La comida/el alma

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

― Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

So I’m twenty-three, but I figure that’s close enough.  Starting around my junior year of high school, I got really into the television series No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain.  Every Monday evening at 10 pm, I would sit glued to the TV, watching Tony travel the world.  I was captivated by his commitment to the real experience of the culture.  We can happen upon magical moments by trusting the locals and being open to experiences that are very different from those we might be used to. The best meals and the best experiences frequently occur in places that many would pass right by.

There are plenty of reservations involved in my trip to Spain from as soon as I get off the plane, but I’ll draw inspiration from Bourdain’s example as I explore Spain and elsewhere.  Tony’s done several episodes on Spain and has called it one of the best places to eat in the world.  A fair bit of this praise was centered on Ferran Adrià and elBulli, which is unfortunately closed.  But his brother Albert runs a restaurant or two in Barcelona, which I definitely intend on visiting.   The Adriàs are also only the postmodern, molecular gastronomic cherry on top of centuries and centuries of a rich and regionally diverse cuisine that draws upon the unique and varied terroir of Spain. 

Food and cooking are what I would call minor passions in my life.  At this point, they’re not my guiding purpose, but they are two things out of which I take great pleasure.  It doesn’t get much better than cooking dinner at a relaxed pace with a glass or two (or three) of wine/some beers with music playing and some quality company.  Cooking “professionally” is much less idyllic, and yet it shares some of the more meditative qualities of food preparation.  For the most part, every job that I’ve had has been in a kitchen, none of which has been a quality or fancy kitchen, but a kitchen all the same.  I at least moved up from the basement of my first job, where I was a burger flipper at a fast food restaurant.  I was working in the kitchen at a wine bar this summer, which is as chic as I’ve gotten so far.

I’ve found that working in a kitchen/service job environment engenders in you a curiously simultaneous sense of misanthropy and empathy.  On the one hand, you start to despise the majority of customers.  I’ve never experienced the same sort of undiluted spite towards a group of people as when they come in to place an order 5 minutes before closing or refusing to leave after closing.  On the other hand, because of the aforementioned spite, you gain a tremendous amount of empathy for your coworkers, and, as long as you’re emotionally capable of empathetic extrapolation, all the other service workers out there on that grind. 

It makes you into a better customer, and generally a more patient and understanding human being.  You become a good tipper.  You don’t say snide things to the waiter or get upset when food takes longer than you think it should.  Food service v. customers is us v. them, and once you’re on the side of the food service, even when you are technically on the customer side (which you inevitably will be frequently), you look at the situation through the eyes of a food service worker.  Because of the ubiquity of dining, whether casual, fine, or otherwise, I really think that compulsory food service should be a thing.  Everyone should have to experience a least a little bit of what it’s like.  And this brings us back to Bourdain, whose book Kitchen Confidential planted these ideas in my head and inspired me to work in kitchens and fertilize those seeds with the manure of low paying and hot work.  But out of the manure comes a better person, a blossom who is much less of an asshole to others.

            But back to Spain.  The fact that there is a cultural art form based in the eating of tasty small plates while drinking, whether this phenomenon goes by the name of tapas or pintxos, is a testament to the health and sanity of a culture.  This will be an extremely welcome respite from American bar food: chicken wings, jalapeño poppers, sloppy nachos, chili cheese fries.  And then all the other wonderful dishes:  la tortilla, paella, pulpo a la gallega, all the other seafood and stews, gazpacho, maybe even a little foam.

And vino, vino, vino.  And cava.  Probably some beer too. I was a little worried about the beer scene, but it seems that craft beer is available at some places in Madrid.  Gotta have my IPAs. 

So considered yourself warned:  There will be food and drink coverage on this blog.

“Well I’m going where the water tastes like wine”

~ The Grateful Dead