Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [126]
The proletarian chic of Les Halles New York was something new to the Japanese. They don't really get the humble workingman'sfare. They adore the higher-end stuff, though, and there were unintentionally hilarious re-creations of haute and nouvelle classics (fettucine and rice on the same plate, for instance). There was and is a heartfelt desire to learn about French cuisine, to enjoy it. Though business has picked up enormously since my trip, at the time I was there, eating at Les Halles - with its Flintstones-sized portions and funky attitude about blood, fat and organ meat - was still a bold adventure. Still, I suspected it was just a matter of time.
An unusual number of single women would show up for lunch, sitting alone and looking shiftily, even guiltily, about before tucking into their steaks and nibbling their frites. The female office workers looked pleasantly secretive about their brasserie encounters, as if they were involved in some deliciously dirty and forbidden conspiracy - off meeting a lover. Watching a group of Japanese salarymen tear into a cote du boeuf for two I got the impression of a kind of gleeful social disobedience, an almost revolutionary act of convention breaking. It was my first experience of the proper Japanese cutting loose. I would see more.
I went out exploring all the time by now. The jet lag wouldn't let me sleep, so I crashed late and rose early, plunging blindly down dark streets at all hours. There is, apparently, no street crime in Tokyo. The most menacing looking bunch of Elvis-coiffed pimps and touts would move aside wordlessly at my approach. Gaining on a group of leather-jacketed punks with silver hair and motorcycle jackets from behind, one of them would detect me and make an almost imperceptible sound - a cough or a clearing of the throat - meaning, apparently, 'Gaijin coming through', and the crowd would part to make way. No one, and I mean no one, would meet my eye with a direct gaze. Whether standing outside a whorehouse at four in the morning, or examining their pinky rings by an idling Yakuza limo, no one ever said, 'What are you looking at?', as might have been the case in American cities under similar circumstances. Barkers for hostess bars and strip clubs and whorehouses - even the ones that accepted Westerners - never solicited me directly; I passed through them like a ghost. I walked. And walked. Streets full. . . streets empty . . . day and night, aimlessly in wide concentric circles, using a visible landmark to navigate around. I took subways to stops where I had no idea where I was and walked more. I ate sushi. I slurped soba noodles. I ate food off conveyor-belt buffets where every imaginable dish rolled by and one simply grabbed what one wanted. I entered bars populated by only Japanese, bars for expatriates and the women who love them. Booze was affordable and there was no tipping anywhere. I was the Quiet American, the Ugly American, the Hungry Ghost . . . searching and searching for whatever came next.
One night at Les Halles, Philippe invited me out for what turned out to be the most incredible meal of my life.
He'd seen, by now, how I was digging Tokyo. He knew from my arrival and departure times about my nocturnal wanderings, so I guess he figured I was ready. He grinned mischievously all the way.
As usual, I had no idea where we were going. Philippe led me across Roppongi, crossing to the skankier, glitzier side where the streets were choked with touts and barkers, whores and shills, video arcades, hostess bars and love hotels. We passed by the poodle-cut pimpy boys and the heavily made-up Thai, Filipina and Malaysian women in their platform boots and crotch-high