My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [104]
“How?! How does the chef come up with this?” I wonder out loud.
Fletch shrugs. “He must have really played with his food as a kid.”
I imagine some guests bring their plastic-wrapped photo home as a souvenir, but not me. I rip that thing out of the packaging and stuff it in my mouth. This one’s different from the other one. Instead of garlic and Parmesan, it’s flavored with chili powder and tastes exactly like a wing. The heat gets me and I discreetly cough into my napkin.
“A little hot for you?” Fletch asks.
“Yeah, but it’s more of a back-of-the-mouth burn, not so bad.”
I try hard not to inhale my “wings,” choosing to delight in all the flavor nuances. The colonel may use eleven herbs and spices, but this dish has, like, a million. I take meager sips of the Brut paired with it, anxious to draw out the pleasure of this experience as long as possible.
“Hey, did you taste the dot of sauce yet? It’s . . .” Fletch pauses to find an appropriately epicurean term.
“I haven’t.” In one fell swoop, I spear a bit of capon, sop up the sauce, and pop it in my mouth. I wait to feel the buzz coming from perfectly cooked capon mixed with a delicately balanced sauce, but all I feel is . . . warmth. Or, rather, heat.
Hot heat.
Fire heat.
Burning, burning, BURNING heat.
“. . . kind of spicy,” he concludes as tears begin to pour out of my eyes. I’m trying desperately not to make a scene, but I’m sputtering and choking. I grab my water to attempt to quench the feeling that I just French-kissed the devil.
I cough and wheeze and try to furtively wipe my tongue with a napkin, but that just seems to make THE HOT angrier. “There’s a bit of an after-burn, too,” he helpfully adds. I slam the rest of my water, my champagne, his water, his champagne, which I practically have to wrestle out of his hand, and I only find relief once I place his melting grapefruit-juice cube in my mouth.
I’m quickly distracted from my seared mouth when I see what the table to my left is being served. They’re getting mini-cupcakes baked with duck fat and filled with fois gras!204 The woman next to us groans as she bites into the cake, but no one pays attention. Everyone in here has cried out in joy and pleasure at least once over the course of their meal.
While I covet cupcakes, our fifth course arrives, and it appears to be a . . . a half-smoked cigar served in a dirty metal ashtray. Actually, it’s a Cuban sandwich shaped like a cigar, and the ash is really just a bunch of mashed seeds, but it’s almost too realistic. They’ve even created a cigar label out of some edible paper.
“I can’t eat this,” I say.
“I’m not sure I can, either,” Fletch agrees.
My stomach begins to roil. “A dirty cigar-filled ashtray is exactly what I picture when I feel sick and want to make myself barf.”
Fletch pokes at the pile of ash. “That’s got to be the magic of this place. It fools your senses. Your eyes and your mouth transmit entirely different images, and your brain gets mixed signals.”
“This whole meal has been some Alice in Wonderland ‘eat me’ kind of shit,” I note. “And it’s like there’s a party in my mouth, and I want to send out a Twitter message inviting everyone to join me.”
“That’s quite the astute observation. Perhaps Saveur magazine will commission you to write down your thoughts for their next issue?”
“Okay then, how about this? Tonight this restaurant has taken something I’ve done every day of my life and turned it completely on its ear. They’ve redefined the whole concept of food for me.”
Grudgingly he admits, “That’s not bad.”
I continue. “It just occurred to me that there are no paintings or posters or anything on the walls because this meal IS the art. And now I am going to eat some damn art.” I lift my cigar, dip it in the ash, and take a big, confident bite.
And maybe I had my eyes