The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [89]
Afterward, we took a trolley downtown and shopped for a while, my mom pointing out familiar buildings and streets from her past. I’d made reservations for dinner that night at a restaurant that an old friend of mine from college co-owned with his brothers. It was located in the avenues, outside downtown, and its specialty was Japanese-Korean fusion. After dusk, we headed back to Chinatown by foot to retrieve our parked rental car.
“I used to walk up this street to our apartment every day,” my mom recalled as we hiked up a steep cliff of a street. I was huffing and puffing after two blocks’ worth.
“Really?” I was surprised. New Yorkers did a lot of walking, but they had no hills like these to deal with. Despite its steepness, the street was busy with locals, tourists, cars, and trolleys, heading both up and down.
“Oh, yes.” My mom nodded proudly. “And I would sometimes carry groceries or my laundry right up this hill. I was your age then,” she added after a pause. “Twenty-six.”
Now, I thought I was pretty fit for chugging groceries around on my bike back in Brooklyn. But I could never imagine taking them up this hill. Or just climbing it, all the time, with or without a heavy load. I remembered that my mom also couldn’t speak English very well back then. I suddenly felt very small, walking beside her.
The dinner at my friend’s new restaurant, Namu, was much more impressive than anything I could have imagined a Japanese-Korean fusion to be. Plus, my friend spoiled us with extra sides, drinks, and specials. We had black cod ceviche served in fried wonton cups, grilled okra with shiso aioli, bourbon and Korean chili-spiced baby back ribs, and cups of sweet sake. It was a unique culinary experience. The best part of all was being treated like family, despite it being a busy night at the restaurant. I felt a little guilty about my not-eating-out habit. What if a friend were to open a restaurant in New York, and because of my wack principles, I wouldn’t support him or her by dining there? That wouldn’t be very nice, I considered. I was glad the dilemma hadn’t happened yet.
The next day was a whirlwind of activity, from sipping wines at a handful of vineyards in Napa Valley to tasting every manner of chocolate possible and taking a truffle-making class at the Death by Chocolate festival at COPIA. My mom and I also found time to stop for lunch at the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone restaurant, in Napa. There, I’d attacked a foamy souffle of cheese that was baked on top of my French onion soup. My mom had ordered a light seafood cioppino, which came with a separate jug of hot broth to pour over the dish.
At the end of the day, we also enjoyed a long dinner with Mark Douglas and three other guests from the chocolate contest. We’d gone to Julia’s Kitchen at COPIA, named after the culinary heroine. My entree was a very deconstructed bouillabaisse: a thin, tomato-based stew with fresh and barely seasoned seafood and a shower of parsley. I felt like I was becoming better acquainted with this California cuisine, something I knew about only from books and magazines.
The next morning, after a quick breakfast at our hotel, my mom and I headed for the airport. It had been a brief but packed two days on the West Coast, and I was sure that my chocolate cravings were sated for the next year or so. I also hoped that my restaurant-food cravings wouldn’t come back to haunt me after all those great and guilt-inspiring meals we had. But as I drove us to the airport, thinking ahead about my upcoming week, I couldn’t wait to get into the kitchen and start cooking again. I could almost feel the familiar grip of the spatula in my hand, and the motions of mincing garlic replayed in my mind.
“You know,” my mom said, leaning back in the passenger seat, “I think it’s a good time for you to be living alone, have your own place. It will be good for you.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Jo-Jo thinks so, too,” she added.
I was squinting from the