A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [99]
Hours ago, we returned from Smithfield Market, where we spent the early-morning hours looking at meat, poking at entrails, prodding carcasses, and waxing poetic about animal fat. The day began in a cellar pub at 6:00 a.m., the chef and I enjoying a hearty breakfast of Guinness and deviled kidneys, the room filled with meat cutters in white plastic helmets and long white lab coats. Now, standing over my table, Fergus is tired. He’s been up since God knows when, was at his restaurant for lunch service, and is now presiding over an elaborate procession of nearly everything on the menu for my dinner. There are surely better chefs in England, but Fergus is my favorite – he’s a hero to me, one righteous, solitary soul-surfing, daredevil motherfucker. I hesitate to mention that he’s struggling with Parkinson’s disease, because he was already a titan in my eyes, long before I knew. If there’s one real hero chef in this book, a man who deliberately put himself outside the pack, staked out a position, and then held it – against all comers – it’s Fergus Henderson, chef of what is maybe my favorite restaurant in the world: St. John, in the Smithfield area of London. Never has his country needed him more.
Years ago, when the prevailing wisdom among foodies dictated quaint, tiny, sculpted portions of brightly colored odd bits – light on the protein and heavy on the veg, Fergus was reveling in pig – pig fat, pig parts, and pig guts – his plates rustic-colored palettes of browns, beiges, and earth tones – maybe the occasional flash of green – simple, unassuming, unpretentious – and absolutely and unapologetically English.
While most of his contemporaries, newly empowered by Michelin stars and a suddenly food-crazed public, rushed to the squeeze bottle and the metal ring, to Japanese and French classics for inspiration, Fergus was alone on the hill, running up the Union Jack. He went to a neighborhood where nobody wanted to go, set up shop in an all-white abattoir-looking space down a seemingly uninviting alley, and began serving what he refers to as ‘nose to tail’ eating, a menu so astonishingly reactionary for its time, he might well – in another country – have been imprisoned for it. Today, while lesser mortals cower around their veggie plates in hemp sandals, cringing at the thought of contamination by animal product, St. John’s devotees – and there are a lot of them – flock to his plain, undecorated dining room to revel in roasted marrow, rolled spleen, grilled ox heart, braised belly, and fried pig’s tails.
It was a very ballsy position to take back in the early nineties – and it’s an even ballsier proposition today, when the Evil Axis Powers of Health Nazis, Vegetarian Taliban, European Union bureacrats, antismoking crystal worshipers, PETA fundamentalists, fast-food theme-restaurant moguls, and their sympathizers are consolidating their fearful hold on popular dining habits and practices.
Fergus is an exception to my general observations of chef behavior – as he’s an exception to nearly all the rules. Standing by my table, he lovingly, even serenely, describes the lovely little pig’s tail I’m about to eat and how much he’s sure I’ll like it.
‘This was a very noble pig,’ he says, looking like a thoroughly charming mad scientist in his white jacket and apron, his movements stiff, formal. He speaks quietly; shy, wry, sounding way too educated to be a chef, he’s the last guy in the world you’d picture as the proprietor of an establishment that celebrates nothing less than guts and glory.
These are dire times to be a chef who specializes in pork and offal. The EU has its eye on unpasteurized cheese, artisanal everything, shellfish, meat, anything