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.

 

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 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. 

 

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.   

A Brief Note on Perspective

It has been a long time since I last wrote.

Six months and five days, according to my brisk calculation.

But no matter. We’ve much catching up to do.

In the past six or eight months the restaurant that I dreamt up here and at my posts at The Atlanic has become a reality. Soul Food Mahanakorn now hums with commerce and conversation and sometimes chaos; and after one year of work I finally have found enough time to sit down and reflect on what has passed.

This is an exercise in writing, to see how well my memory serves me, because ultimately I’d like to put these collective ramblings into a book. Recipes cross-stitched in the manic fabric of opening one’s first restaurant. Or something like that.

The greatest change that I’ve experienced over the past year has been one of perspective. Not only how I interpret the spatial relationships between customers and servers, or workers and owners, but really, how I view the world. As a writer, I used to look in from without. Now, that has been flipped 'round. 

A few weekends ago, sitting outside a bar I frequent after our service dies down, in those hours where waiters and bartenders and managers spill out onto streets full of people who are several hours ahead of them in terms of merriment, I was talking to a few friends. Most of them were writers. We traded stories. Of recent trips, political bullshit, drunken nights, single lives. I can’t remember what we spoke about, specifically. But as I said my piece, which I’m sure involved a tale of horror or surprise or (rarely) satisfaction within the four walls of my place of business, a friend said this, “Dude, I don’t mean to be a dick, but why don’t you tell a fucking story that doesn’t have something to do with your restaurant.”

Two things:

One, when someone says “I don’t mean to be dick” they are most likely being a dick.

Two, he was right. I had nothing else to talk about. I had been locked up on one of three floors, 47 square meters each, for a year. I hadn’t gone out into the world, but the world had come to me. And smiled sweetly, or threatened to burn my goddamned shop down, or had thrown up all over the wall behind the toilet or gotten engaged at table three as what became their favorite song played or had simply paid and vanished.

I had shuttled back and forth between those other realms of market and living room and bed, but really, this last year of my life has been illuminated in the dusky light of carefully dimmed halogen or the fluorescent and flinty steel of the kitchen. It has a soundtrack, of familiar songs I know not only words but of stories to.

It was all that I had to talk about. And so I went on. 

I will here, too.

 

 

Self-Portrait

Time is whizzing by. Progress now happening fast. And in the meantime, I walk, run, ride taxis, and hop on the back of buzzing motorbikes. This city is a maze, and I'm trying to get to the end of it, in this race to open. Sometimes I do. Usually not. But we're certainly getting to know each other. More pics later of the space. 

 

Cause it's Friday: Meet My New Friends

Yeah, we're working like dogs these days. But occasionally there's some time to rest (especially if you're a Thai construction worker...)

In between trips to the banks and phone calls and damage control and coughing on dust, I kick it with Tik, the little guy next door at the flower shop. Check out his amulet. It's fresh.

And after I've had some stir-fried chicken with basil and egg at Tik's mom's shop (she cooks and arranges flowers) I may head over to my furniture maker's spot (Joe's BO, Ekkamai Soi 18). Joe makes really comfortable chairs and his little pet is the cutest damn dog I've ever seen... so I'll let you in on the secret. 

Alright then. Have a good weekend. Sleep on a pile of rocks, lose your shirt and sport a medallion, or bark like a fluffy duck if you like. Me, I'm off to dinner. 

A Portrait

 Yasothorn, 10am.

 

Chinatown, 10pm.

 

Who Trims That Thing?

One of Bangkok's many mysteries is this remarkably wide, perfectly flat tree that sits inside a ring of race track at The Royal Bangkok Sports Club. I took this photo yesterday, and it hasn't been stretched for effect (though I did crop it). I want one just like it. If wishes were horses...