Light Snacks Will Be Served

A Detour to Amerigo

After eating a delicious lunch in Florence, Paolo told the chef that we were on our way to Modena. We were making a pilgrimage of sorts, off of our planned route, to visit the celebrated Osteria Francescana.  The chef nodded and winked, knowingly. “OK, that’s fine,” his expression seemed to suggest. But then he narrowed his eyes, and said “You must go to Amerigo. It’s a trattoria in Savigno. A special one. Near Bologna.”

Two days later, we hopped in our tiny Fiat and raced past the archways of old Bologna, then through the industrial outskirts of what might be Europe’s most beautiful city. The sun was setting, and soon we wound into the hills in darkness, passing shadows of grapevines that produce the sweet, bubbly Lambrusco. It was just a degree or two above freezing, and as we circled back down the hills into Savigno, a stag jumped across the road. It was huge, and muscular, and it stared right at us. We met the stag at the road’s next traverse, and the one after that. We lost sight of him as we entered the town – whose sign proudly proclaims “Savigno – Citta’ del Tartufo (City of Truffles)”

 Amerigo

Now, Savigno isn’t a city. It’s a village, in the hills of Emilia Romagna, where farmers with dirt-caked fingernails drink at a bar called Free Beach. When we parked at 7pm, the streets were eerily empty. The restaurant lights where we had booked were off. And so we drank Campari at Free Beach, where fizzy white and red wine are on tap, and where they serve potato chips and hot dogs for appertivo hour.

But Savigno’s pride – beside its wines and truffles – is a remarkable trattoria called Amerigo. In all my life, I can say it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten in. Part of it might have been the chill in the air, and the wood smoke, the changing of the seasons, the silence – but the restaurant knows that, and it captures the essence of it all. You cannot separate Amerigo from Savigno – one thing is not possible without the other.

 The vines outside of town

Our meal began on the second floor, as radiators clunked and the waitress poured us glasses of local Sauvignon Blanc. Then came a string of dishes – earthy and deep, rich with what was outside – that had Paolo and I grunting with pleasure. There was a first course of polenta enriched with pecorino, topped with thin slices of headcheese whose fat and gelatin melted into the grains beneath. And Paolo’s white bean soup topped with fat, pan-seared porcini mushrooms.

Beans, Porcinis

We decided to stay in Savigno for the night, instead of driving back to Bologna, after the first course. We ordered more wine, and our waitress booked us a room in a local inn (the restaurant has rooms too, but they were full). I suggest, if you ever go to Amerigo, you do the same. Eat and drink deeply. Intoxicatingly. Then sleep.

In heaven, this is what macaroni and cheese looks like

What came next was a pile of feathery black truffles, completely obscuring the fresh pasta beneath, which had been simply tossed in butter and black pepper. And then another pasta course, hand-made ravioli filled with aged parmesan cream and sautéed with smoky ham. It was like macaroni and cheese from a sacred realm. Paolo ate a lasagna with layers of green sauce, venison, and wild mushrooms. “It’s the best lasagna I ever tasted,” he said, between shakes of his head. When I took a bite, my thoughts returned to the stag, walking through the forest, searching for somewhere to sleep.

Pasta with black truffle

By the time the mains came – a veal cheek in red wine, and a massive cut of black pork, simply grilled and served with chunks of fat – we had already eaten too much. Dizzy with food and wine, we worked our way through the meat, then stumbled across the street. I woke at dawn, in a room so cold I was unable to sleep. A crucifix hung above the bed, covered in purple glitter, sparkling like Lambrusco. The vines outside were starting to turn yellow. The mist was lifting.

We dressed, and left.

 

First Impressions of Feasting in Rome

I could attempt to catalogue all that passed my lips in the past 11 days, everything that I saw, from cheesemakers to tiny wineries to villages clinging from chalky hillsides that spill onto green fields. Of cheeses I’d never tasted, some fantastic and others toeing the foul line, and wines that did as much to confound my palate as to dazzle. But that would take a great deal of space. After a 2,000 km journey around Italy, Paolo and managed to eat maybe 40 meals. As I write, we’re on our way back to Bangkok, up in the air. Inspired. Ready to rip.

First, we ate our way around the great trattorias in Testaccio, where Guido Vitaletti, my partner Paolo’s father, worked as a butcher in the local slaughterhouse (it’s now an art gallery). When they closed the abbatoir in Testaccio, Guido opened a butcher shop on Rome’s fringes. He sold fresh meats, cheese and cold cuts his whole life, and, like many Italians, his children followed in his footsteps. The love of food here transcends.  

Today, the neighborhood restaurants in Testaccio remain: gutsy places like Felice, Agusterello and Da Enzo that traffic in classics like pasta amatriciana but really shine when the sweetbreads, meatloaf, liver, heart, intestines and baby lamb hit the table. (And hit the table they do – service is gruff, brusque, and unforgiving if you’re full).

A secondi of sweetbreads, pajata (veal intestines with milk), and lamb ribs at Agustarello.

A meal to the uninitiated can often feel like three – a battle against waves of salumi, then starches with cheese, and then protein – but shots of coffee and grappa arrive to reinforce, and after a long walk through Rome in autumn, past the Tiber and scattered ruins, we would do it all again.

Italy is a nearly impenetrable world of product. Cheese, sausages, hams, dried meats, mushrooms, pickles, marinated things, breads and all manners of pasta. Often, restaurants do not so much cook as unwrap, slice, plate, and serve. And that’s the glory of food here – a celebration of artisan producers that make things out of pork fat and sheep’s milk and semolina flour that really, seriously, should not be fucked with.

(To see this orgy of product up close, in Rome, go to Volpetti, and ask for Claudio. I like it much better than the modern Eataly monolith that's sprung up next door.)

Coming from a rootless cooking background like mine, the cooking seems a little too simplistic at first. Caccio e pepe? A fresh pasta made with only pecorino, starchy water, and black pepper? But then you see it, how the starch and the cheese coaslesce into a velvety sauce, how that sauce sticks to the thick strands of rough, soft pasta like glue. There are three tastes: the sheep’s cheese, rich and savory with a whiff of pasture; the wheat, which tastes faintly of hay and earth; and the spicy brightness of black pepper.

Cacio e Pepe, at da Enzo, at two o'clock.

And as I ate my first, and then second, and then third helping of this dish, I started to understand. Some things are supposed to be simple. To complicate their purity would be unthinkable to a Roman chef. And as I’m working with one, this was something I needed to see. Needless to say, I’m very glad I did.

 

To Rome, For Research...

 

It’s just few days after my last post, and I’m aloft again, headed towards Istanbul, and  Rome.

The reason is this: To eat, to study the small details of the best trattorias there, to source food ingredients, alcohol and wines, and just to immerse myself in the eating and drinking culture of Italy for two weeks. I’m travelling with Paolo Vitaletti, a native son, talented chef and (bias alert) my business partner. You see, in October, right before my trip to Singapore, we signed a lease for a space on Sukhumvit Soi 31. A Roman-style trattoria, with an Italian and an American at the helm, is coming soon to Bangkok. But first, we must eat.

Before you wonder why I’d do something like that – I’ll explain. This restaurant was a long time in the making. Paolo and I have known each other for years, and about three years ago we sped around Bangkok on his purple scooter (he drives like a bald bat out of hell, weaving between busses and food carts, and one can only close their eyes and hope…) looking for a restaurant space. I never found one with Paolo, and he later moved to Beijing, to helm the kitchens at the Aman. The space I later found became Soul Food Mahanakorn. But finally, gracefully, the pieces fit.

The last two-and-a-half years of my life have been rewarding, and often miserable, for the same reason. It is hard to run a restaurant alone, without a partner. The closest thing I’ve had to that was Chai, my manager, who last month returned to Myanmmar. I miss Chai. And I’m incredibly excited to work with Paolo.

We want to create a bastard-child of a trattoria – (should we call it Bastardo? Nah) with the rustic, simple cooking that one might find in Rome, or Puglia, in small restaurants along the Appian Way that winds south towards the heel of the boot. But with the sensibility of something other – something a little younger, fresher, and less constrained by the order that seems to define the Italian Restaurant In Asia. Paolo will bring his spirit onto the floor, and mine will occasionally drift into the kitchen. The wines will be from wherever we feel like. The drinks will be strong. The room warm. And if we get it right, the customers happy.

But first we must eat, and I’ll share some of that with you here. Cheers.

 

On surprises.

Life is a surprise.

From the very first moment when it strangely begins, a tangle of things, all the way to the end.

As I write I’m sitting on Thai Airways flight 409, three-fourths of the way to Singapore. As we cruise on this seemingly immovable, two-storey aircraft, my sous chef Eak is riding to my right. He’s staring intently at the in-flight entertainment like his fortune lies inside, considering possibilities. Pi Bun, my head chef, sits beside him looking vaguely afraid. I suspect he is.

Exactly three months ago today these two sat beside me, as air was forced in and out of my brittle lungs through a tube, inside Samitivej Hospital. I was stuck inside a body that didn’t want to work. My chef Pi Bun wept as I tried to shake my head, to tell him that I wasn’t going just yet. But my thirty percent chance became fifty, and soon my life wasn’t reduced to percentages. Time and medicine and care and the mostly the comfort of people close to me, brought me back.  I haven’t written about my accident since it happened, and I don’t know if I ever will, after this. But it happened. And it was quite a surprise.

We’re on our way to Singapore to cook brunch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on the 21st of October. Those of you who have followed this blog, or have visited my restaurant, might understand how much this means to me. To have the opportunity to bring my boys – the ones who stood behind me for the last two years, as I took all the credit; who stuck with me as I fired my manager (their cousin); who ground their way through 700 services; who stood by my side as I nearly left them without a place to work, without so much as a shake of the head – to take them outside of Thailand and to cook with them is an extraordinary experience.

When we disembark with our luggage, we’ll drive across Singapore and into the strange and shiny cavern of a five-star hotel lobby. There will be a perplexing array of light switches to switch and a ridiculous number of pillows to sleep on and banquet kitchens that could swallow our little restaurant in one gulp. We’ll slowly simmer fish with ginger and pandan leaves and lemongrass, and fry the fragrant curry paste we pounded yesterday in Bangkok. Then we’ll grind pork and fold it with salt and turmeric, lime leaves and chilies, and stuff that into casings for sausage. On Sunday, we’ll frantically plate it all for 400 guests and maybe sneak in a glass of Champagne and hop back on a plane to Bangkok.

I won’t delve too far into this life and how my eyes might filter things differently. But today I woke up and sharpened my knives, quietly wrapping them in soft cloth. I kissed my wife and smiled, rode my motorbike to the shop and met my chefs for lunch. The air and the quality of sunlight felt different as I buzzed through the traffic, as if the draining rains had finally stopped and our dry season had arrived.

Maybe it has. Maybe not.

 

On travel, adoption, and living in fear of the word fusion.

The good folks at Travel + Leisure Asia allowed me to republish this essay I wrote for their September food issue, which is on newsstands now (go buy it -- writers need to eat!)

It's about labeling food, something that seems ever more slippery to me these days. But it's also about travel, and the thought processes of chefs, and what I think is (generally) a positive trend in the restaurant world: Chefs learning more about other ways of cooking, and subtly employing that knowledge. Enjoy. 

 

In Bangkok, I run a Thai restaurant. The food we serve, in my mind, is resolutely Thai (though there are aspects to the cooking process, and a few ingredients, that are not). I have always cringed when people told me, or when I read in a review, that my restaurant serves ‘fusion’ Thai – partly because of the detractive nature of the term, and partly because I don’t believe this to be true.

Gently, I’ve tried to bend the boundaries of Thai cooking – smoking something here, curing something there, putting Thai fried chicken on a Thai coconut waffle – without breaking them. Because I, like many others chefs, have lived in fear of the word fusion. But I’m not sure this word means much at all, anymore. Or if we, as chefs and consumers, should give it much weight.

Just like the word authentic (the flimsiest food descriptor of all), fusion is a deeply misleading term. Great cooking cultures – Thai for one, but also more recent cuisines in Australia, the Americas, Goa, South Africa – have evolved because of a tendency to absorb the ideas, ingredients, and techniques of migrating cooks. So when do we stop, erm, fusing?

 If one wants to cook traditional recipes, that’s just fine with me. And I firmly believe the world’s great cooking cultures should be guarded for posterity. But it doesn’t mean we all ought to cook exactly what we grew up eating. Imagine a world where cooking didn’t cross-pollinate – a tomato-less Italy, a China without chilies, a Bangkok without woks. It’s depressing.

My recent trip to Spain reinforced the notion that the fine dining world has moved beyond a fear of fusion. This began in Girona, at a restaurant called El Cellar de Can Roca.

“The first course, the amuse,” my waiter explained, “represents the chef’s most recent travels around the world,” as he presented me with spheres of food, perched on a steel structure, like gumballs roosting on a leafless tree. I wondered if there was a tinge of irony, or even jealousy, in his monotone, as he introduced this work of edible experience.

My first bite, a taste of Korea which I plucked from the top branch, rudely awoke a palate that had been lazing for days on sheep cheese and buttery ham and subtle, olive oil-soaked seafood. Suddenly, I struggled with a mouthful of pungent miso. Pow!

The next bite took us to Beirut, I believe, then Mexico, then Morocco. But it wasn’t until the chef – who was raised in his family’s Girona restaurant, studying classic Catalan food – was on more familiar ground that his cooking began to resonate. I remembered most the meal’s small, informative turns on flavor, like a delicately smoked sliver of anchovy swimming in a soup of gingered cherry and amaretto, and crispy lamb breast with forest mushrooms poking through a pillow of creamed morels, but I quickly forgot the miso ball.

Until I returned to Asia, and began to unpack my own experiences in this essay.

I would like to think that mainstream cooking – not the dreamy three-star stuff above but everyday restaurant cooking – is on the cusp of real change. A time when people will stop uttering that tired, “fusion, confusion” analogy under their breath and accept that food is essentially formless; it is an interchangeable medium that does not necessarily lose its unique character if it borrows another ingredient, or technique, from a place far away. Because now, we often venture far away. Most people didn’t used to – and most especially working-class cooks.  

We talk of a global economy, of global food shortages and international migrations, but rarely do people talk about this apparition that is global cuisine. Unless it’s negative. Some of that is well-deserved, especially during the salad days of fusion, where a squirt of Sriracha or the sting of wasabi was used clumsily by uninformed cooks and promulgated by restaurant chains. Bad fusion food abounds in Bangkok, where recent culinary graduates splatter pizza or spaghetti with something that sort of tastes Thai. But serious chefs have figured out how to use each others’ arsenal of ingredients, and well.

And so, quietly, many are cooking whatever they feel like, unannounced. Because they know more about what they’re doing than we do, we don’t notice as much.

There are, as far as I can tell, two opposing schools of thought when it comes to cooking. Those that think that our culinary order hangs in the balance as soon as the simplest traditions are tweaked, and those that put miso paste in butter because it tastes really good.

And on my last trip through Spain, most of the memorable meals I ate were cooked by chefs that fell into the latter category. There was a crisp, tiny cone filled with the silky insides of a ripe tomato at Tickets, in Barcelona, that slowly rose above the ordinary with the quiet heat of grated wasabi. It was there, but you had to seek it out in your head, as Albert Adria must have when he created the dish. And a rabbit taco, an elegant little tapa stuffed with braised rabbit in a gentle cumin and chili braise, like Mexico viewed in soft, Mediterranean twilight. These geographical leaps felt nothing but natural.

There are many reasons Spain has emerged as a world leader in gastronomy – it’s a combination of great product, innovation, climate, history and a strong traditional food culture. But, in my mind, it’s the lack of dogma in their modern cooking that has allowed Spain to move so far forward, so fast.  While France eased into the idea of adoption, Spain had already thrown open their doors to spices, sensations, molecular techniques and whatever else might push their food forward. Labels be damned. Delicious was the measuring stick.

Which brings me back to my original point – travel is changing the way we cook, the depth of our understanding, and the ingredients chefs choose to use in restaurants. Nowhere in Europe was this more apparent to me than in San Sebastian – a place steeped in Basque traditions, that remains open to most anything.

As I wound through the old town I passed cooking stores with hand-forged Japanese sushi knives in the windows, and Asian basket steamers. There was that old-school mishmash of Gallic and Spanish, too – the chocolatiers and cheese shops and baguettes and olive oils and hams. And then I went to Arzak for lunch.

Elena Arzak, the proprietor of this legendary Basque restaurant, led me through her 100,000 bottle wine cellar. But what fascinated me most was their spice room – 1200 different flavors, neatly catalogued, at the disposal of chefs who work exclusively on recipe development.

The meal was one of the best I’ve ever had, and often surprised me – a chunk of goat cheese was offset by the astringent glow of turmeric, silky foie gras was encased in crisp seaweed, like a lighter, umami-laced tempura. But the local products were what opened my eyes. There was a sardine speared atop a ripe strawberry, and an unspeakably delicious dish of beef tongue and dover sole. After the meal I told Juan-Mari Arzak and his daughter Elena what I loved best, and she smiled. “We have 10, sometimes 15 visiting chefs in our kitchen. They come to cook, on their vacation. And they notice simple things like you, things we think are normal they think are fantastic, and this excites me.”   

That night, I wound through the famous pintxos bars of the old town, drinking wine and hopping from bar to bar. And there were so many little sidesteps on tradition that I forget them all. A scoop of mole-flavored ice cream atop a pig’s ear terrine; a pork rib braised in sweet fruit and cumin like a tagine; a grilled prawn with the subtle scent of lemongrass.

My last meal in Basque country was at Azurmendi, in Bilbao. It’s a stunning place, but what sets it apart is Chef Eneko Axta’s precise yet playful approach to Basque classics.  As we slurped an oyster, for instance, a waft of sea mist drifted across the table, as water plucked from the Bay of Biscay was poured over dry ice and purple seaweed. Does that sound pretentious? Because it’s not. It’s surreal, like eating an oyster in a secreted cave.

After the meal, Axta took me upstairs to his greenhouse to show me his peas, which are picked at night, and cooked in a jelly made from the fat of the world’s best ham. “I’m coming to Bangkok this fall, I think” he said, “would you show me around, and can we cook?”

“Yes, of course.”

And if all goes right, sometime next year, long after this article is published, as diners overlook the vineyards outside of Bilbao, a waft of kaffir lime rind might slither across a white tablecloth, like a jungle vine. Here in Bangkok, a slice of raw fish might find itself perched upon a strawberry. And if we both do it right, people won’t call it fusion as they eat. They’ll nod their heads, as if it always was.

Why is the food in San Sebastian so good? (Part one in a series)

I can't remember the first time I heard about the Basque town of Donostia (usually referred to, in Spanish, as San Sebastian). It might have been in a food magazine, or on the tip of a chef's tongue in some impassioned, late-night discussion about where the best place in the world might be to eat. But there it was, buried in my psyche, a promise of delicious things. It remained there for years; an itch unscratched.

There are plenty of stories scattered across the internet that explain, mostly with wonderment, about how good the eating is in this part of Basque country. And the reason is simple, I think: People here really and truly care about cooking and product. Perhaps more then anything else. The parade of cooking celebrities and shower of Michelin stars didn’t happen by chance; the movement began to simmer a long time ago, in basement taverns, and aging seafood halls, in gastronomic societies. And you need to see that first, before it all comes into focus.

Donostia is a town built on the foundations of a food culture both sophisticated and primal – there is decorum and fine dining; dark taverns where drunks munch on tiny sandwiches and sip watery beer; there are the vineyards and butchers and fishmongers and wonderful chocolate and pastry shops; there are foreigners and Basque folk foraging side-by-side for the best pintxos through the tunneling restaurants of the old town; and there is the cold sea and the green mountains that supply what might be the second-best market in Spain. From the second we arrived, I was smitten.

For the past two weeks I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind – what makes the food here better than anywhere else? And instead of answering that, I’ll just tell you what I ate at a seafood restaurant.

About thirty minutes from San Sebastian, through the mountains and then around the foggy coast, is a town called Getaria. Vineyards that produce tart, Txakoli grapes hug the hillsides that look down over an old church and a wide elbow of sand. There is a harbor for fishing boats. And a restaurant called Elkano, and a fashion museum.

I was told that I must eat at Elkano by Eneko Axta, a prodigiously talented chef whose brilliant cooking I would later try at Azurmendi, in Bilbao. The Chef told me that this was “classic Basque seafood cooking – the best kind.”  

                                                      The grill at Elkano

When we entered the restaurant at 2pm it was empty – it started to fill at about 3, which apparently is fish time in Getaria. The menu is spare. There are several fish to choose from, all fresh from the local fleet docked outside, a few starters, and your meal begins with bread and good olive oil.

Owner/manager Pedro Aitor approached us and warmly explained the seafood available. Then, he asked if I minded bones, and when I shook my head, his eyes lit up. “The red mullet is here, now, only for a few weeks,” he said, smiling. “It is the one from under the rocks, the small, sweet red mullet. Everyone here orders turbot, but for me, the red mullet from the reef close to shore speaks of this season, of the spring. I would never serve one from the deep sea, these are the babies, the first of the year.” His eyes were distant, and I wondered if he was looking at the sea when he spoke, addressing it as much as us. 

So we order red mullet. And hake throats (kokotxas), which he says “are our favorite thing to eat, and only one per fish.” The throats are done three ways, lightly fried with an egg batter, grilled and grilled and served with a mild salsa verde. We also order squid, grilled with ink sauce “only one boat fishes for squid now, in Getaria, and we get the best catch.” Also, a bottle of Verdejo from Rueda, brisk and very bright, from pre-Phyloxera vines, crisp and cold like the afternoon outside.

The hake throats, gelatinous with a wisp of smoke from the grill, are wobbly, saline bites. Strangely, as I eat them, I’m reminded of China – of the sea cucumber and shark fin and fish maw that takes their place at the Chinese table because of texture rather than taste. Except that these hake throats, like the juicy, mild flesh of the fish, do taste pretty good.

The meal got better from there. The red squid was served beside a stripe of ink cooked with salt and onion; it was tender and only adorned with salt, cooked as perfectly as one is able to. Living in Thailand, I eat a lot of squid, which is often charred or chewy; none is as tender and simple as this. My wife and I smiled between bites and sips of wine, realizing this is one of those meals we’re never going to forget.

Then, although all the other tables are digging into large, flat turbot crisp around the fins, we are presented with two tiny, tender red mullet. The owner encourages me to suck the juice and brain from its skull and I do.

Have you ever sucked out the contents of a prawn’s head – one that’s fresh and fatty? It was like that, but better. Like the first breath you take after a long drive that ends at the edge of the ocean. Like sea urchin butter. Like red mullet brains, the first of the year, from under the rocks.

The flesh of the little fish was firm and sweet, tight like crabmeat, and again it wasn’t sauced or spiced, merely salted. The final flourish was a black piece of slate, with a slash of tart apple sauce, and on it sat the barely seared livers of the fish we were eating. It was delicate and rich, just a nibble, and it left me wanting more.

Which I do now, and always will, until I get back to Elkano.

(Part two, on mushrooms and pintxos, beef and spring lamb, coming sometime in the relatively near future)

 

                                                        The beach at Getaria

 

On Fancy Restaurants, and a Trip to Tickets

I have a lot to share with you.

I’d like to write about two weeks spent eating in Spain. About meals that I never thought I’d eat. About going to those places that people like me only dream about until we’re there, and Elena Arzak is smiling warmly and asking you if you like her pigeon while a waiter scrapes crumbs off the table with some polished pewter tool and a gruff sommelier splashes more ancient Rioja in your glass. Holy shit. Pinch me. This is real.

Now, I understand that but a month ago I wrote about lists, and fancy restaurants, and how preposterous these indexes of greatness are. And I meant it, sort of, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to eat at the world’s best restaurants, whatever that means. And in two weeks in Spain my lovely wife endured four very long and meaningful meals with me. Not everything was good, but it was, for me at least, a transformative sort of experience.

First, I’ll share with you my meal at Tickets, Albert Adria’s (brother of Ferran, of el bulli fame) tapas restaurant in Barcelona. Calling Tickets a tapas restaurant is sort of like calling a Ducati a motor scooter. Yes, the form is the same: small bites eaten in succession, often with bread, some things from the mountains, some from the sea. Yes, the ingredients are familiar, especially if you are Spanish. But the way they are delivered – the pops and crunches and clever twists – are just delightful. The tricks that were perfected at el bulli are employed sparingly here – a spherification of seawater here, a caviar of olive oil there – but the precision and care that defines this kitchen is evidenced throughout.

We ate tomato smeared on perfectly crisp slivers of country bread, with a translucent jelly of iberico that melted like luxurious, ethereal pig fat. Severely perfect segments of oranges swimming in a mild soup of olive oil, mint, and a suggestion of mustard. An oyster, with a bouquet of microscopic flowers and cubes of sour apple. There were crunchy cones of tomato that had a whisper of wasabi – a combination so subtle and simple that I thought about it that night before bed, rolling around, wondering about the possibilities of cooking so precisely that flavors might come to you after you had consumed the food.

Then there was a rabbit taco, laced with cumin and chili, like Mexico colored by the gentler spectrum of Catalan cooking. And soft, steamed buns stuffed with ribbons of lardo and bacon, that slid down like the best Chinese baozi.  We gulped a bottle of PSI – a great second label of Pingus from the Ribera. My friend Veronica wept after the rabbit taco, because she had a rabbit once, and never realized that it might taste so wonderful. 

And as we skipped off into the Barcelona night, bellies full, bursting with pleasure and a little shame, one thing was certain: we had just witnessed something really, truly special. A chef communicating with diners, executing his vision in a way that wasn’t pretentious or exhausting. Just really fucking good.   

 

On Bangkok.

I wasn't going to put this piece of writing on the blog. It's ponderous and dark. Probably too much so for this medium. But today I read this piece by Pankaj Mishra (my restaurant gets a shout-out, which is nice!) and I thought, what the hell. I'll give you a slice of my Bangkok pie. It's of a different flavor.

The prosaic sort of poem below was colored by two events that happened outside my house. And those things that happen within the confines of the restaurant. Bangkok has a sinister side, but most writers don't get it right. I'm not sure I do either, but this is, I guess, an attempt.

I read this piece at the Bangkok Literary Festival held at the Neilson Hays Library a few months back. The topic of the readings was the city in which I live. And so, here we go...  

 

After the wild-eyed tuk-tuk driver nearly ran me down,

In front of a festering canal beside my house,

He scowled, then spilled out of his machine.

He came at me with an amphetamine tick and a beer-perfumed hiss,

And I wondered what the hell I was doing here.

Then I began to run.

Once, when my best cook disappeared, I wandered to the bank through the back streets of Sukhumvit.

Morlam chirped from cheap speakers, as I made my way to the teller, and I thought about him.

I cared about him.

And looking down at the cracked pavement, trying not to trip, beside the bus stop,

I spotted my chef.

He was sitting on the sidewalk, on a straw mat, a block from the restaurant.

Beside him, an ancient-looking fortune teller, sipping an energy drink, whispered in his ear.

My eyes met the chef’s, and then they didn’t, as if guiltily we shared the same secret.

The chef came back to work the next day.

I had dreamt of a restaurant, and then I had one, and so I stopped writing stories about others and tried to make one about myself, under this backdrop of Bangkok.

And it was through the eyes of others, like the Burmese furniture maker who swam across a river to become a waiter, that I began to understand this place.

And the chef from Yasothorn, with a sharp stutter from a motorbike accident, who pages through catalogs of amulets, looking for one that might bring him something better.

Then there’s the dishwasher whom I once watched kill a rat with his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of cooking,” he said, when I tried to promote him. “There’s just too much noise in my head.”

We are guests, 13 of us, sitting at the same table, waiting for what comes. The one thing we know is that Bangkok does not belong to us.

After a long night at work, we sometimes go to Rama 9 Road, to eat Isaan food and drink beer.

The restaurants there bear the names of places and dishes from upcountry – Larb Phet Sisaket, for instance – which must make customers feel closer, or farther, from home.

The massage parlor girls spill in, with the bartenders and the taxi drivers, and in the fluorescent light, their hard lives seem less so.

And after many drinks we sometimes talk about our dreams, and often, my staff talk of going home.

This Thursday, after midnight, I returned home from work.

And on the same street where I was almost run down, beside the brown canal, there were piles of blood-stained cotton.

Pairs of surgical gloves were ripped inside-out and left to lie beside the empty wrappers of life-saving things, syringes and bandages and the shattered plastic from a broken bike.

I sat and stared at it in dim light from my own motorbike, as it idled, alive.

The next day, as I began to write this piece, I thought about dreams, and how they drift into our lives, changing our perception of a place.

This city we live in invites cliché, as we catalog the strange sensory experiences here that come to define Bangkok.

But they don’t, really. They’re just smells and sounds and sights that we cling to, for safety, on our way home.

They’re our handlebars. 

 

On Top 50 Lists, Crowd-sourced Reviews, and What Makes a Restaurant Great

When Restaurant Magazine releases something like its World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, sponsored by that avatar of good taste, San Pellegrino sparkling water, people are bound to talk. Outrage, backslapping and head-scratching ensue. And that’s precisely the point.

People take this shit seriously. NOMA is the best restaurant in the world. For three years running! Seriously, what could be better than that? (For me, the answer is, a place that’s open after 11pm in my neighborhood serving pretty decent sushi where I can eat after service. One that serves cold beer, and remembers what kind of fish I like to eat.)

I was considering this list last week. Much as anyone else who writes about, eats at, cooks in, or owns these sorts of restaurants probably was. And so we’re clear: I occasionally eat at and write about these sorts of restaurants. I don’t cook in or run one.

Forget about who came in at one, or ten, or, to my great delight #50 (nahm, in Bangkok). It’s not a representative list by any measure. Asia barely gets a nod, as Lawrence Osborne cleverly writes about here. Japan is largely (and bafflingly) tossed by the wayside, as are Hong Kong and mainland China, Singapore and Bangkok, KL and Seoul and Saigon.

But does that mean that Asia deserves half, or even a quarter of this list? I’m not so sure.

As anyone who evaluates restaurants on their relative merit knows, it’s about more than what arrives on your plate. Is there ice in your drink? Is there even a drink menu (or ice)? Is the drink menu sticky? Or the table for that matter? Are there napkins?  Is the flatware clean? Are they playing Celine Dion on the flat-screen? Is there air-conditioning? Is the kitchen a filthier, open-air extension of the dining room? Are your waiter’s fingernails dirty? Is there a toilet? Is there an old man sleeping on a cot wearing a diaper in the back?

These are experiential things to consider. And there are a few dozen more. And Europe, America and Japan mostly do those front-of-house things much better.

Conversely there are many, many westerners who romanticize the allure of eating on the street. There are some who’ve made writing careers out of it, insisting that Asia’s finest food is cooked out-of-doors. That’s all fine and good, and the dish or two that one might serve on the corner could be unspeakably, RM-SP World’s 50 Best delicious, but that doesn’t make it a great restaurant. It makes it a street food shop serving a great dish. To be truly great, your pony needs to perform a few more tricks than putting good food on a pink plastic plate.

The RM-SP list is a recent phenomenon. An even more recent, and I would argue more influential one are crowd-sourced review sites on the internet. And here is where I think more people really, really get it wrong.

Consider this:

Nahm, which I mention came in at number 50 on the RM-SP list, and which I firmly believe is the finest Thai restaurant in the world, barely cracks the top 75 on tripadvisor.com, IN BANGKOK ALONE. This, from what seems to me the most influential restaurant site for independent, English-speaking travelers in Asia. (Meanwhile an Indian snack joint sits snugly at #2. Have a look, and draw your own conclusions).

Crowd-sourced reviews can be useful, venomous, venal. Sometimes all at once. After nearly two years in the business I can assure you that customers who have bad experiences are far more likely to convey them to their imagined readership than those who enjoy good ones.

“I read about you on tripadvisor” seems more of a threat than a greeting sometimes. Like arriving at your table dressed in chain mail.

The internet is populated with a lot of food reviewers who take their unpaid profession rather seriously. There is nothing wrong with this, but what is flawed is their lack of accountability, experience, or accuracy

(Should I really take the time to respond to Jaquilp, and tell her that in fact we don’t serve Mekong whiskey in any of our cocktails, let alone all of them? Or that there is no order to the food that arrives, unless you ask for it? Is Metacritic798 really just a disgruntled owner from up the street? Should I bother to explain to PapabearandPanda that Soul Food isn’t in a “weird neighborhood”? Probably not. But I know I'm not the only one considering their words.)

It’s far too easy for dishonest owners to fluff their numbers, and price seems to be the first consideration for many online reviewers. (Fair enough, but is value a measure of greatness? I don’t really think so.)

Which brings me back to the beginning...

Lists are infuriating. Lists are tantalizing. Lists are fucking lists.

But ice-cold Sapporo, some fatty slices of hamachi, and a smile, at 1145pm… That shit is for real.

 

Wintersummer

(Because it's Christmas, and because it's not-quite-hot outside today, I thought I'd share this little snippet of life in Bangkok that I wrote for my friend Christine's Summerzine project earlier this year. Happy holidays, wherever you are...)

Wintersummer

In Bangkok, we celebrate this fleeting hint of winter.

It is our summer.

But it is shorter than your summer. Sometimes it never even comes. When it does, we know it will soon be gone. And there is sadness in the almost cool air, like there is on the last day of vacation.

Our summer comes around Christmastime, except that it’s not Christmastime, unless you’re a tourist here on your Christmas vacation, or you're shopping. The city’s many shopping malls do play Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and fake snowflakes are strung from their ceilings. There might be a sale on bathing suits or flip-flops or plastic trees. And this reminds us that our summer is about to come.

Outside, in the thick and sticky air, beer companies erect monuments to themselves in front of the shopping malls to remind us it’s summertime. We come by the thousands to drink watery beer from toy-like plastic towers emblazoned with logos of lions, tigers, leopards and elephants. Some of us wear wool hats while we drink, as if the beer might give us a head cold. The centers of those toy-like beer towers are filled with ice to keep the watery beer cold in the middle of our not-quite-sweltering wintersummer. This is the only time one might wish to sit outside on the baked concrete plain that is Bangkok. And so we drink to forget.

And the surest sign that it is summer in Bangkok is when our street dogs, who roam freely in our alleyways and block the jigsaw sidewalks as they sleep through the afternoons, put on their tee-shirts. The dogs might get cold if they didn’t, but in wintersummer they usually do. It’s like the plum blossoms in Japan, announcing the arrival of spring. But weirder. Funnier.

So if you ever find yourself in Bangkok, in the middle of winter, and you see drunks in wool hats wandering around shopping malls festooned with the roaring logos of jungle cats and surrounded by sleeping street dogs dressed in colorful tee-shirts, smile.

It’s summertime.