believe me,

but it sings, salt sings…

Dust of the sea,

in you the tongue

receives a kiss

from ocean night…

in it, we taste infinitude”

---- Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Salt”

Chilean Poet-Diplomat Pablo Neruda in the mist.

Elizabeth the Beautiful’s face lit up. She said it smelled like one of her favorite smells; a bonfire. I agreed and added, “yes, a bonfire on a beach on the sea of Japan”. One of the new line chefs walked by, gazed at it, asked politely if he could hold it a moment. He did and then said it reminded him of petrified wood. It does. I had never seen it in a solid section before … only in pale, blond, pencil-like shaving wisps in the bag it comes in when we go shopping in Asian markets.

One of our former chefs sent it as a gift upon his return from Tokyo. Along with it he also sent the wooden box designed to work much the same as a carpenter’s plane that enables one to harvest this exotic sea treasure.

In the U.S. the product is known as bonito. It’s Japanese name is katsuobushi, literally, “firewood fish”. It is prepared from skipjack tuna by hanging it in the dry, salty air on the coastal cliffs of Japan. The price of the bonito is determined how close it is to the center cut. Prepare for a cost of over $100.00 per pound. Skipjack is a streamlined, fast-swimming fish, common in tropical waters throughout the world, where it inhabits surface waters in large shoals (up to 50,000 fish), feeding on fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks of all sorts. Katsuobushi (or bonito if you like) is the main ingredient in dashi, the “mother” to miso soup and, in essence, the Japanese equivalent of a Jewish Mother’s chicken soup. So you know its good for you.

In 676 AD the Emperor of Japan outlawed the consumption of meat for the common people. It remained so for succeeding governors because Buddhism was the strengthening national religion.

When that chef friend sent the package he included a note. It said that this dried fish ‘was about thirty years old!’ Decidedly not fresh! Yet … all the better!

I shaved some of the hard substance into the handsome rectangular box and gathered the resulting “tuna dust” at the catch drawer below the blade and spooned it into a cup of hot water I had poured from a tea kettle. The once inanimate motes suddenly and mystically danced to life, wriggling in the hot water as if they would love to swim away.

My mind turned inward and I thought of fishermen holding lanterns high and peering into the dark ancient nights on the Sea of Japan. I thought of them hunting their streaking prey and of cold rocking seas of centuries gone by and thanked the heavens that refrigeration took a long time to be invented. If it had been any sooner man might not have conceived of smoking, salting, curing, fermenting, pickling and drying foods to make it though the long seasons that have no steady harvest and we’d be poorer of for it. And there would be no dashi or miso soup for us.

Now I’m going out to look for that bonfire.

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DASHI A.K.A. DASHI KOMBU

Dashi is the basis of Japanese soups, stews, stock concentrates and sauces, and the better your dashi, the more successful your meal will be. Powdered instant dashi is readily available, but it is simple to make your own—and avoid the additives often contained in those products. The more refined dashi uses katsuo bonito flakes, which are not cheap, but excellent results can be had with niboshi dried small sardines.

Recipe follows.

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As soon as I was 20 years of age, I began my love affair with Key West. I took a couple of detours, to be sure: a brief stint of college in Hawaii, manual labor in Colorado and Kansas, and work as a short-order cook in an Illinois diner, before I settled into cooking on the island that changed me. It was the early 1970s and in South Florida I was experiencing the cuisine of the Caribbean and Latin America on a daily basis.

Louie’s Backyard, Key West. 1986. Where I first began to find the voice and flavors for what became New World Cuisine’. (Photo credit to Richard Watherwax).

When I eventually (haltingly!) decided to become a professional chef, I initially gravitated to classic French cuisine—that was what one did. Back in the 70s regional American cooking had few proponents. It would be ten years before Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Wolfgang Puck and Paul Prudhomme kindled that fire. While I didn’t have the money to attend cooking school I did, however, have the will to become educated. One by one I bought the books that would form the foundations of my book schooling. I read them like a jailhouse lawyer sensing they were my only hope of escaping the rough lives of the cooks I encountered during the wild and wooly days and nights in the first kitchens I knew.

With my friend and American culinary artist Jeremiah Tower at a James Beard Gala.

Originally, I was deeply influenced by France’s “three-star chefs”—Roger Vergé, Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Alain Senderens, the Troisgros brothers. Yet my day-to-day eating experience was of New World flavors; West Indian chutneys and Central American plantains, Bahamian conch salad and Cuban steak a la parrilla—in the cafés of Key West. Slowly but surely the magic of those foods and their special language came to define me as a chef.

There was, in fact, a defining moment in my decision to become the chef that I am today; it was one morning in 1987, as I sat on the deck behind Louie’s Backyard where I was employed.

At this point I’d cooked in a lot of joints, and I use that word purposefully. I’d been frying eggs, flipping burgers and barbecuing ribs even as I was venturing into the Cuban and Bahamian shacks and cafés around Key West for lunch or a café con leche. By the mid 80s I had become a true working chef. I was running Louie’s, long considered one of the best restaurants in Key West. Jimmy Buffett hung out with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane. Louie’s is situated in a spot where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Atlantic Ocean. I was drinking a cafecito and studying a stack of cookbooks; French, Middle Eastern, Southwestern, Italian … in pursuit of some daily special for my menu that evening, when I looked up to see a sailboat drifting southward. I mentally drifted with it for some time, wondering where it might be going and what those on board would see and taste when they got there.

With the person who defined Cajun/Creole cuisine and influenced countless chefs, Paul Prudhomme. We were in Madrid to receive the ‘Madrid Fusión’ awards together.

And just like that, I realized that it was time for me to put away my books on the dishes of other places. It was one of those moments of complete clarity. As much as I had drawn from the wisdom and artistry of hundreds of years of European cuisine, it was now time for me to express where we were living.

I thought about how North America’s music had evolved, how its literature and architecture and dance were amalgamations of cultures bumping up against one another. Key West was a place where Spanish, African, and Anglo influences converged, yet the foods we were serving at the higher end restaurants seemed almost frozen in time. No one had yet imagined what kind of fusion cuisine might result if those cultures were expressed in food the way the cuisines of New Orleans, California, and the American Southwest were products of the different peoples who inhabited them.

I urge you to get in front of a map of the Caribbean and Central and South America. Compare it to the United States. Think about how different “our” foods are, not only from our southern neighbors’, but even region to region, state to state, and city to city. You can’t help but be struck by how many food experiences there are to be had in the enormity of that complex geography. The Americas are guided culinarily by a vast range of histories and an ever-shifting present tense.

The cookbooks thus far. Each one written to learn as much as we could in doing them.

In the next months I went back to some of the same spots I’d eaten in many times since we had settled in Key West but now with new eyes. I went to a restaurant modestly named ‘B’s’ and another called ‘La Lechonera’, to ‘El Cacique’ and ‘El Meson de Pepe’, and some places that had no sign out front at all. I sat on stools at counters and ordered. I pestered cops and fishermen and housepainters and housewives about what they were having. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind translating a menu item for me if I couldn’t make it out yet. I earned initial curiosity of many waitresses as I quizzed them and took notes on a spiral pad. It got exciting; I felt like I was solving a puzzle or cracking a case. With each meal I envisioned how it was cooked, and how I might adapt it to the things I loved from my own experiences which allowed for more riffing since I would not be disappointing the ancestors I descended from. I was and remain an enthusiastic acolyte of the place we lived, worked and raised our son.

Less than a year after my epiphany on the deck, my partner Proal Perry and I opened an addition to Louie’s Backyard. It was on the second story. We wanted an informal restaurant. I was offering constructions like “Mojo Marinated and Roasted Chicken with Saffron Rice and Rioja Essence” and “Seared Tenderloin of Beef with Crispy Vaca Frita and Boniato Mash” and “Grilled Florida Snapper with Salsa Verde and Maduro Plantains.” Diners going to Louie’s would come up when they heard I was now cooking at ‘The Café’, eye the menu, and more often than I’d cared to admit at the time, head right back down the stairs to the more “cosmopolitan” food I had created in the original restaurant. Before they departed, however, they occasionally offered their opinions that went like this, “What? Is he crazy? I’m not paying more than ten bucks for black beans and yellow rice!” It is not for the faint of heart to cut a new path.

“IF THE MAP OF THE WORLD WERE A TABLECLOTH,

AND I COULD CHOOSE A PLACE AT THAT TABLE,

I WOULD SIT ACROSS THE PENINSULA OF FLORIDA,

AT THE NEXUS OF NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN.

MY PLATE WOULD TOUCH CUBA, THE FLORIDA KEYS, THE YUCATAN, THE WEST INDIES, THE BAHAMAS, AND SOUTH AMERICA.

AND IF TIME COULD TELL, I WOULD LISTEN TO THE TALES OF VOYAGERS, DISCOVERERS, TRADERS AND MYSTICS WHO, IN SEARCHING FOR “THE INDIES”, THE GREAT KHAN AND THE RICHES OF CHINA, DISCOVERED SOMETHING MUCH MORE VALUABLE AND ENDURING, A NEW WORLD OF CULINARY TREASURES.

ALMOST INSTANTLY, THE CUISINES OF THE OLD WORLD BEGAN TO MERGE WITH FOODS OF THIS NEW ONE;

THIS EVOLUTIONARY AND INEXORABLE FUSION

LIES AT THE HEART OF NEW WORLD CUISINE.”

—- Norman Van Aken

“Folks, I’m telling you,

birthing is hard and dying is mean.

So get yourself some loving in between.”….Langston Hughes

Almost everything in life seems to have two sides. Its ups and downs.

Love almost inevitably suffers loss.

Salt finds its way into the sugar bowl.

Men are from Mars and Women from Venus.

The apple Eve gave Adam was the fruit that spoiled a Garden.

Where can we turn to find a pleasure that never causes pain?

Is there and earthly good that is always and constantly good?

Yes. It is chocolate.

It is fitting that it was first imbibed by Ancient Indian Kings.

When I was a child, I like so many other kids ate the chocolate of our American youth.

The magic words. The prayer words!

Hershey, Nestlé, Mars, Heath, Butterfinger, Kit Kat, Almond Joy and Baby Ruth.

What child ever found the sting of a rebuke so often suffered due to other children in chocolate? None!

We all loved it. And the child in us still does and always will.

If sex, love and music were all one food (sexlovemusic) it would be chocolate.

When asked to describe the flavor of chocolate even the most literate individuals find themselves adrift in the nonalphabetically constrained language of groans, shudders, moans and sighs.

The ‘GDF Cake’ developed by Justin Van Aken for our cookbook, “My Key West Kitchen”, Kyle Books.

The cacao tree is a native of Central and South America. Today, it is cultivated around the equator, and can be found in the Caribbean, Africa, South-East Asia, and even in the South Pacific Islands of Samoa and New Guinea. The Latin classification name for chocolate is Cacao theobroma which means, ‘food of the gods’. Naturally helpful in asserting it god-like powers is that it was also considered an aphrodisiac by the Maya and the Aztecs. This legend did not evaporate as it crossed the Atlantic for its eventual cultivation and reinvention in Europe.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to encounter cacao. On August 15, 1502, on his fourth and last voyage to the Americas. The man had a knack for finding the gods, intentional or otherwise!

The chocolate of these Mesoamerican civilizations was consumed as a bitter-tasting drink made of ground cacao beans mixed with a variety of local ingredients that could have included chilies, allspice berries, annatto seeds and vanilla. An officer serving with Cortez observed the Aztec ruler Montezuma, drinking fifty flagons of chocolate a day presumably as a prelude to visiting with one of his many wives.

(One per wife?)

When the Spanish first brought chocolate back to Europe, it was still being served as a beverage, but of all the foods that moved from West to East it was chocolate that went through the most serious transformation.

By the 17th century European nobility began to mimic the Indian kings and drank chocolate with great ceremony and fuss. The Spanish soon found competition from the French, English, and Dutch who were cultivating cacao in their colonies in the Caribbean, and later, elsewhere in the world. As the cost of producing chocolate began to drop it began to become a confection for the masses as well.

In World War II the American government contracted Hershey chocolate to provide their candy bars for the troops in battle. Chocolate bars were being produced at the rate of 500,000 a day!

When we wish to send someone a message of love, all you need is love chocolate.

Not only chickens lay eggs. I am down in here in my shell now because I was asked to be.

“Find some time ‘ago’ and tell us about it”, she said.

I will not crack myself open like the chick’s egg to emerge, blinking, staggering and unable to return, but crawl out, with my own curiosity as my guide, hold my shell up to keep her pink and blazing sunset colors, her spined and spiral shape intact and listen to time’s murmuring, between the beats of a human’s heaving chest, of “Mother, Mother” Ocean”.

Before Lunch Chef, Sous Chef, Executive, Prep or Sous Chef I must have been the ‘Pre-Chef’. I once lay back within my shell, coiled and coded with some DNA recipe, no doubt, embedded in my soul’s center. I, pre-knowing, followed false trails out aplenty. I was a multitude. Poorly skilled house painter, Kansas flat lands concrete sprayer, Honolulu flower seller, Illinois carnival highway roving gypsy, golf course sod layer, blues band struggler, black tar roofer and others.

But those are for other tales. We will begin and spiral around this life as a cook.

~~~

The Pre-Chef days were all but over and white clothing, hippie long tied back hair and two thousand pairs of sneakers ago I cooked in a town called Lake Forest, Illinois. Not my first kitchen job. That is even further within the catacombs of my spiral-shelled cell. Perhaps another time we’ll go there.

Hitchhiking was a way to get to work when the VW crashed.

I arrived around 1 p.m. each day, (whenever my hitch-hike lift concluded) in the high chaos and tidal roar of the lunch rush hour. People were screaming in at least four languages. In that kitchen it was often like a hellish day at the United Nations. The Chinese cook ‘Let’ would be jockeying the Scandinavian fish chef ‘Thor’ aside to puff up his Florentine Omelettes under the broiler. Thor would peer over his glasses at the tickets and mutter to no one in particular, “I’m gonna stick my meat fork in that guy someday.” Eddie was from Philadelphia … the only guy on the line I could not understand a word out of did teach me how to use a French knife, but it was all through gesture and pantomime in that his speech was some kind of crazy shorthand dialect only a few people could follow. Eddie worked the cold pantry and must have consumed 5 pounds of shrimp and crabmeat each day. White sea food flecks rode upon his massive jowls.

The reigning chef was a Frenchman named Gabriel, (his horn blown long ago), who retired in the mid-afternoons with his newspapers, cigars and bottle of Burgundy to his private quarters upstairs.

The kitchen was built down into the ground with no windows. With all the other chefs napping after the morning shift in the bunkhouse behind the restaurant, the hours between 3 and 5 were dark, dreamy and quiet.

I spent many of those afternoons with a kind, funny and dying Japanese man named Tokio Suyehara. ‘Toké’, as he was called, was the head chef of the restaurant for some of the years before I started there; but after the cancer hit him, he had no strength for it. His body shrunk down to boy’s size with only his head, feet and hands left large.

Toké and I had some routine chores to do. Making the creamed spinach, slicing lemons and carefully putting paprika on one hemisphere and chopped parsley on the other, but we accomplished them quickly so we could sit in the chef’s office and drink tea and talk. He and his family were forced into the Nisei internment camps during the Second World II. He recalled that strange displacing times yet never with self-pity. Other times we would raid the refrigerators, and he’d make me some incredible dishes he knew from his travels and his life as a chef. On doctor’s orders he ate bowls of ice cream or drank shakes to try and put some weight back on, which frustrated him because he missed his own spicy, aromatic, textured cooking. I was learning why with these meals and felt bad for him. He shook it all off with a smile. I remember him out in the yard of the restaurant picking dandelion greens in the softening April sunlight one day shortly before I left that job, (never to see him again), bringing them in and making us a gingery soy dressed salad with them.

Most of the chefs lived behind the restaurant in a drab bunkhouse. Those who could nap did so. For those who could not quiet their minds with sleep it was ball games on the flickering TV at a nearby saloon or letter writing back to old countries and families there. Then it was back to work the dinner hour. The restaurant changed her rhythms dramatically over the next two hours.

The dishwashers had lifted the mats, swept and mopped, cleaned a thousand dishes and hundreds of pans, taken out the dirty laundry, the garbage and re-set the cutting boards in position by then. Usually, the Italian would be back first, whistling and bragging about a mid-afternoon conquest, (often imaginary) and readying his station, which was the meat grill. His name was Michelangelo but asked us all to call him Mike.

The other chefs came in one by one and soon staff meal was coming together. The meal always seemed to make the cooks uncharacteristically pleasant. Maybe it was the wine they gulped in coffee mugs. Everyone on the floor staff knew but they never ratted on the chefs or they’d have had one helluva time getting their orders filled during service. One of my unspoken about jobs back then was going to the liquor store a few blocks when no one was checking and pick up the beers and whisky and hid it behind cases of lettuces or cans of snails. The chefs often sipped the wine intended for cooking out of clear sight. The managers allowed it under the naïve assumption that that would be all they would drink. Crazy. Some of these bastards drank the sherry out of the Shrimp de Jonghe dishes from the reach-ins right in the middle of service leaving the shrimp only with the butter, breadcrumbs and parsley set up in the casserole dishes.

I was learning so much.

Restaurant cooking was very different in the U.S. back then. It was as if the whole profession just went under after a bright period between the late 1940’s and early 1960’s. After Kennedy got shot through Vietnam and Watergate the whole rodeo show seemed to get corrupt. Nixon sneaking the Margaux into his glass while his guests drank plonk would have been in perfect sync with the cynicism a waiter on a typical floor staff would manifest. Oh, you could still see the old pattern on the tapestry of French classical cookery in this restaurant. The names were still there, ‘Veal Oscar’, ‘Tournedos Rossini’, ‘Sole Bercy’, and there was an occasional rivalry that flared up between the cooks, the French vs. The Italians vs. The Asians. Young Americans were on the very bottom.

The life just killed you everyday, twice a day.

I knew that I had to get out before my ability to be the only thing I ever considered worthy of being died.

I took my shell and rolled south as far south as I could go on dry land.

Key West. Mile Marker Zero.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copyright by Norman Van Aken 8.21.26

In 2006 it was my good fortune to meet Harold McGee when we both attended the Madrid Fusión Awards. I received mine with him as well as Paul Prudhomme, Alice Waters and Mark Miller. Other luminaries like Judith Jones the astonishing editor of so many vaunted authors, the journalistic, “Food Arts” magazine founders, husband and wife team Michael and Ariane Batterberry, Charlie Trotter, Ferran and Alberto Adrià, Juan Arzak and more.

It was January and Madrid was dark and cold. Harold walked out of the auditorium with us. A number of us from the conferences were headed to a celebration featuring a lot of Jamón Ibérico and Cava. I was moving along at a clip to generate a little body heat. Then Harold said, “Would you two mind terribly if we stopped somewhere so I could purchase a topcoat?”. Janet and I were wrapped from head to toe and had we not we’d be shivering too. We popped into a haberdashery in the city founded around 900 AD. A sales clerk stepped forward and soon Harold began to try some on. I shall never forget the tall, slender, bespeckled gentleman slowly doing a 360 in a shop mirror and then asking Janet if she liked it. She gave him her brilliant smile and an enthusiastic thumbs up!

Me, Janet, along with others including José Andres, Mark Miller and Harold McGee. José was soon cooking us all his famous ‘Spanish Egg’ dish.

A few years later a FedEx package arrived at my office. It was from Palo Alto. It was heavy! I opened it up and Harold’s book was in there. This time autographed and with a beautiful letter.

One of the great honors I’ve had was to represent the state of Florida for the “Milan Expo; American Food 2.0”. The nationwide chefs selected known as the USA’s “Culinary Dream Team”; all have been recognized by the James Beard Foundation and the International Culinary Center, and are also members of the American Chef Corps, an initiative launched by the U.S. Department of State to elevate the role of culinary engagement in America’s formal and public diplomacy efforts. Dean Fearing of Texas, Mary Sue Milliken of California, Hugh Acheson of Georgia and Daniel Humm of New York City all cooked there as well.

Where we cooked was a temporary James Beard Restaurant there within the historic, “Il Duomo” located in the heart of Milan on the rooftop of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. For our main course we cooked my ‘Guava Glazed Cornbread Stuffed Roasted Quail’. I loved seeing our Italian chef counterparts taste the guava glaze we had lacquered those plump birds with. Bright eye’d smiles and ‘thumbs up’! are a universal language.

In many Latin American countries, the popular beverage agua fresca is often made with guava. The fruit is a key ingredient in punch, and the juice is often used in sauces, candies, dried snacks, fruit bars, and desserts. Pulque de guavais a popular alcoholic beverage.

In many countries, guava is eaten raw, typically cut into quarters; it is also eaten with a pinch of salt and pepper or in India spice mixtures known as masalas. In the Philippines, tamarind or also ripe guava is used in preparing the somewhat sourish but beloved stew sinigang.

One of my all-time favorite references books is, ‘Food’ by the great Waverley Root. He notes that, “The guava had been seen by nobody except the American Indians before the time when the Arawaks served some to Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean”. Mr. Root goes on to note that there are “approximately 150 species of guava, all of which originated in tropical America. They belong to the genus psidium, Greek for pomegranate, probably so named for the many small, hard seeds enclosed by the pulp recall that fruit”.

The Nobel prize winning Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez was asked why he was returning to his homeland after his long European expatriation. He answered, “because I want to smell the scent of guavas.”

My greatest weakness for guavas is when prepared in pastelitos made with guava paste and cream cheese, warm right out of the oven.

And with a cafecito?

Dios Mío!

I’m Norman Van Aken and that’s my Word on Food ©.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

© 2025 Norman Van Aken

And for a bonus here is a recipe you might want to try.

GUAVA CHIPOTLE BBQ GLAZE

©2021 All rights reserved by Norman Van Aken

Note: You want to use pure Guava Paste. We use the Conchita brand. Don’t use Guava Paste that has cream in it.

1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 large clove garlic, minced

1 Tablespoon diced sweet onion

7 ounces, (by weight) guava paste, chopped

½ Cup water

¼ Cup soy sauce

2 Tablespoons pureed Chipotles en Adobo, (Puree whole can and then take out the 2 Tbsp.)

3 Cups of Heinz Ketchup

3 Tablespoons Spanish sherry vinegar

Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

In a small saucepan heat Extra Virgin Olive Oil over medium heat.

Add the garlic and onion and cook for about one minute.

Reduce the heat to low and add the guava paste and water and stir until the paste is dissolved.

Stir in the soy sauce, chipotle puree, vinegar and salt and pepper.

Let cool. Use as desired.

In June of 2001 Charlie (Trotter) sent me an email writing, “Did you make it to the Slanted Door while you were there? I think it might be the most flavorful food in San Fran right now”.

Due to public demand they moved to a larger space and not long after to an even larger one. That was in the Ferry Building. We dined there as well some years later. Despite the nature their huge demand by a throng of customers in the huge open dining room proved to be very tasty again. I probably brought my copy of his cookbook that day. I love to buy a chef’s or restaurant’s cookbook while on property. They invariably autograph it and it makes the plane ride home go much more quickly. Even though I longed for the flavors throughout our trek back home. Fat chance on an airplane!

Sadly Charles died young and suddenly at age 62 from cardiac arrest. The food world from coast to coast mourned. Still he has left a huge impact on so many. I am hoping that it is true that the family is going to open at the original location on Valencia Street. That is the rumor. I’d have the ‘Green Papaya Salad with Tofu and Rau Ram’ to start and the ‘Shaking Beef’ after. I would love to go back and raise a toast to our very talented yet humble friend. Maybe buy this book if you have not. It is a treasure.

Miss Julia wields a knife for one of the many 80th birthday parties held for her that epic year.

Cooking in America was dramatically affected by Ms. Child. But no one person does that alone and though she was in the vanguard there was a kind of renaissance that swept through the 60’s and 70’s in all manner of cooking. By the ‘American Centennial Celebration’ in 1976 the pride in American cooking was in full flower. Julia herself became less intensely French and embraced the new wave of regional cooking and produce with her sunny predilection for all things comestible. The woman known across the nation as “The French Chef” was close friends with French born Jacques Pépin and, perhaps ironically, it was Jacques who helped her find her California roots as she made her important voice include American cooking as well as the French she would never leave.

It was about at this time that I first had the pleasure of meeting the tall, engaging, famous woman and hearing her high-pitched voice in person. I can recall the day as if it were yesterday, yet it was many years ago. It was September of 1988. I was with my wife, Janet, at a small restaurant outside of Boston proper. We were on the first book tour of our lives. I had done “Good Morning Boston” that morning and before we were to fly off to Detroit the next morning to do more to promote the book I’d titled “Feast of Sunlight” we had the luxury of choosing a restaurant to dine in. I selected a place named “Hamersley’s Bistro”. I had won a contest that the chef of that restaurant had also won for her region of the U.S. Her name is Jody Adams. I had brought in a book to give Jody that night. But fate stepped in between. It was as we were being seated. Janet was suddenly pulling me by the sleeve, she hissed, “Be careful! You almost knocked that sweet looking little old man over!” I stood as still as a bird dog! I carefully looked about me and the tightly packed tables of the busy dining room. It was at that moment I looked past that man to his companion. It was unmistakably, magically and most clearly Julia Child. And she was sitting at the table immediately next to us! We had come from Key West where I had been cooking at “Louie’s Backyard” and “MIRA”. Julia’s voice ended my momentary panic over having nearly knocked her husband off his feet. She said, “MY! Don’t you two have the most m-a-r-v-e-l-o-u-s sun tans!!” Janet beamed a smile of forgiveness at me.

And then, “What brings you two young people to Boston?” Her voice rising like a soufflé on that last word of her question. Throughout the dinner we shared our mutual enthusiasm for the food and service. At the end of the meal I handed Ms. Child a copy of my first cookbook. She was incredibly gracious, asked me to inscribe it to her and insisted from now on I must address her “as Julia!”. And with that she moved from a television personality to a friend I came to share time and stove space over another score of years.

A night at my restaurant in Coral Gables forever etched in our collective memories.

It seems everyone has his or her own favorite Julia Child story. That’s how well known and firmly entrenched in the American psyche the inimitably voiced gourmet goddess became.

I was fortunate to know her and perform with her and it seems that each time I was in her presence; her unwavering well … “Julia-ness”, stunned me! Whether it’s a “save the liver!” faux memory or a more personal touch—such as having her cookbooks signed in her finely etched, surprisingly small, way.

One of my other personal memories took place back in 1990. I had been invited to go to Fetzer Winery up in Mendocino, California for a big weekend event celebrating their spectacular new organic garden. Janet and I left for San Francisco on the 12th of July. We took the chance to dine at Jeremiah Tower’s new place, “690” for dinner and Wolfgang Puck’s “Postrio” for breakfast the next morning before driving up to Mendocino. It was a blisteringly hot in wine country that July.

The Fetzer’s had invited quite a lineup of chefs to not only cook but to discuss the craft of cooking. I was immersed in a group of talented chefs that could not only cook brilliant food but were conversant and knowledgeable about its place and value within our culture. Chefs included Stephan Pyles of Dallas, Anne Rosenzweig of New York and John Folse of New Orleans. Julia Child was the big draw and she walked amongst us; a female Buddha of contentment and grace.

The Fetzer family threw a big opening night party for us at their “Big Dog Saloon”. The next morning Stephan Pyles and I were scheduled to appear on an early morning radio show hosted by San Franciscan KSAN radio star, Narsai David. Stephan and I joined the other chefs staying up until nearly dawn, sharing the enthusiasm chefs have for the passion of this job. We shared a fair share of wine too! Our heads were splitting as we walked down the soft path to the place in the gardens the radio folks had set up their remote “studio”. Though it was not yet 9 a.m. the heat was a force. We had not yet had coffee. The need was growing more fiercely by the moment. When we tiptoed to the table near where Ms. Julia and Mr. David were already on the air. We saw coffee cups. We mimed our needs, holding our hands in mock prayer. Narsai signaled that he was going for a commercial break. When the radio guys cleared us, I asked Julia where we might find some of the coffee. She smiled broadly to all of us, held up her coffee cup with her pinky extended and remarked merrily, “Oh no, darling, Narsai and I are drinking the Gewürztraminer!”

She had a great sense of humor too.

Jackson in his atelier.

We were preparing for a busy night at the restaurant. Holiday busy. Each night our culinary team divides up the duties to insure that everyone working gets fed before service. We, like many restaurants that do this call it “Family Meal”. It is meant to nourish as well as give them a bit of time to get to know each other. I like it when the kitchen team and the front of the house team mixes in and learns more about each other. It makes for a natural team building opportunity. Breaking bread and finding our joint humanity truly matters. There are times when as it home the family meal is humble and even seems to be a grab bag of leftovers. But on key nights I’m happy to say they go all out and make something that will really psyche up the entire team and ready them for the heavy duty action to come. One such night recently was at hand and big pans of beautifully prepared meatloaf awaited our dedicated work force. Smiles were ear to ear as they helped themselves to a big bowl of salad, slices of crusty bread and the meaty prize on the end of the line.

Family Meal, gloriously awaits.

Meatloaf is a dish that can be traced by to Roman times. It’s likely that the American version was born in a mixture known as scrapple to the German-American early settlers of Pennsylvania where it was mixed with cornmeal. By the 19th century it took on it’s current form usually centered on beef. My mother’s copy of “The Joy of Cooking” show’s some tell-tale stains on that page.

I received a gift cookbook titled, “Dinner with Jackson Pollock” written by Robyn Lea. I had long known of his art as I had begun to follow all kinds of artists since I was a young boy. I learned that he had awkward times finding himself. To that I think many of us can relate. Pollock had agonizing doubts about his ability to draw. But when he developed his ‘drip method’ (*note below) he found an ally in the heaven sent miracle know as gravity. While leaning over his canvases he waved his arms and gods descended.

It is fascinating to me that a man of such ground-breaking art would also be a person who helped cook dinners and baked bread with his wife Lee Krasner in a careful and measured way. The endpapers of the beautifully produced book portray neat, flowing handwritten recipe cards from long ago as well as some recipes cut out of newspapers of the times they lived in. Sure enough Mr. Pollock’s family liked classic American down home meatloaf, the topic of today’s “A Word On Food”.

From the cookbook’s end papers. How many of you have such treasures? (Comments welcome).

His recipe was one he learned primarily from his mother Stella. She added pistachios and served it with a grainy mustard sauce. Once I read the mustard sauce part I had flights of fancy imagining the artist who’s art was described as, “volcanic … of having fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized”.

I imagine him saucing the meatloaf. Their houseguests shocked as he climbs up on top of his dining room table chair, leans over and commences to swirling and dripping the mustard sauce in masterful ways on to their plates. I wonder … do I give that a try?

I’m Norman Van Aken and that’s my Word on Food ©.

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Historical note: The female artist Janet Sobel a self-taught Ukrainian-American painter who began creating pioneering “all-over” drip paintings in the mid-1940s—years before Jackson Pollock famously adopted the technique in 1947.

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© 2026 Norman Van Aken

A question is asked, “Does Joe Beef have a Michelin star?”

The answer is ‘No. They are Michelin recommended”.

The second question is, “Is it hard to get a reservation at Joe Beef?”

The answer is essentially. “Extremely difficult!”.

Make your own conclusions.

I first started hearing about Joe Beef from Tony Bourdain after sitting with me at a dinner. He intoned, “Norman. You would love it. Get yourself up to Montreal before the hordes find it”.

Saddled with running my main restaurant and operating the others getting away during those years was almost impossible. When I heard of the cookbook, the one I’m featuring here today, I wasted no time in purchasing one. It remains among my favorites for their unapologetic refined gonzo culinary style coupled with a kind of eccentricity that I find irresistible.

The most visible of the original owners was David McMillan. One night working the wood burning ovens at NORMAN’S I realized it was the same David McMillan sitting at ‘Table 33’ … the dining room table closest to my station. David stands out in any crowd. He is a large man with eyes that miss nothing. He was charming, funny and gracious. He asked me to send out whatever I wanted. What I really wanted was to fulfill his request and then hop on plane to go dine under his care and the care of Frédéric Morin and Allison Cunningham who are the other two skilled beyond measure partners in that treasure book. —- Norman

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Photo courtesy of WSJ.

I knew Tony from our times together over ten years. He wrote the foreword to one of my cookbooks. We shared the same editor, the great Dan Halpern. We did one of his shows cooking and carousing in Key West and another off the coast of Venezuela which involved many kinds of sea craft, a ‘deserted island’ concocted scene and a music discussion that included his love for the Beastie Boys, not shared by me. Before taking his film crew to shoot an episode in New Orleans he asked me to help patch things up between him and Emeril due to a remark Tony had in ‘Kitchen Confidential’ When Charlie Trotter died Tony sent an A.P. wire journalist my way for comments ‘to help make sure great your friend is treated properly’. This was all before the awful slide down due to a love affair gone devastatingly haywire. I think people who only knew Tony from his shows will have little problem enjoying the movie as it is well done, well-acted and well written. Kudos to @A24.

There are a few scenes in the kitchen that are unrealistic to me from a drugs standpoint. I worked in Key West in the late 70’s when a lot of partying took place and yes, sometimes during service. But even then, there no one was doing blow right on the hot line in front of the head chef. The chef/owner character, played well by Antonio Banderas is, additionally a church going type doubling down on him unlikely turning a blind eye to his line cooks chopping out lines of coke in plain view with the ticket orders hanging.

I asked my Dallas, Texas based chef friend Dean Fearing if he’d seen it. He texted me, “I was supposed to go catch it here Monday night in Nashville, but something came up and I didn’t go, but I kept saying to myself Tony would probably have hated to have a movie done on his life.” I replied, “that sentiment was one expressed to some degree by Laurie Woolever who was Tony’s personal assistant for several years and the author of ‘Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography’. She had proximity more than just about anyone. She partially countered it by saying, “I could never know exactly how Tony would react to many things”. Kim Witherspoon was Tony’s book agent and dear friend. She is an executive producer of this movie. Kim is exceptionally bright, yet down to earth. She was less concerned with the script being factually accurate if they were emotionally true. Eric Ripert jumped in without requiring them to show him the script due to Kim’s involvement. That casting choice gave a lot of Tony’s fans a feeling of comfort and validation that supporting the film was not a break in their allegiance to a man that traveled the world and brought a measure of sanity to what we endure everyday given this ongoing global political shit show.

Tony standing tall above me, Charlie and Emeril during the night Charlie was bestowed a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Tony was M.C.

In the end I enjoyed the film. More so by the next day as I continued to think about. I’m not sure if Tony would have. He was often shy and might not have felt the portrayal was how he saw his early years. Many of us wish we could ask him. I do.

“Happy Island” Tony and I had drinks, laughs and a music discussion that ran the gamut.

The inn was run by two women who lived in a frontier locale and created their menus completely out of the local area with everything from the aperitif’s created with herbs growing on their grounds to birds they shot and roasted on their spit to perfect tarts made with the fruits harvested by their own hands. It was the single most perfect ideal of what I would want a restaurant of mine to be. One day I dreamed to make it true.

But they are so much more as they take me back to the time in my life when I was a carny. I fell into the job like most of the jobs I had during that shall we say hazy period of time. A buddy of mine nick-named ‘G-Baby” and I got the gig together through his older sister’s rock & roll boyfriend that summer in Northern Illinois. We traveled around Lake County, sleeping under the trucks many nights when the mosquitoes were missing in action. Other nights it was in ‘G’s’ beat up van.

The carnival company was ‘McDermott Amusements’ and our starting wage was $2.55 an hour. The job was to help run the rides when the carnival was in town and then help tear them down, pack them up, and move on to the next town when the gig was up. I started on the merry-go-round but soon worked my way up… the the Tilt-a-Whirl. Good times!

My pay stub from back then.

There was a badass power we felt being carnies. It was a tangible excitement we brought to those towns that the local kids connected with. They were overjoyed that something—anything—had come into their static lives. They hungered for what was faraway, but that they could not afford. It arrived in the form of our visiting carnival. As dirty, hard, and poorly paid as the job was, the rush we got when the word got out that we were in town felt good. Few foods were sold at the carnival we were part of. The fare once evident in carnivals and county fairs had dried up in the early 1970s. We were too far north of Chicago to have been lucky enough for a good soul-food entrepreneur to have joined us for a three-day gig. And the Hispanic community churning out the intoxicating flavors of their foods below the still-uncrossed borders had yet to arrive. Such a shame! One of the few bright spots was chowing down on the occasional corn dog from a vendor at one of the small towns we rolled into that summer with our carnival troupe of characters.

Carl and Neil Fletcher lay claim to having introduced their “Corny Dogs” at the Texas State Fair sometime between 1938 and 1942. However The Pronto Pup vendors at the Minnesota State Fair claim to have invented the corn dog in 1941. The ‘Cozy Dog’ Drive-in in Springfield, Illinois, claims to have been the first to put the corn dog on a stick in 1946. I don’t think I had a corndog in the years after carny work until I took a trip to Texas with my wife, Janet at the invitation from the great Texan Chef Dean Fearing where he operates, “Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton”. Dean or “Dean-O” as I call him asked us to come cook a dinner with him. Our weekend fell during the Texas State Fair and Dean who is always up for a good time made it clear that no matter what we would not miss out on the foods at the fair. The stand out that caloric afternoon as I’m sure you have guess by now were the corn dogs.

Double pleasure! Corn Dogs and O Rings!

I had never made one until I was writing my memoir, “No Experience Necessary”. My editor asked me to be sure to include a recipe corresponding to each chapter and what I was doing in my life then. So the ‘Carnival chapter’ begot us a recipe. It’s a deep-fried, carny ride of corn dog heaven.

The night Jimmy Kimmel and I made Corn Dogs on his show.

I’m Norman Van Aken and that’s my Word on Food ©.

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CARNY CORN DOGS

Norman Van Aken, © 2012, “No Experience Necessary, the Culinary Odyssey of Norman Van Aken”, Taylor Trade

We had no food in our carnival beyond cotton candy, popcorn, a hot dog and cokes. The marriage of the polyglot ethnic foods that is so evident in carnivals and county fairs had dried up during this period in the early 1970’s. We were too far north for what might have been the luck for a good soul food entrepreneur to have joined us for a three day gig and the Hispanic community was still just churning out the magical flavors of its foods in the still uncrossed borders where they lived and we didn’t. It was a shame! It was just a dry season in that little window of history. You could go to a state fair and still find a lot of American fare cooked by junior leaguers and get plenty of what is much more bland food than I love...but we only lasted three days in each town and the communities we went to never seemed to know we were coming until the day our muddy, aging trucks pulled into an area of each town and we started to set up. It was not until after I got electrocuted on a Ferris Wheel and left the carnival, (oh yes the story is within) that I found the joy of making my own Carny Dogs.

Yield: 6 ‘dogs’.

6 hot dogs, bratwurst or ‘Maxwell Street’ Polish sausages

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1 Cup yellow cornmeal

1 Cup AP flour

½ teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ Cup granulated sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 egg, beaten

1 Cup milk

1/2 Cup buttermilk, (or as needed to make a smooth, thick batter)

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1 quart oil, for frying

6 wooden skewers

Pre-heat the oil in a deep pot over medium heat to 350 degrees.

In a medium large bowl combine the cornmeal, flour, salt, cayenne, black pepper, cumin, sugar and baking powder.

Stir in the egg, milk and buttermilk. Set aside.

Insert the wooden skewers into the sausages going at least ⅔ of the way up.

Roll them in the batter until well coated. Try not to coat the stick.

Fry 2 to 3 at a time until golden brown.

Allow about about 3 minutes turning them over a few times.

Drain on paper towels.

Serve with your choice of condiments and/or sauces.

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© 2026 Norman Van Aken

We were standing on the sidewalk in Wynwood where it is often best to press up against a wall so you don’t get jostled by the roving hordes of happy folks who have discovered that once all but forgotten area of Miami. An out-of-town friend of ours had stayed the night before in Homestead. He lives in L.A. and New York City and is in the process of moving here part time. When I asked him why the visit to our beloved agriculturally rich community to the south, he answered that he has a friend who farms down there. It was his first visit there. I asked what his friend was growing, He replied, ’Right now they are harvesting lychees’. I instantly wanted a bag of that delicious fruit! I had to explain to him about the fruit as he’d not yet experienced them. I must make that happen for him. Maybe the best way for me to do it is to ride with him back to Homestead and do it right where they come out of Mother Nature’s loving arms.

One of the best places of all to get not only lychees but all you can see here is “Robert is Here”

Exotic Fruit expert Elizabeth Schneider tells us that lychees come from “majestic trees which grow up to forty feet and are densely covered with coppery evergreen leaves through which emerge with clusters of brilliant-colored fruits that hang like bunches of strawberries.” In addition to South Florida lychees are also grown in Southeast Asia, Australia, Israel, South Africa and Hawaii.

Another expert is the author of the Oxford Companion of Food, Mr. Alan Davidson. He has an excerpt in that tome that states, “During the first century AD a special courier service with swift horses was set up to bring fresh lychees from Canton north to the imperial court.

The celebrated Lady Yang, whose passion for lychees fetched with great cost helped cause the downfall of her lover, the Emperor Hsuan Tsung. Devotees of the fruit met in temples and gardens to consume hundreds of lychees on special days during the latter period of the Ming dynasty.

What a treasure lies within the thin bark-like covering that protects them! Peel them and images of an Asian garden or temple may roll before your eyes. It possesses the aromas of musk and lightly crushed roses. It is an edible haiku. Succinct, mysterious … eternally desired.

A kissing cousin to lychees are rambutans. Also amazing!

I love them best of all simply chilled. No accouterments are required. This is one of those fruits best enjoyed by two lovers, peeling them for each other….more garden images…. hmmm…. What would Adam and Eve had gotten into with lychees? God knows….

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Last night Janet and I made a Lychee Chutney with Five Spice Powder and Mangos. We often served that in our Coral Gables restaurant with Roasted Quails we’d stuffed with Cornbread, Currants, White Miso and Pistachios.

The harvest season is short but Lychees do freeze very well right in their shells. Just allow them to come back so serving temperature before peeling them and looking for that garden...

I’m Norman Van Aken and that’s my Word on Food ©.

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© 2026 Norman Van Aken

Mr. Beard’s portrait that hangs in the Beard House, NYC. Photo by author.

The English language has evolved to become a glorious treasure trove of borrowed words, phrases, and sayings from all over the globe. Yet, there are still gaps in the language which sometimes make it hard for speakers to express themselves. Sometimes, a sensation you never knew existed only crystallizes once you learn there is a word for it! Such is the case with the Japanese word tsundoku. It describes the habit (vice?) of accumulating more books than you can actually ever get around to reading.

The word is combination of two Japanese words. Tsun which comes from the verb meaning ‘to pile’ and doku from ‘to read’. This is a condition I know I have. And with the ease it is to download books has made it exponentially even crazier.

Pile it on, say I!

My love of books goes like I imagine many of you … back to childhood times. It was my quiet escape route and I took it daily. I would read in trees, on noisy buses, in my bed with a flashlight long after I was admonished to ‘turn the lights off and get some sleep’!

She’s loved reading since even before this. Here at the beloved, ‘Books & Books’, Coral Gables.

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Frankly it saved me from what might have been a long, slow, burn of a life of being a line cook. Being a line cook when you are 21 can be fun if you are into the cooking cadences and battles. ‘Yes, Chef!!”

But it is not something one should think is fun when they are say … 41. Somewhere on the road one needs to turn from being the foot soldier into a trusted chief. Or ‘chef’ if you will. Books brought me that salvation.

I began with one cookbook in what eventually became my library. Like the journey up the mountain beginning with one step my collection began with that first book. The world of cooking became illuminated past the routine world of the kitchens into the ‘what if’ world.

It all started with one.

My first cookbook purchase.

The author of that first book was James Beard. The book is titled, “Theory and Practice of Good Cooking”. It was an incredibly fortuitous break. It was the way Mr. Beard broke that book down that I believe was the ‘skeleton key’ that helped me begin to unlock the methodology of cooking. He divided his book up by techniques. The chapters were not ‘soups, salads, appetizers’ and so on. He organized ‘Theory and Practice” with chapters on poaching, grilling, pickling, steaming, roasting, baking and the like. It clarified so much in my culinarily unschooled mind. I had not been to a cooking school of any kind. I never did in fact. My means of learning is a coalition between cooking hitched to reading. It is what the author Malcolm Gladwell talked about in his essay on the “10,000 hours being the magic number” for one to find knowledge.

Tsundoku. It is a malady I have fallen in love with.

I’m Norman Van Aken and that’s my Word on Food ©.

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© 2026 Norman Van Aken

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He organized ‘Theory and Practice” with chapters on poaching, grilling, pickling, steaming, roasting, baking and the like. It clarified so much in my culinarily unschooled mind. I had not been to a cooking school of any kind. And I still have not. My means of learning is a coalition between what the genius author Malcolm Gladwell talked about in his essay on the “10,000 hours being the magic number” for one to find greatness. I doff my cap to the world of our cookbook authors, proud to be among you.

Another guy was at the house when we got there. One I knew. Long haired, tall as a tree, mustachioed Chris Robinson. He was an excellent bartender who also worked at Louie’s. He was renowned as one of the Island’s most heralded ladies’ men. Chris was a mellow, Vietnam vet that I could never imagine being at war with anything … other than a stubborn zipper.

By now Jimmy and Keith had most of the lyrics down. Most of the melody too. Chris gave me a half glass of Barbancourt. I sat on the sill of a big window with the Gulf of Mexico breezing in behind me. The song’s chorus was where they were still seeking ‘The Muse.’ It was a song about the endless twists and turns of life. The ups, the downs, the never fuckin’ gonna happen, and the just maybes. Jimmy and Keith made up nonsense words or just hummed to fill in the stubborn gap and then moved on to the part they were happy with. That’s when I fell out of Jimmy Buffet’s window.

Photo shoot on Dog Beach between Louie’s and Buffett’s.

First Jimmy, then Chris, and then Keith came hot footing down the stairs and over to the waterside of the house. By god’s graces I had landed on a large mound of sand that had been delivered that morning to be spread to a thinning area of Jimmy’s beach the next morning. Chris climbed the sand hill, lifted me up and clapped me on the back to get my lungs to open. Then he reached delicately into my shirt pocket and plucked out the key to my moped. With motorized transport safely out of the way for the evening, we all climbed back up the wooden stairs. Chris fixed fresh drinks. Jimmy picked up his battered Martin and found the notes from before. Words came now and he sang them with a golden smile, “Shit happens…“.

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My favorite JB song. I, like many back in Key West back then knew the pirate from ‘Full Moon Saloon’ days. For more on that link to by memoir below.

Excerpted from my memoir, “No Experience Necessary, The Culinary Odyssey of Norman Van Aken”

https://www.amazon.com/No-Experience-Necessary-Culinary-Odyssey/dp/1589799143/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dOxE54sn_r3S1persewcSs3RTeU-NTWC1_X1vMILmFU7eFxQ_8GOmOTpYMSLIRLBw-05Xr4VKR_9HaP1de-hyizDqA9DIKwjMqgBNU1xVw6CM1SS8NuyzMTXDTVlgslFPs2pDTDkyTK4YJsxrdglDn6CwwQM_iZU5MQxGlc80YvzM33TPoYcaX-qKXjPal9MbH7WtnA-dv8h_Is0g91MNRYqeD3vqLjoKaYlJ9zPadA.gvgUjnE8rL9NxuVPhyE_MbZO5H_cP36XazOZ8x5dDQw&qid=1783948342&sr=8-1

As we entered, I could hear Charlie’s voice on the loudspeakers. I was surprised to hear him in that I thought our time of arrival would have been too late to see his performance. Then I learned that the entire program was already one hour late in the running time.

As we passed the entrance and security checkpoint folks making sure we had our badges we were motioned over to the VIP reserved front row seats by Will Blunt of Star Chefs. Our son, Justin was already there having taken a cab in from Newark to catch a seminar he did not want to miss while Janet and I checked our bags into the hotel.

Charlie was on stage doing a demo. He was illustrating how he did a particular dish twenty years ago and how he was presenting it now. He had grown a beard since our last visit to Chicago. It was becoming thick and had a fair amount of gray in it too. I didn’t like it but I loved him for moving past the perfectly presented look he’d portrayed for the past 20 years, in fact it made me smile. Was Charlie accepting the passage of years? When he finished his presentation, he walked backstage. I excused myself from Janet and Justin and went to find my brother. He was taking off his chef coat and getting ready to be whisked to the airport. As usual he was in whirlwind mode. He had sweated through the fine blue shirt he wore under his whites and eagerly slugged a glass of white wine while a reporter sought his attention. Upon seeing me he hugged me and I him and we laughed about the beard. Michael Ruhlman walked in and said hello to each of us then and touched on the subject of the Gourmet magazine article he’s written and how the editors had rejected it for unclear reasons. Charlie was kind and diplomatic despite the hard work both had put in on that effort, especially Ruhlman…as he is often called nowadays ... one name; Ruhlman. Justin had come back in the tent too. More hugs. Charlie bid us adieu. Justin, and I returned to our seats.

At 5 o’clock three comfortable leather chairs were brought to the front of the demo stage area. Michael Ruhlman came out in blue jeans, a long un-tucked shirt and sandals. He looked more California surfer than the accomplished writer he is. He introduced Anthony Bourdain and England’s semi-retired bad boy of cuisine; Marco Pierre White.

The main room in the Park Avenue Armory was set up like a high school basketball game with bleacher type seating holding perhaps 400 attendees. Michael’s job was a pleasant duty in that nearly everyone in the room were fans of Tony’s. MPW was more of a mystery to some but due the fact that Tony tipped his hat to MPW gave the dour faced Englishman instant cred. Plus his cookbook, “White Heat” provided him near mythic stature. One could almost sense a delicious anticipation that was a far different appetite than the ones later for suckling pig and sous vide snacks.

The subjects ranged but the one that resonated perhaps the most and will be remembered the most whether one agreed or disagreed had to do with how Tony and even more Marco were sick of 18 and 24 course tasting menus. One restaurant in America that features and is revered for them is owned and operated by the highly regarded Grant Achatz of Chicago’s “Alinea”. Grant was sitting in the center of the stands and looked on as if their comments had nothing that could deter him from his philosophy. Grant had dealt with the travails of mouth cancer, a chef’s nightmare that almost everyone there knew about too. My guess is that his perspective on life was more removed from the squabbles in the food community. The crowd was digging into it. MPW felt that “what you get with one of those meals was a big dish of a chef’s overblown ego”. This was nearly hilarious coming from a guy who mentored the idea of bullying in the kitchen and “firing” customers. Mr. White now seemed to project an air of a chastened man … a brawler who had found his personal Jesus. Tony has projected a variety of more complicated opinions about multi-course dining in his journalistic career but on this day he seemed to be in accord with White and even posited the idea that Julia Child was the best television teacher on food the world has ever known. One can agree or not, but what is harder to put out in a forum like this is the perspective it takes to look at the world with a set of eyes that both remembers the past and can balance its effect with things that happened in the past six months. One of Yogi Berra’s quotes comes to mind, “It’s like déjà vu all over again”.

Eventually the time was drawing toward its scheduled end, and the audience was asked for questions. Star Chefs Co-Founder Antoinette Bruno was walking past the front row … she suddenly recognized me and broke into a broad smile and leaned over to kiss my cheek. I whispered in her ear. “I have a question for them”. She lit up and stood near me while one of the guests got a response to their question. Antoinette handed me the mike. I said, “Hello. My name is Norman Van Aken. My question is for Marco.” There was a now a very still quality in the old room. “I have been cooking since 1971”. The Englishman interjected and said, ‘Ah…me since ’78’…like we were a couple of old fellow rugby players. I went on. (Hit the link)

STAR CHEFS CONGRESS

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