for me, find out how come they’re all so damn good at what they do, what the roots of their particular kind of magic powers might be.

When I told my boss at Les Halles, José, about my plans, and that we’d be needing a new chef de cuisine while I bopped around the globe, there was not the weeping and rending of garments and the ‘Oh my god! No! Noooo! What will we do without you?’ that I’d been secretly hoping for. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Ah! Then you must go to Portugal. I will call my mother and tell her to start fattening a pig.’ I cleared my schedule, prepared to cut myself loose from everyone and everything I knew and loved.

Full Disclosure

Here’s the part where I reluctantly admit to something about which I’m deeply conflicted – even ashamed. I’d lie about it if I could. But you’re probably going to find out about it anyway, so here’s a little preemptive truth telling: Almost the entire time I would travel, there would be, somewhere in the vicinity, at least two people with digital cameras. They’d be wearing headphones. One set of phones would be recording, or at least monitoring, every word, curse, and belch issuing from my mouth. When I went to the bathroom, I would have to remember to turn off the little clip-on mike attached to the transmitter on my hip. I had, you see, sold my soul to the devil.

‘We’ll follow you around,’ said the nice man from the television production company. ‘No lighting equipment, no boom mikes, no script. It’ll be very inobtrusive. Just be yourself.’

‘It’ll be good for the book,’ said my editor.

‘We’ll take twenty-two episodes,’ said – God help me – the Food Network.

Okay, it would make things easier. In Russia, for instance, when I wanted access to a Mafiya nightclub, it helped to have television producers from New York Times Television