'I'm sure you want to shower, maybe rest for a while,' said Philippe, before heading back to Les Halles. 'Can you find your way to the restaurant?' I was pretty sure I could.
After a long shower in the short, deep apartment bathtub, I managed to find my way back to Les Halles, where I was shown around and introduced. Frederic Mardel was the chef, from Aquitaine by way of Bora-Bora. His chefs de partie, Hiroyoshi Baba of Japan, Delma Sumeda Elpitiya of Sri Lanka and Mo Ko Ko of Myanmar were gracious in the extreme. Fortunately, the common language in the kitchen was French, which I found, to my surprise, that I could still speak and understand.
I had been worried about this moment; I'd been apprehensive about invading another chef's kitchen. We tend to get our backs up with the arrival of interlopers, and though it may have been nice to be held up as some sort of benchmark for the Les Halles organization, I knew how I'd have felt if the chef from say, the Washington or Miami branch came swanning into my kitchen, wanting to show me how the big boys do it. Frederic was a friendly and gracious host, however, and like the rest of the crew, had never been to New York. I was a curiosity, as strange to them as they were to me.
The kitchen was small and spotless, with dangerously low-range hoods for a 6-foot-4 guy like me. A grate-covered canal ran around the floor beneath each station, with a current of constantly flowing water washing away any detritus that might fall from cutting boards. Containers were all space-saving square in shape, and the counters were low to the ground. I put on my whites, unwrapped my knives and hung around the kitchen for a while, watching food go out, taking it all in, making small talk with the crew, aware of a persistent throbbing behind my eyes, an unpleasant constriction around my temples, a feeling that I was somehow not getting enough oxygen.
Beat from the flight, I only stayed a few hours that night, until at 10 P.M. Tokyo time, my brain thoroughly poached with jet lag, I slunk back to the apartment to collapse.
I woke up at 5 A.M., hungry, put on a pullover, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, black elk-skin cowboy boots that had seen better days, and a suit-cut leather jacket that Steven had picked up used for me at a flea market. I was ready for adventure.
Breakfast.
At first, I didn't have the nerve. I wandered Roppongi's early-morning streets, tortured by the delicious smells emanating from the many businessmen's noodle shops, intimidated by the crowds. Japanese salary men sat cheek-to-jowl, happily slurping down bowls of soba. I didn't want to stare. I didn't want to offend. I was acutely aware of how freakish and un-Japanese I looked, with my height, in my boots and leather jacket. The prospect of pushing aside the banner to one of these places, sliding back the door and stepping inside, then squeezing on to a stool at a packed counter and trying to figure out how and what to order was a little frightening. One couldn't enter a place, change one's mind and then creep away. The prospect of being the center of attention at this tender hour, with the capillaries in my brain shriveled from all the beers on the flight, and the jet lag even worse than it had been the day before - I just couldn't handle it. I wandered the streets, gaping, my stomach growling, looking for somewhere, anywhere to sit down and have coffee, something to eat.
God help me, I settled for Starbucks. At least, I saw from the street, they allowed smoking. It was drizzling outside by now, and I was grateful for the refuge, if ashamed of myself. I sipped coffee (when I ordered it, the counter help repeated the order to one another at ear-splitting volume: 'Trippa latte!! Hai! One trippa latte!'
I sat by the window, head pounding, smoking and sipping, summoning the courage for another pass at a soba joint. There was no way, I told myself, that I was gonna eat my first Tokyo meal in Starbucks! Pinned under the wheels of that hypothetical Mister Softee truck, I would have something to regret. Muttering to myself, I charged out of Starbucks, found the narrowest, most uninviting-looking street, pushed aside the banner of the first soba shop I encountered, slid back the door and plopped myself down on a stool. When greeted, I simply pointed a thumb at the guy next to me and said, 'Dozo. I'll have what he's having.'
Things worked out well. I was soon slurping happily away at a big, steaming bowl of noodles, pork, rice and pickles. This method of ordering would become my modus operandi over the following days and nights. I can tell you that I felt a lot better about myself after my breakfast. I spent a few hours at the restaurant before hailing a cab for Chiyoda-ku district. I had an engagement.
If you didn't already know, a few years back I wrote a satirical thriller policier, set, predictably, in the restaurant business. Based loosely on my experiences at Work Progress and with the 'Italian fraternal organization' I mentioned earlier, it was acquired for translation by the eminent Japanese publishing house, Hayakawa. Being the hustler that I am, upon learning I was headed for Tokyo I immediately contacted my Japanese publisher, volunteering, a bit disingenuously, to do 'anything I could' to help promote the book over there. I don't know how nice or how welcome a thing to do it was. The book had been out for a while - and clearly had not set the world on fire. David Hasselhoff might have hit it big over there; Airwolf reruns were once huge on the Pacific Rim; but my little book had not, I think, caused my publishers to send for me to satisfy public demand for a closer look. What a responsibility, I now realized, what a situation I had saddled Hayakawa with, giving them an alarmingone week's notice of my arrival.
However horrified they might privately have been, they responded with enormous tact and hospitality. An event was organized. A reception committee was formed. Cars were laid on. Lunches arranged. Copies of my book were found and quickly displayed in the ground-floor bookstore of their corporate offices. So, I found myself headed off to the Chiyoda-ku district to meet the chef of La Riviere, a restaurant adjacent to and owned by my publisher. I was to cook a meal evocative of my earlier work of fiction for the benefit of the press, provide a few bons most at a press conference, appear on Japanese cable TV (network also owned by my publisher) and in every way cause inconvenience to strangers who had been nothing but generous to me from afar.
The chef of La Riviere, Suzuki-san, must have been thrilled to have me show up in his kitchen. Bad enough, some big, hairy gaijin was getting rammed down his throat, making use of his staff, rummaging through his reach-ins - but I was cooking Italian. The menu for the event was minestra toscana, followed by a paillard of veal with roasted red pepper coulis and basil oil, and a salad of arugula, endive and radicchio. Chef Suzuki was polite, as I was ushered into his kitchen with the requisite bowing and greeting. He was helpful and polite in every way, as was his crew. But he must have been simmering with rage and disgust. Suzuki-san and I communicated through a translator and gestures, my gift of a Yankee World Series Champs baseball cap going only a short way to ameliorating the chef's molar-grinding distaste for what I was about to do to his kitchen. My simple Italian lunch, re-creating a home-cooked meal prepared by a gangster character in the book, must have looked to the chef like roadkill. And the portions! I thought I'd scaled them down nicely, but after serving the meal to a roomful of bowing, chainsmokingvand very genial Hayakawa executives and a few press-ganged members of the fourth estate, I found myself repeatedly asked, 'Bourdainsan, the portions at Les Halles, how many grams of meat in each order?' When I replied, the reaction was giggling and head-shaking - an indication, I came to believe, of abject terror. The prospect of returning a partially eaten entree, of not finishing, is a terrifying one. And the proper Japanese will avoid causing such offense at all costs. So the thought of tucking into a 2½-pound cote du boeuf, or a full order of cassoulet toulousaine, must have seemed to my hosts like scaling a mountain of dung.
Still, the Hayakawa people were extremely kind. I was driven around by two senior editors, invited to lunch - with Chef Suzuki cooking this time. My second book was, I believe, rushed into print; it might otherwise have been forgotten had I not turned up on their doorstep. I got to see myself on Japanese TV and in the press; I was shown how to use the subways by Hayakawa hosts; I ex
perienced the not unpleasant occasion of having a whole room of people bowing to me in near unison; I got to meet the elegant, shrewd and impressive Mr Hayakawa himself; and I signed a lot of books for persons no longer living a first for me. Apparently this is not an unusual practice, a commemorative signed copy for the deceased.
I wasn't doing too badly by day three. My head still felt as if someone was tightening a vise around it, and I'd probably offended many at Hayakawa with my inadvertently boorish behavior, but I had been out on my own and around town. I'd cooked in not one, but two Japanese kitchens. I was comfortably taking cabs, ordering food and drink, using mass transit and exploring at will. I was having a good time. I was learning.
Back at Les Halles, I used my recent experience at La Riviere to scale down the portions and pretty up the presentations. Working with Frederic and his crew, I rearranged plates to resemble smaller versions of what we were doing in New York: going more vertical, applying some new garnishes, and then observing customer reactions. I looked for and found ways to get more color contrast on the plates, moved the salads off to separate receptacles, stuck sprigs of herb here and there. With Frederic, I tried to develop a repertoire of specials - trying to make sense of the arcane system of supplies in Japan.
Things were different here. What was ordered was not always what arrived. My inquiries about foodstuffs were often met with blank stares and shrugs. When the problem was finally identified, the answer was most often, 'Too expensive.' The supply situation really was a problem. Onglet (hanger), cote du boeuf (rib section), and faux filet (sirloin) were all shipped from our central boucherie in New York, so that was fine. But the bright red filet was Japanese product and wildly expensive. Fish and produce were objects of religious sanctity - particularly fish and the price reflected that. A gift of a melon in Japan implies a life of obligation. Frites are taken very seriously in our organization, but Japanese potatoes have an unusual starch/sugar content and require blanching in water. I suggested peanut oil instead of canola, like we use in New York, and was informed that one could rent a small apartment for what it cost to fill a deep-fryer with it. I'd brought along some white truffle oil and some truffles and the crew gazed at them like Martian artifacts.
There was no runner or expeditor at Les Halles Tokyo. After food was plated, it was hand-carried to the outer service bar where it was picked up by the waiters. The garde-manger, who also doubled as pâtissier and worked in an open area, visible to the dining room, was required out of custom, to shriek 'Welcome!'in Japanese, along with waiters, bartender and manager, to all arriving guests. This was somewhat alarming to a jet-lagged newcomer like myself. The process was repeated on departure, as it was almost everywhere I went, the ubiquitous scream of 'Arigato gozaimashiTAAAA!' making me want to leap out of my skin.
Frederic was beat. He worked seven days a week, fourteen-plus hours a day, as did the general manager. It was early days for our new outpost - not yet busy enough to require a full staff and total commitment was required. The GM's eyes seemed to float around in his skull in pools of fatigue. The cooks worked split shifts, arriving at the last possible second before service, working through lunch, then they were cut loose to wander idly around Roppongi - far from their residences - before returning for dinner. The carping and grumbling an arrangement like this would inspire back in New York would lead invariably to mutiny and open revolt. Here? People went about their tasks with considerable good cheer and dedication.
The proletarian chic of Les Halles New York was something new to the Japanese. They don't really get the humble workingman'sfare. They adore the higher-end stuff, though, and there were unintentionally hilarious re-creations of haute and nouvelle classics (fettucine and rice on the same plate, for instance). There was and is a heartfelt desire to learn about French cuisine, to enjoy it. Though business has picked up enormously since my trip, at the time I was there, eating at Les Halles - with its Flintstones-sized portions and funky attitude about blood, fat and organ meat - was still a bold adventure. Still, I suspected it was just a matter of time.
An unusual number of single women would show up for lunch, sitting alone and looking shiftily, even guiltily, about before tucking into their steaks and nibbling their frites. The female office workers looked pleasantly secretive about their brasserie encounters, as if they were involved in some deliciously dirty and forbidden conspiracy - off meeting a lover. Watching a group of Japanese salarymen tear into a cote du boeuf for two I got the impression of a kind of gleeful social disobedience, an almost revolutionary act of convention breaking. It was my first experience of the proper Japanese cutting loose. I would see more.
I went out exploring all the time by now. The jet lag wouldn't let me sleep, so I crashed late and rose early, plunging blindly down dark streets at all hours. There is, apparently, no street crime in Tokyo. The most menacing looking bunch of Elvis-coiffed pimps and touts would move aside wordlessly at my approach. Gaining on a group of leather-jacketed punks with silver hair and motorcycle jackets from behind, one of them would detect me and make an almost imperceptible sound - a cough or a clearing of the throat - meaning, apparently, 'Gaijin coming through', and the crowd would part to make way. No one, and I mean no one, would meet my eye with a direct gaze. Whether standing outside a whorehouse at four in the morning, or examining their pinky rings by an idling Yakuza limo, no one ever said, 'What are you looking at?', as might have been the case in American cities under similar circumstances. Barkers for hostess bars and strip clubs and whorehouses - even the ones that accepted Westerners - never solicited me directly; I passed through them like a ghost. I walked. And walked. Streets full. . . streets empty . . . day and night, aimlessly in wide concentric circles, using a visible landmark to navigate around. I took subways to stops where I had no idea where I was and walked more. I ate sushi. I slurped soba noodles. I ate food off conveyor-belt buffets where every imaginable dish rolled by and one simply grabbed what one wanted. I entered bars populated by only Japanese, bars for expatriates and the women who love them. Booze was affordable and there was no tipping anywhere. I was the Quiet American, the Ugly American, the Hungry Ghost . . . searching and searching for whatever came next.
One night at Les Halles, Philippe invited me out for what turned out to be the most incredible meal of my life.
He'd seen, by now, how I was digging Tokyo. He knew from my arrival and departure times about my nocturnal wanderings, so I guess he figured I was ready. He grinned mischievously all the way.
As usual, I had no idea where we were going. Philippe led me across Roppongi, crossing to the skankier, glitzier side where the streets were choked with touts and barkers, whores and shills, video arcades, hostess bars and love hotels. We passed by the poodle-cut pimpy boys and the heavily made-up Thai, Filipina and Malaysian women in their platform boots and crotch-high dresses, past enormous and eerily empty Yakuza-run nightclubs, karaoke bars, restaurants. It became darker as we walked farther and farther from the neon and screaming video signs - yet still, not a rude comment or hostile stare. Finally, Philippe stopped, sniffed the air like a hunting dog, turned suddenly and headed for a dimly lit stairwell in a deserted courtyard, a single pictogram of a leaping fish the only indicator of activity below. Down a flight of steps, not a sound, to a bare sliding door. He pushed it aside and we were standing in a small, well-lit sushi bar. Three young sushi chefs in headbands and two older men in chefs' coats manned an unfinished blond-wood bar, packed with somewhat inebriated-looking businessmen and their dates. We were ushered to the only two open seats, directly in front of a slowly melting monolith of carved ice, surrounded by fish and shellfish so fresh, so good-looking, it took my breath away.
My chef friends in New York would have gouged out an eye or given up five years of their lives for the meal I was about to have.
First, hot towels. Then the condiments: freshly grated wasabi, some dipping sauce. We were brought frozen sake, thick, cloudy, utterly delicious. The first sip seemed to worm its way directl
y into my brain like an intoxicating ice-cream headache. I had many more sips, Philippe all too anxious to pour more and more. The first tiny plate, tentacles of baby octopus, arrived, the chef standing there while we ate, examining our reactions which were, of course, moans, smiles, bows of appreciation and thanks. Already feeling the sake, we thanked him in French, English and bad Japanese - covering all bases. More bows. The chef removed the plates.
His hands moved, a few motions with a knife, and we were presented with the internal parts of a giant clam, still pulsating with life as it died slowly on our plates. Again, the chef watched as we ate. And again, we were a good audience, closing our eyes, transported. Next came abalone with what might have been the roe and liver of something - who cared? It was good.
More sake. Snapper came next. Then bass. Then mackerel, fresh and squeaky and lovely to look at.
We went on, calling for more, our appetites beginning to attract notice from the other chefs and some of the customers who'd never it seemed, seen anyone - especially Westerners with our kind of appetites. Each time the chef put another item down in front of us, I detected almost a dare, as if he didn't expect us to like what he was giving us, as if any time now he'd find something too much for our barbarian palates and crude, unsophisticated palates.
No way. We went on. Calling for more, more, Philippe telling the chef, in halting Japanese, that we were ready for anything he had - we wanted his choice, give us your best shot, motherfucker (though I'm sure he phrased it more elegantly). The other customers began to melt away, and our hosts, the chef joined by an assistant now, seemed impressed with our zeal, the blissed-out looks on our faces, our endless capacity for more, more, more. Another clam arrived, this one tiny, more roes, some baby flounder - it kept coming, accompanied by pickled wasabi stem, seaweed so fresh I could taste deep ocean water. Another tiny moist towel was provided in a little basket and Philippe informed me that custom allowed us to eat with our hands at this point in the meal. Tuna arrived, from the belly, from the loin. We kept grinning, kept bowing, kept eating.