BOURDAIN DAYS

Paris, Ile-de-France, November 21, 2016
Photo by: C.G.

The stack of to-read books in the living room are indications of a weekend mood. The previous workweek was a blink of time, but now the agency to rest out long has traction and good reason. Goethe had a pretty striking theory about plants. The poet wrote in the late eighteenth century that botanical vegetations and garden blooms, with the exclusion of hardwood trees, all shared vascular structures and/or systems of growth that determined exactness of physiology by their difference in manifestation: that genetically the stalks were wrapped up petals for their eventual unfolding, that “everything is leaf” about a plant, that the flower was merely the incumbent becoming of a pretty leaf. This outlandishness made me think of  the late Chef Anthony Bourdain and his food travels around the world in search of the perfect plate. In France, the culinary scene there is a seamless manifestation of organic beauty, all is exquisite and coming from the same source of focused tradition of taste and interpretations. (The chef actually had died in Paris. It was, I think, heaven to him.) Of all his shows, the episode in Greece where he cooked for his staff was my favorite (it certainly wasn’t the usual dialogue between foodies and the politicalizations of history); instead he was his homey self in an outdoor kitchen feeding abundantly and deliciously for his peeps. I had never seen him cook on television before, so this broadcast was an illumination of his heart as a cook. The impresario journalist, the master chef, the home cook was distilled into one persona. White wine in hand while grilling the baby octopus with artichoke leaves, its tentacles still twitching life, shouting “plates please with lemons these babies will cook fast,” his intentional timing to eat at the right place at the right time was a commitment to the experience of food to a level of reverential. He was my hero. (Summer of 2013 a friend from New York let us borrow her uncle’s bungalow along the beach access road on Cayman Brac, in the Caribbean, and that 10-day vacation all I did was cook, a l a Bourdain— it helped that the uncle was a fisherman and had a small farm up the cliff near the lighthouse, and every morning he would show us his fresh catch and would always generously say to help ourselves in his vegetable garden.) There was news that he had also died of, I believe, cancer, a few years back. That had deeply saddened me. But my time there and with him, I had sensed he was happiest at sea and had a sense of wholeness around his plants and fruits. The other night I saw an old episode of Chef Toni’s show on CNN, Parts Unknown, when he was laying over in Taipei, Taiwan for 3 days (of course passionately eating everything he could try at the night market, or was recommended at restaurants by the in-the-know locals), and it brought a flood of memories and longing to me since Taiwan was, and still is, my favorite food (doe hua, sweet soybean custard swimming in ginger syrup) and nature (Bai Yen hot springs, an hour hike from town to mountain high where the waterfalls meets the volcanic spring at a confluence pool) and its people (will genuinely treat you like family) destination country in the world.  I had stayed for a month in the fall of 2016 at Xindian, and my host became a brother figure, and I, an extension of his family, his sisters and his kids. In fact I had two brothers there at the time of my stay. The other was an ex-left-the-temple-life-monk and pursue his culinary passion to be a vegan chef. His small restaurant was just down the street from my homestay and it and his companionship became my sanctuary of inclusiveness in spite of my difference of culture (being a writer from the wild City of New York versus a gentle, contemplative man who seemed to me praying while in the act of cooking). His plates of blossoms and greens and purple rice were like altars of beautiful simplicity. Once at the prep table in the kitchen we were picking the leaves of the water spinach and I remember him saying, “I have enjoyed your company and your sharing of your poetic life and love for life, know that you will always have a brother in the same spirit here in Taiwan. Our heart’s journey, I think, are side by side.” I would have taken Bourdain to this sanctuary had I known him personally, had we discovered each other’s like-mindedness and reverence for food at the crossroads of our similar travels worldwide, pulled by the longings of the gastronomical earthbound creatures we are in search of heaven on earth.