A Cook's Tour Part 10

It was sensational. Sitting there watching cattle graze on a hillside across the water, listening to Gloria tell Glaswegian jokes, drinking red wine and watching the tall gra.s.s and heather move in the wind, I could hardly imagine a better setting for an afternoon meal. I did, however, begin to fear for my own safety. When this stuff hit the airwaves, when the PETA folks got a load of this, I could be looking at serious trouble. I don't want any vegan terrorists throwing blood on me particularly not if I'm wearing an expensive jacket. Hopefully, my potential adversaries don't get enough animal protein to pose any real threat to my health or wardrobe. But I can't be sure, can I? Maybe I should buy a Taser.

Very, Very Strong

It's back to my Saigon routine: Mornings at the market, 555 cigarettes and 333 beer. I'm holed up at the Continental (where I should have stayed all along), just across the street from Givral's pastry shop and the old Theatre Munic.i.p.al. Faded photographs of the hotel hang in frames on the walls surrounding the Orchid Garden bar in the courtyard. They date back to the 1880s, depicting straw-hatted French generals, white-suited colonists, satraps, and rickshaws. A much larger, later photograph, dated 1975, shows NVA soldiers resting out in front of the hotel. Across the square is the Caravelle, where journalists, spooks, and MACV bra.s.s once watched from the top-floor bar as B-52 strikes and airborne Gatling guns carved up the countryside beyond the city. Graham Greene stayed here. His character Fowler used to drink at the cafe downstairs, the Continental Shelf, where le tout le tout Saigon used to gather each evening to drink and gossip. Saigon used to gather each evening to drink and gossip.

I think I've gone bamboo, as they used to say about British military advisers who'd stayed too long in this part of the world. I've gone goofy on Vietnam, fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with the place. I'm now accustomed to bowls of spicy pho pho for breakfast, strong cups of iced expresso over crushed ice with condensed milk at Trung Nguyen (sort of a Vietnamese version of Starbucks only better), lunch at the for breakfast, strong cups of iced expresso over crushed ice with condensed milk at Trung Nguyen (sort of a Vietnamese version of Starbucks only better), lunch at the coms coms, cheap eateries where I'd have bowls of rice with fish, chicken, or meat. I've come to rely on the smells of jasmine, frangipani, the durian and fish-sauce aromas at the markets, the constant buzzing and rumbling from the motos. I have a hard time letting any of the don gah don gah pa.s.s me by women carrying portable kitchens on yokes across their shoulders, serving bowls of soup or noodles that are always fresh. Everything is beautiful. Everyone is nice. Everything tastes good. pa.s.s me by women carrying portable kitchens on yokes across their shoulders, serving bowls of soup or noodles that are always fresh. Everything is beautiful. Everyone is nice. Everything tastes good.

Linh has changed since introducing me to Madame Ngoc. A few weeks ago, he was all nerves and suspicion. When I told him, before leaving for Nha Trang, that Philippe might be swinging through town, maybe joining us in Can Tho, he'd stiffened at the prospect of an unannounced and unantic.i.p.ated new arrival. He'd have to talk to the People's Committee, he said. People were watching us, he insisted, independently reporting on our activity. This addition to our party was an unexpected and potentially difficult development. Who was this Philippe? What were his intentions? Was he also a journalist? Was he a French or American citizen? During drinks at the roof bar of the garish Rex, when I left to go to the bathroom, Linh followed me, making an elaborate show of washing his hands while watching in the mirror to make sure I wasn't emptying a dead drop or whispering into a satellite communicator.

But since Nha Trang, he's been relaxed, and since he introduced me to Madame Ngoc, he's become an absolute p.u.s.s.ycat.

Madame Ngoc is a force of nature. The relationship between the matronly middle-aged restaurant owner, dripping in jade and jewelry, smelling of French perfume, always smartly dressed in well-tailored businesslike Western attire, and Linh, the young translator and Communist functionary, is a mysterious one. When he first took me to her restaurant, Com Nieu Saigon, I couldn't figure out why he was so solicitous of her. At first blush, they couldn't seem more different: the cold, efficient Hanoi boy and the warm but mercurial Saigonese woman. Yet Linh never lights a cigarette without first lighting one for her. He pulls out her chair for her. He hangs on her every word, antic.i.p.ates her needs. When she narrows her eyes, looks around the room, clearly desirous of something, Linh goes on full alert. But then so does everybody else. She may be a tiny Vietnamese version of a yenta, but underneath her soft features and almost overbearingly generous nature it's pure steel. She teases him relentlessly. She scolds, pokes, dotes on him, calls him 'Little Brother'. It is, I finally figured out after a few visits, love.

'Next time! You bring cookies. Chocolate!' says Madame Ngoc, pleased by my gift of flowers but preferring other things. 'Chris! Lydia! You happy? I love you . . .' she says, giving them both a big hug and a kiss. 'You too thin!' she says to Chris, who has never fully recovered from his crab in Nha Trang. 'Too thin! I think you sick.' She snaps her fingers, and across the room an a.s.sistant manager and a waiter rush over to serve her. She barks at them in Vietnamese, and a few moments later, the manager returns with packages of vitamins, Maalox, and herb tea. 'Tony, Chris, Lydia,' she says, looking worried. 'You must be very careful.' We each receive an identical package and a stern admonition to eat more carefully when outside of Saigon. A few days ago, it was bags of Vietnamese coffee (she'd heard me raving about how good it was here). When Lydia commented earlier on the toy dogs with bobbing heads on the dashboard of Madame Ngoc's chauffeured car, she'd presented each of us with a set later in the evening. We all love Madame Ngoc, and we think she loves us, too.

'I give my heart. Make people happy,' she says warmly, before snapping her head to the right and fixing a waiter with a brief look of withering scorn. Beers arrive at our table. Ashtrays are emptied. At Madame Ngoc's restaurant, people are happy. The clean white room is packed with Vietnamese families. Tables of eight, ten, twelve, fifteen people tear into food all around us, with new guests arriving every minute. They drive right through the dining room, three and four to a motorbike, then into the backyard parking area. Napkins are popping everywhere from their packets. Every few minutes, a clay pot shatters loudly on the floor and a sizzling-hot rice cake goes flying through the air. The colors on the plates at every table are electric, psychedelic, positively radiating bright reds, greens, yellows, and browns; and it smells good: lemongra.s.s, lobster, fish sauce, fresh basil and mint.

Com Nieu Saigon is the slickest, smartest, sharpest restaurant operation I've seen in a long, long time. Madame Ngoc, a tiny little middle-aged woman, divorced, living as she is all too willing to tell you all alone, runs it like a well-drilled battleship. Every table, every corner, every crevice of latticework in the open-air dining room is clean, tight, and squared away. Underneath the broken crockery, even the floor is spotless. The cooks, the waiters, and the managers move like a highly motivated even terrorized dance troupe. It does not do, I have long since gathered, to disappoint Madame Ngoc.

She's figured out how to run a successful restaurant in a Communist country. Com Nieu is a loud, casual, comfortable family place with a distinctive gimmick. Madame Ngoc, reading up on Vietnamese culinary history, found a traditional preparation for rice baked in clay pots. The drill at Com Nieu is that when you order a rice side, a waiter retrieves it from the kitchen, smashes the crockery with a mallet, the pieces falling to the floor, then hurls the sizzling-hot rice cake across the dining room, over the heads of the customers, to another waiter, who catches the cake on a plate, flips it, sends it up in the air a few more times like a juggler, then cuts it into portions tableside, dressing it with fish sauce, peppers, sesame, and chives. The room resounds with the noise of breaking and broken crockery. Every few minutes, searingly hot disks of rice go sailing by my ear. It's a tightly controlled riot of food, folks, and fun, kids standing on their chairs, their moms feeding them, granddad and sons tearing apart lobsters, crabs, and giant prawns, grandmas and dads smoking between courses, everyone chattering, eating, loudly and visibly enjoying themselves.

Who is Madame Ngoc? As she tells you, she's just a lone hardworking woman, unlucky in love, who loves cookies, chocolate, stuffed animals (which she collects) and continental buffets in large Western hotels. (She took us as her guest to one of the bigger, newer ones absolutely giddy around all those chafing dishes of French and Italian food, the cake stands of Austrian pastries and French pet.i.ts fours.) She is driven everywhere in a new luxury sedan. When it rains, someone is waiting curbside with an umbrella. When she decides at 10:30 at night that she wants us all to have our picture taken together, she snaps her fingers, barks a few orders, and a frightened-looking photographer arrives in a full sweat only a few minutes later, an old Nikon and flash rig around his neck. Com Nieu is jammed full every night as is her other restaurant, a Chinese-themed place down the street. And Madame Ngoc is at one or both, reigning over her devoted staff and adoring public for most of her waking hours.

'I so tired. Very hard work. Very tired. Sometime I don't want to come. I want to stay in bed. Sleep. But no can. Always watching . . .' She feigns a deeply suspicious inspection of her rushing staff. 'I go to fish market to surprise. Maybe somebody steal from me. I must find out. I say, "How much for crab today? How much yesterday? How many pounds you sell me yesterday?" I must look. Careful.' She points to her eye, signifying eternal vigilance. At the arrival of a large party by the front entrance, she jumps up out of her seat and approaches them, all smiles.

'I love everybody,' she says. 'You must give love. Give yourself to be success. You love people. They love you back.' Food arrives at our clean, newly varnished and polished table. Canh ngheu Canh ngheu, a tofu and dill soup. Platters of bong bi don thit bong bi don thit, crunchy, delicious golden zucchini blossoms that have been stuffed with ground pork and seasonings, then batter-dipped and fried. Cha goi Cha goi, spring rolls, and rau muong sao toi rau muong sao toi, flash-sauteed spinach with garlic sauce an otherworldly bright, bright green. Thit kho tau Thit kho tau, a stew of pork and egg in coconut broth, the halved boiled eggs tinged pink around the outer rim of white. Tom kho tau Tom kho tau, lobster stewed in coconut and chili, redder than red, the plump tail meat a phosph.o.r.escent saffron yellow. Ca bong trung kho to Ca bong trung kho to, a whole fish fried and dressed with chili sauce. Dua gia muoi chau Dua gia muoi chau, stir-fried baby bok choy. And, of course, lots of com nieu com nieu, the wedges of crispy rice cake from which the restaurant takes its name. Everything is as fresh as I've seen it anywhere in the world, fresher even. The flavors practically explode on my tongue; the colors shimmer. At the end of the meal, platters of ripe custard apple on ice arrive, accompanied by sliced mangoes, papayas, dragon fruit, and pineapple. I have been Madame Ngoc's guest three or four times by now, and there is no question in my mind that hers has been the best food I've had in the country (this in a country where everything is already fabulous).

Like any really good restaurant lifer, Madame Ngoc's nervous system is hard-wired to every movement in both kitchen and dining room. She has the ability to sense a full ashtray on the other side of the restaurant, even when far out of view. One moment she's cooing over Lydia, or teasing Linh for being late to the airport the last time she was in Hanoi, or insisting I try the crab, or worrying over Chris's stomach the very next second, she's giving orders to a shaking but very competent waiter who has somehow managed to displease her, rebuking him in terrifying imperious tones.

Then it's back to 'I love you, Chris, Lydia . . . Tony, you happy?' She places her hand over mine and gives it a pat. When she smiles, it's a broad, full-body grin. And I want to hug her like a beloved aunt. She's a cross between a Jewish mother and the head of the Genovese crime family, driven, relentless, smotheringly affectionate, dangerous, warm, complicated and attentive. Though very concentrated on money and things she has rarely, if ever, allowed us to pay for anything.

She's strong. She can be hard. She can be cold. But on our way out the door after dinner, as we say goodbye for the last time to our new best friend in Saigon, her face collapses and she bursts into tears. As our car pulls away, she is sobbing, her hand brushing the gla.s.s in a combination wave and caress.

New Year's Eve in Saigon is a jumbo-sized version of the song tu do song tu do, the weekend ritual of cruising downtown Saigon, circling the fountain at the intersection of Le Loi and Nguyen Hue boulevards. It's the Vietnamese equivalent of low-riding or cruising down Sunset Strip; thousands tonight, hundreds of thousands of young Vietnamese, dressed in their best b.u.t.ton-down shirts, freshly laundered slacks, dresses, and ao dais ao dais, drive in perpetual slow-moving circles through the downtown city streets. They are going nowhere in particular. They don't stop. There is no place to stop anyway. Every inch of Saigon seems filled, tire-to-tire, with motos and scooters. It takes twenty minutes to cross the street.

My plan was to celebrate the New Year at Apocalypse Now, a promisingly t.i.tled expat bar a few blocks from the Continental. What better place to be when the ball dropped, I thought, than some sinister expat bar in Saigon? I expected opium-addicted ex-mercenaries, aggressive wh.o.r.es in silver minis, long-AWOL 'white VC,' black market hustlers, Aussie backpackers, shriveled French rubber barons, their faces teeming with corruption and the effects of malaria; I expected international rabble, arms dealers, defectors, and hit men. I'd had such high hopes. But from the moment I step inside, I am instantly disappointed. Apocalypse Now is a fern bar! There's food! A crowd of well-dressed tourists from America, Canada, and Taiwan sit in a rear dining room among potted palms and Christmas lights, near a buffet of hot entrees, salads, and what looks like Black Forest cake. They sell T-shirts with the movie's logo. Soccer is shown on an overhead projection screen near a small stage. Sunburned blondes with Midwestern accents and Tammy Faye hairdos drink colorful c.o.c.ktails at a clean Formica bar.

I hate the place on sight and retreat back into the streets, finding somewhere to stand by a large stage set up behind the Theatre Munic.i.p.al. I recognize my moto driver from a few days earlier from his Yankees cap and we wave h.e.l.lo to each other. Onstage, a group of children are taking part in some kind of dance and theater presentation: patriotic songs, storytelling. No one in the crowd is watching; everyone has their attention fixed somewhere else. The constant growl of the motos and scooters drowns out nearly everything. Once in a while, loud technomusic plays over loudspeakers as the traditionally garbed performers leave the stage for a break. Everyone seems to be waiting for something, going somewhere, but nothing happens. As the hour approaches, I see a few people check their watches. One minute to midnight, and traffic has not slowed. No ball appears poised to drop. There are no fireworks. Midnight pa.s.ses indistinguishable from five minutes before or after. No one cheers. No one kisses. Not a single raised fist, shout of 'Happy New Year,' or any acknowledgment that another year has pa.s.sed in the Western world. It's true the Vietnamese celebrate the Chinese New Year (Tet), but for weeks there have been signs everywhere reading Happy New Year, and people have been calling it out whenever they spy an American or a Westerner. Everyone seems poised to party, the milling crowds huge, the traffic heavier than ever, but I see not the tiniest indication of any intention to do anything but drive or stand. They've all come out for the event, all these kids, as far as the eye can see, and beyond. They cl.u.s.ter around a laser-light display outside a nightclub, as if not knowing what to do next. Dance music blasts from inside, but n.o.body dances, sways, even taps a foot or drums a finger.

It reminded me of my first high school dance boys on one side, girls on the other, both sides afraid to move. Or have I misunderstood? Are the hundreds of thousands of kids driving and driving in circles all dressed up with no place to go as the song says or are they truly indifferent to the infinite delights of three chords and a beat? Vietnam seems to have shrugged off the worst of our culture with barely a look back. Is 'living freely', song tu do song tu do, just driving? Or is it waiting? And for what?

It's tim ran tim ran time. This time, I'm going to eat something that will, I am a.s.sured, make me very, very strong. The strongest. Huong Rung (Flavors of the Forest) Restaurant is a bright beer-garden-like s.p.a.ce, enclosed by trellis, its foyer crowded with fish tanks. I enter, sit down, and order a beer right away, steadying myself for what will probably be the most . . . unusual meal of my life so far. time. This time, I'm going to eat something that will, I am a.s.sured, make me very, very strong. The strongest. Huong Rung (Flavors of the Forest) Restaurant is a bright beer-garden-like s.p.a.ce, enclosed by trellis, its foyer crowded with fish tanks. I enter, sit down, and order a beer right away, steadying myself for what will probably be the most . . . unusual meal of my life so far.

A grinning waiter approaches, holding a wriggling burlap sack. He opens it, gingerly reaches inside, and extracts a vicious, hissing, furious-looking four-foot-long cobra. As I've ordered the specialty of the house, I a.s.sume the staff is inured to the sight, but when the cobra, laid on the floor and prodded with a hooked stick, raises its head and spreads its hood, the whole staff of waiters, busboys, and managers everyone but my cobra handler steps back a few feet, giggling nervously. My cobra handler, a nice young man in waiter's black slacks and a white b.u.t.ton-down shirt, has a sizable bandage on the back of his right hand, a feature that does not fill me with confidence as he lifts the snake with the stick and holds him over the table, the snake training its beady little eyes on me and trying to strike. I knock back the rest of my beer and try to stay cool while the cobra is allowed to slide around the floor for a while, lunging every few moments at the stick. The cobra handler is joined by an a.s.sistant with a metal dish, a small white cup, a pitcher of rice wine, and a pair of gardening shears. The two men pick up the cobra, fully extending him; the cobra handler holds him behind the jaws, while the a.s.sistant keeps him stretched just ahead of the tail. With his free hand, the handler takes the scissors, inserts a blade into the cobra's chest, and snips out the heart, a rush of dark red blood spilling into the metal dish as he does so. Everyone is pleased. The waiters and busboys relax. The blood is poured into a gla.s.s and mixed with a little rice wine. And the heart, a Chiclet-sized oysterlike organ, still beating, is placed gently into the small white cup and offered to me.

It's still pumping, a tiny pink-and-white object, moving up and down up and down at a regular pace in a small pool of blood at the bottom of the cup. I bring it to my lips, tilt my head back, and swallow. It's like a little Olympia oyster a hyperactive one. I give it one light chew, but the heart still beats . . . and beats . . . and beats. All the way down. The taste? Not much of one. My pulse is racing too much to notice. I take a long swig of rou tiet ran rou tiet ran, the blood and wine mixture, enjoying it, not bad at all like the juice from a rare roast beef robust, but with just a slight hint of reptile. So far so good. I have eaten the live heart of a cobra. Linh is proud of me. Many, many sons. The floor staff grin, the girls giggle shyly. The handler and a.s.sistant are busily carving up the cobra. An enormous ma.s.s of snowy white snake tripes tumbles out of the cobra's body cavity onto a plate, followed by a dribble of dark green bile.

'This very good for you,' says Linh as a waiter mixes the bile with some wine and presents me with a gla.s.s of ruou mat ran ruou mat ran. It's a violent green color now, looking about as appetizing as the contents of a bedpan. 'This will make you the strongest. Very special, very special.'

I have long ago come to dread those words. I take a long swig of the green liquid and swallow. It tastes bitter, sour, evil . . . just like you'd expect bile to taste.

Over the next hour or so, I eat every single part of the cobra. First, ran bop goi ran bop goi, a delicious shredded-snake salad, heavily dressed with citrus and lemongra.s.s and served in a hot pot. Ham xa Ham xa, braised cobra with citronella, is also quite good, though slightly chewy. Long ran xao Long ran xao, however, the snake's tripe sauteed with onion, is absolutely inedible. I chew and chew and chew, grinding helplessly away with every molar. My chewing has not the slightest effect. It's like chewing on a rubber dog toy only less tender. The tripe, while innocuous-tasting, is impossible to break down. I finally give up, hold my breath, and swallow a mouthful whole and intact. Xuong (ran) chien gion Xuong (ran) chien gion, the deep-fried bones of the snake, is delightful like spicy potato chips only a lot sharper. You might enjoy these at a Yankees game, though very carefully. If one bone goes in at the wrong angle, it could easily pierce your esophagus, making the prospects of lasting through the ninth inning doubtful. Ran cuon ca lop Ran cuon ca lop, the cobra's meat, minced and rolled in mint leaves, is also delightful a festive party snack for any occasion.

The manager comes over to present me with a plate containing a large tree grub, white with a black freckle-like mark on one end. It's alive, undulating, bigger than a thumb. Oh, Jesus, no . . . It squirms around, thrashing on the plate. No, I'm thinking. No. Not that . . . Fortunately, the tree grub is cooked before serving, sauteed in b.u.t.ter until crispy. When it arrives back at my table, perched on a little bed of greens, I warily take a nice-sized bite. It has the consistency of a deep-fried Twinkie: crunchy on the outside, creamy and gooey in the middle. It tastes fine. But I would have been much happier not having seen it alive.

Overall, though, not a bad meal. And I've eaten the still-beating heart of a f.u.c.king cobra! (I'll be dining out on this story for a while.) For the very first time after eating food that will 'make me strong,' I actually feel something. I don't know if it's just nervous energy and adrenaline, but when I walk out into the street, I feel a buzz, a jangly, happy, vibrating sense of well-being. I think, Yes, I believe I do feel . . . strong.

'Monsieur Fowlair. Monsieur Fow-lairr . . .' someone is whispering.

It's the police inspector in Greene's The Quiet American The Quiet American, talking in my dreams. I wake up expecting to see Phuong, the heroine of the novel, preparing an opium pipe for me, and Pyle, the youthful CIA agent, petting his dog in a chair. I'm in my room at the Continental, carved fleurs-de-lis in the woodwork, ornate chairs, yards of intricately carved shelving. I can hear the clack-clacking of shoes on the wide marble floor outside the door, the sound echoing through the halls. Saigon. Still only in Saigon. The French doors leading onto the balcony are open and, though early, the streets are already filling up with cyclos, bicycles, motorbikes, and scooters. Women crouch in doorways, eating bowls of pho pho. A man fixes a motorbike on the sidewalk. Buses cough and stall and start again. At Givral's, across the street, they're lining up for coffee and the short, plump, fragrant-smelling baguettes. Soon, the 'noodle knockers' will come, rapping their mallets to announce the imminent arrival of another yoke-borne kitchen, bowls and bowls of steaming fresh noodles. Linh has informed me of something called 'fox' coffee, ca-phe-chon ca-phe-chon, a brew made from the tenderest beans, fed to a fox (though I have since seen it referred to as a weasel), and the beans later recovered from the animal's stool, washed (presumably), roasted, and ground. Sounds good to me.

I'm leaving Vietnam soon, and yet I'm yearning for it already. I grab a stack of damp dong off my nightstand, get dressed, and head for the market. There's a lot I haven't tried.

I'm still here, I tell myself.

I'm still here.

Perfect

The whole concept of the 'perfect meal' is ludicrous.

'Perfect,' like 'happy,' tends to sneak up on you. Once you find it like Thomas Keller says it's gone. It's a fleeting thing, 'perfect,' and, if you're anything like me, it's often better in retrospect. When you're shivering under four blankets in a Moroccan hotel room, the perfect meal can be something no more exotic than breakfast at Barney Greengra.s.s back in New York the one you had four months ago. Your last Papaya King hot dog takes on golden, even mythic, proportions when remembered from a distance.

I'm writing this, these words, from a beach chair somewhere in the French West Indies. My hand is actually scrawling in wet black ink across a yellow legal pad. I'm not here to eat. I'm here to write, and relax, untroubled by phone calls, shoes and socks, visitors, E-mails, or obligations of any kind. I'm here because I've been on the road for over a year and I want desperately to stay put, to dig in, to remain in one place and maybe reacquaint myself with my wife.

I've been coming to this beach for a long time. The first time I visited, back in the eighties, I was still kicking dope, and the blood-warm water felt cold on my skin. My wife and I honeymooned here, blowing every cent of wedding loot on a two-week kamikaze vacation, which left us tanned, happy, totally in love with the island and utterly broke. Down here, I like to think that I'm not the brutish, obsessive, bl.u.s.tering blowhard control freak, Chef Tony; nor the needy, neurotic, eager-to-please, talk-in-sound-bites Writer Tony but the relatively calm, blissed-out, sunstroked, amiable Husband Tony the nicest version of me Nancy is likely to see for forty days at a clip.

After a few lazy hours bobbing around in the warm, gin-clear turquoise water, and dozing on the beach, Nancy was reading me the police blotter from the local paper.

A man, 'G,' from Saint Peters, was detained last night on the Pondfill Road. A gentleman from Domenica complained that 'G' had mistreated him with a pair of nail clippers after a dispute over a game of dominoes at the Dinghy Dock Bar. Dutch side police arrived at the scene and gave 'G' a stern warning and he was released. Two youths from Back Street, 'P' and 'D', were arrested after stealing a gold chain from Kun Shi Jewelers on the Old Street. The youths asked to see a chain in the store, then ran away without paying for it. They were arrested at the bus stop on the Bush Road as they tried to make their escape by bus.

'Jesus,' said Nancy. 'It's a crime wave.'

A while ago, I looked up from my pad, wiped the sweat out of my eyes, and, after consulting my watch, turned to Nancy and said, 'Hungry?' She said yes, as I knew she would. We're creatures of habit down here. We have a routine. That meant a short walk across the hot sand to a thatch-roofed hut with a smoking barbecue grill, a rudimentary bar with five or six kinds of liquor, and two coolers of iced Caribs, Red Stripes, and baby Heinekens. Gus, the proprietor, has known us since 1984, and he had a pretty good idea what we wanted. By the time we ducked under the palm fronds into the shade, he'd already cracked two Caribes.

I ordered the barbecued ribs. Nancy went for the cheeseburger. The service at Gus's is never quick. Our order took about half an hour normal waiting time on this island. But, uncharacteristically, I wasn't impatient at all. I didn't fidget. I didn't look nervously around. I didn't listen for the telltale sounds of a spatula lifting Nancy's burger off the grill or the bell signaling an order was ready. I knew Keesha, the woman working the grill, and was aware that she did things at her own pace. I didn't care how long it took. I was happy to wait, drinking the beer in the shade of Gus's makeshift frond-covered shelter, sand between my toes, hair still wet from the sea, Nancy looking brown and happy and a little bit drunk across from me.

My ribs were tender, slightly crispy on the outside and seasoned with the same adobo spice that Gus puts on everything. If the ribs were marinated in something before grilling, I knew not what. Nor did I care. Any critical sensibilities had long ago been put on hold. Nancy's cheeseburger was small, cooked completely through, and topped with a single Kraft cheese slice and a too-large bun, also seasoned with the ubiquitous adobo. She never finishes her food, so I knew that I'd get at least a bite. Both plates were white plastic, garnished with soggy french fries just as I'd expected them to be. Gus's new s.h.a.ggy CD played on the sound system for at least the fourth time that day. It will, of course, remain the music from this time on the island. From now on, that CD will always and forever bring me right back here to this time and place, the taste of crispy pork and adobo seasoning, Gus's Beach Bar, the look on Nancy's face as she sighed distractedly, yawned, stretched, and then tossed one of my rib bones to a stray dog that'd been lurking by our table. The dog knew the routine.

I've learned something on the road. It doesn't do to waste. Even here I use everything.

August 2001

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Thanks to: Karen Rinaldi, Joel Rose, Rosemarie Morse, Kim Witherspoon, Panio Gianopoulos, Lydia Tenaglia, Chris Collins, Matt Barbato, Alberto Orso, "Global" Alan Deutsch, Bree Fitzgerald, Michiko Zento, Shinji Nohara, Dinh Linh, Madame Ngoc, Khoum Mang Kry, the incredible Zamir Gotta, Scott Leadbetter, Simon McMillan, Lu Barron, Edilberto Perez and family, Martin Vallejo, Abdou Boutabi, Luis and Virginia Irizar, Chris Bourdain, Jose Meirelles and family, Philippe Lajaunie, Colin and Isabella Cawdor, Mark Stanton, Abdelfettah and Naomi, Jamie Byng, Fergus Henderson, Gordon Ramsay, Thomas Keller, Juan Mari Arzak, Dan Cohen, Kim Martin, Liane Thompson, Christian Gwinn, Dan Halpern, Anya Rosenberg, Sarah Burns, Scott Bryan, Eric Ripert, Michael Ruhlman, Mark Peel, Tracy Westmoreland, and all the people who helped me on the way.

ANTHONY BOURDAIN is the author of Kitchen Confidential Kitchen Confidential, two satirical thrillers, Bone in the Throat Bone in the Throat and and Gone Bamboo Gone Bamboo, and the urban historical Typhoid Mary Typhoid Mary. A twenty-eight-year veteran of professional kitchens, he is currently the 'Executive Chef' at Bra.s.serie Les Halles in Manhattan meaning he gets to swan around in a chef's jacket taking credit for others' toil. He lives and always will live in New York City.

By the same author

Medium Raw

No Reservations

The Nasty Bits

Typhoid Mary

Les Halles Cookbook

Bobby Gold

Kitchen Confidential

Bone in the Throat

Gone Bamboo