If this sobering revelation wasn't painful enough, if I wasn't choking down enough crow, there was some more humble pie to come: a waiter came in with a half-empty bottle of wine, a 1989 Le Chambertin, and handed it to the Dominican dishwasher. At this point, I was ready to answer one of those ads in the paper for 'Learn How To Drive the Big Rigs!', maybe take up mink ranching. Anyway, the grateful dishwasher examined the bottle for sediment, promptly decanted the remains, poured some wine into a stem glass - which he held knowledgeably between two fingers by the stem - and then swirled, examining the ropes with a discerning eye, before taking an airy slurp. I was ready to hit myself hard with the nearest blunt object.
Oh yeah: the food.
Luxurious, but austere. Bluefin tuna tartare with pickled cucumbers, lime, chile and lemon grass was formed by hand. Unlike a lot of his peers, Scott doesn't like torturing food into unnatural shapes so it looks like something else. (Metal rings, remember? You might want to reconsider what I said about them too.) Green and white asparagus were spooned with chanterelles and truffle fondue. Chilled lobster was stacked on fava bean puree and drizzled with Ligurian olive oil. Even the green salads were hand picked, one leaf after the other piled gently on the plate, the garde-manger guy tasting the occasional piece. A filet mignon came up in the window with a medallion of bone marrow looking pretty and pink under a thin veneer of sauce.
And Scott still doesn't make veal stock. There was tete du pore en crepinette, monkfish with white beans, lardons, roasted tomato and picholines, diver scallops with pea shoots, black truffle vinaigrette and truffle/chive/potato puree, Scottish salmonhit the pass-through with chestnut honey-glazed onions, old sherry wine vinegar and chicken jus.
Not a damn thing to sneer at. That I do more meals at Les Halles in forty-five minutes than Scott does all night was cold comfort. The food was all so dead-bang honest. No bogus wild-weed infusions, cookie-cutter piles of pre-made garnishes, no paper collars used to force food into tumescence. Garnishes, such as they were, were edible; the food looked good without them. And the plates were white, no SB logo, no multicolored spirals, baroque patterns, oddball novelty shapes, football field sizes or ozone layer-puncturing space needles of verticality. The pâtissier whacked off a hunk of Morbier for a cheese plate - a daring selection, touch that stuff and you'll be sniffing your fingers for a week. Bread was from Amy's, along with a rustic ciabatta.
When orders came in faster, the pace quickened slightly, but nobody ran. Nobody seemed hurried. Scott jumped from station to station as his mood dictated: fish, saute, garde-manger, even pastry. In his absence, waiters wordlessly stepped in and did the expediting and plate finishing, with imperceptible change in product. (Waiters shouldn't touch food. Did I say that? Wrong again.)
Is everybody getting their food on time, I wondered. Everyone was so damned calm and collected in here that maybe it's chaos outside, a herd of pissed-off diners glaring silently at their waiters and wondering where their chow is - waiting for that made-to-order risotto so the rest of the order can come up. I decided to see.
No such luck. Outside, the dining room was as relaxed as the kitchen, nothing but happy faces, lingering over appetizers, sipping wine, expressions those of anticipating first-time lovers who just know they're going to be good together. The bar was packed with monomaniacal wine aficionados, pouring over the 1,400-strong wine list like Talmudic scholars - beakers, glasses, decanters laid out in front of them making them look like well-dressed Dr Frankensteins. They had a lot to ponder. The Veritas list is an imposing volume with a very reasonable range of wines from 18 to 25,000 dollars. I asked the bartender, hopefully, if any of these wine wonks ever got into it over the relative merits of say, Cotes du Rhone vs. Bordeaux, or '95 or '98? 'Anybody ever take a poke at another guy, duke it out over grape varieties? Drunken brawls over topsoil, irrigation, drink now or drink later?'
Nope. All is calm. Pleasure rules.
Listening to the customers talking seriously, really seriously about wine, I find yet another reason why Scott is a three-star chef and I'm not: I know almost nothing about wine.
I am not immune to the charms of wine. I've lived around it, enjoyed it, cooked with it all my life. I am not entirely ignorant on the subject, nor am I dismissive of its importance. I still remember vividly, heading off to the vintner in Bordeaux with my Oncle Gustav, to get our empty bottles refilled with vin ordinaire from those giant casks. I can tell the difference between good wine, bad wine and great wine. I have a pretty good working knowledge of the wine-producing regions of France and Italy. I am vaguely aware that California seems to produce drinkable product these days. But I couldn't tell you grape variety with any more assurance than I could talk about stamp collecting or phrenology. And to be truthful, I've always felt that I've survived enough dangerous obsessions in my life; the knowledgeable appreciation of fine wine has always seemed to me to hold potential for becoming yet another consuming habit - an expensive one. When you know what it's like to squat on a blanket on upper Broadway in the snow, selling off a lifetime's accumulation of rare books, records and comic books for drugs, the idea of spending next week's paycheck on a bottle of red seems like, well, something that I probably shouldn't be doing.
So, even though I've been gushing here about Veritas and all things Bryan, I'm really doing the place a disservice. The menu, the business, the whole concept of Veritas is built around the wine - a formidable cellar put together by two of the premium collector/connoisseurs in the universe. It should be pointed out that Scott's food at Veritas is designed to complement that wine. I can only imagine that it does. The fish dishes are unusually hearty, drinkable with red for the most part, I believe (don't trust me on this), and the meat and poultry dishes are constructed and refined to match up nicely with the list. Some of the Asian seasonings and ingredients of Early Bryan have been dispensed with in order best to accomplish that mission.
As for me, I drink beer and vodka when I eat at Veritas, preferring to spend my lucre on what I know to be good namely the food. I know that's a lot like going to Egypt and not bothering to look at the pyramids, but hey, I'm just an old-time cookie with a chip on his shoulder and a heart full of envy.
Problem is, Scott's an old-time cookie, too. After the kitchen closed (at ten forty-five they were talking about getting the last orders in!), I took him up to the Siberia Bar, down the subway steps, through the platform-level bar and into the downstairs annex. I was hoping to get him drunk, find something to dislike about the miserable bastard who's so much better than me. Maybe I could get him sloshed, he'd start venting, make injudicious comments about some of those culinary heroes he'd worked for in the past.
I mentioned I'd eaten at Le Bernardin recently, the full-bore chef tasting. An eyebrow went up. 'Oh yeah? What did you have?'
When I told him, he looked happy, like I get when describing my first oyster.
'You have the mackerel tartare, dude?' he asked.
'Yeah,' I said, hesitating. 'It was good . . . really good.'
'Yeah,' said Scott. 'It is good, isn't it? What else did you have?'
I told him, the two of us talking about menus like some people talk about the Miracle Mets or the Koufax-era Dodgers.
'Who's making food these days that interests you,' I asked.
'Oh, let's see . . . Tom. Tom Collicchio at Gramercy Tavern. Tom makes really good food . . . and Rocco di Spirito at Union Pacific is doing interesting stuff.'
'Have you seen this foam guy's shit?' I asked, talking about Ferran Adria's restaurant of the minute, El Bulli, in Spain.
'That foam guy is bogus,' he smirked, 'I ate there, dude - and it's like . . . shock value. I had seawater sorbet!'
That was about as much bad-mouthing as I could get out of him. I wanted to know what he likes to eat, 'You know, after hours, you're half in the bag and you get hungry. What do you want to eat?'
'Beef bourguignon, he said right away.
I've found common ground. Red wine, beef, some button mushroom
s and a few pearled onions, bouquet garni, maybe some broad noodles or a simple boiled potato or two to go with it. A crust of bread to soak up the sauce. Maybe I'm not wrong about everything.
All cooks are sentimental fools.
And in the end, maybe it is all about the food.
MISSION TO TOKYO
IF THERE WAS ANY justice in this world, I would have been a dead man at least two times over.
By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. By all rights I should have been, at various times: shot to death, stabbed to death, imprisoned for a significant period of time, or at very least, victimized by a casaba-sized tumor.
I often use the hypothetical out-of-control ice-cream truck. What would happen if you were walking across the street and were suddenly hit by a careening Mister Softee truck? As you lie there, in your last few moments of consciousness, what kind of final regrets flash through your mind? 'I should have had a last cigarette!' might be one. Or, 'I should have dropped acid with everybody else back in '74!' Maybe: 'I should have done that hostess after all!' Something along the lines of: 'I should have had more fun in my life! I should have relaxed a little more, enjoyed myself a little more . . .'
That was never my problem. When they're yanking a fender out of my chest cavity, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.
I'm still here. And I'm surprised by that. Every day.
So in the spring of 1999, I really and truly thought that I had had all my great adventures, that the entertainment and excitement segment of the program was long over. Been there and done that was more than an assumption for me, it was a defensive stance, and one that kept me - and keeps me - from repeating the stupid mistakes of the past. Sure, there were things to learn. I learn things all the time. But I'm talking about eye-opening, revelatory, perspective-altering life experiences:the exotic, the frightening, the totally new. I wasn't about to sample any new experimental hallucinogens at age forty-three. I wasn't going to submerge myself in some new criminal sub-culture, steeping myself in the customs and practices of professional gamblers, heroin seekers or sexual adventurers-though at one time it would have greatly appealed to me. I didn't think I'd be shipping out on a great big clipper ship (as Lou Reed puts it), wandering the back streets of Peshawar or sampling live monkey brain in the Golden Triangle. My personal journey, I thought, was pretty much over. I was comfortably ensconsed in secure digs, with a wife who still remarkably - found me to be amusing on occasion. I had a job I loved, in a successful restaurant . . . and I was alive, for chrissakes! I was still around! Though the game had long since gone into overtime, I still had a few moves left in me, and I was content to play them out where I'd started - New York City, the place I believed, heart and soul, to be the center of the world.
So it came as a surprise when one of the two partners at Les Halles, Philippe Lajaunie - a man I'd barely conversed with up to that time - approached me one spring afternoon and said, 'Chef, we'd like you to go to Tokyo. Make the food look and taste like it does in New York.'
Now, Brasserie Les Halles is a much-loved New York institution, serving authentic French workingman's fare to hordes of diners each night. I'm an American, whatever my lineage, so it threw me off-guard to be asked if I'd care to go halfway around the world to consult and advise a French chef - in Japan - on the fine points of cassoulet, navarin d'agneau, frisee aux lardons and boudin noir at Les Halles Tokyo.
But my masters, Philippe (a Frenchman) and Jose de Meireilles (a Portuguese francophile), seemed convinced enough of my mystical connection to the food they clearly adore to pack me on to a plane and send me jetting off to Tokyo for a week. It was a daunting and unusual assignment and I was going alone - my wife would not be joining me.
My biggest concern was the flight: fourteen hours in the air, and no smoking(!) I scored some Valium before leaving for the airport, thinking maybe I could knock myself out and sleep through the ordeal. Unfortunately, as my Israeli-navigated town car swung into the Kennedy Airport environs, I couldn't find the damn pills. I tore frantically through my pockets and carry-on luggage, near tears, cursing myself, my wife, God and everybody else who might be responsible for this hideous situation.
I checked my knives through, not wanting to carry them on, and was soon dug in, at 11 A.M., at the bar by the departure gate: last stop for degenerate smokers. My companions were a very unhappy-looking bunch of Asia veterans. Like me, they were chain-smoking and drinking beer with grim, determined expressions on their faces. A Chinese gentleman next to me, apropos of nothing, shook his head, blew smoke out of his nose and said, 'Sleeping pill. Only thing to do is sleep. Fourteen hour to Narita. Long time.' This did not improve my mood. Another bar customer, an MP headed to South Korea to pick up a prisoner, slammed back another draft and described the horror of business class to the other side of the world. He too shook his head, lips pursed, resigned to his fate. A red-faced Aussie with a five-hour layover waiting for him on the Tokyo end, advised me to have another beer - at least. 'Or three, mate. Nothing to do but bloody sleep.' Yeah, right, I thought. Got any Demerol?
As a back-up, I had acquired a few nicotine patches. I rolled up my left sleeve and slapped one directly over a vein, hoping for the best as they sounded final boarding.
The flight was endless. The in-flight movie was a slight improvement over looking out the window: a Japanese film about, as best as I could gather, fly-fishing. Guys standing around in waders, philosophizing about carp in a language I couldn't understand, had a pleasantly somnolent effect and I managed, with the help of many more beers, to pass out for a few hours.
I should point out, by the way, that I know nothing about Japan. Oh, sure, I've seen The Seven Samurai and Rashomon and Yojimbo and the Kurosawa policiers, and Sonny Chiba and Gidrah versus Mecha-Godzilla for that matter, but I was in every significant way ignorant of all things Japanese. I knew only enough about Japanese culture and history to know that I knew nothing. I spoke not a word of Japanese. I had, with only a week's warning before my trip, not even acquired a guidebook or a street map for the city of Tokyo. But I did like sushi and sashimi.
The city of Tokyo is an amazing sprawl - something out of William Gibson or Philip Dick - seeming to go on forever. The bus from the airport wound over bridges, down through tunnels, up fly-overs that wrapped around the upper floors of apartment and office buildings. I passed canals, industrial parks, factories, residential areas, business districts, carp ponds, austere temples, indoor ski slopes, rooftop driving ranges. As I got closer to my destination, it was getting dark, with giant, screaming video screens advertising beverages and cellphones and recording artists, garish signs in English and Japanese, lines of cars, crowds of people - row after row after row of them, surging through intersections in orderly fashion. This was not America or anyplace remotely like it. Things on the other side of the world were very, very different.
The bus unloaded at a hotel in Roppongi district, and a helpful dispatcher in a uniform hailed me a cab. The rear passenger door swung open for me, operated by the driver by lever, and I slid on to a clean, white slip-covered back seat. Dispatcher and driver examined the Les Halles business card with address, debating route and destination. When the matter was decided, the door swung closed and we were off. The driver wore white gloves.
Roppongi district is international in character - like an Asian Georgetown - and Les Halles Tokyo, located in the shadow of the Eiffel-like Tokyo Tower, and across the street from a pachinko parlor, looked much like its older brother in New York, though spanking new and impeccably, surgically clean. Les Halles New York is loved for its smoke-stained walls, creaky chairs, weathered wooden bar - the fact that it resembles what it
is: a familiar, worn, old-school brasserie of the Parisian model. Les Halles Tokyo, on the other hand, though accurate to the model down to the tiniest design detail, was shiny and undamaged, and apparently kept that way.
It was a warm night when I arrived, and the French doors to the cafe were opened. Philippe saw me from the bar. He'd arrived a day earlier. He came out to greet me.
'Welcome to Tokyo, Chef,' he said.
I had been provided with an apartment nearby, and Philippe helped load my luggage on the handlebars of two borrowed bicycles for the short trip over. My first close-up look at Tokyo was from the seat of a rickety three-gear as I pedaled furiously to keep up with Philippe. He took off at a good pace down Roppongi's very crowded streets. You're supposed to ride on the sidewalks, I later learned, though I don't know how that's even possible. Traffic runs the wrong way over there, so heading straight into it, I picked and wove my way between cars and vans, dodging pedestrians, trying to keep my 50-pound duffel bag on the handlebars and not get dragged backwards off the seat by the other bag hanging around my neck. Roppongi Crossing, though by no means Tokyo's largest or busiest intersection, is where thousands of teenagers meet before heading off to the bars and clubs. The streets were unbelievably dense with pedestrians, people hanging around, flashing neon, flapping banners, more screaming signs, pimpy-looking young men in suits and patent leather shoes, surrounded by dye-blonde Asian women in thigh-high boots and micro-mini skirts. Philippe took a hard turn and we were heading down a hill, through twisting, narrow and decidedly quieter streets. Things became stranger and even more unfamiliar, the smell of something good to eat issuing from every building we passed.
The organization kept a few apartments in a kind of residential hotel. It looked like a hotel, felt like a hotel, but had no visible employees. Comfortable, spacious by my imagined Tokyo standards, and equipped with cable TV, phone, fax, kitchenette and ingeniously designed bathroom, I was soon unpacked and agreeably installed, my mysterious French boss staying next door.