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 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.   

 

The Twilight of the Trishaw

There aren't that many trishaws left in Thailand, anymore. Motorbikes are simply too cheap and too convenient, and are widely used as taxis these days, forcing out the hard working pedicab drivers. But whenever I see one, if I'm not in a hurry, I flag it down. The slow ramble of a pedicab is probably the best way to see a small Southeast Asian city (not Bangkok... I wouldn't wish that on anyone). You have time to take in the scenery, make mental notes, take photos, and smell the flowers. Seriously. You can smell flowers when you ride in a trishaw. 

Some of my fondest memories of my time in Chengdu, Sichuan, were late nights spent wobbling across potholes with a Snow Beer and good friends, in the back of these three wheeled bikes (bet you don't remember, AGP).  They also remind me of Penang, and the south of India, and what is probably the most interesting trishaw town of all, Lhasa. High in the Himalaya, trishaw riders have their own language of whistles - one means 'I'm passing from behind', another 'turning left, or right.' In a trishaw, you have time to whistle where you're headed. 

Above is a photo of my latest trishaw driver, Pit, who pedaled us around Nakhorn Si Thammerat this week. He is 74-years-old. As we slowly rolled through the charming provincial city, dotted with temples and mosques, he waved and smiled to almost every person we passed. You also have time to make friends, when you drive a trishaw.   

Cause it's Friday - Poodle on a Motorbike

Surat Thani - a quiet Thai town most tourists race through on their way to noisier nearby islands -  has a wonderful night market serving all kinds of street snacks. Twice we've stopped for a night there, on our way south, to eat and stroll through the market. Last Sunday, in between bites, I spotted this poodle waiting for his foraging owners to return to their bike. It made me smile. Enjoy your weekend. 

 

A Snack Up Isaan Way

Over the NYE holidays, I traveled in Isaan, stopping to cook with families in Chiang Khan and Nong Khai (you'll hear about the cooking in Nong Khai - with some great recipes - a little later). While up in Thailand's northeast, we also got to eat some regional things that rarely make their way down to Bangkok. I was reminded of that today, when I passed a local vegetable seller on my street, who happened to be selling some of these remarkable tomatoes that we found in markets along the Mekong.

Thailand has many superior agricultural products, but tomatoes aren't one of them. While slightly better than, say, the grainy, pale pink specimens that were the only kind I could find in much of China, Bangkok's tomato selection ain't great. Asia is not a place for good tomatoes (though I hear the Japanese have an heirloom fetish - of course they do). 

But these little guys - crisp, juicy, sweet, sour and even citrusy - were very nice. Both thick and thin-skinned, the small tomatoes varied dramatically in taste. Some added a fruity note similar to tomatillos, others were bitter or sugar sweet. They complimented a dish we encountered several times in Loei, which I've been craving lately for its simplicity.

We ate it once on the way from touristy Chiang Khan to Nong Khai. My wife and I spent two hours in Pak Chom's dusty parking lot/bus station/food market, before boarding a wooded-floored Mercedes bus, that seemed to move as much laterally it did forward. During that time, we tried the local specialties.

These noodles were a nice change from Isaan's meat-heavy cuisine, where occasions to eat a vegetarian dish are fairly few. In Loei we ate this simple, fresh noodle dish, where strands of batter are squeezed into boiling water, and are then cooked with some Chinese cabbage.  

 

The noodles are topped with some of those tomatoes above, and dressed by the diner with fish sauce, sugar, and a sauce made of fire-roasted chilies and coriander. Locals mixed with their fingers, then ate with their hands in the beds of pickup trucks. We ordered a few plates, then admired the delicate texture of the dish. There was a subtle, green sweetness in that plain, boiled cabbage. And in it an opportunity to do something Thais rarely let you do - taste a single flavor or two.  

Then we boarded the bus, and the grinding commenced.

There was five hours of rattling, squeaking, shaking, rumbling and shuffling ahead.  

The Guy Who Sat Beside Me

 

On a recent flight from Singapore to Bangkok, I sat next to an older gentleman with the thick, tanned forearms and friendly smile of an American who golfs a lot. There was an empty seat between us, and he was watching something on his i-pod, so I just smiled and nodded and unsnapped my laptop and started working. My eye was drawn to his Rolex - the diamonds on which were flashing from the outside light. He closed the shade. I stared at his wedding ring - made of what looked like several ounces of chunky white gold. Then I looked at my thin, little band and kept typing.

About half way through the flight we struck up a conversation. I had already made my judgments - executive, import/export, midwest and probably Chicago, electronics or maybe petroleum. These guys are usually pretty nice when I meet them, and remind me of America in a strange, paternal sort of way.  Like if I happened to sit next to my own father, without recognizing him, while he was on a business trip.

Turns out the passenger was in the seafood business, and was from the Pacific Northwest, but by way of Chicago (one point). What was most fascinating about our conversation was how convoluted his work was, a curious characteristic of our food chain these days. He was based in Seattle, and the lion's share of fish caught for his particular company came from the waters off of Alaska and Russia. 

But that fish - 'Cod,' he told me, which could pretty much be anything white and swimming these days, I thought - is then gutted, frozen whole and shipped to factories in China. In China, it is then cut into precise portions and dusted with breadcrumbs and sometimes also deep fried and frozen. Then, the cut and breaded fish boards another boat, floats back across the Pacific, and makes its way to Denny's, TGIFridays, freezer cases and other outposts of factory produced food nationwide. A fresh, wild fish, paraded around the world and frozen to nothingness, all for a shower of fucking breadcrumbs.

"The problem is, the Chinese have now learned how to soak the fillets in a (insert chemical name) and water solution and increase the weight!" he said, a little dismayed. "But the Indonesians don't. And, they're great at processing the shrimp with the tails still on, too. We just can't do that in America anymore...." he said, now sounding almost wistful.

I nodded my head with genuine interest. And I thought that the problem wasn't in the chemical bath, or the labor costs in keeping a shiny tail poking out of golden breading, but the ridiculous system itself. Then I returned to my work.

As he bit into the factory-made chicken pie that JetStar serves on that flight, I admired his wedding ring again. It really was a magnificent piece of gold, like a vein cut right out of the earth.      

Sweetbreads, Fish Heads

 

Last night, in Singapore's Durian-inspired Esplanade Theatre, I saw Andrew Bird put on a show. Bird is one of those rare performers that sounds almost exactly the same live as he does on albums, which might have to do with the fact that he's playing all of the instruments both live and on his albums. 

So Bird's up there punching pedals with his feet, looping tumbleweed whistles with staccato violin plucketry and mournful pulls on his bow and guitar chords and all sorts of other noises into what finally evolves into something like a band's wall of sound. It's pretty fascinating to watch. 

And then he played a song called Gray Matter, which he originally wrote as a song called Sweetbreads, and he sang it as it was on the original. Which has chorus that goes like this: "They call them sweetbreads, I could taste what you were thinking, ooooh, sweetbreads, that's the taste of neurons blinking."  

But before the song, the shy and sort-of-awkward performer said something (I'm paraphrasing here) like this: "This song is about tasting the brain, and, well, I rewrote it because I thought it was kind of upsetting. But, you know, we eat animal's hearts, and brains, and places where the soul is said to reside, and don't really talk about the implications of that very much. But we probably should, you know?"

I love eating sweetbreads, which come from the thymus or the pancreas of hoofed mammals, but that's not why I kept turning Bird's words over in my head. It also wasn't because I was stoned, because I was in a concert hall in Singapore. 

As he plucked his violin strings and sang of sweetbreads I thought about all the hearts and brains and feet I've eaten, and how even when you're eating them you don't really consider what that thing was doing a few hours or days before. And I made a note to think about it the next time I ate something in which "the soul was said to reside." And I did, at lunch, the very next day. 

I'm not crazy about Singapore's food like some people are (I find much of it is greasy, one-dimensional,  and sort of overrated). But I'm hip to the fact that there's some great cooking going on here too. And when I come to Singapore, the first thing I want to eat is curry fish head. Today, at the famous Banana Leaf Apolo I got my fix, as Bird's words fluttered around in my head. Looks like Mel Gibson has too.

But I digress. The fish's flesh was firm and sweet, the sour tamarind curry was fiery and complex, and really I couldn't imagine a better lunch. And as i plucked off the fatty, tender cheek of the fish, I considered it swimming around in the deep, scarfing up so many small creatures. I felt great privilege to be eating such a formidable looking fish's head; a head that would probably go to waste in the West. It just might just be where that animal's soul resides, I thought, because it's definitely the most delicious part of the fish. 

So, anyways, that's the taste of my neurons blinking.