Fat Guy

I can't imagine that any individual -- especially not me -- will ever have as big an impact on the food world as Parker has had on the wine world, but if I can even be compared to him that's good for me. One big contrast, however, is that Parker is what I would call a consumerist -- a consumer advocate in the Ralph Nader tradition that takes as a given the need to protect consumers from sellers -- whereas I do not consider myself to be an advocate for anyone nor am I trying to protect anyone from anything. My only constituency is the cause of excellence in cuisine, and if that puts me at odds with consumers, restaurateurs, farmers, whomever . . . that's too bad. Actually it's good. I enjoy when people in the restaurant business call me a consumer advocate and consumers say I'm an industry apologist. If I'm calling everybody and everything into question, I'm doing something right. Parker's consumerism, informed by a Watergate era view of conflicts of interest that I think is ultimately conterproductive, is evident not only in his attitude but also in the direction in which he has taken his career. He's a reviewer of wines -- he tells people what wines are good and what wines are bad. I would find it mind-numbingly boring to produce those massive tomes of wine (or restaurant) reviews with numerical ratings and tasting notes. I'm more interested in encouraging people to judge for themselves.

It's all about please and thank you. Other than that I try not to pause too long to think about why so many people have been so generous towards me, other than to note that in general there is an exceptional generosity of spirit (Ruth Reichl's description) in the chef community. I just try to pay it forward by being generous with others. There's also a bit of a domino effect. Oh, you spent time in Colicchio's kitchen? Well, let me show you how a real French kitchen works. Oh, you spent time with Delouvrier? Well, let me show you how we do Michelin eight-star cooking. Still, to describe what I've done in professional kitchens as "cooking" is to be overly generous. I think "schlepper-observer-flunky" is probably closer to the mark. It has been invaluable, though. I wanted to write about my time in the Delouvrier and Ducasse kitchens (that Delouvrier became the chef at Ducasse's restaurant in New York had nothing to do with my timeline -- I was with Delouvrier at Lespinasse and with Ducasse and Elena at Alain Ducasse New York), but there's only one chapter in the book about kitchens (I can't tell you how tired I am of explaining to people that it's not a damn book about people shooting up and throwing knives at each other in restaurant kitchens) and there was only room for one fine-dining-kitchen storytelling episode. For that I chose Gramercy Tavern, because it was so formative for me.

I can quit any time I want. What's for lunch?

I think it's amusing in the same way that it's amusing to deal with someone who has a wacky assessment of his own abilities -- you know, like a guy who sings horribly but thinks he sings beautifully and therefore does so loudly. It's funny, in a Jerry Lewis sort of way, if you know what I mean. The point being, whenever some misguided ideologue of French cuisine -- be it someone French or, more often I think, a Francophile who has only ever experienced France as a tourist -- comes along and talks about the perfection of French culinary culture, it's funny to rub that person's face in McDonald's, Quick and a litany of other gastronomic failings. If the French and Francophile cognoscenti weren't so sensitive, so clearly living in denial about it (or, alternatively, treating it as though it's a threat tantamount to a nuclear first strike), it wouldn't be nearly as funny. What's particularly interesting to me, to get back to the Taco Bell point, is that the peculiar admixture of embrace and rejection of McDonald's and Quick (which are essentially the same thing, except that Quick is indigenous) has created what I've seen labeled a "duopoly." There aren't really any other significant fast food chains in France. Which creates an interesting situation wherein the chains that would represent an improvement over the existing cuisine don't have the ability to penetrate the marketplace. Taco Bell is probably not a great example, because it's not particularly good, but look at a chain like Baja Fresh. Undoubtedly, Baja Fresh serves much better Mexican food than the current French baseline. And, because it's an easily replicable chain concept that can be built by anyone, staffed by anyone and plunked down anywhere with exactly the same results, it isn't subject to the tired old objections of "But we have no Mexicans!" and "But we have different ingredients!" Yet there's very little chain innovation in France. In most instances you just have McDonald's and Quick.

My hypothesis is that they don't exist in the raw state, just like baby corn. They have got to be a manufactured product that comes into the world already in a jar or tin. Because it doesn't make sense any other way.

The original egg-white omelet, from before egg-white omelets were cool and before Egg Beaters was a meme. The idea was to make an egg-white omelet with every vegetable in the restaurant's mise-en-place, except for green peppers -- never green peppers.

Chili was a big one, as were obscenely large helpings of spaghetti marinara. Also, by some bizarre twist of fate, virtually everyone I was friends with had a penchant for eating breakfast food in the evening, so I made a lot of bacon and eggs. The biggest crowd pleaser, though, which I got from my high school sweetheart, was hot-dogs-in-biscuits: you'd form biscuit dough around hot dogs and bake them in the oven. That's a really good dish. In the early 1980s, when my father got sick, I took on the task of feeding myself, and this rapidly spread to feeding others. I had always been well fed by my mother, and she continued to cook plenty (she still does), but many meals were prepared by me. Friends -- particularly my debate team peers -- would come over often to work and practice, and I'd provide food. This reinforced the cycle: they came back. It was a real scene, I tell you. My parents, at some point, gave me a book called The Teenage Chef. It had recipes for all kinds of stuff the members of my peer group liked to eat. I started with that book -- it wasn't until years later that I cooked the dishes I had grown up watching my mother cook -- and quickly moved on to grownup cookbooks. There was also a lot of intuitive cooking going on -- nobody ever taught me how to make diner food; I learned it from watching the griddle guy.

To call it a decision-making process would be to glorify what was more of a confused admixture of emotions, miscalculation, desperation and neurosis. It's possible to paint a certain picture in hindsight, but in the moment I was in crisis in every way. Somehow I emerged on the other side as a writer. More specifically, giving up my career as a lawyer became a fait accompli: it just got to the point where I had to choose between, on the one hand, being both a distracted lawyer and a food writer without enough time to do good work, or, on the other hand, devoting myself completely to being good at one thing. So, you know, one day -- this is when I was practicing on my own, doing consulting and bits and pieces of litigation while trying to write during the downtime -- I got a call from someone who wanted me to handle a piece of litigation (something that was going to require travel and that would have me at the beck and call of the client for months on end) and something deep, or not so deep, within me made me say, you know what, I'm not taking on any new legal work right now. And I never took on any new legal work again. Well, there was actually the time my landlord called in a panic and asked me to defend our superintendent in traffic court. I won. He was guilty, I didn't feel great about it, but we needed him to be able to come to work or the garbage situation would have just gotten out of control. So a guilty man went free as a result of my years of rigorous Cravath training. Since then it's been a struggle, and not just financially. Of course the money is a big problem from the standpoint of being able to have things like electricity, but money isn't a big emotional issue for me. Ellen and I have sort of made enough to squeak by in most years. We lose a little, we gain a little, things pretty much work out. The couple of years after 9/11 were horrible for freelancers, but the couple of years after those have been pretty good to us. We're not talking about the kinds of incomes that we had when I was a lawyer and she was a marketing manager at a publishing company, but we also don't need as much because the lifestyle is so different. Probably harder than the financial challenges are the actual challenges of what we do, though: motivation, self-confidence, self-discipline . . . it can at times be pretty exhausting. Reactions of family and friends? I think they all thought I was nuts. Some said so, some didn't. Nor do I think any of them have changed their minds. My father stopped teaching full-time (he was an English professor at Stony Brook) when he was 43 years old, on account of his health problems, so for most of the time I can remember he was not working full time at an academic institution. Thus his relationship to academia was not that of a typical professor -- he went off in a much more independent direction and became, for lack of a better description, a social critic -- or rather he let the social criticism aspect of his work (which was already significant) become the focus of his latter years. For the next 15 years, until he died at age 58, he held a series of adjunct positions at places like Barnard, University of Virginia, St. Peter's, and his last position was with the National Council for the Humanities as a council member, but none of that made up the bulk of his work. Mostly he was writing about culture and society, and he was deeply involved in various academic organizations, most notably the National Association of Scholars, of which he was the national chairman and also the editor of the NAS journal, Academic Questions. Academia wasn't something my father commuted to. It was in our home. There was always an eclectic collection of intellectuals hanging around the apartment, planning to overthrow one thing or protect some other thing from being overthrown. So, you know, since I sort of grew up in the live version of a combination of the collected works of Woody Allen and Saul Bellow, it's hard for me to label any form of behavior "peculiar," except for so-called normal behavior, which to me seems utterly peculiar. Why was he so interested in regular people? I guess for the same reason the great works of literature are so often about guys who hunt whales and whitewash fences and such: because regular people can be more interesting than anyone, and certainly more interesting than a lot of academics.

Culinary school is the new law school, except when you get out of law school you can earn a living even if you're a mediocre student and when you get out of culinary school you can't make any money even if you're Escoffier reincarnated. That whole issue, however, is not a subject I cover in Turning the Tables -- my subject is restaurants from the diner's perspective. The forthcoming book that I think every would-be chef should be reading is by one of the great young chefs out there, Doug Psaltis, written with his brother Michael Psaltis who is a (my) literary agent. It's called The Seasoning of a Chef: My Journey from Diner to Ducasse and Beyond. The publication date is September 13. Of course Tony's book, Kitchen Confidential is also a must-read in that category, as is Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute. And there has been some good journalism on the subject -- Steve Klc and Chefette have pointed to some good materials in various discussions here.

My knowledge isn't current, and when you say "best" in the context of Wilmington circa 1994 you have to do so tongue-in-cheek, but certainly the most memorable place was the Italian restaurant where the servers would occasionally break into operatic arias. On that trial I was what was called the "beachmaster," a term Tom Barr coined based on his training as a U.S. Marine. The beachmaster, well, he (or she, more on that in a moment) secured the beach and directed the rest of the troops. I was the rarest of things, an emergency substitute beachmaster. The original beachmaster on the trial, Elyse, had managed to get pregnant and was at month number seven on the eve of trial when she went into premature labor. Lucky for the trial team, that was the day I returned from my honeymoon. So I was in the right -- I mean wrong -- place at the wrong time and I took over the beachmaster position on the first day of trial. What that meant was that I was there for the entire duration of the trial, living and breathing it. Other people, like the expert witnesses and various support staff, would come and go to and from New York or wherever, but I was always in Wilmington. I even had a car (a Jimmy, actually) and driver, a genuine local guy named Dave who spoke of almost nothing but crabs and crabbing. So anyway, what I would do is take people out to the Italian opera restaurant without telling them that the servers were going to sing. And of course it was endlessly hilarious to watch people's reactions when it happened. Dave also steered me to the one really good crab place, which was called DiNardo's, I think, though at the time on account of red tide or black plague or whatever all the crabs were coming from Louisiana. They were good, though. Also there was the fondue place, which was good for its time and place. And of course there were the elegant restaurants at the DuPont hotel (aka my house), which, if you were on expense account (as we always were), couldn't harm you.

It's hard to know what might have been, but one thing worth pointing out is that for the most part I enjoyed the practice of law. In particular, the group of people I was around at Cravath, Swaine & Moore was one of the greatest assemblages of brilliant minds and irrepressible personalities imaginable. I have so many fond memories of my time there, working on some of the most important commercial litigation projects of the time (everything from the Time Warner/Turner merger to the Air Products derivatives matter to big utilities and banking cases that aren't well known but are nonetheless important in the business world) with some of the best lawyers in the world (Tom Barr, Rory Millson, John Beerbower, not to mention my contemporaries many of whom are now partners at excellent firms). I also got quite a lot out of law school. I was particularly blessed to have been intellectually adopted by Jim Fleming, a brilliant Constitutional law professor who never stopped challenging me at every level of the game. No, the problem with the law wasn't that I didn't like it. Some people even thought I was pretty good at it. The problem was that it wasn't possible for my legal career to coexist with the other things in my life that were equally important. Things like my wife and parents and friends and writing. When my father died, after I had been at Cravath for a year or so, I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we had gotten together for lunch that year -- and this was with us living and working in the same couple of square miles of Manhattan. Although it took years of psychoanalysis to figure it out, in retrospect it's pretty obvious that his death prompted me to wake up and get off the treadmill much earlier than most people who make the kind of transition I made. So I wasn't in my forties when I made the change. I was in my mid-to-late twenties. More to the point, my encounter with the law taught me several things. First, it taught me how to think. In law school as a student, as the writing and research editor of the Fordham Law Review, at Cravath and also at Shereff Friedman and Lehman Brothers and even practicing on my own, I developed a certain degree of mental discipline that I don't think one can get from just sitting around in a room. Second, it taught me about the structure of arguments. While you don't learn to write attractive prose as a lawyer, you do learn (particularly as a litigator) to build compelling arguments. Third, it taught me about research, which is the foundation of truth-seeking in many cases. Fourth, it taught me about business and business relationships -- this knowledge has come in very handy with the eGullet Society, which has a complex management system that would have been totally foreign to me if I hadn't done my time at places like Lehman Brothers. And, of course, with the practice of law came money, and with money access to fine dining. Coming from a middle class background (middle class in the American colloquial sense of a working class income) there's no way I could have just magically exposed myself to fine dining without some sort of intervening economic leverage. I was speaking recently to a group of students at the NYU food studies program. This was a class on food writing, and I was supposedly the guest expert. It's a great program in a lot of ways. The teacher, Daily News writer Irene Sax, tells these young people so much stuff I wish I'd known earlier on. But at the same time I can't help but think that they'd all learn more about food working at law firms. Someone who comes right out of college and just becomes a food writer is never going to have the pure experience of being a frequent, high-end restaurant consumer. If you're bred to be a food writer without first living a little of your adult life, the risk is that there will be a bit of a Truman Show aspect to whatever you do from there on in.

It would have been pastrami, sauerkraut and mustard on rye, with the following restrictions: - Extremely "juicy" (aka well marbled with fat), warm Romanian-style (very peppery) pastrami only from the deckle, cut by hand in thick slices -- never by machine. - "New" sauerkraut as is served out of the giant bins at Guss on the Lower East side -- not packaged. - Old-world grainy East European-style mustard that blows the roof of your mouth off -- not the flavorless watered-down imitators that pass for mustard today. - Rye bread made from a sourdough starter, firm in texture (not the texture of Wonder as is common today) because it's actually made from a high percentage of rye flour (not white flour with a handful of rye flour per metric ton) and with plenty of caraway seeds. - Only one half of the sandwich delivered to the table. The other half packaged, along with a fresh slice of bread wrapped separately, to be eaten for breakfast the next morning. (Edited to add: accompanied by a three-quarter-sour pickle)

I think the Amazon price will remain the Amazon price for the duration of the hardcover printing. Per Dave's instructions above, however, I'll be happy to answer practical questions about the book -- when it comes out, how to get a signed copy, what the name of the typeface is, etc. -- on the "Fat Guy lays it on the table" topic. Thanks!

The determination is made on a case-by-case basis. For example, "The Dolly Parton" is twin rolls stuffed with corned beef, pastrami, coleslaw and Russian dressing.

Does baby corn exist outside of cans? Is it, literally, baby corn?

I don't find it difficult to accept. I find it impossible to accept. And I doubt I'm alone. Indeed, I would theorize that not a single person reading along here would agree with the absolutist position that no factor other than immigration is important in determining the spread of non-French restaurants in France, so much so that every single other factor -- supply and demand, the French palate, etc. -- is "quite unimportant." Once we get to the point where every challenge to the theory gets labeled a joke, we're going to be moving away from the truth, not towards it.

This raises a question about the definition of a can. For example, when you put something in a glass jar, like fruit preserves, you are said to be "canning." But a jar is not a can, at least I don't think it is. And then there are all these other variants, like plastic tubs that are rather can-like but aren't really cans, and also there's there are all these modern paper boxes and plastic bags and foil pouches that seem to accomplish the same thing that a can accomplishes, maybe. In the curry-paste department, in the places I shop, it's interesting to see the different packaging methods in play. The two Thai-style curry pastes that I think are the best are the Maesri brand, which comes in a can, and the Mae Ploy brand, which comes in a plastic tub lined with a plastic bag. I actually prefer the Mae Ploy, even though everybody I know with even the slightest Thai food expertise says the Maesri in cans is superior. But they're wrong. Now, for whatever reason, the Indian curry pastes I like -- such as Nirav -- all seem to come in glass jars. Not sure what's up with that.

I'm fortunate to live not far from Schaller & Weber, and it's a wonderful place. For some reason -- maybe because it's on the Upper East Side, maybe because there's a perception that it's too Old New York, maybe because German/Austrian/Hungarian food is passe -- the place doesn't have a lot of traction among foodies. That's good, because you never have to wait on line. I'd definitely recommend the double smoked slab bacon -- it's one of the best bacons in the world. I've been a member of the Bacon of the Month club, I've sought out bacon all over and I've eaten enough for ten lifetimes, and I come back to Schaller & Weber bacon as a neighborhood product that's right up there with the best from far and wide. It's not an in-your-face bacon with a particularly strong or unique profile. Rather, it's just superb, concentrated, serious bacon. Also in that 'hood, be sure to go by the Yorkville Packing House (1560 Second Ave. at 81st St., 212.628.5147) for a smaller but equally amazing collection of cured meats from the Hungarian side of the equation.

Jack, I'd view this from the perspective of what seems to be a near-universal human need to couple food with religious and quasi-religious beliefs. It's not just foodies who have a quasi-religious relationship with food. It's vegetarians, low-carb dieters and even seemingly normal people -- their food religion seems unremarkable because it's mainstream, but think of all the restrictions and taboos at even the most typical dinner table. One thing I've also noticed is that people who grow up in traditionally religious households but reject religion as adults very often sublimate their religious dietary practices into quasi-religious food behaviors: you take someone who grew up in a kosher household but no longer observes the laws of kashruth and I can guarantee you that person has a significantly higher percentage chance than the general population of subscribing to one or another variety of rigorous dietary regimen.

Ptipois, I'm glad you now seem to be acknowledging the existence of numerous factors other than immigration in determining the spread of non-French restaurants in France -- otherwise it would be hard to point to enough American immigrants to explain 900 McDonald's stores. I'm still, however, intrigued by the blanket assertion that "the French don't as a rule like spicy flavors but that this never was an obstacle to the opening of non-french restaurants that serve a de-spiced version of the original cuisines." How have you made this determination? What magic apparatus allows you to conclude that the number of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris serving de-spiced Vietnamese food to a capsicum-fearing public is exactly the same as the number of Vietnamese restaurants that would be serving piquant Vietnamese food in a hypothetical Paris where the population loved hot peppers and strong spice flavors?

Ptipois, I fail to see why you maintain such a steadfast commitment to the idea that all non-French restaurants in France are explained by immigration and nothing else, especially in light of your own statements, for example that "opening up to spicy, strong tastes and flavors is very fine but it's not easy for the French in general." Are you seriously contending that nothing affects the spread of non-French cuisine in France other than pure numbers of immigrants? French culinary culture: irrelevant? French flavor preferences: irrelevant? French national pride: irrelevant? Seems a bit extreme of a position to be taking.

I think it would be a mistake to say it's all about immigration and leave it at that. Counterexamples abound all over the world. There is, for example, no significant French population in New York City, where most of the top restaurants are French. The Japanese are brilliant at emulating cuisines from all over. Conversely, there are plenty of Germans in New York but virtually no good German restaurants. No, it's not all about immigration. Immigration is a factor, as are several other things. The French palate's opposition to piquancy would seem to be an undeniable factor in limiting the development of all the wonderful cuisines that depend on capsicum for the character of so many of their dishes. The existence of such an overwhelmingly dominant cuisine is also no doubt a factor. The population of France is increasingly multi-ethnic, but the restaurant scene reflects that only in part.

The Mexican food in France topic got me thinking generally about non-French cuisines in France. Which non-French cuisines have flourished in France? Which are generally done well? Fundamentally, is there something about French culinary culture that inhibits non-French cuisines? For the specifics of how to get good Mexican, Chinese, etc., food in France, I'd suggest separate discussion topics, but in general what's going on here?

I'd consider an alternate strategy. My feeling is that bar stools are universally uncomfortable -- even the best ones don't compare in comfort to chairs where you can place your feet on the floor. People, in general, will not enjoy sitting down to a leisurely meal on bar stools. The difference in height between a standard table (30") and standard countertops (36") is only 6". Here's what I would suggest: shop around the tag sales, antique markets and auctions and find yourself a gorgeous old farmhouse table that fits your space and is as close to 30" high as possible. With it, you can use standard older chairs that are likely to be much better built than any but the most expensive new chairs. Then get yourself several very thick butcher block cutting boards big enough for a student to work on. When it comes time to use the table for classes, each student gets a big thick cutting board in front of his or her place, creating a distinct workspace. If you get blocks that are about 4" thick, you'll be pretty darn close to standard counter height. And remember, 36" standard kitchen counters are too high for a lot of kids, teens and short adults. If you have a 30" table to start with, you can give younger and shorter folks 1/2" cutting boards, and you can keep a mega 6" block on hand for really tall people.

The event organizers just sent around some statistics on the 2005 Big Apple Barbecue. Thought you all might be interested. Over 100,000 people estimated to have attended. • 6000 lbs of spare ribs • 26,000 buns • 3850 lbs of baby back ribs • 1000 lbs of baked beans • 5500 lbs of beef brisket • 1900 lbs of coleslaw • 4000 lbs of pork butt • 11,284 cups of beer • 2600 lbs of whole pork shoulder • 8011 bottles of water • 30 whole hogs • 5512 bottles of soda • 30 cases of pig snoots • 300 lbs of chocolate chips • 35,000 slices of bread • 195 bags of charcoal The event raised more than $50,000 for the Madison Square Park Conservancy.