Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [123]
'I'm sure you want to shower, maybe rest for a while,' said Philippe, before heading back to Les Halles. 'Can you find your way to the restaurant?' I was pretty sure I could.
After a long shower in the short, deep apartment bathtub, I managed to find my way back to Les Halles, where I was shown around and introduced. Frederic Mardel was the chef, from Aquitaine by way of Bora-Bora. His chefs de partie, Hiroyoshi Baba of Japan, Delma Sumeda Elpitiya of Sri Lanka and Mo Ko Ko of Myanmar were gracious in the extreme. Fortunately, the common language in the kitchen was French, which I found, to my surprise, that I could still speak and understand.
I had been worried about this moment; I'd been apprehensive about invading another chef's kitchen. We tend to get our backs up with the arrival of interlopers, and though it may have been nice to be held up as some sort of benchmark for the Les Halles organization, I knew how I'd have felt if the chef from say, the Washington or Miami branch came swanning into my kitchen, wanting to show me how the big boys do it. Frederic was a friendly and gracious host, however, and like the rest of the crew, had never been to New York. I was a curiosity, as strange to them as they were to me.
The kitchen was small and spotless, with dangerously low-range hoods for a 6-foot-4 guy like me. A grate-covered canal ran around the floor beneath each station, with a current of constantly flowing water washing away any detritus that might fall from cutting boards. Containers were all space-saving square in shape, and the counters were low to the ground. I put on my whites, unwrapped my knives and hung around the kitchen for a while, watching food go out, taking it all in, making small talk with the crew, aware of a persistent throbbing behind my eyes, an unpleasant constriction around my temples, a feeling that I was somehow not getting enough oxygen.
Beat from the flight, I only stayed a few hours that night, until at 10 P.M. Tokyo time, my brain thoroughly poached with jet lag, I slunk back to the apartment to collapse.
I woke up at 5 A.M., hungry, put on a pullover, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, black elk-skin cowboy boots that had seen better days, and a suit-cut leather jacket that Steven had picked up used for me at a flea market. I was ready for adventure.
Breakfast.
At first, I didn't have the nerve. I wandered Roppongi's early-morning streets, tortured by the delicious smells emanating from the many businessmen's noodle shops, intimidated by the crowds. Japanese salary men sat cheek-to-jowl, happily slurping down bowls of soba. I didn't want to stare. I didn't want to offend. I was acutely aware of how freakish and un-Japanese I looked, with my height, in my boots and leather jacket. The prospect of pushing aside the banner to one of these places, sliding back the door and stepping inside, then squeezing on to a stool at a packed counter and trying to figure out how and what to order was a little frightening. One couldn't enter a place, change one's mind and then creep away. The prospect of being the center of attention at this tender hour, with the capillaries in my brain shriveled from all the beers on the flight, and the jet lag even worse than it had been the day before - I just couldn't handle it. I wandered the streets, gaping, my stomach growling, looking for somewhere, anywhere to sit down and have coffee, something to eat.
God help me, I settled for Starbucks. At least, I saw from the street, they allowed smoking. It was drizzling outside by now, and I was grateful for the refuge, if ashamed of myself. I sipped coffee (when I ordered it, the counter help repeated the order to one another at ear-splitting volume: 'Trippa latte!! Hai! One trippa latte!'
I sat by the window, head pounding, smoking and sipping, summoning the courage for another pass at a soba joint. There was no way, I told myself, that I was gonna eat