Table for One: In Search of Regulars at New York City's Restaurants

My apologies to everyone who has been patiently been asking for more. I've had this story written and waiting to be edited for a few weeks now, so here it is finally for you to read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed my experience.

Bello Sguardo, Upper West Side
Amsterdam Avenue, between 79th and 80th Streets

"There's hardly enough light for you to read!" she said, offering me a candle wrapped in crimson paper from her table. "Well, that's not going to help any."

Indeed, there wouldn't be enough light for me to read my book, even so early at 8pm on an August night in New York City. The lack of adequate lighting completely defeated the purpose of my mid-week dinner out by myself. After a day of wandering around Central Park and the Upper West Side, I decided to end my day over a lone dinner to read my new book, enjoy a glass of wine and a caprese salad, and savor the lingering heat of day that evening at summer's end.

There is something about dining alone in New York that makes this very lonely practice rather acceptable. Every restaurant in the city has its regulars, and I'd wager that a large percentage of these regulars dine alone. Perhaps it is the comfort of returning every day to the same restaurant; the staff becomes like family, the customer's preferred table like his own dining table at home. But even amidst kissing couples, lively families, and groups of women on friend dates, a crowded restaurant can be rather comforting to those who dine alone. This is why, on that particular night in August, I decided to forgo scrolling through my cell phone contact list and
request a table for one.

That night at Bello Sguardo, a fine enough Mediterranean restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, I found a bit of unexpected companionship. I was able to read only about a paragraph of my book (Picture Perfect, by Jodi Picoult) when my fellow diner interrupted to engage me in conversation. I found myself entranced by this woman, who told me an story more compelling than the one I read on paper -- the story of a woman's life, where love, family, creativity, and compromising truth and belief in oneself lead her here, next to me, to share my Table for One.

Stella, as she will be called for the sake of anonymity, is a regular at Bello Sguardo. With her jet black hair cut short in an incredibly elegant and stylish bob, she looked like an Italian Cleopatra on whom the waiters doted with a sort of maternal reverence. After she convinced me to order the Chopped Salad in place of the Caprese ("You'll get one tomato and a slice of cheese with the Caprese. The Chopped Salad is more interesting, or so it seems to me."), I ordered a glass of delightfully smooth and inexpensive Chablis, closed my book, and settled back for a simple meal and unexpected companionship.

Stella, like any good regular, called herself a very picky diner. Her meal, for example, was not on the menu. It was rather an accommodation by the restaurant's staff to suit her taste for that particular evening: mixed green vegetables, two rounds of eggplant parmigiana, and a spoonful of penne pomodoro. There hadn't been enough sauce on the eggplant, and she asked the waiter for more. "But you'll have to go downstairs to get it?" she asked, showing her knowledge of the complete topography of the restaurant. The waiter insisted on getting it for her, and so she agreed to have more sauce. Later she told me that she was hoping for string beans rather than mixed vegetables. She also complained --to me only -- that she should have been given Parmesan cheese. She resolved that just for tonight she wouldn't to be too picky.

I was curious to know why this attractive older woman would be dining alone. She was rather statuesque; her dark hair fell closely to her cheeks, as if to frame the features of her beautiful face. She wore the timeless combination of black and white clothing, and her manicured nails were polished a deep purple, just a few shades darker than her lipstick that painted her pouty lips. The only ring she wore was a simple, black band (made of plastic, she later confessed) on the pinky of her right hand.

When the waiter came to take my order, she encouraged me to ask for more feta cheese with my salad. I didn't, for once ordering straight off the menu without asking for changes. When I turned back to her, she looked both amused and disappointed.
"You didn't ask for more cheese..." she smiled.
"Oh, I didn't want to make a fuss. And those people over there look like they have the same salad with a nice bit of cheese on it."
"My children always say I'm too picky," she said, cutting a bite of eggplant with her fork. "I didn't realize I was picky. But I do think that the more I go to a place, like here, the more picky I become."

We talked for a bit about what made her picky: taste in food, taste in clothes, ("I have a pair of leather coolats with silk lining that I bought from Bergdorf Goodman's for $500. And that was in 1986, and I can still wear them... Ten, twenty, twenty-one years later."), and most importantly -- taste in men. She asked me what my past and present boyfriends had to say about my tendencies for pickiness. I laughed, and told her that it was less a question of my boyfriends' commenting on my pickiness, but rather a question of my friends who constantly comment on my pickiness when it comes to picking boyfriends. She chuckled, and then asked me to try to describe my perfect man.

For Stella, her perfect man had been her husband: "When I met him, I ran home and told my mother, 'I met my husband!' I knew right away." She looked nostalgic, and her eyes began to sparkle with dewy tears. "When I first saw him, he was sitting there with his hand on his chin, biting his thumb. His profile was so beautiful, chiseled like a statue."

Stella's husband was the brother of her good college friend, and Stella, after hearing about this brother all throughout college, finally concocted a plan to meet him. Their first meeting was a success, and after a year, they were married. "He made me feel safe and we just knew it was to be. We worked out the questions, and there were no doubts."

She told me about how her husband was a writer who composed beautiful poems to her, two of which she recited to me. Together, they had two children (two boys and a girl). "All I ever wanted were babies," she told me frankly. For her, a career was secondary to having a family. However, once the children came of age, Stella pursued the career of an actress. As a young girl, she did stage shows, but when she was older, she switched to film. "I did all the New York films," she told me humbly. "Serpico, Taxi Driver... I was in all of them. Back then, it was easy to get a part as an extra -- and I could take my babies to the set."

As her story goes, Stella entered the business rather "connected." She was discovered on stage by a fellow who told her to join the Italian-American division of the Screen Actors' Guild. As a bright young thing, she eagerly brought her new friend home to her father. "My father eyed him up and down, gave him a little upward nod. He did the same. It sealed the deal and I was in," she told me, touching my arm. "But when he left, my father screamed: 'What are you doing with a guy like Angelo?? Do you know who he works for?!?' But it didn't matter. Back then for us Italians, everybody worked for somebody."

We spent the whole evening wrapped in conversation about love, careers, food, and family. We touched on subjects that made her cry, we talked about things that inspired me to keep going for what I wanted and needed. At the end of the meal, she moved on to espresso, and asked her waiter if she could smoke. When he casually told her that she could not, she retorted by saying how she saw a friend of his smoking outside a few nights earlier. The waiter clearly couldn't argue with that, but out of politeness, Stella stood up and lit her smoke just on the border of the terrace. Like a star from an old film, she took long drags between thoughts, resting her elbow on the back of her opposite hand. "I think I'm starting to figure you out," she told me. And then she described me in almost perfect detail, and set me on course with a plan.

Once her espresso was finished, it was time for us both to go. We paid our checks (hers considerably less than mine -- another perk of being a regular) and we stood up to walk a bit together up the Avenue. We paused for a few moments at a sidewalk bench, and she lit up another cigarette "for digestion." As the ten o'clock hour neared, Stella turned to me and thanked me for my company, and excused herself to walk home alone into the summer evening.

Stella left me with some important advice, as well as other stories about her life which I guard for the sake of keeping the confidence with which she trusted me by recounting them. Of the many things I came to understand over that dinner with Stella, the most important lesson she seemed to stress was that we do not always have all of the answers. She encouraged us to live life with a little bit of recklessness in order to follow what the heart compels tells us to do. It seems that this philosophy has worked for Stella throughout her storied life. Even though now she dines alone, Stella has lived an entire life of fulfillment, where all of her hopes and needs were fulfilled. It is this life and the memories from it that have remained her trusted company through many a Table for One.

Knife Skills 101

Early this morning at 12:43am, I gave a doctor the finger.

It had been two hours since I arrived at the Emergency Room of St. Luke's Hospital. The nurse at triage complained to me about her late-night hunger. A woman two-and-a-half times my size with a breathing problem whined about being cold through her respiratory treatment tube while simultaneously sucking on Peanut M&M's. A few homeless people came in with "injuries" that required them to stay the night.

I waited patiently, slightly amused by my mishap, with my middle finger bleeding through a roll of gauze that trailed behind me because the triage nurse couldn't find her scissors to cut it properly.

I didn't cry when I sliced my finger open. I didn't panic when our cab driver had a hard time driving straight up Amsterdam Avenue. I didn't even get upset when I had to take a urine test to see if I was pregnant (the absurdity of which was made all the more amusing when my roommate told them she was positive that I wasn't pregnant, and the boyfriend of the sprained-ankle-girl questioned whether or not we were lesbians).

Not even the three-hour wait just to see a doctor had dampened my spirits. There was something rather vindicating about having my first trip to the ER be the result of a cooking accident. I was there because I had cut the cheese.

It was Mimolette cheese, one of my most favorite cheeses -- nutty, orange, and hard as wax. We were having a Delivery Lockdown Cocktail Party (awaiting a delivery from Bed Bath and Beyond) enjoying a bottle of Muscadet, Lemon Apples, Etorki Cheese and of course, the culprit Mimolette.

My other roommate couldn't slice through the cheese, and I offered assistance. I picked up the wedge, proudly poised to show off my cheese-cutting skills, and held the rind in my right hand, picked up the Swiss cheese knife in my left. A chorus of "watch your fingers" went up around the table -- which everyone did as soon as the knife skidded across the cheese and sliced through the tip of my right middle finger.

One bloody bamboo cheeseboard, one picture text message to my father, and one Google search for the best NYC ERs later ("Amanda, what are you expecting, a pre-suture spa treatment?"), I was on my way to bandage up my first serious injury that would allow me to become part of the ranks of cooks who sustain -- and relish in -- injuries from all sorts of kitchen mishaps.

Four years ago, I survived unscathed from a grill explosion in my face while grilling a filet of Tilapia. Two summers ago, I lost a bit of the tip of my right thumb while slicing vegetables on a mandolin slicer. When I was in Paris, I burned myself on my oven while pulling out a tray of roasted fall vegetables. I now have an hourglass-shaped scar on my right wrist. Since then, I've been in good shape. But this cheese knife cut was deep, bloody, and fleshy enough to seek real medical treatment. I like to think that my wound is a real chef's cut. Is it a bit perverse that I'm slightly disappointed that I cut it on cocktail cheese rather than while preparing a four-course meal?

In one week, I will get the stitches removed from my finger, and it won't look like a Frankenstein Finger anymore. I wonder if it will scar like the oven burn, or if it will return to normal like my eyebrows did after the gas grill explosion. Either way, I'm now in the Cut Cooks Club, and if anyone challenges my membership, I'll just show them the finger.

Diary of a New York Waiter

"I miss you." Spray-painted on a sidewalk in Paris, October 2005.

For those of you who have been missing Josh's serial of Diary of a New York Waiter, here on Goûter, don't fret. Josh has opened up his own independent blog, which is hilarious, poignant, and inspiring.

In his latest post about life as a waiter at "Café Roman," Josh reflects on what it means to be alone. As observes two of Roman's most loyal customers, Picky Pam and Two-a-Day-Tom, he confronts his biggest fear of growing old and lonely.


It's what each of us fears most, being alone. And yet, if you look around you, so many of us do end up that way. I find that I look towards my own future and the possibility of spending a great majority of my mature years by myself, and instead of accepting it, I deny, deny, deny. "I'll have a life partner and he won't die first."Or, "I'll have lots of children...children who will be content spending significant amounts of time with their old, lonely Dad."

But then I think of my grandmother, who lost her oldest of two daughters (my mother) to breast cancer, and who lost her husband two years later to heart failure. She, a woman who spent her life giving her entire self to her family, spent these past eight years sitting abandoned, re-watching episodes of Little House on the Prairie, welcoming any distraction no matter how familiar it is. There are, however, things I believe my grandmother, had she pushed herself to do so, could have done to better surround herself with peers and friends so as not to feel so utterly alone. She could have joined a book club - she reads more than anyone I know. She could have worked some kind of desk job that her bum knee would not have prevented her from being able to do. At Cafe Roman, we have two extreme regulars, who, like my grandmother, are elderly and alone. Every day they come in, both with their own quirks, ready to visit their respective surrogate families of waiters.



To read the rest of the post and more about Josh's adventures, visit Diary of a New York Waiter at http://newyorkwaiter.blogspot.com.

Risotto with Mushroom and Thyme Ragù

Risotto is one of my all-time favorite dishes. When I was asked to prepare it for my "nanny family," I was absolutely thrilled. When they requested mushroom risotto, I was elated.

Risotto is a dish that many people tend to eat in the colder seasons because it is such a substantial and comforting meal. It was perfect for last week's weather in New York, when rainy cold Autumn days suddenly interrupted our August heat, which was then promptly restored over the weekend at 100*.

Risotto is, however, a very versatile dish that can be prepared for any season if the right ingredients are used. It is a meal that can showcase the produce of the season. Wintertime root vegetables are excellent for a comforting meal of Risotto with Butternut Squash and Sage. In the spring, welcome the new season with Risotto with Shrimp and Spring Asparagus Tips. Take advantage of summertime tomatoes with a Sweet Tomato and Basil Risotto with Peas. In the fall, take through the woods under changing foliage to collect mushrooms for this Mushroom Risotto with Thyme.




RISOTTO WITH MUSHROOM AND THYME RAGÙ


For the Risotto:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
1/2 cup fennel, finely diced
3 small cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup carrot, finely diced
1/2 cup diced Portobello mushroom
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups Arborio Rice (risotto rice)
6 cups fluid: 2 cups vegetable stock, 2 cups mushroom stock, 2 cups water (kept warm in a small pot on stove)
1 cup grated Parmesean cheese

For the Mushroom Ragù*:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup fennel, finely diced
2 small cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup carrot, finely diced
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
1 cup sliced Crimini mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced Shitake mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced Portobello mushrooms
1/2 cup small Oyster mushrooms, whole
1/2 cup Black Trumpet mushrooms
1/4 cup dry white wine
Salt and pepper, to taste

* Vary the types and quantity of mushrooms you use, depending on taste and availability. If using dried mushrooms, re-hydrate for minimum 2hr before cooking in warm water, and retain mushroom water to use as mushroom broth in risotto.



Heat oil in a large, heavy sauce pan. Add diced onions and sauté until they just become transparent. Add fennel, garlic and carrot, and thyme, and sauté mixture until vegetables just become soft. Sauté in mushrooms until they soften, and add 1/2 cup dry white wine to de-glaze pan.

Once wine has mostly evaporated, add rice. Sauté and stir mixture gently, about 1 minute, being careful not to brown or burn rice. When rice becomes fragrant, add remaining cup of dry white wine, stirring slowly and often until liquid has been absorbed by the rice.

Add 1 cup hot broth, and simmer until broth is just nearly absorbed by the rice, stirring slowly and often (about 4-5 mins). Add more broth, 1 cup at a time: each cup should be absorbed before continuing to the next. This allows the rice to become tender and creamy, instead of bloated and sticky. Continue until rice is thick and creamy, about 20-30mins.

While risotto is simmering, heat a sauté pan with olive oil to begin preparing the mushroom ragù. Just like the risotto, add diced onions and sauté until they just become transparent. Add fennel, garlic and carrot, and thyme, and sauté mixture until vegetables just become soft. Sauté in mushrooms until they soften, and add remaining 1/2 cup dry white wine to de-glaze pan. Cook until mushrooms are cooked, crisping the edges. Set aside.

In the risotto pot, add parmesean cheese and stir in completely. If you are making this risotto ahead of time, stir in cheese before serving to avoid binding the rice. To loosen rice, add more warm water and a touch of olive oil.

To be sure risotto is done, try this old trick: if the wooden spoon can stand straight when plunged into the risotto, it's done.

Serve risotto in a large, shallow bowl. Spoon a portion of risotto in a mound in the center, sprinkle generously with mushroom ragù on top, and a light dusting of fresh thyme leaves. If available, drizzle truffle oil across the top for a rich, woodsy flavor.

Serve warm and enjoy. Buon appetito!

The Tradition of Good Taste: An Interview with Jacques Pépin

Even amidst the busy bustle of the farmer’s market where crowds of locals and summer travelers picked through the ripe and colorful produce, his familiar smile drew me straight to him. Indeed, he had already drawn quite a crowd to his little booth off in the shade where he sat signing his new book, Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook; but it wasn’t the crowd of admirers that gave him away. It was this smile of Jacques Pépin, so familiar and inviting, that instantly helped me to recognize one of the first and most esteemed celebrity chefs of our time.

A resident of Madison, Connecticut, Mr. Pépin lives just minutes away from the town in which I grew up. Throughout my growing up in Connecticut, I had occasionally heard of Monsieur Pépin’s comings-and-goings about town; making celebrity appearances at local epicurean events, signing books at R.J. Julia Booksellers, performing cooking demonstrations at Cook’s Kitchen. I had even spotted him once, late one night on the Shoreline East commuter train. But when I heard that Mr. Pépin would be in person at the Florence Griswold Museum’s annual Connecticut Farmer’s Market, I quickly arranged an interview with him, then jumped on the MetroNorth from New York and made my way home.

Yet despite all of his local fame, Jacques Pépin is not just a local celebrity. He is one of the original celebrity chefs who brought French gourmet cuisine to the United States, and has since taught chefs and ameteur cooks alike about the elegant possibilities that can be had in every meal.

Born in France near Lyon, Mr. Pépin came to the United States in 1959 and soon became a rising culinary entrepreneur and one of the original celebrity chefs. He has accomplished so much throughout his career; from cooking for Charles de Gaulle to cooking with Julia Child, Jacques Pépin is unquestionably one of the culinary greats. But unlike many celebrity chefs of the moment who portray a chef's career as fame, glamour, and glitz, Mr. Pépin has always maintained a sense of humility and realism about working in the kitchen: “You still sweat a lot, and you still work Saturday and Sunday, and you still work 16 hours a day, you don’t make that much money. So you really have to go into that business for the right reason, which is really having the bug and loving what you are doing.”

Now in his early seventies, Mr. Pépin looks as though he could still handle the energy and the stamina required by this life of a chef. On that summer afternoon of the interview, wearing a patterned short-sleeved button-up shirt with his grey hair swept into a dapper coif, Mr. Pépin had the relaxed yet sophisticated air of an epicurean Frenchmen, truly in his element surrounded by food. He welcomed his admirers with sincerity and signed their books with care; even after decades of international celebrity, it seemed as though Mr. Pépin still had an appreciation for these simple rewards of his fame. “I certainly did not go into that business [of being a chef] to ‘become famous,’ because it was totally unheard of until 30 or 40 years ago.”

When Jacques Pépin first started his career, being a chef was not the glamourous career that a culinary career seems to have today with the current obsession with foodie culture. Back then, being a chef was still very much considered a position of service: “At that point, we were quite low on the social scale. Any good mother would have wanted her child to marry a lawyer or a doctor, or to become a lawyer… but a cook? But now, we are genius.”

Being a “genius” is one thing that Mr. Pépin can include on his list of qualifications, not only for his culinary aptitude, but also for business savvy, his ability to translate French cuisine to Americans (and vice-versa), and his academic background in liberal arts. Like any great artist, Mr. Pépin dedicated much of his life to learning all of the nuances of his craft. After beginning in his mother’s restaurant, Le Pélican, at age 12, Mr. Pépin left school the following year to begin his French apprenticeship under chef Lucien Diat at the Plaza Athenée. Upon coming to the United States, Mr. Pépin enrolled for a PhD in Civilization Literature. Yet even though Columbia did not accept his final thesis about the history of French cooking within the context of French literature, Mr. Pépin’s educational experience gave him a context into which he could place his own work and translate the nuances of French cuisine to his American audience. Later in life, he used this academic background to become a teacher himself: “I teach that [field of study] at Boston University now, the same class, and there is a Master in liberal arts with a concentration in Gastronomy. The crazy part of it is that we’d be very happy to have that today at Columbia.”

All the while that Jacques Pépin was learning about the art and literature of French cuisine, he was simultaneously learning about American food culture of mass production during his ten-year apprenticeship with the Howard Johnson Company. It might seem anathema for a French gourmet chef to be learning from the hands of a chain-restaurant entrepreneur, but for Mr. Pépin, it was the birth of his American gourmet career. “I wanted to work in a totally American environment, learning the language and learning about American eating habits and about production – mass production – and chemistry of food.” He credits the success of his work with New York restaurants to his experience at Howard Johnson, both his consulting on Windows of the World in the World Trade Center and his restaurant, La Potagerie on Fifth Avenue.

It seems so very hard to believe that the McAmerican way of cooking could provide anything of use to the hands of a young French chef. But Mr. Pépin fully esteems his American experience, and was even ready to defend American produce over a comparison to French. “The earth is the earth. If you grow it the right way, it is the same result.” A walk with him around the local farmer’s market showed that such a claim might be true; but ultimately I got Mr. Pépin – an avid gardener himself – to admit that there was some truth to my bias for European goods. We discussed wild mushrooms (Mr. Pépin is an avid mushroom-hunter in Connecticut and upstate New York as well as in Europe), which he cited as evidence to the mystery of diminished taste in American produce: “Now I’m talking about walking 15 miles up the mountain here or there, so it’s not like its cultivated or anything. It just doesn’t have as much taste as it has in Italy or in France.”

Just like Mr. Pépin may have to apply extra seasoning in America to bring out the flavors of produce, he also makes an effort to keep some of his French “rituals and traditions” in his life here in the United States. Like true epicurean, Mr. Pépin’s culture is one that truly involves the use of all of his senses. “My culture is a culinary culture, and that takes place around the table, and there is much more than food.” He and his wife, Gloria, are avid epicureans, and he cooks often with his daughter, Claudine, who has also made herself in to a well-known chef. Summer seems to be the time when these cultural traditions come about most easily: “From going mushrooming to playing pétanque, you know we play boules, to going frogging as we did the other day, to going to the beach to get the tiny little white bait that we fry like French fries, to doing the garden.”

For Mr. Pépin, incorporating these epicurean traditions into his life is what defines him. Much in the spirit of building a community, Mr. Pépin sees his culinary culture – particularly the communication of recipes – as a way to keep traditions and pass on cultural rituals. “If we do a ritual like playing boules, those rituals are part of a culture and part of the culture is those rituals, and those rituals are expressed in traditional recipes.” Like the academic that he deeply is, Mr. Pépin cited Claude Lévi-Strauss: “The process of cooking is the process by which nature is transformed into culture.”

The ritual of cooking is, for Mr. Pépin, the ritual of narration. Is it telling a story, keeping traditions, and bringing people around the table in conversation. As we made the last turn to a stall in the farmer's market, I couldn't help but ask him what he was planning on making for dinner. Gloria had purchased red leaf lettuce, fresh corn, and a few tomatoes, and I was curious what he was crafting with those simple ingredients. But like any good chef, Mr. Pépin did not have a recipe in mind, and would just follow his senses: "For dinner? Well, we'll just go home, look at what we have, and then, well, we'll see."

Sensual Living: An Epicurean Life Defined

With the exception of the correct pronunciation of this blog's title, the question of what the meaning of "epicurean lifestyle" is one that I receive fairly often.

(To set the record straight, goûter is the French verb, "to taste," and it is also the masculine noun for "a snack." It is pronounced: "goo-tay", not "goo-ter," certainly not "gow-ter" and not "goo-tee-ay." To those who can't pronounce this word -- you know who you are, and let's practice saying it together sometime.)

The word "epicurean" comes from the 3rd and 4th century Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who initiated the Epicureanism movement in a school that started in his home. The school taught the principles of pleasure and sensual living, with an optimistic and secular world view with humans and relationships at the center. He taught his philosophy in the garden of his home; the gate of the school's garden bore the inscription: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."

Epicurus' school was the first Greek philosophy school to admit women, and it stressed the importance of friendship and kinship through its teachings about following a life of pleasure. Epicurus glorified the body, and developed a non-religious spirituality through his belief in pain and pleasure as measures to know evil from good. Contrary to criticisms of his philosophy, Epicurus did not advocate hedonistic revelry: "By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom." [From Letter to Menoeceus] Instead, he posited that pleasure is (when taken in measure) a kind of human divinity that should be celebrated and admired:

Epicurus did recognize the potential problems with a life of pleasure: "No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves." [8th Principal Doctrine] So what happens when Epicureans go wild? The ubiquitous restaurant critic of the New York Times, Frank Bruni, published an article in yesterday's paper entitled: "Fine Diner to Riffraff: Tipsy Tales of 4-Star Benders." Mr. Bruni goes inside New York's most lavish restaurants to find that despite the most formal décor, some restaurant-goers have hard time maintaining decorum.

Mr. Bruni cheekily recounts some of the most raucous and raunchy stories from New York's finest epicurean destinations. There is episode of the table-top dancing woman at Daniel; skinny-dipping in the restaurant pool at the Four Seasons; Sex-sous-la-Table; Sleeping between courses at Picholine; and countering foie gras protesters by showing bodily proof of the effects of "fat liver" on a fat man.

Clearly, these diners are hardly epicureans because they lack the most important qualities of an epicurean life: temperance, wisdom and appreciation. Perhaps I should correct myself; I am sure that some of them heartily appreciated their meals and their misadventures. I certainly enjoyed reading about them. But what is epicureanism, and what does an epicurean life mean?

I've been called a "flâneuse" after Baudelaire's "Le Flâneur." From the French "flâner," "to stroll," the term describes he or she who strolls city streets and takes the role of the detached observer. To me, this love of ambling about and observing my environment is a product of my epicurean lifestyle. I lived my life in Paris almost entirely through my senses; the above picture is of the table of my 21st birthday, where I celebrated with my dearest of friends at my favorite Moroccan Restaurant, 404 Restaurant Familial in the Marais district. After our dinner of lamb and vegetable tagines, couscous, fresh salads, North African wine, and honey-drenched sweets with mint tea poured from on high, we lingered around a table cluttered with glasses of all shapes and sizes that sparkled in the dancing candlelight.

I observe, I read, I taste, I touch, I feel. Cooking for me is an incredibly sensual experience: my hands are my tools. I cannot cook without touching and tasting everything. If this is a surprise or repulsive to you, just have a look inside any professional kitchen -- you're not the first to taste what has been put on your plate. I believe that part of being a good chef means having a relationship with your food; if you can pick your vegetables, get your fingers covered in the earth. Go to a spice market and let the spice aromas dance under your nose. Always taste while you are cooking so that the flavor romances you as your meal unfolds. Eat with those whom you love, for eating is a communal experience to be done slowly, with attention, and with care.

This savoring of food, ingredients, time and friends is part of what defines an epicurean lifestyle for. Of course, one should always save room for dessert -- for what would a life of good taste be with a sweet and happy ending?


Epicurus, from Letter to Menoeceus:

"We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come."



404 Restaurant Familial

69, Rue des Gravilliers

75003 Paris
+(33) 1 42 74 57 81



Leave me a comment with your definition of epicurean lifestyle. And as always: bon appétit!