A Meal Observed - Hardcover

Todhunter, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375410856 ISBN 13: 9780375410857

Publisher: Knopf, 2004

Synopsis

In this seductive account of a long, luxurious dinner at the venerable Paris restaurant Taillevent, Andrew Todhunter is both the American abroad sharing a rare gastronomic adventure with his wife and the apprentice-cum-reporter who has spent several months working in the restaurant’s celebrated kitchen, learning what goes on behind the scenes. As Todhunter describes it, Taillevent’s highly orchestrated kitchen is “less an atelier than a gun deck on a ship of war, a place of shouts and fire.”

On the other side of the kitchen’s double doors, in the warm light of the nineteenth-century dining room, the American couple surrenders to the sensual pleasure of a beautifully wrought and meticulously served dinner—from the amuse-bouche (a warm cheese puff to “amuse the mouth”) and the crème de cresson soup, with its sunken treasure of lobster tomalley, to the crowning glory of the fantaisie. In the spirit of A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals, Todhunter layers mouthwatering descriptions of French dishes and their preparation with reflections on his American childhood (when food, like sex and money, was not to be discussed at the table), dips into culinary history and philosophy, and entertains with asides on everything from olive oil and chestnuts to the science of viniculture and the chemistry of chocolate. Between courses, Todhunter brings us back to the sanctum of the kitchen itself, where he has probing conversations with chef de cuisine Philippe Legendre and pastry chef Gilles Bajolle, both major figures in the French culinary pantheon, and their assistants. Through these great chefs and their impeccably trained brigade we gain a unique glimpse into the heart of French cuisine and the love of fine food. Is cooking more an art, a craft, or a science? Are great chefs born or made? Why are there so few women chefs in France? What is the greatest danger for a chef at the top of his game? How is a new dish developed? What is the future of haute cuisine in France and in the world at large? When we cook for others, for love or for money, what do we give of ourselves?

As richly satisfying as the five-hour meal it describes, A Meal Observed is a delightful paean to the French and French cuisine, and to the universal love of the table. Bon appétit!

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Todhunter lives in northern California with his wife and two children. A freelance journalist who has written frequently for The Atlantic Monthly, he is the author of Fall of the Phantom Lord and Dangerous Games.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

L’Arrivée

I park at the corner of the rue Balzac and the Avenue de Friedland, and the instant I cut the engine I become aware that I am nervous. Performance anxiety, butterflies, a mild version of the racking nerves I used to suffer, as a freshman and sophomore in high school, before a wrestling match. The fear that I would be humiliated, outmanned, before the eyes of my coach, my teammates, and a girl whose name I had shoveled in the snow, on the frozen Hudson River, in letters visible to passing aircraft. In the car, I glance quickly over at my wife, who smiles gamely but a little uncomfortably, and we sit for a long moment in silence, not moving, in a kind of feigned, mutual optimism, as if bracing for embarrassing news. I try not to think it through, because I know that analysis will only make it worse, and that I am here, we are here, to enjoy ourselves. I glance at the car clock, then my watch, and their un- expected synchronicity provides a flush of paramili- tary satisfaction. I slip my cell phone out of the inside breast pocket of my jacket and check the time in the upper right-hand corner of its miniature screen. All three! A good omen, and proof, despite the state of my front bumper, creased into an awkward V against a black Mercedes’ tow bar in Brugge, that my equip- ment and I are essentially on the ball. According to these three chronometers, it is 8:15 in the evening on Tuesday, July 13, 1999, the eve of Bastille Day. We are early.

I glance again at my wife. Erin is thirty-two and beautiful—stunning, really—and for this I’m grateful. Her beauty is the one sure thing we have on this world we are about to enter, the thing no waiter or sommelier or maître d’hôtel at Taillevent—a Michelin three-star restaurant considered by many critics to be the finest in France and thus the world—can wrest from us with a patronizing glance. In hours of need, one can remind oneself that beauty, more even than youth, its reckless twin, has ever been a fortune before which wealth, sophistication, and intellect will bow.

We are also prepared to spend between twenty-five hundred and three thousand francs—four to five hundred dollars out of our own pockets—on a meal for two. This is something we have never done. Not only because we are often nearly penniless, given the vicissitudes of my work, but because we are not, truly, gourmands. By and large, that is not where our money goes. For reasons fiscal, temperamental, and psychological, we eat out rarely, and when we do we often bring it home. Furthermore, though we have bought the odd issue of Gourmet or Saveur, we have not yet subscribed to such magazines. We are not, in short, “foodies.” I object to the very word “foodie,” not only for its inherent ugliness as a sound, but for its cliquishness. “I’m a huge foodie,” a woman told me recently at a dinner party, with that mixture of false shame and childlike enthusiasm that accompanies nearly any public revelation of sensual preference, and it struck me as surprisingly intimate, even indecent, as if this near-stranger had slipped off her Roman sandals, stretched her calves across my lap, and asked if I would like to eat her feet. I later admitted that if this particular foodie had been more attractive her confession might not have troubled me. In that case, it might well have conjured the agreeable image of her nude and reclining in a bathtub of mashed banana.

Our status as nonfoodies notwithstanding, my wife and I both like to cook, and even more than that we like to sit and eat at a comfortable table for long hours. And that is one reason we are here, at this moment, at the corner of Balzac and Friedland. For there are few moments more existentially harmonious than those that make up the latter half of a good meal in a hospitable restaurant, in the company of one or two people—rarely more—with whom one feels almost entirely safe, and by whom one feels at least partially understood. I had such a meal at an underrated one-star restaurant named Julien, in Strasbourg, on the quai des Bateliers, with my wife and her mother some six years ago. By some turn of fate for which I shall always be grateful, I have been blessed with a mother-in-law who is excellent company. I would never have imagined, as a bachelor, that I might take some of the best trips in my life with my wife and her mother, but there it is. The fact that she is a good deal younger than we are in spirit certainly helps, and there is always the vague sense that we are traveling with a mysteriously greying niece. In any case, the near-perfection of such a meal has less to do with the food, with the procession of well-wrought dishes, than with that gathering condition of bien-être induced by wine and victuals and companionship in a warm, preferably unfamiliar setting, all the while under the care of sure-handed and anonymous strangers.

This state generally peaks late in the evening, and usually at the pause when the dinner plates have been cleared away. There is first of all the caloric high, the rush of blood sugar, the false sensation that all is well in the world because one has eaten well. The conversation usually peaks at this time, and everyone at the table is giddy. At that moment, a server often brushes the tablecloth. The conversation at a pause, you may lean back away from the table to admire this orderly gesture. You may be struck by the suspicion that Western civilization, beleaguered by greed, cynicism, and bad taste, might simply be preserved through the observance of this solitary act. When the server withdraws, you luxuriate in the sight of the freshly cleaned white tablecloth, minutely spotted here and there, perhaps, but smooth and free of crumbs, and as you lean back in, resting your forearms on the table, you sweep the white expanse with an open palm. The candlelight soaks into the cloth, and glimmers on the surviving silverware, and the white noise of the other conversations in the restaurant is decorous but lively. You feel as if you are swimming unseen in the well of these voices, through these foreign and contented lives. Besotted with this confluence of nurture and sedation, free of fear and responsibility, you stare blankly at the cloth, or up into the flame of the candle, or close your eyes and sink into the taste and heat of the wine, into the womblike center of these concentric human circles, one within another within another—and for a moment you will know that you are here, truly here, at this table in this restaurant in this benign and generous world.

If one has been careful with the wine, but not too careful, the afterglow of this rapture de la table can last well into the drive home, and even, if you hurry, into bed.

The anonymity of the waiter is in itself impor- tant, and serves a number of functions. In America, of course, to global ridicule, we have made the widespread mistake of training our servers to introduce themselves to their customers by name. This has not yet trickled down into the kind of rural American diner frequented by deer hunters, where the waitress might reflexively call you “hon” but will have far too much common sense than to burden you with her identity. It is largely for this reason that I like such diners, where, when you’ve dulled your senses to the fence of neon-orange vests along the counter, and the fraternal “I’m gonna kill me an animal” intention that hangs in the air like the scent of sawdust and sour beer, you can still get a fine breakfast of eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee for under five bucks.

I should confess that, though I am willing to catch or spear fish, I haven’t eaten red meat in some years, and feel viscerally opposed to terrestrial sport-hunting for reasons I can’t quite articulate. My paternal grandfather was a fanatical hunter and fly fisherman, and my father likes to fish from time to time, so I have no doubt that I would enjoy everything about big-game hunting except gunning the animals down. In fact, I could well imagine spending hours or days in pursuit of a large animal with an empty rifle, if only to draw a perfect bead on it—De Niro at the end of The Deer Hunter—and let the animal pass. My mother, for her part, spontaneously became an ovolactovegetarian at age six. I believe it happened at breakfast, when she declared she would not eat the bacon on her plate, or any other meat for that matter, as long as she lived. Nearly seventy years later, she has yet to wriggle out of this vow. This was in 1932, when Americans who chose not to eat meat were considered not merely odd but dangerously out of their minds. If I inherited a portion of my grandfather’s love of sport, and a portion of my mother’s sensibility regarding animals, spear fishing may represent some kind of lame behavioral compromise. When I was a young boy in New England, the day I came ashore with my first speared rockfish and cleaned them on a stump at a friend’s house, the smell of the fresh blood on my hands triggered an unexpected and primordial response. I rubbed the blood up and down my forearms, painting them, and nearly swooned from its sight and its sweet sticky smell. It was powerfully arousing in some uncultured way, and I might easily have smeared the rest of my eight-year-old body with the blood had I not felt some shame in my excitement. Later, I experienced a measure of revulsion when it came time to eat the thick white meat of the fried fish that I had speared, although I forced myself to eat it, and that feeling rarely recurred. Now I spear-fish much more rarely, and when I do I feel a bit sorrier for the fish. It has also been quite some time since I was excited by the smell and sight of blood, and even longer since I felt a pang of revulsion at eating the flesh of an animal so recently living.

My father, who taught me to fish, taught me to kill them quickly, to reduce unnecessary suffering, and I had assumed this was a universal practice. One summer...

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375410856
• ISBN 13: 9780375410857
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240