The chef of La Rivière, Suzuki-san, must have been thrilled to have me
show up in his kitchen. Bad enough, some big, hairy gaijin was getting
rammed down his throat, making use of his staff, rummaging through his
reach-ins—but I was cooking Italian. The menu for the event was
minestra toscana, followed by a paillard of veal with roasted red pepper
coulis and basil oil, and a salad of arugula, endive and radicchio. Chef
Suzuki was polite, as I was ushered into his kitchen with the requisite
bowing and greeting. He was helpful and polite in every way, as was his
crew. But he must have been simmering with rage and disgust. Suzuki-
san and I communicated through a translator and gestures, my gift of a
Yankee World Series Champs baseball cap going only a short way to
ameliorating the chef's molar-grinding distaste for what I was about to
do to his kitchen. My simple Italian lunch, re-creating a home-cooked
meal prepared by a gangster character in the book, must have looked to
the chef like roadkill. And the portions! I thought I'd scaled them down
nicely, but after serving the meal to a roomful of bowing, chainsmoking
and very genial Hayakawa executives and a few press-ganged members
of the fourth estate, I found myself repeatedly asked, "Bourdain-san, the
portions at Les Halles, how many grams of meat in each order?" When I
replied, the reaction was giggling and head-shaking-an indication, I
came to believe, of abject terror. The prospect of returning a partially
eaten entree, of not finishing, is a terrifying one. And the proper
Japanese will avoid causing such offense at all costs. So the thought of
tucking into a 2½-pound côte du boeuf, or a full order of cassoulet
toulousaine, must have seemed to my hosts like scaling a mountain of
dung.
Still, the Hayakawa people were extremely kind. I was driven around by
two senior editors, invited to lunch—with Chef Suzuki cooking this
time. My second book was, I believe, rushed into print; it might
otherwise have been forgotten had I not turned up on their doorstep. I got
to see myself on Japanese TV and in the press; I was shown how to use
the subways by Hayakawa hosts; I experienced the not unpleasant