FOOD In Which We Stare In Lust At The Sous-Chef
Friday, May 27, 2011 at 10:31AM 
The Satiated
by DAYNA EVANS
There is a guy who I'd had a recurring interest in for a few years. I will make no effort to describe what he looks like, partially because I don't want to reveal who he is and mostly because describing people's physical features is not my strong suit. (He's got a head? And stuff?) He and I had a brief thing that didn't even involve sex but swiftly turned into the realization that we communicate more like brother and sister than people who have a mutual sexual desire.
A few months ago, this past paramour of mine said something to me over the Internet that I am pretty sure I have thought about nearly every day since. ("Thought about" is an understatement and "nearly every day" is a lie. I have decimated, pulverized, and obliterated this statement so hard that I think of it in Latin now, the dead language.) In response to something I'd said about, I don't know, a frittata or a perfectly-toasted English muffin, he said: "Is food all you ever think about?" Bam. There it was — the combination of words that had the ultimate debilitating effect on me. This is the type of insult (one may argue that this isn't even an insult) that turns me from a person generally unconcerned with getting ready for "bikini season" to a hypersensitive psychopath who starts inventing names for newly-discovered pockets of fat. "Have you seen my knees? They look like fried eggs, but like, without the white part." "My neck is loose. Loose like the skin of a turtle if you took off its shell." This guy, who was relatively insignificant to me at that point in my life, had found one of the few ways to make me feel insecure: he insinuated that I have a negative relationship with food.
I was on a train traveling from Paris to Grenoble and I was doing my normal train activity of listening to R. Kelly on oversize headphones while furiously scribbling notes. The only thing more boring than my travel journals, of which I have too many, is if you tried to read a journal with no words in it.
On this particular train ride, I was recounting every detail of the days that I'd just spent in Paris with two friends.
Today I slept in late. I was really tired. I wanted to go do some touristy things. I'd seen all this stuff before, but I went anyway. The Eiffel Tower is really cool.
I tend to avoid introspection, emotion, and depth in my travel journals because I only write in them as a way to itemize my journeys for posterity. You know, for when the Internet breaks. Handwritten truths are important to preserve.
At 1300 hours, I looked at my watch and took note of the fact that it was 1300 hours.
heading to marseilleI had another hour and a half on the train and about four more opportunities to repeat R. Kelly's entire discography before attempting to join a Baptist church choir, so I didn't stop writing. I talked about Notre Dame ("Tourists are wack.") and how the Louvre was closed ("Bummer. Wanted to see that headless naked sculpture.") and how I don't remember the Champs Élysées being on a mild incline ("My legs hurt. I need a nap.") I was just making sure to get it all down.
I started to write about a patisserie that I'd stopped in to grab a snack. I had seen the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe; I had strolled along the Seine and acted faux-pious outside of Notre Dame. I had written about all of these idyllic snapshots with the emotion of a fried egg without the white part. But what followed to describe one pain au chocolat took up three full pages of unbridled passion that made me write so quickly that I had to stop myself once or twice to question my own reality. I used words like "nestled" and "ooze" and "MLB Hall of Fame." I apologized to my imaginary reader for being hyperbolic and then apologized to the world in general for having allowed myself to reach such depths of delusion. I began to feel guilty. Did I really just celebrate the existence of a pastry that, when biting down on it, you could feel the butter seep out of its insides in a pool around your molars and gullet? Was it necessary to explain the relative flakiness of each layer, all of which served as "bodyguards" for the velvety dollop of chocolate nestled (told you) within the pastry's center? I was worse than I thought.
My older brother is a dick. I'm allowed to say that in writing because it's widely understood that all older brothers exhibit some variant of malevolence toward their younger siblings at one point or another. It's natural. It is the brother who does not act this way that is terrible — he's always doing creepy shit like buying his 13-year-old sister Bacardi Breezers or getting choked up at the sight of her in a prom dress: "She's grown up so fast!"
In high school (and middle school and grade school and life), my brother and I were distinctly different. He wore light-wash jeans with t-shirts promoting meaningless words on them like "TREAD" or "Let's meet at my parents' log cabin this weekend," and I shopped at thrift stores for the newest elderly-woman styles. I was into ska (don't tell anyone) and he listened to nu-metal (tell everyone). And like I said, he was a dick. Regardless, I looked up to him because he was older and I thought he was the coolest person I knew.
We fought constantly. I used to get a lot of admonition from my mom for having a really sharp tongue, and I admit, I have said some things to the both of them that would make even Jesus drop his "I'll love you no matter what" shtick. My brother, on the other hand, didn't share the same evil verboseness. He was a lot bigger and could simply put me in a "sleeper hold," which, for years, was a wrestling move that I legitimately thought he had invented. But sometimes he didn't even have to attempt strangling me to sleep to stop me from slinging vitriol. All he had to do was call me fat. And he did, often.
I can't remember when I became aware of my body and the various parts that I was expected to feel insecure about. Amazingly, it seemed that my brother already knew about them well before I had my first sobbing fit over my weight. He was openly critical of the way I looked because fat comments crippled me. I wasn't obsessed with clothes or makeup, and I knew he couldn't slander my intelligence, so telling me I was fat or had "rolls" was the only way he could guarantee my surrender. This was made worse when he would mock me in front of his friends. We were only one academic year apart so I was further humiliated to know that upperclassmen were enjoying jokes made at my expense about the size and shape of my body. I couldn't fight back — I felt too ashamed.
But it wasn't just shame, it was confusion. We were from the same gene pool; how could weight be so different for me than it was for him? Our eating habits and interest in food at that point in life were exactly the same. When my mom would make dinner — four pounds of pasta, eight loaves of garlic bread, and two apple crumbles (one in the freezer for later) — my brother and I would eat the same amount. It had never occurred to me that he ate that much because he was a "growing boy" and it was encouraged; a metric ton of pasta puttanesca was supposed to turn him into a man, according to no scientific source at all. I just loved food because all the women in my family did. Eating was associated with positive experiences — parties, holidays, vacations — in which we'd all get a chance to be together.
In the Italian-American bubble, this notion is unwavering in its importance. I am convinced that when my metabolism inevitably slows to a halt, making me gain the years of weight I've been staving off with light exercise (ultimate Frisbee), my grandmom will still tell me at Christmas that I'm not eating enough — and I'll listen. But outside the bubble, things are different.
"In a competitive eating contest, what food could you eat the most of to guarantee you'd win?" I had asked my friend this question roughly once a month for the entirety of our friendship, yet I still expected a new response each time.
"Green grapes, easily," she said.
"That's boring. And they'd expand. Or you'd feel really sick."
"Nope. It's green grapes. Always green grapes. Or toast." She didn't even look up from her laptop. "What would you eat?"
"I could eat four servings of ravioli without even trying and I could probably eat nine Mack and Manco's pizzas. I don't know, maybe scuppelles? Or another kind of doughnut?"
"Yeah, scuppelles. Those are so good. I think you could do it."
I find myself in conversations like these all the time. Someone could bring up that one Saturday last summer when we saw a giant gorilla walking down Flatbush destroying everything in its sight — even that American Apparel that I always think is a movie theater — and I'd respond: "Can you believe he stormed right past the Jamaican bakery without even grabbing a plantain tart?" My appendix could burst, forcing me into unrelenting agony that may lead to death, and I'd wonder if the hospital (or morgue) would have rum raisin ice cream for my convalescence (or funeral).
There are many people who believe they are content with their lives, as they do not want for anything. These people are wrong because they have not had my mom's lasagna. If food could be granted sainthood, my confirmation name would be "Mom's Lasagna." In my family, the offer for a second helping does not have a question mark at the end because it seriously isn't your decision. The offer is presented more as a mild threat. This was life inside the bubble — dominated by taste and satiation.
Imagine my surprise when I began to meet people who thought of eating as a scientific procedure that would provide their bodies with energy three times a day. First there were the waspy friends — a family party for them was a colossal bummer for me. Green bean casserole, a sleeve of Ritz crackers, and four stale Oreos to go around? Really? And no one would even eat, they'd just get sloshed on rosé wine and Yuengling.
After the waspy friends of my youth came the self-conscious girls of college. Beer was off-limits because it made them feel bloated and heavy; bagels were only okay on Sundays with a level-nine hangover — otherwise it was egg whites on wheat toast; and worst of all, ice cream didn't exist, which was the number two reason why going to college in New York was one of my worst ideas. The first time I heard the word "fro-yo," I thought that someone still living in their parents' basement had invented a style of yo-yoing that involved yo-yoing with your right hand while eating a FrozFruit (preferably strawberry-flavored because those are dope) with your left. When I found out that "fro-yo" was the literal representation of the death of ice cream, I nearly dropped out of college to work on a farm. With cows. To make ice cream.
Surviving wasps and college girls was nightmarish but nothing could have prepared me for the crisis I underwent when the world was introduced, for better or for worse, to the word "foodie." I was a foodie, right? I had, on several occasions, eaten an entire package of Garibaldi biscuits — my favorite British import — without even processing the fact that this wasn't culturally encouraged. For years I saw no issue with my family's pre-dinner ritual of eating a dozen or so of my mom's homemade scuppelles, an Italian raisin donut twisted into a pretzel-ish shape and coated with granulated sugar. We ate them before dinner, before even appetizers were served.
The first Thanksgiving that I brought one of my waspy friends home, I was notified by the sheer horror on her face that this wasn't standard fare. By her third Thanksgiving with us, however, she had bought into the delusion and could eat more of them than even I could. Surely, if foodie meant what I thought it meant — one who eats food — I had found the title that embodied my lifestyle.
When I was told in due time that a foodie wasn't the same as a vaguely Epicurean glutton, my life had befallen another crisis of conscience. I had no idea what Royal Galilee Osetra Caviar with l'oeuf chou-fleur, Persian cucumber, meiwa kumquats, red ribbon sorrel, and tellicherry pepper melba was. (This is an actual menu item at Per Se.) I only knew that if it was delicious, I wanted it. All of a sudden I was staring at the bottom of a jar of Nutella, wondering why my basic affection for things that taste good was beginning to feel somewhat illegitimate and in some ways, contemptible.
I moved to America when I was eight and my best friend loves to remind me that everyone in our entire grade school thought I was a weirdo, particularly her. Let the record show that the reasons I was considered freakish were 1. I was too nice and 2. I had a British accent. Children severely lack good judgment — those two things alone would get me a date with a character on Gossip Girl now, or at least that guy in my junior-year creative writing class that I lusted after endlessly. There was never any mention of the terrifying boy-short haircut my mother had given me days before my first day of school or my inability to understand what a nickel was.
Regardless, my friend was able to get over my abnormal niceness once I had lost my accent, and we became inseparable in 7th grade. Please note that she took over three years to come around. We were the Big Bird and Snuffleupagus of middle school: she was tall, blond, and thin. I was short, squat, and brunette, though I didn't have eyelashes so long that they were like curtains for my eyeballs. My eyelashes were normal.
As is the natural progression of all middle-school friendships, when her dad asked us if we'd like to go on a road trip to Branson, Missouri, we immediately said yes. Middle school was terrible so even a two-week road trip to the depths of hell would have seemed like a fun prospect during those times.
At a rest stop in Tennessee, we were starving and decided our only option was to suck it up and go to Chick-fil-A for lunch. We let her dad go ahead so that we could finish watching the end of Coyote Ugly, a favorite of ours then and now. (We had a TV in the car for some inexplicable reason.)
After ordering, we begrudgingly took seats next to her dad, who, within two hours of the trip had become our least favorite person in the entire world. He had yet to notice our attempts at completely ignoring his presence, so without heed, he began his signature yammering.
"Boy, oh boy. This trip has been fun so far. Right, girls? Gosh, seeing Graceland? That was a dream of mine. What a sight!"
"Yep," we muttered in unison.
"I cannot wait to get to Branson! You ladies will absolutely love it."
No answer.
"Well, anyway. Let's eat this grub and then hit the road again."
Exaggerated silence, petulant stares.
"Say, Dayna, it sure is nice to have you out here with us." He took a bite of his chicken sandwich and frowned. "This fast food nonsense is terrible for you." He took another bite. "But the good thing is that my kids and I can eat it no problem and we won't gain a thing. We've got such fast metabolism in our family!"
I flashed a look of Where is this going? toward my friend.
"I bet it's not the same for you, right? You eat one of these and gain five, six pounds! That's the difference. You probably have to really watch what you eat, don't you?"
That was over ten years ago but it could have been fucking yesterday. My friend did all she could to change the subject and make him shut up. She knew how hurt I was, but there wasn't much she could say to take his words back. I had suddenly become painfully aware of what I ate and how much. In my family, you ate what you wanted until you were full. There was never any question of "Will this make me gain weight?" because we didn't think weight determined character. But for the first time in my young life, this question had been raised, and it's taken years for me to finally stop answering it.
grenoble
On the day before I was set to leave for Spain, I was miserable. I had spent that morning trying to make the most of Marseille, a city that must pay off the postcard industry because it looks nothing like those blue-sky beach scenes suggest. I could send you a box full of gasoline and rotting trash, hand-delivered by a dude who will leer at your ass shamelessly, and that would paint a more accurate picture. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible so I voluntarily got to the train station an hour early, preferring the sight of people running around with suitcases to douchebags strutting around on manmade beaches. At the station, I got into a fight with one of the attendants at the information booth. He berated me in French and I attempted to slam a glass swinging door in his face. And when I got on my train to Lyon, I spent the first hour and a half thinking that I had gotten on the wrong one. It was a disaster of Bridget Jones proportions.
The rest of the day went as follows: I arrived in Lyon's city center that looked like the Mall of America, wanted to die. Took tram to the old city, regained desire to live. Asked for directions to hostel, was told to "climb the mountain," considered murder. Saw mountain I was supposed to climb, thought of 127 Hours, nearly decided to sleep on the street. Ascended mountain with 50-pound hiking backpack, arrived at hostel, talked to woman with hemp necklace, asked for European power converter to charge phone, no dice. Took tram back to Mall of America, purchased converter, returned to mountain, crawled up mountain, realized converter I already had actually wasn't broken, saw life flash before my eyes. Washed myself in prison shower with no hot water, dressed still wet. Returned to hostel room, collapsed, hoped to be returned to maker. Said "Jesus?" out loud. No answer.
This day, had it been anywhere but France, would have really sucked. Basically, it did suck. I sincerely wish that no one ever has to climb a mountain twice, and I perpetually question the sanity of those who do. But as I lay on my hostel bed at six o'clock that evening, I felt all right. I knew that the best part of my day was still to come, so I got up, pulled myself together, and even said bon soir to the hemp necklace lady as I walked out the door and down the mountain.
Lyon is astounding. When you aren't being punched in the face by the presence of fourteen H&Ms and a Carrefour, it is a magical place to visit. The old city is so pleasant that "Little Town" from Beauty and the Beast was on constant loop in my head while I walked around. My dismay from earlier was starting to fade and I let France just do what France is good at: make my heart flutter. And the greatest part? It was dinnertime.
Dining alone, despite the lonesome-husbandless-woman implications, is one of life's greatest joys. You can spend time with your own thoughts, eat slowly and thoroughly, and what's most important is that you can order as many menu items as you want and no one is there to remind you of your family's history of high cholesterol.
I ended up exactly where I had dreamed to be on my last night in France: at a traditional Lyonnaise bouchon. Bouchons stand against a lot of what French cuisine lauds; they aren't about fussy, delicate meals — they serve traditional Lyonnaise fare made from hearty ingredients, often times including the scraps of an animal that a Parisian restaurant might toss.
I was seated at a long communal table that had a few solo diners and one couple. What followed was one of the most satisfying meals of my life. My hair was still wet from the hostel prison shower, and my clothes were an unappealing mix of three-week-unwashed hoodie and so-dirty-they're-gray jeans, but this only enhanced my experience because I felt like I was at home. Everyone in the restaurant seemed to know one another, and the kitchen was openly visible. I stared in lust as the sous-chef meticulously chopped up an entire leg of ham, causing my waitress to startle me when she asked what I'd like to drink.
"Agh! A half carafe of house white, please." Full disclosure: I was speaking in French — pathetic and clumsy French.
"Of course." She shuffled back behind the bar and I looked around at everyone's plate. Creams, meats, hunks of fresh baguette, brown sauces, dark green mounds of vegetables, potatoes so brown, soft, and buttery that you could stuff them in your pillowcase at night to encourage sweeter, gentler dreams.
Once my wine arrived, I ordered a three-course meal. Saucisson brioché servi chaud avec lentilles vertes was my first course. To translate into what my stomach remembers, this was a wide slice of sourdough bread, toasted, with a hole cut in the middle. The hole was plugged up with a thick slice of sausage heavier than a baseball. An array of greens on the side was dressed with oil and vinegar, which slid around my plate, eagerly being absorbed by my toast. I ate slowly, and when the toast was gone, I reached for the basket of fresh baguette slices to make sure there was no meat sauce left behind.
My second course was une quenelle de brochet Artisanale en sauce Homardine. This dish was better than some boyfriends that I've had. A soufflé of creamed pike, bound by an egg, butter, and black pepper base; housed in three layers of delicate pastry; sitting in a sauce made from cream and lobster; while a bed of sautéed spinach and garlic sat beneath it all, like "Hey, surprise!" I was practically hysterical when I realized that I had finished eating. I contemplated asking if I could order another, but some sane voice inside me said that I needed to get my cholesterol checked. For the first time in my life, dessert was inconsequential. It was some sort of chocolate-cherry thing with fresh cream but come on, who fucking cares? I had just eaten sausage nestled in toast and soufflé sitting in lobster sauce. Dessert really had to sit that one out.
Leaving the bouchon to climb a mountain was near impossible for me to do. Everything that mattered about food and comfort existed inside those four walls. I was tempted to ask if I could sleep there instead of at the prison hostel on top of the mountain that was starting to seem like Shutter Island in my mind. A Shutter Island without Leonardo DiCaprio in well-tailored 50's attire.
When I got to the top for the third time that day, hemp necklace lady wasn't there. There was a crowd of travelers in the common area drinking beers and socializing, some Americans and Brits. I walked languidly passed them and straight into my room to discover that not one girl who was boarding there was currently home. Though it was unusual for a hostel, for once I had the room to myself. I repacked my bag, set an alarm, checked my e-mail, and got into bed — all before nine o'clock; I suppose mountain-climbing is actually quite exhausting. When I turned off the light and closed my eyes, I basked in the knowledge that a little wine, bread, and meat, when eaten thoughtfully in a warm place with warm people, would guarantee me a long and burdenless rest.
Dayna Evans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She last wrote in these pages about her trip to Burkina Faso. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She tumbls here.
"Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)" - Jay Electronica (mp3)
"Victory Is In My Clutches" - Jay Electronica (mp3)
"Be Easy" - Jay Electronica (mp3)
dayna evans, europe, lyon, marseille 
