University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Finding my own moveable feast

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Finding my own moveable feast

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Content Finding My Own Moveable Feast

by
Grayson Kelly

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
December 2022
Copyright 2022 Grayson Kelly
Table Of Contents
Abstract…..………………………………………………………………………………………iii
Introduction: The Egg Also Rises …………………………………………………………………1
Chapter One: Peeling Back the Layers ……………………………………………………………3
Chapter Two: Hatching ……………………………………………………………………………9
Chapter Three: My Grandmother, The Artist ..……………………………………………………8
Chapter Four: To Know One Is to Be One ………………………………………………………22
Chapter Five: Sausage and Eggs…………………………………………………………………33
Chapter Six: Eggs, A Love Story ………………………………………………………………...42
Chapter Seven: The Torrents of Spring ………………………………………………………….49
Chapter Eight: Not Cheaper by the Dozen ………………………………………………………56
Chapter Nine: The Green Hills of Burgundy…………………………………………………….63
Chapter Ten: Give Me a Quiche …………………………………………………………………73
Chapter Eleven: The End of Something …………………………………………………………76
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………..80
ii
Abstract
What begins as a culinary adventure – a hunt for famous egg dishes representative of the
vastly different regions in France – becomes so much more: a journey of self-reflection,
self-exploration, and ultimately self-acceptance. In “Finding My Own Moveable Feast,” the
author – a culinary school graduate and food writer - travels from the cobblestone streets of Paris
to the towering cliffs of Normandy to the majestic chateaux of the Loire Valley to the rolling
lavender hills of Burgundy, describing in delicious detail his consumption of such French
favorites as oeufs mayo, pain perdu, souffles, quiches, eggs in sauce, and, of course, omelettes.
He marvels at the manner in which a simple egg can be transformed into a mouthwatering
masterpiece and at how each dish has its own history and tells its own story. He interviews food
historians, chefs and even physicians regarding the influence of the egg in culture and regarding
their own personal culinary experiences and influences. But this is not just a collection of
recipes. While on this expedition, the author examines how the egg can be a metaphor for life,
rebirth, and transformation, and he reflects upon his own life and his own rebirth as he travels
from town to town. What takes place is a raw and honest assessment of the challenges that he
himself has faced while struggling to find his own identity. Indeed, the author ends up
channeling Hemingway himself. Just as “Papa” used a stark and unsympathetic tone in “A
Moveable Feast,” when describing his years as a struggling expat in Paris, the author is frank and
unapologetic about his own, Anthony Bourdain-like struggles, and his own escape from the
darkness of addiction – a fate not uncommon for many in the food and restaurant industry. And
in the end, after a great deal of self-assessment and introspection, he reaches a conclusion that is
perhaps very different than Bourdain’s: that life is worth living and that no obstacle is too great
to overcome.
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Introduction: The Egg Also Rises
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold
white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their
cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty
feeling and began to be happy and make plans.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
They say that life changes when you least expect it. Little did I know, as I prepared to
return to the country of my heritage in the spring of 2022 on a gastronomical adventure in search
of the perfect French egg dish, that my path would take such an unexpected turn. Little did I
know that I would experience first-hand the metaphor of the egg as a symbol of life.
The decision to travel to France was not initially based upon some deep desire for
self-contemplation or growth. Quite the contrary: my thought process was far more simplistic.
Assigned the task of writing a thesis in my field of study (food and culture) and knowing that I
could count on a few free meals and lodging from family scattered across France, I decided to
visit the “Motherland” for purposes of studying the many ways that an egg – a simple egg - can
be transformed into a culinary miracle. As a professionally trained chef, I longed to explore the
singular gastronomy of France - to learn the art of preparing omelets and souffles from the true
masters of the craft. So, what better occasion than this to indulge the voices of my ancestors that
had long been calling my name?
As I scratched out my itinerary, drawing crooked lines from the bright lights of Paris to
the battlefields of Normandy, from the towering and sacred island of Mont St. Michel to the
awe-inspiring chateaux of the Loire Valley; from the rolling hills and vineyards of Burgundy to
the charming lavender fields and moutarderies in Dijon, I focused entirely on how many different
and unique egg dishes I could sample – not on how my travels might rekindle something deep
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inside of me. Let us be honest: the only kind of growth I contemplated was a few inches on my
waistline, thanks to the many different French sauces I was planning on sampling.
Perhaps that was best: no expectations. The best kind of personal change often happens
when it is unplanned and unexpected. As the old Yiddish proverb goes, “We plan, and God
laughs.” That certainly proved to be the case for me.
2
Chapter One: Peeling Back the Layers
“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front
of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the
sputter of blue that they made.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
There are layers to everything—even the egg.
The Latin proverb “Omne vivum ex ovo” (every living thing is from an egg) links the egg
to birth, spring, and the renewal of life. While on my quest to eat as many different eggs as
possible, I ultimately found myself contemplating my birth, cultural background, weaknesses,
strengths, true identity, my past, and the path forward. To my great surprise, I experienced a
renaissance and renewal – a begrudging acceptance of and ultimate triumph over my past
struggles and self-doubt.
None of this would have happened had I returned to France in the same capacity as
before, when I spent ten alcohol-fueled days in Paris and Burgundy in the fall of 2019. Barely
able to recall anything about that last trip, I embarked on this adventure as a stone-cold sober
man, more conscious and conscientious of myself and my surroundings and fully aware of how
much I had missed (and taken for granted) the last time across the pond.
My renaissance, however, did not happen overnight. In a way, I figured, I’d be killing
two birds with one stone: overcoming the complicated tableau that my life had become and
exorcising some demons.
First, I am French. I am the great-grandchild of a French general (Baron Henri Le Grand
de Mercey) who retired after serving in World War II to make wine with his wife and six children
in the tiny town of Montbellet, deep in the rolling hills of Burgundy. From a young age, I spent
many summers at the family chateau – a living relic of a time gone by. One could say that my
3
bloodline is a quarter French nobility or that I’m the part-owner of a historic wine property in the
middle of the Massif Central, but, like most things, the reality is far less “bougie” than it sounds.
My summers were spent picking up rocks, rebuilding crumbling walls, and working in the
garden. I was not living in the lap of luxury. As a result, over the years, I came to take the grand
old place (and my heritage) for granted, not understanding how or why it made me unique or
different and having no reason to know how it might one day play a huge part in my life.
Thus, I identify as truly French. I can quickly discern the difference between
camembert’s sharp, pungent aroma and the bloomy, floral notes of a Bougon. It goes with the
territory.
Second: “Hi. My name is Grayson, and I’m an alcoholic.”
When I last visited France in September of 2019, I was, by all accounts, a complete
trainwreck. Amy Schumer’s character in the movie by the same name had nothing on me. I was
350 pounds, cripplingly addicted to alcohol, and depressed as fuck. I traveled to our home in
Burgundy for my sister’s wedding – a wedding I can barely recall. So consumed with the need
to get drunk was I that I was unable to navigate flights, long drives, wedding parties, and family
dinners without the comfort of a bottle of hard liquor in my pocket.
When I returned home, I was filled with regret. I had wasted the opportunity to experience
French culture and be truly present at my sister’s wedding because I was more interested in
chasing down a fifth of Absolut.
Third: I’m gay!
Closeted for many years, I finally came out to my parents a year after my sister’s
wedding and … one week before I left for rehab.
4
I am the product of a very Catholic family, so I grappled with how my parents would
respond. So many times, I had come to the brink of revealing my true identity, only to pull back
out due to self-doubt and worry. When I finally “outed” myself after storming into my parents’
bedroom late one night, I immediately exclaimed: “But don’t think of me any differently.”
My father’s reply was completely unexpected. “Do you really think that we didn’t
already know that? We love you no matter what.” My mother burst out laughing and then
crying – a happy cry – and I joined in. It was cathartic, and felt like we had all just emitted an
enormous sigh of relief. The elephant in the room had finally been revealed; the figurative 300
pound orangutan that had been hitching a ride on my shoulders for the past twenty years had
finally jumped off. Not sure what else to say, I hurriedly said, “I don’t want to talk anything
more about it,” and left the room almost as quickly as I had arrived.
My parents, who had grown concerned about my tendency to withdraw and isolate, were
relieved. They privately reveled in the fact that I had come out, sure that I would now embrace
my new self and see no further need to isolate. Little did they know that my issues were far
darker.
This is where I pulled what I now call “Grayson’s singular, spectacular double-punch to
the gut.” Having just come out to the most important people I knew about my sexuality, I
decided to (again) come clean to them – this time about my alcoholism and my need for serious
help.
One week later, I was back in my parent’s bedroom. “I have a problem,” I said. “I think I
need to go away for a while.”
I’d unconsciously been folding a tissue into a perfect triangle while dabbing its sharp
corners against the edges of my eyes, pretending to be both emotional and confident
5
simultaneously. I was anything but. I’d learned the tissue trick from years of watching The Real
Housewives, some known for perfecting the method of lightly dabbing the corners of your eyes
with tissue for effect and not to mess up your makeup. Because I wasn’t wearing mascara, I
could not have replicated Lauren Conrad’s singular tear in The Hills, I could have (and did have)
my Candiace tissue moment. It was Oscar-worthy but honest.
My parents knew that I had a tendency to drink when I became emotional, but they had
no idea the extent to which my disease had taken control of me. I’d been so full of self-loathing
and shame for the past few years that I hid my darkest secret from everyone who cared about me
while at the same time isolating myself from them. So – the “reveal” – that I was an alcoholic –
completely shocked them.
Fourth: for years I have hated myself. As the character Hannah Horvath (brilliantly
written and played by Lena Dunham) said in one of my favorite episodes of HBO’s GIRLS, “No
one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing someone’s gonna
think of to say about me, I’ve already said to me, about me, probably in the last half-hour.” And
for the record, please, someone, put me in a room with Judd Apatow for five minutes; I’m
confident I’ll walk away with my own HBO show.
Though I project a steely, cocky front, I have secretly always lacked confidence in
myself. In rehab, they told us that the main reason we had regressed into addiction was because
of things that had happened in our childhood. “T’s,” they called them. “T” stood for trauma, and
they were classified on a binary scale: “little T’s” and “big T’s.”
But what about those “T’s?”
6
It could’ve been the strict diet I started at age seven, when I told my well-meaning mom
that I hated being “fat.” That diet could’ve been what sparked a life-long struggle with body
dysmorphia and disordered eating. I’ve always despised my body; whether it was being the only
boy to wear a swim shirt at birthday and pool parties or on trips to the beach, or being the person
who quickly gained nearly a hundred pounds during a monthslong depressive, alcoholic
sophomore year of college (when I gained not the freshman fifteen but the sophomore hundred).
Or it could’ve been the twelve years of Catholic school I attended as the youngest son of
a devout Catholic lawyer, where I was drummed into silence after being told by my teachers that
homosexuality was inherently evil.
Or it could’ve been playing on soccer teams where the other boys freely threw around the
word “faggot,” and used misogynistic epithets to joke with each other. The relentless attack on
who I was – by people who didn’t know who I was – clearly influenced my inability to truly
come out of my shell until my mid-twenties.
Or it could’ve been my perception that my average academic performance in school, or
on the ballfields, didn’t quite match up to the exploits of my sister and brother – both standouts
in every arena.
As they say … “a million cuts …”.
The last thing I would ever want to do is demonize my parents. There is too much nuance
to everything to point the finger at anyone, or to cast blame over people who never had any
intention of hurting me. Life is complex, and there is no better example of that than the
ever-evolving and growing relationships that I’ve experienced with each of my parents over the
past three years. Just as I’ve had to learn hard lessons, as I’ve begrudgingly come to accept
reality, and as I’ve embraced my own changing personal ideology, so have each of my parents.
7
Once staunch conservatives, they have joined the weirdly chronologically mirrored shift in
society’s attitude towards LGBTQ+ issues over the last twenty years. They have been far more
accepting and supportive of me than I imagined, and as a result, the years of pain are steadily
washing away.
Ninety days in rehab, followed by six months in a halfway house, followed by three more
months of outpatient alcoholism treatment, gave me plenty of time to exorcize the demons. I
cleaned myself up, literally and figuratively. I got sober. I went back to school. I began to eat
healthy. I began to exercise. Piece by piece, twenty-six years of little “T’s” began to fall behind
into the rear-view mirror.
8
Chapter Two: Hatching
“Hunger is good discipline.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
The Wickenburg desert in Arizona was still in the early morning, a quiet so deafening
that it assumed a sort of magnitude. I was wide awake, staring at the anti-ligature curtain rod
above my bed as the sun poked its head up from behind the mountains on the horizon outside of
my window. The winter sunlight flooded through my room’s cherry-red curtains, painting the
bare white walls of the treatment center with a rosy hue.
The day was March 1, 2020. It was my twenty-fourth birthday. I was one week sober,
having endured five days of a chemically-induced, medically directed detox. In what was
undoubtedly a pity offering, my treatment therapist Linda had stealthily gifted me a book the
night before, during my bed check. The book, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, wasn’t on the treatment
center’s approved reading list for young adults, but I’d stayed up all night reading it. “Happy
Birthday Brophy Boy,” she’d penciled on the inside cover, referencing the high school I had
graduated from – perhaps the last time I was sober. “I heard you’re a writer. Enjoy the
contraband. Linda.”
I liked Linda. She exuded a comforting warmth, and she seemed like the type of woman
who would be fast friends with my mom. When she told me that her son was also an addict who
had gone to my private high school, I knew that we would get along; after all, she probably
understood me on a deeper level than the other therapists at the Claudia Black Young Adult
Treatment Center. I didn’t know yet, but the son to whom she had compared me had actually
overdosed and died a few years after he graduated from my high school. Perhaps that is why she
had taken such a liking to me. I didn’t know why; I sure as hell didn’t like myself.
9
In Wild, Strayed decides to embark upon a 1,100 mile solo hike across the Pacific Crest
Trail in an effort to get sober and reclaim her life. Each morning as she begins to hike, she
repeats to herself one of her dead mother’s mantras, which motivates Strayed’s character to put
her hiking boots back on every morning and take on another day: “There’s a sunrise and a sunset
every day. You can choose to be there for it. You can choose to put yourself in the way of
beauty.”
Ugh, I thought to myself in my detox bed. That’ s so fucking beautiful. I guess I have to
get up now?
I got up. I figured morning walks were what healthy people did, and after what I had been
through, I was dying to feel any semblance of physical health. I tip-toed through my shared
bedroom, trying not to trip on a pair of sneakers or awaken my new roommate, Tony: a
pie-faced, eighteen-year-old heroin addict and Army engineer from Appalachia. I eyed his
still-sleeping form as I snuck past his bed, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. Tony
was nice enough, and I liked his bleached, platinum blonde hair and drastically dark roots. His
inability to keep up with the bleaching routine in rehab reminded me of how, during my sad
platinum phase, I was forced to grow my roots out as a college student in Rome due to the lack
of Sally Beauty in Trastevere.
The door closed quietly behind me, and I watched a family of quail frantically flee down
the dirt path in front of me. The treatment center, part of a larger facility characteristically named
The Meadows, separated men and women in their young adult program, and the boys’ dorm was
hidden in a corner of the campus.
10
The air was dry and cold, and I hadn’t been on my feet this early in years. It was a new
year, a new age, and for the first time in six years, I was stone cold sober. I began to run just as
tendrils of purple and orange began to snake out from the horizon – beacons from the
just-finished sunrise. All I could hear was the crunching sound of my feet hitting the dirt path
and my own breathing, the air expelling from my lungs and rising like plumes of gray smoke.
Only, for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t smoke. It was life rising up out of me and being
inhaled right back into me.
As I ran through the rehab campus, I found myself noticing the little things in my
environment that I’d been too drunk to notice for the past five years. Bushels of bright yellow
flowers, thriving with life, home to a litany of honeybees pollinating in action; curious prairie
dogs popping their heads out of their underground bunkers to watch me run by; the lyrical
morning birdsong. Life.
Being clear minded and present in my own head felt bittersweet. It was strange not
waking up with the daily hangover that I’d become so accustomed to having. It was equally
strange being so alert, so alive, and so present in my own head. Without an excruciating headache
or aching liver to distract me, every moment felt like I was mainlining reality. On top of that, the
world that had flown by me while drunk seemed like such a novelty. I had so much to re-learn.
After having been fucked up for so long, each new day felt like I was rediscovering the magical
banality of what it means to be alive in the world.
It was a strange time to be in a rehab facility. And it was the perfect time to be in a rehab
facility.
Within weeks after I arrived, the world outside completely shut down, ensnared in the
clutches of a strange and new epidemic. COVID-19 was just a sparkle in a Chinese bat’s eye (I
11
kid) when I entered treatment, but as I began my recovery, the globe was in turmoil. We were
allowed to watch the news for an hour a day, and the news was both startling and frightening.
The future – mine and the rest of the world – was uncertain. The difference for me was that
instead of being trapped at home, where I likely would have deepened my slide into alcoholism,
perhaps to the point of no return, I was (luckily) in a treatment facility, working on myself and
experiencing a renewal of sorts that would enable me to survive and prosper once released back
into the somehow both chaotic and, yet, quietly sequestered world
For my twenty-fourth birthday, I received an inconspicuous-looking package from my
parents. It had already been sliced open and sorted through by the nursing staff, just in case it
contained a bundle of dirty needles, a key-bump of fentanyl, or some other form of contraband –
like candy. The package contained two books and a few stacks of dusty old recipes.
I had never received a gift like this. It felt like a “this is awkward, you’re in rehab on
your birthday” care package. But it included a bit of magic: a well-read tome written by Anthony
Bourdain called Kitchen Confidential.
My long-suffering parents had both pushed Bourdain’s writing on me in the past, in an
attempt to inspire me to keep writing my own stories. I’d always been a pseudo-fan of his T.V .
shows, but I had never actually taken the time to delve deeper into his world. Like most addicts, I
was too preoccupied with ruining my own. That night, the first time I’d been sober on my
birthday in many years, I settled into my twin XL bed with Kitchen Confidential, and before I
knew it, I was fully immersed in Bourdain’s world.
“I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do what the fuck I want,”
Bourdain famously said in one of his interviews. There are a lot of things that you could call
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Anthony Bourdain. Chef, author, food journalist. Addict, hedonist, party-boy. Dad, son, brother,
friend. Cynicist.
But nobody can say that Anthony Bourdain didn’t have a way with words. According to
Patrick Radden Keefe’s now-famous 2017 profile of Bourdain in The New Yorker, the
aforementioned quote was the chef’s simple pitch for his CNN television show Parts Unknown.
Keefe’s profile was written just one year before Bourdain was found hanging in his Paris hotel
room while on-location shooting for that same show. Bourdain’s suicide reverberated throughout
the culinary and cultural worlds; for some, his shocking death – while at the height of his success
- was of the same magnitude as the death of icons like Princess Di and Michael Jackson.
Something interesting happens when a beloved public figure meets a tragic end.
Everyone seems to be able to remember where they were when they hear the news. The world
stops for a minute, followed by weeks of mourning by fans and foes alike. Bourdain’s death was
not unlike this in the culinary world. I remember walking into my first restaurant gig the day
after he died, as a prep cook at The Henry in Phoenix, and found our chef—a steely, gruff,
always-stoned asshole—crying in the walk-in freezer.
Ultimately, what shocked most fans about Bourdain’s death was that it was ruled a
suicide. How could a man who was so loved by so many, who led such a storied life, and who
seemingly had everything one could wish for -- kill himself? Hundreds of think pieces about the
stigmas behind mental health and suicide flooded the internet in the wake of his death, and a
larger conversation was spawned about the prevalence of mental illness in the culinary industry,
a topic that Bourdain knew quite well and never shied away from.
"Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental
way dysfunctional,” Bourdain wrote in his 1991 New Yorker piece “Don’t Eat Before Reading.”
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Those truths, and that essay, were the precursors to what is widely considered his life’s finest
work, Kitchen Confidential – the book that became an inspiration to me as I spent month after
month in recovery. In his genre-defining book, Bourdain detailed his early years in New York
kitchens, battling his own addictions, his mental illness, and the rampant toxicity that pervades
restaurant culture. Through his masterful and intimate narration, Bourdain simultaneously
highlighted both the glamorous and repulsive sides of professional cooking while chronicling his
own tormented life and personality.
Born on June 25, 1956, in New York City, Anthony Bourdain was raised in suburban
New Jersey, the son of a copy editor and music executive. While he developed a devotion to
literature and East Coast rock music, it was actually while on an oyster fishing expedition in
France, when Bourdain was a boy, that he discovered his passion for food. The oyster fisherman,
”Monsieur Saint-Jour,” challenged the family to eat an oyster freshly plucked from beneath their
boat. All – except Anthony – recoiled in horror. In his own words from the first chapter of
Kitchen Confidential, the young Bourdain’s first oyster on the boat that day tasted not only of
“seawater, brine, and flesh” but also of the future. “I was hooked.” Bourdain’s oyster adventure
was the catalytic event for his hedonism, a label he wore with pride, alongside “addict.”
“Everything that followed in my life – the food, the long and often stupid and
self-destructive chase for the next thing, whether it was drugs or sex or some other new sensation
– would all stem from this moment. I’d learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually –
even in some precursive way, sexually – and there was no turning back. The genie was out of the
bottle.”
Epiphanies like this are not unique to addicts; it doesn’t take much for us to seek an
intoxication of any kind. But Bourdain’s description of what he called “the forbidden fruit” and
14
his lifelong pursuit of pleasure, depicted in all of its gory detail in his book, resonated with me in
a way that few other things had. I felt less alone when I read Bourdain shamelessly recount his
struggles with substance abuse and how he maneuvered himself through different situations.
With each page turn, my formerly dwindling passion for life felt like it was being reignited.
Bourdain’s way with words made me want to write. I wanted to share my voice the way that
Bourdain shared his; abrasively honest, imbued with radical wit and charisma, and provocative.
Most of all, Bourdain’s story gave me hope -- hope that I too could get better and that I too could
claim my stake in the culinary and writing worlds. Here was a guy-- a true hero in my
eyes-who’d been hooked on some of the most devastating substances in the world and had
kicked them to the curb on his way to fame and fortune.
Like Bourdain, I wanted to be unapologetically me. I was a mentally ill, overweight,
recovering alcoholic in his early twenties. Rock bottom? Yes. But with such a ceiling.
Bourdain’s writing allowed me to recognize that what I saw as my flaws could be turned into
power objects. He helped me realize that it is my flaws that make me unique, that set me apart,
and that make my stories interesting and worth telling. aAfter reading Kitchen Confidential, I
wanted to channel my personal experiences into stories that made people laugh and feel less
alone than I had for so long.
Substance use disorder is a twisted game, one that chemically rewards the addict with
white-hot bursts of ecstasy while simultaneously attempting to kill them. There’s a common
saying in the recovery community - one you’ll hear at twelve step meetings across the world: “At
first, the using is fun. Then, it’s fun with problems. Then, it’s just problems.”
The first time that I got drunk by myself in my bedroom was an epiphany-like moment
not unlike the young Bourdain’s back on the French oyster boat. As soon as I felt the familiar
15
burn in my stomach, the waves of anxiety and, most of all, loneliness, receded. Curling up in bed
with my laptop and a handle of Svedka felt like nirvana. I, too, knew that I was hooked. My
personal genie had erupted within me like a roll of Mentos from a bottle of Diet Coke.
Drinking wasn’t the problem. Rather, as we alcoholics and some Housewives say, it was
my solution. It was the golden salve that quelled any discomfort that came my way. Alcohol
made my life feel livable, quite literally drowning my all-encompassing and paralyzing
depression. In the back of my mind, I knew that I was committing a long, slow suicide, but I
couldn’t care. I was young! As the “eternal teenager” James Dean liked to say, “Live hard, die
young, and leave a good looking corpse!”
But as I watched friends and peers drop like flies from the fentanyl crisis, I started to
realize that dying young had its drawbacks. Still, it took a moment of terror about putting blood
on the hands of my brother, and a resulting prayer to a long-lost God, to finally admit that my
self-medication was in fact leading to my demise.
The villain in Bourdain’s story is a nefarious one - one as equally misunderstood as it is
stigmatized: suicide. In an excerpt from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, the late chef’s
ex-wife Ottavia admitted that, while “he had this image of, you know, this bad boy, no fucks
given,” Bourdain was “actually really sensitive and really fragile.”
Recently, the CDC released a report indicating that a dramatic uptick has occurred in the
number of American suicides over the past decade. Worse, the report observed that fifty-four
percent of those suicides were committed by people who didn’t have a previously known
mental-health issue.
I do not know why people kill themselves. I do know that there is a mental health crisis
in this country, and that the crisis – fueled in part by alcoholism and other substance abuse
16
disorders - is thriving in the restaurant industry. It’s about time we start taking restaurant workers
seriously and treating them like humans. There is a reason that the profession is known for
attracting addicts. Gritty sixteen-hour nights in restaurant kitchens aren’t conducive to wellness.
In fact, you’d have to be crazy to want to be a chef, and most of us are. In his 2012 memoir
Medium Raw, Bourdain shared his self-deprecating thoughts on those in the profession.
“In my world, I took it as an article of faith that chefs were unlovable. That’s why we
were chefs. We were basically… bad people--which is why we lived the way we did, this
half-life of work followed by hanging out with others who lived the same life, followed by
whatever slivers of emulated normal life we had left to us. Nobody loved us. Not really. How
could they, after all? As chefs, we were proudly dysfunctional. We were misfits. We knew we
were misfits, we sensed the empty parts of our souls, the missing parts of our personalities, and
this was what had brought us to our profession, had made us what we were.”
One can say many things about Anthony Bourdain, but as evidenced by the impact that
he had on the world and on the millions of people who he touched, including yours truly,
“unlovable” was not one of them.
17
Chapter Three: My Grandmother, The Artist
“Even when you have learned not to look at families nor listen to them and have learned not to
answer letters, families have many ways of being dangerous.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Kitchen Confidential wasn’t the only book that my parents threw into my care package.
Alongside Bourdain’s masterpiece was another of its own caliber: a handbound copy of my
grandmother’s cookbook, Our Good Home Recipes.
I never got to meet my grandmother. France Marie Roget Le Grand-De Mercey died of
pneumonia at age fifty six, four years before I was born. When I was a child, like most children
who grow up a grandparent short, I was regaled with stories about her from my father and his
siblings. The stories were bittersweet reminiscences of a time gone past, and they seemed to be
woven together by a singular, constant thread: my grandmother’s famous French cooking.
My grandmother lived a fascinating life. Born in Casablanca, where her mother and
siblings had fled from Burgundy to escape the German invasion during World War II, she was
named after her homeland: France. When the war ended, the family returned home to the family
farm and chateau, where her father produced sparkling white wine bottled under the family
crest.
My grandmother descended from French nobility. Her grandfather and my
great-great-great-grandfather, General Etienne Le Grand de Mercey, was one of Napoleon's
prized generals – a 7-foot-tall warrior who commanded the armies in Italy and southern Europe.
The chateau where my mother was raised was gifted to the General by the famed
short-and-mighty military leader himself, as part of an old French custom. The estate, known as
St. Catherine, is now a historical landmark in France. To my family, the humble, crumbling
18
chateau is more of a living relic of a time gone by, and by extension, the best possible memory of
my grandmother.
In 1954, at age 18, and already a renowned young artist, France was approached by an art
professor who was traveling through France and who offered her a scholarship to attend
Dominican College in San Rafael, California. France accepted the offer and set off to the United
States on a true adventure, not knowing a word of English. After four years, she graduated from
Dominican with a degree in art, and went to work teaching painting during the day at a private
girls’ school in Carmel, and teaching French at night at the Army Foreign Language School.
Soon after that, France met my grandfather, an Irish-American OBGYN, Dr. John
Vincent Kelly. They married, had my father, and moved to Nigeria, where my grandfather
worked as a medical missionary. Two near-fatal malaria cases and a harrowing black mamba
attack later, the family moved back to the States and settled in Philadelphia. France’s abstract oil
paintings landed her a position as a visiting artist at the famed Barnes Foundation, for whom she
worked while raising four children.
In 1992, in failing health, and knowing that she did not have much time to live, France set
out to create what, in her children’s opinion, would be her life’s greatest work of art: a highly
detailed, handwritten, and beautifully illustrated cookbook. Mamie France died just weeks after
completing her cookbook and distributing copies to each of her children. The cookbook
occupied a place of great reverence in my family’s kitchen. Its dog-eared pages and rough edges,
from years of use, served as a reminder that, years beyond her death, she remained a huge part of
the family.
Back in my tiny bed at the treatment center, as I flipped through the pages of Mamie
France’s cookbook, and as I read the intimate headnotes of each recipe and her simple yet so
19
personal drawings, I felt like I was reuniting with a long-lost relative that I had never known. For
24 years, I had rarely ever thought about Mamie France. Now, at rehab, with all the time in the
world to think and self-reflect, I felt for the first time like I had a spiritual connection to
something or someone.
Zen Buddhists might call this experience “satori,” or enlightenment. Followers of St. Paul
might call it “being blinded by the light.” Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler coined the term
“the Aha moment” to describe what I felt. It was not unlike, I figured, what young Bourdain felt
on the oyster boat.
All that I know is that something in my brain clicked. In a way, Mamie France helped me
find me. She helped me reconnect with my family. She helped me reassess my future. She put
me in touch with my bloodline and my identity and the undeniable connection between the two.
I realized that the marriage of my two artistic passions— writing and cooking—was quite
literally embedded in my D.N.A. It dawned on me that if it was possible for Mamie France and
Anthony Bourdain to reach out and grab me at my lowest, perhaps I could reach others at theirs.
While polar opposites in person, Anthony Bourdain and Mamie France equally inspired
me. After successfully finishing treatment, I resumed my studies at Arizona State, and, for the
first time, began taking studies seriously and excelling. At the same time, I began devouring all
of the journalistic food writing that I could find. I scourged the websites of literary giants like the
Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, combing through the archives and becoming more
empowered and energetic with every story I read. After graduating from college, I was accepted
to a food journalism M.A. program at the University of Southern California. I was on my way.
Destiny beckoned.
20
Eleven months later, as I presented this thesis, in effect a book proposal, as a graduate
candidate, I thought about this excerpt from the commencement address given by journalist and
USC alumni Rachel Scott at my graduation:
“My fellow Trojans, let my story serve as evidence that you can shake things up,” she
said. “Sometimes our decisions are so clouded by the status quo, we talk ourselves out of a great
opportunity, convinced the best option is the safest one, the most practical, the one with the best
track record. Today, I challenge you to question what is driving your decision,” she continued.
“And if it’s fear of doing something different, get out of your own way.”
21
Chapter Four: To Know One Is to Be One
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those
who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and a higher grade of manure.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I have to admit: since it had been years since I’d formally studied French food–and had
never even really dug into it–I decided that I needed to learn more about the past few centuries,
and in specific, dishes or foods that migrated from France to the U.S. and have become staples. I
also wanted to learn more about the history of cookbooks from the time. I needed to get a more
well-rounded perspective, and dive into history.
I reached out to a food historian to learn more about the subject at hand–French food,
more specifically, French egg dishes and their influence on American cookery. Sarah Wassberg
Johnson is not just a food historian but the food historian–an author, speaker, educator, podcaster,
and blogger on all things food history
“French food is certainly a rich topic,” she said. “And, Americans were kind of obsessed
with it in the eighteenth century and then again in the late nineteenth, and turn of the twentieth
centuries.”
The first dish I wanted to talk about? Ouefs mayo, of course, the dish that sparked my
idea to focus on eggs in the first place.
“I don’t think I can think of an American dish quite like oeufs mayo,” I said. “In fact,
many of my American friends have looked at my pictures of oeufs mayo and almost gagged.
‘Mayonnaise and eggs?’ is always the reaction I get.”
“They probably don’t know that mayonnaise is essentially, just egg yolks and oil itself,”
she replied.
22
“But I think you may be forgetting a dish that’s highly ubiquitous in the U.S.”
I racked my brain, but couldn’t come up with anything–sure, there’s egg salad, but if
anything, ouefs mayo is just a deconstructed egg salad.
Johnson giddily replied: “Deviled eggs!”
“Deviled eggs actually started out with butter as the primary ingredient, not mayonnaise.
Deviled eggs with mayo became more popular with the introduction of prepared mayonnaise in
the 1910’s–again, more evidence of French ingredients being accepted into American food
culture.”
“However, there are lots of popular egg dishes in the nineteenth century that I’m almost
certain have French origins, including shirred eggs and all sorts of omelets.”
After our conversation, Johnson emailed me a link to one of the first French cookbooks to
be translated into English–now enshrined in the Library of Congress. “I think you should start
with this. Could be an interesting jumping off point for the historical context behind French
cookery and its migration out of France,” she wrote.
Johnson sent me a number of historic cookbooks, including some of the very first French
cookbooks published in the United States, dating all the way back to 1767. I was both bemused
by the content and also shocked at how relevant the information still was. That, and the
similarities between them; the self-awareness each author and translator had that they were
venturing into unknown territories, pioneers of bringing their cultural craft to people across the
States.
One of my professors always told me that food can be used as a lens through which you
can tell any story. Therefore, it’s important, when thinking about this subject, that we also think
23
about what was happening in eighteenth century Europe, when the United States didn’t even
exist yet.
A good place to start my research was Anne Willan’s The Cookbook Library. In
eighteenth century European society, two “strong forces” were at work, “one intellectual and
centered on the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment, the other material and propelled by the
eagerness of consumers.”
1
Willan notes that Enlightenment thought, led by the French philosophers V oltaire,
Montesquieu, and Diderot, sought a new order based on reason and science. Enlightenment
played out in a variety of ways throughout Europe; even the cookbooks from the time are clear
examples of its omnipresence. Co-occurring was the Industrial Revolution, which enabled
publishers to produce greater quantities of books at lower prices, which made cookbooks more
accessible to “the growing market of literate customers.”
The seventeenth century brought with it a scientific revolution, which sent everyone’s
previously thought ideas about the world into a tailspin. People began to look away from the
teachings of the church and the Bible, as well as the works of classical antiquities and towards
reason, logic, criticism, and freedom of thought. The Enlightenment held that there could be a
science of man, and consequently, brought interested thinkers into direct conflict with the
political and religious establishments of the time.
In keeping with Enlightenment notions, most food writers in the early part of the century
believed that cooking was a science to be approached systematically, according to a codified set
of rules, preferably under the guidance of someone ‘professed,’ who had already been trained by
a mentor, usually a man, usually French or French trained, and likely associated with the great
1
Anne Willan, Mark Cherniavsky, and Kyri Claflin, The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks,
Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012),
193.
24
house of a wealthy aristocrat.
2
You see this in most of the cookbooks from the time, most of
which have lengthy introductions in which the author or translator lists their entire resumes, like
an ancient LinkedIn page.
I dove into the first translated French cookbook to make it into the Library of Congress:
The Art of Modern Cookery Displayed subtitled “Consisting of the most approved Methods of
Cookery, Pastry, and Confectionary of the Present TIme.” Menon’s Les Soupers de la Cour is
given credit, but the translator is not given any, again a mystery. What we know about this
translator is that they describe themselves as “a foreigner, who has been several Years a Clerk of
the Kitchen in Noble Families in this Kingdom,” (the U.K.)
“In this work, the French names are preserved and explained, for the mutual ease and
instruction of natives and foreigners,” is written right underneath the translator's note, again,
making it clear that the author was aware of the need to simplify recipes for the “modern” home
cook. The translator is so insecure, in fact, that the prologue is simply titled “The Translator’s
Apology.” The translator begins: “I shall not pretend to make any further Apology for the Title of
Supper, than that the French are, in general, more elegant in their Suppers than Dinners.”
It’s evident that early non-French cookbook writers were concerned that the French
recipes they so meticulously were trying to bring to English speakers would be too difficult or
too exotic. Previous English cookbook authors were ardently and transparently anti-French in
their rhetoric, such as Hannah Glasse, a prolific English cookbook writer. According to The
Cookbook Library, Glasse’s anti-French attitude was “in tune with the debate about the
debilitating qualities of French cuisine—with all its physical, financial, and even social
costs—that had begun fifty years earlier. Much of British society likely agreed with Glasse’s
2
Willan et al., The Cookbook Library, 193.
25
famous diatribe, ‘Such is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be imposed on by a
French Booby than give Encouragement to a good English Cook.’”
The original French cookbook was called Les Soupers de la Cour, or La Cuisine
Reformee, which according to the translator, was at the time “the last and most complete Practice
of Cookery published in French. While flipping through the recipes of The Art of Modern
Cookery Displayed, there’s no doubt that the content of the book was geared towards one
ingredient: meat, and all types of it. Not an egg recipe to be found, but if you’re looking for
recipes like “eau du poulet” (chicken water) or “tetine de vache au verjus” (cow’s udder and the
juice of unripe grapes,) then you know where to look.
The French book was written by one of the most prolific and mysterious cookbook
writers of eighteenth century France, who went only by the pseudonym Menon. For a long time,
it seemed as if Menon’s identity was lost to history. Prior to 2021, “virtually nothing is known
about his life or his dates of birth and death,” wrote Leon G. Fine in a paper for the International
Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science. Then, something amazing happened: Fine traveled to
the Chateau du Villiers outside of Paris when researching his article, and there, in the library, he
found the very first edition of La Cuisiniere Bourgeoise. Not just the first edition, but Menon’s
own personal copy, dated 1752, in which Menon himself signed his full name: Louis Francois
Henri de Menon. According to Fine, “the first blank of the book, inscribed 1875, shows the
owner to have been Mrs. Menon, who passed it on through four generations of the family as
inscribed in the book.”
The focus on meat, however, isn’t something that should be looked past. Instead, in
Fine’s previously mentioned article, the sourcing for this book (Menon) actually has interesting
cultural context when closer examined.
26
Dr. Leon Fine, M.D., with all of his gastronomical knowledge and research, isn't exactly
the first person that one would suspect to have such a niche interest in historical French cookery.
Dr. Fine is an extremely respected and lauded nephrologist–a doctor who works on the kidney.
He is also a professor of Biomedical Sciences and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, and is credited by
the hospital with establishing the graduate programs at Cedars, which have been thriving since
2008.
Why, then, would a nearly legendary doctor, who’s written hundreds of research papers
on the topic of medical history, particularly the history of kidney diseases, wade into the waters
of French gastronomical history? Who was this incredible man?
“Well,” he told me over a recent Zoom call, “the simple answer is that I am an unabashed
foodie.” He was born in South Africa and still has the accent, but he tells me that he’s traveled
far and wide and lived in multiple countries and cities, a man with as interesting a history as the
subjects we were about to discuss.
“I’ve lived in Israel, I’ve lived in New York. I lived in London, and France. And I’ve
always seen French cuisine, and the French style of cooking, to be the forerunner of many other
cuisines that followed, including Spanish cuisine and Italian cuisine.”
“I’m also a collector,” Fine says. “Would you believe me if I told you that I, for the last
forty years, every time I go into a restaurant I’ll say ‘I really would like to come back to this
place, can I please have your restaurant card?’ I take the restaurant card, business card, whatever.
And if there’s no restaurant card, I keep a copy of the bill. I now have sixteen volumes of
restaurant cards from restaurants all over the world.”
No surprise, there, I thought. He continues: “I say this to show you that a collector is a
collector; they’ll collect anything. I also collect books.” I watch him pull something into view
27
from behind his computer screen. It’s a small, worn copy of Menon’s La Cuisiniere Bourgeoise,
the subject of one of his articles I’d read.
Initially, I’d reached out to Dr. Fine after reading his opinion paper in the International
Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science titled Meat cookery for the 18th century female
household cook: An unrecognized influence of Menon’ s La Cuisiniere Bourgeoise (1746). The
article examines the book that most in the know consider Menon’s magnum opus, his second
book La Cuisinière Bourgeoise (The [Female] Bourgeoise Cook). Dr. Fine’s fascination with the
book stems from a notion that he’s convinced should be more well-known: that Menon’s book
was one of the most important stimuli empowering the female chef to engage in meat cookery.
“Don’t tell me that’s the one that has the signature in it,” I said, shocked. I’d only seen
scanned copies of the book from the Library of Congress’ website.
“It’s not. This book was printed in 1756, and the first edition was 1746. There was one
prior edition of this book, but this is still the second edition.” Rare books like these can fetch up
to six figures on Ebay and sites of the sort.
“When I write something, I feel I must have something to say that is original. Just writing
another description of someone’s life or their work is a little bit boring, and really not that
academic. But I realized when I was looking at this, that this was one of the very first, let’s call it
a cookbook, that was written for the female chef, which was very unusual, and very specific.”
Fine says that he suspects that the decision to appeal to the female home cook probably had
something to do with the publisher, that perhaps there was an apparent hole in the marketplace at
the time.“I noticed that if you look at the contents of the book, it has a very strong influence on
meat. You had a time when meat eating was not something that people indulged in at the time,”
said Fine.
28
Fine explains that in eighteenth century France, beef was not accessible to the middle and
lower classes due to the steep price. Therefore, poorer people ate pork. “Mutton, beef, venison,
things like that, that was for the not-so-poor people,” he adds. “So, since this book consists
mainly of meat recipes and is geared towards the female cook, the combination is what sets it
apart from the rest at the time.”
Fine told me that Menon was a prolific writer, publishing a number of books. “But the
reference to this, and the strangest thing about him, is that he was only known by a single name.
Nobody ever discovered his name,” said Fine. “So all the literature talks of him as just ‘Menon,’
and even one of the most authoritative book dealers who specializes in books on cookery wasn’t
quite sure he wanted to believe me when I told him that I’d discovered what Menon’s actual
name was, because I’d found it listed in a book in some library in France.” Perhaps the book
dealer didn’t believe him at first, but I did; it was obvious that Fine knew his subject material
through and through.
Menon wasn’t Dr. Fine’s only gastronomic muse; he’d also been fascinated with the
(again, untold) story of a fellow Burgundian, François Pierre La Varenne (1615–1678). “If you
look at the fifty years before La Varenne, there were only about four publications that came out
of France that talked about food and cooking. And then, La Varenne appeared on the scene and
he basically simplified what, prior to that, had been very, very elaborate and over-sugared,
over-salted and over-spiced foods. He simplified them and presented them in a very easy to read,
easy to understand format,” according to Fine.
Dr. Fine suspects that, like writers who would come after him, La Varenne probably
thought that his main audience was professional cooks. “But given the size of the work and its
29
popularity, and the fact that it went through multiple editions, it was probably used much more
widely and not only by professional cooks,” said Fine.
La Varenne’s work was so popular and ubiquitous in seventeenth century France that
other publishers at the time would “shove” La Varenne’s name on the front page of the book,
claiming his authorship, in order to use name recognition to sell books to wider audiences.
“That’s why some people like me said, oh gee, I’d better buy that book!” said Fine. “To only
discover that, after the fact, this was a later edition in which La Varenne had zero influence. And
it just shows you that publishers–perhaps in collusion with authors as well–basically just found
ways to sell books.”
Another culinary giant from the time was Grimod de la Reynière, described by Dr. Fine
as “a rascal,” who was not a chef but rather one of the world’s first food critics. Reynière was an
attorney turned theater critic turned food writer, both loved and hated for his scathing and witty
reviews of the eateries of the day. “Grimod,” Dr. Fine laughs, “makes for very good storytelling.”
He’s not wrong; Reyniere lived what could only be described as an outrageous life. He
was born into a wealthy Parisian family of fermiers généraux (tax collectors) in 1758, with
deformed hands, on which he would later wear artificial prostheses.
3
From a young age, due to
his wealthy upbringing, Reyniere showed a “visceral passion for food and wine, as well as
rebelliousness towards every milieu he became familiar with.” Before he was disbarred and
dismissed as an eccentric on account of his conduct–“inappropriate for a man of
law”--Reyniere’s way of practicing the noble legal profession was rebellious in itself. He chose
to represent, pro bono, the poorest of people overwhelmed by the taxes imposed by his own
relatives.
3
Cathy Kaufman, “The Claw at the Table: The Gastronomic Criticism of Grimod De La Reyniere,” Academia.edu,
June 3, 2014, https://www.academia.edu/1149262.
30
Though Reyniere’s antics would ultimately be told alongside his story, it was really his
collection of writing that would go on to change history forever With his family’s wealth and
access to the elite gastronomic scene at the time, Reyniere hit upon the idea of writing what he
coined a “food lover’s almanac,” Almanach des Gourmands and Manuel des Amphitryones, an
eight-volume series of the world’s first restaurant guides. Think: Michelin, but eighteenth
century France. By the early 1800’s, Reyniere had pissed off a lot of people in the Parisian food
scene with his snarky reviews. Many accused him of taking bribes to write good reviews in the
almanac.
“Grimod was such a S.O.B. that if the restaurant slipped him a few francs into his palm,
he would say nice things about them. And if the restaurant didn’t play the game, he would ignore
them,” Dr. Fine tells me. After angering much of France, Reyniere discontinued the Almanac,
faked his own death and planned his own “funeral” to see how many people would show up. Few
did. When he actually did die, Grimod still went out in a comically hilarious way: he choked on a
glass of water on Christmas Day in 1837, passing “just before the proverbial festive lunch–which
he had been very much looking forward to, by the way.”
4
If I learned anything from my conversation with Dr. Fine and in my research of these
ancient French cookbooks and writers, it’s that cookbooks aren’t just books. Rather, they are
gastronomical relics from the past. Whether La Varenne’s books, or Menon’s books, or even my
grandmother’s cookbook, these tomes deepen our knowledge and understanding about the
origins of the culinary arts. Furthermore, gaining a complete vision of the world of gastronomy,
both yesterday and today, allows food writers to connect their intellect with their knowledge of
the palate and grasp modern cookery in all of its complexity. Just as these books–and cookbooks
4
Carlo Petrini, “Grimod De La Reynière - UNISG - University of Gastronomic Sciences,” Università di Scienze
Gastronomiche di Pollenzo, May 24, 2021, https://www.unisg.it/en/voices/grimod-de-la-reyniere/.
31
in general–are valuable tools through which we can learn about the culinary arts, they also
provide an interesting lens through which we can discover more about the society and culture at
the time. Dr. Fine learned this himself when he studied La Cuisiniere Bourgeousie.
“If one wishes to call themselves a gastronome, or gourmet, or gourmand,” Dr. Fine told
me, as we finished up our interview. “One really must be familiar with these stories from the
past. This is where the authenticity of things lies: a gourmand is not only a tourist but, on the
contrary, a traveler who keeps his knowledge alive through curiosity.”
32
Chapter Five: Sausage and Eggs
“For a poet, he threw a very accurate milk bottle.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Its a basic tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous that, once you’re sober, part of the recovery
process is writing down the names of everyone you’ve ever come across, anyone that’s ever been
in your life, and next to the name, you’re meant to write out what you’d “done wrong” to them in
your active addiction.
I, for one, hadn’t ever been a big AA-head; it’s not really my style. I find the church
basements, burnt community coffee, and eternal self-flagellation via war-storying to be not as
conducive to recovery as any other “tried and true” method of recovering from alcohol abuse.
However, that’s not to say that I don’t see the importance of such a program; one that is
accessible to anyone in the world at any time of the day, ostensibly. AA is essentially “free”
group therapy, something that can be invaluable during the first few years of recovery.
The first few Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that I attended were in a church basement
in downtown Wickenburg, Arizona, a stone’s throw from where my young adult rehab center
was hidden in the dusty hills nearby. I only attended two, my first two Tuesday nights in rehab. I
loved these two meetings; any chance to escape from the rehab center for even an hour was a
welcome treat, even if just to know that the world was still happening outside of my own head.
Then, all of the sudden, the world shut down, as COVID-19 began to spread across the
globe, and our meetings became virtual. Virtual AA meetings do not a supportive community
make, and in the first few months, the meetings were commonly “Zoom-bombed” by internet
trolls, interupting someone’s emotional share with graphic porn or a Donald Trump meme.
33
The second treatment center I went to was in Huntington Beach, California. The facility
serves as the second “step-down” from inpatient hospital rehab. The program is only for young
adult men, and we were assigned houses next to the beach that would house six of us and two
older guys who had gone through the program and were sober now. Soon enough, I was filling
out my own list of names and writing next to them what it was exactly that I felt bad about and
what, if I ever had the chance (and if it wouldn’t cause any harm), would say that I was sorry for.
I racked my brain for days, transporting myself back in time through when I’d begun drinking
and who had come across my path.
Up to that point, my biggest accomplishment had been graduating from culinary school,
but I knew that I didn’t bring my full “best” to culinary school, showing up hungover and
anxious every single day. I remember feeling my body vibrate from the internalized panic during
morning classes, sweating through my chef's coat and toque, thinking about my next drink. I
always wondered if anyone could tell that there was something wrong with me–whether they
could smell the tequila leaking from my pores as we chopped mirepoix side by side, or that my
nose was becoming as red and ruddy as your average eighteenth century drunken Irish pirate. (I
can say that. I was a drunk half-Irishman for years.)
Culinary school is inherently competitive. Chefs, by nature, are notorious assholes. The
chefs who taught us were mostly the latter, too caught up in their own egos to really get to know
their students. One of my chef instructors, however, actually took notice at the time. Chef Frank
Proto pulled me out of class on the day we were beginning to learn how to make sausages; a day
I remember fondly, the Monday after my twenty-second birthday party, an especially hungover
morning. He asked me if everything was alright. “You seem really off today,” he said. “Do you
want to talk about anything? You know I’m here for you right?” I fought back tears, and told him
34
that nothing was wrong. While I finally felt “seen,” I was too ashamed and scared to tell anyone
my secret.
For the rest of the semester, as things got worse and I fell deeper into my addiction, I
began to self-sabotage by not showing up to some of my last classes with Chef Frank. I didn’t
talk to him at graduation, too ashamed to pretend like I had been anything but a failure, in my
eyes only. Needless to say, his name ended up on my apology list.
“Can you believe it’s been, what,” I ask him recently, finally mustering up the courage to
contact him for an interview. “Four years since 2018?”
“It’s been a long time, and a weird two years,” he replies.
“Yeah, it’s crazy. Definitely weird. I actually, um, got sober during the pandemic,” I say
nervously. “So I don’t know if you ever noticed, but I was going through some shit while I was at
I.C.E. Lots of drinking.”
My sobriety wasn’t the subject of our conversation. Rather, I’d contacted Chef Frank out
of necessity. I wanted–well, needed–to talk to a passionate chef about cooking, and more
specifically, egg cookery. Who better, I thought, than the man who taught me how to cook and
was looking out for me the whole time? But, I still had to mention it. Something within me
wanted a way to say, “hey, look, that wasn’t me!” But it was. I’m still coming to accept that.
I’m not sure what reply I expected, but the one I got put me at ease.
“I think my impression of you was that you cared about cooking, but you seemed…
cranky, all the time. I imagine that might have been the drinking?”
Chef Frank keys me in on something I’d not previously known about him: alcoholism is
something he has real life experience with. It’s something he understands. “My mom’s an
alcoholic. She’s been sober for over twenty years now.”
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I let him know that, even though I look back on culinary school with some semblance of
regret, it’s not because I didn’t enjoy the education or take anything away from it; rather, I
regretted that I hadn’t been fully present for that year. I also tell him that while working in
restaurants was fun as a semi-functioning alcoholic, food writing is now more my style.
“Well, honestly,” he says, “I think that the environment of restaurants or the food industry
isn’t conducive to being sober, either.” Is the seeming tendency for the kitchen to attract addicts
something that he’s noticed throughout his career? Or, while teaching at school?
“When I’m teaching, you don’t get as much exposure to that, just for the fact that most of
the time, I’m not there during the evening. Did you see it in school?”
“I mean, I saw myself,” I say. “At the time, I thought that I could both drink and have a
career as a chef or cook. But I couldn’t even do that.”
“Well listen,” he assures me. “That’s no small feat. To have gone through all that stuff,
getting through the program…you’ve got to give yourself a pat on the back for that even though
you might not have been sober at the time. You graduated!”
Though my passion for cooking had somewhat been dwindling since I’d left culinary
school, I wanted to talk to a chef who I knew was the real deal, and who I knew had a true
passion for the culinary arts. Perhaps, I thought, talking to Chef Frank might light a fire inside of
me. But enough about me.
I remind him that he was the man who taught me how to make sausage, a skill so obscure
yet one I feel will one day come in handy. If you didn’t know that he’s only half Italian, you’d
assume he was full-blown due to his generous demeanor and inherent Italian culinary talent. But
on his mother's side, he’s German and Irish. “A little bit of German Jew in there too,” he says.
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Food–fresh, local food–has always been what he calls “at the forefront” of his early life
and childhood. Growing up in Long Island–with its proximity to the culturally diverse boroughs
of NYC–enabled Chef Frank to be exposed to all different types of cuisines. Food, for him, was
life. It was, and is, his culture. “As a kid, we used to go to Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx
most weekends. They have these things called terminal markets. So, all the trucks that used to
supply the supermarkets would congregate at a terminal market as a central point to distribute
their goods to markets and customers alike. They had vegetables, they had cheese. There were a
lot of Italians there,” he recalls.
“We’d buy fresh sausage and dry sausage. And have you heard of scamorza cheese?” I
hadn’t, I say, shamefully. Chef Frank’s eyes light up, as his familiar passion for even basic
ingredients shines through. “Well, it looks kind of like a gourd. It’s got a fat bottom and a duck
neck top. We would buy wheels of provolone cheese. We would make our wine from the wine
grapes we bought at these markets.”
Now you know why Chef Frank seems so Italian. “We also had this tradition of making
tomato paste. But this is a tomato paste that’s unlike anything anyone’s ever seen. It almost looks
like brownies once it’s done because it’s so dehydrated. As you know,” he says, “food was very
important. It was at the forefront of my life. Sunday dinners were, a lot of times, with my entire
family–grandma and grandpa and all.”
Chef Frank’s father was a mechanic who worked the night-shift for United Airlines at
JFK. “When we were school age, he would come home and cook breakfast for us. But we’re
actually talking about dinner–breakfast could’ve been pasta or steak or even ‘eggs in sauce’.”
“I’m always jealous of Italians for just this reason,” I tell him.
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“Well, I actually think it can be annoying for some. My wife is full Irish–both of her
parents–and she’s a first-generation American. Their family,” he says, “has a totally different
view of what food means. For them, food is fuel. The first time I cooked her parents dinner, I
wasn’t even finished putting the food on the table and they were already eating it and making a
cup of tea. The Irish are savages!”
Getting a kitchen job was an obvious goal of his into his teens. “I didn’t get my start in
restaurants. I actually got started in a catering hall probably an hour and a half from where we
grew up. Before culinary school, I actually had no restaurant experience. I worked a lot of big
parties–basically what Long Island is known far. Huge weddings, christenings, bar and bat
mitzvahs. Catering halls were and still are big on Long Island.”
When he was twenty-one, Chef Frank applied to the Culinary Institute of America, or the
C.I.A (not that one) in upstate New York. “I was just finishing up two years of community
college–I have an associates degree in Restaurant Management. It basically just seemed like the
right next step, and it didn’t hurt that I loved what I was doing.”
Passion for the craft is necessary to be in the culinary profession, and I’m not the only
person who thinks so. This is the type of passion that would drive one to voluntarily work in one
of the toughest, most demanding, and unrewarding industries of all–the restaurant industry–just
because you love it so much, and you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else. It’s the type of
passion that gets a line cook out of bed at the crack of dawn for breakfast service after a bender,
and the kind that would make you dole out more than $50,000 for a culinary arts degree.
At C.I.A., Chef Frank was taught French cuisine and technique, but the program also
allowed him to try his hand at other cuisines, to see what fit best; Italian, Asian, Spanish,
Mexican. “It was a diverse curriculum–a lot like what you experienced at I.C.E.”
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Frank then worked at the Tribeca Grill in lower Manhattan, a famous mainstay for New
American food in the city. He tells me that one day, after pounding the pavements looking for a
restaurant job before he graduated, he walked into Tribeca Grill and was offered a job on the
spot. “The head chef at the time was Don Pintabona–a graduate from my culinary school. He
actually told me that at first, he was hesitant of hiring me. ‘They tend to get a little full of
themselves,’” he tells me. “One of our owners was Robert de Niro. It was really hot at the time,
and absolutely a great place to get my start.”As for his approach to cooking and the kitchen, Chef
Frank tells me he always has one goal: to simplify where he can. “I think that young cooks tend
to put a lot of stuff on things and sometimes, you just don’t need a lot of stuff! Sometimes, if you
just cook a steak with salt and pepper, it’s going to be great. But people put a lot of seasoning
and this and that and, well, you’ve lost your direction.”
I remind him of one of the dishes I cooked for him during a market box challenge,
something reminiscent of the conceit of the popular television show Chopped. We were given a
protein and a random box of vegetables and ingredients and told to do our best. I kept it simple,
and made a full chicken with roasted carrots. “I specifically remember you telling me, ‘I wish
everyone kept it as simple as this. Roasted carrots, delicious…’” I say.
“Exactly,” he replies. “A piece of chicken is super bland, so it probably needs a lot of
stuff. But if you’re buying yourself a steak or a pork chop, just keep it as simple as possible.
People overcomplicate food.”
He reminds me of one of the chefs who he worked alongside at the time, a British chef
who’d just been hired from his sous chef job at Eleven Madison Park. “That’s a tweezer chef,”
Frank says. “They need tweezers to plate their food. Here’s a speck of parsley here, and a flake
of pepper here. Let’s take a turnip and make it into a broth and then into a foam.”
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“Show me a chef that can take a horse carrot and make something delicious with it.
That’s talent, right? You know, if you’re getting the best ingredients in the world, well then just
don’t fuck it up. But if you’re like most, with kind of plain ingredients, you now have the chance
to do something spectacular with them. That, to me, is talent.”
It’s the perfect opportunity for me to pivot the conversation to the broader theme of my
project, eggs. “There’s actually a famous quote,” I say. “The one-hundred folds in a chef’s toque
represent the one-hundred different ways you can cook an egg.”
“Here’s the thing about eggs, right?” He gets serious in tone, exactly as I would. “There
are so many ingredients out there, and eggs are probably one of the simplest yet most versatile.
You can go to almost every single culture and find fifty different egg dishes from each. They’re
one of the things that I think we take for granted. We don’t appreciate the importance of the egg
in our life, and how they’ve allowed humankind to grow to the point where we are.”
“It’s a simple thing, but it was such a cheap source of protein and so ubiquitous that it
became a daily staple. Eggs really don’t get their due,” he tells me. “From the poorest to the most
wealthy people; we all eat eggs. That’s why we do an egg week at culinary school. It’s such an
integral part to so many different things, one of the most important culinary ingredients in our
world.”
His go-to egg recipe? “Have you ever heard of eggs in sauce? It’s the Italian version of
shakshuka. First, you take pancetta, and a leftover tomato sauce. You put it in a pan, get it hot,
you can spice it up if you want, and crack a few eggs in it. Throw it in the oven and you’ve got
dinner, breakfast, and/or lunch.” His recipe is an example of his dedication to making great food
simply. “It’s just a handful of ingredients, and yet, so satisfying. Eggs, tomatoes, onions, garlic,
pancetta, salt and pepper.”
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Nowadays, Chef Frank isn’t working for I.C.E. Around the time I graduated, he got a call
from Epicurious. They were looking for a professional chef to star in their Youtube series–and
the rest was history. “4 Levels of Hamburgers: Amateur to Food Scientist”, the first video he was
featured in, now sits at almost 28,000,000 views. Another, “$500 vs $16 Steak Dinner: Pro Chef
& Home Cook Swap Ingredients” is at 50,000,000. Needless to say, Chef Frank’s socials grew a
huge audience overnight. When he’s not being a viral sensation, he’s teaching culinary arts at a
middle school in Long Island, a gig that he says is probably his most favorite yet. Sharing his
passion for the craft with young students is rewarding.
“Something that I tell my little students in middle school is that you’re only going to get
good at something if you keep practicing it. Same thing with, say, knife skills. You just have to
put your face in front of people and do it. Get uncomfortable. Do you think that the first time you
crack an egg and make a fried egg, that it’s going to be perfect? No! It’s going to be weird! But
just get over yourself and do it. That’s how you’re going to get better at it.”
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Chapter Six: Eggs, A Love Story
“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even
poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong, nor the breathing of
someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
In a Los Angeles Times article, Toni Tipton wrote: “The pre-Christian Ukrainians thought
the egg personified the coming of spring: a celebration of the rebirth after the long death of
nature in winter.” But the Ukrainians were not the only ones who recognized the egg as a symbol
of life and transformation. In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans placed eggs in tombs or left
nests of eggs beside the deceased – a sign of life after death – while Maori people buried their
dead with an egg of a now-extinct moa in one hand.
During the second week of culinary school, I and the rest of my class were taught knife
skills and egg preparation. Knife skills you can understand. But eggs? My fellow students had to
be thinking the same thing I was: everyone knows how to cook eggs. Why would
chefs-in-training need a whole “egg week”?
The truth lies somewhere between the fact that, on one hand, we were learning French
culinary techniques (and the French heavily emphasize eggs in all dishes) and second, that, well,
we were learning to cook. Eggs truly represent a universal language in terms of food. One could
easily consider “eggs” a cuisine unto their own. Did you know that humans have been eating
eggs for six million years? I can’t name another ingredient with such historical, gastronomical
ubiquity and such incredible staying power. In effect, eggs have been a part of life, and
sustaining life, for as long as life has existed.
During egg week, we learned how to cook huevos in all their various, lovable forms:
soft-boiled, poached, fried, sunny-side up, baked into a rustic French tomato sauce, vigorously
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hand-whisked to create a silky aioli. Think of omelets oozing with Boursin cheese, fried egg
sandwiches on toasted, buttery brioche buns, quiche lorraine, cheesy scramble. We covered it all
– and ate it all.
But there was one dish that, looking back, was glaringly missing from the culinary arts
syllabus: les oeufs mayonnaise. A simple-sounding but delectable bite of heaven. I had been
obsessed with the dish ever since I first experienced it while “studying” abroad in 2017. One day,
my friend Christina and I took a quick food break in-between our wine crawl in Pigalle, a
neighborhood in Paris. As our neurotic Parisian waiter carefully placed lunch plates down on our
tiny sidewalk bistro table, I watched a look of disgust flash over Christina’s face as she saw what
I’d ordered. I’m not sure what my wine-influenced mind was expecting when I asked for les
ouefs mayo, but I sure wasn’t expecting this… deconstructed egg salad?
Well, when in Paris, I thought, and I dug in. Fireworks ensued. A literal mouth orgasm
occurred. If there is such a thing as a foodgasm, I had it in a small sidewalk café in Paris. Call
me Meg Ryan.
I couldn’t tell you the name of that restaurant. (Thank you, wine.) But I can tell you that
what they served me that day made a lasting impression on me, both as a chef and foodie. And I
never lost my love for that dish – even if it wasn’t on my professors’ list at I.C.E.
Incidentally, I’m not the only one who feels that way about les oeufs mayonnaise. The
power that the dish holds on the French people is not only proven by its presence on restaurant
menus throughout the country, but by the fact that it even has its own “society” dedicated to the
proliferation and proper cooking technique of the dish.
The Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise (A.S.O.M.), or the Association to
Safeguard Oeufs Mayonnaise was created by famed food critic Claude Labey in the 1990’s.
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According to the New Yorker, it was a yearly practice for Labey and his co-founder, the French
journalist Jacques Pessis, to “bestow awards upon bistros that they determined were properly
upholding the tradition of oeuf mayo.”
Labey noticed that the popularity of the famous dish had been dwindling in the late
1980’s–probably due to diet culture, and that even French bistros were no longer serving it. Eggs
had been unfairly villainized for their high cholesterol content, and when diners stopped ordering
the creamy delight, bistros took the egg dish off the menu. Labey said that the “emblematic”
dish–which he sees “as indispensable to the cuisine as the paperclip is to office work”– had
almost garnered an “endangered species” status around this time.
Labey is long gone–he died at age ninety-three in 2017–but the A.S.O.M. has been
revived by his grandson. Through their hard work, a national love has re-emerged for ouefs
mayonnaise, and the dish is once again widely available. Thank God.
To be fair, the dish isn’t one that can be easily found on a menu. It is rarely located in the
entrée section, and is more commonly listed as an appetizer, alongside more famous dishes like
soupe l'oignon gratinee (French onion soup), jambon de cru, and the like. If you’re in the know,
however, and if you’re paying attention, and if you’re half of the “foodie” that I am, track down
“les oeufs mayonnaise” and order it. You will not be disappointed.
A day after arriving in Paris, after a stressful jaunt through the rainy Marait district, my
companion and I decided to take our chances and try to get a table at Le Petit Vendôme, perhaps
the most famous bistro in Paris. We took the line seven train from Notre Dame, emerged at the
Opera station, and made our way east, past a crowd of smoking Parisian students, towards the
restaurant.
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From the street, the tiny bistro seemed packed, not unlike a can of sardines soaking in
olive oil. The building, right off of a side street in the 2nd Arrondissement, was not far from the
Palais Garnier, and the restaurant seemed as old as the palace itself.
Described as an “unfussy bistro for familiar French eats,” the bistro –at first glance– fit
right in with the ancient pre-war building in which it is housed. I had learned about Le Petit
Vendôme when reading an article on David Lebovitz’s blog, in which he posited that the
restaurant was the home of “the best sandwiches in Paris.”
“You’ll pay a little more here than you would at a traditional bakery, but when you’re
around the corner from The Ritz, the rent is a little higher,” Lebovitz warns his readers in the
blog post. “But the place is packed full of locals and when people tell me they want to ‘eat where
Parisians eat,’ I always think of Le Petit Vendôme.”
When we walked in, the front of the place was chaotic. People were crammed together at
tables all around us, arguing boisterously, and drinking from bulbous wine glasses lodged
alongside platters of fragrant cheeses and various lunch dishes.
“Bonjour madame,” I nervously said to the enthusiastic maitre’d, in my best French.
“Nous avons une réservation pour deux à 12:00."
The woman casually flipped through a book in front of her, before shooting me a puzzled
look. “Non…”
I pulled out my phone and sweatily handed it over to show her that I had indeed made a
reservation – as confirmed on the website.
And then the fatal words flowed. “Ah, monsieur,le réservation – c’est pour demain (for
tomorrow).”
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“Oh no,” I thought. Yet one more fuck up in a string of faux pas, surely due to my lack of
preparation for the trip.
“Ah! Okay, we will return. It’s okay,” I told the host. “Je suis désolée." She shook her
head and smiled.
“No, no, don’t worry. Sit down, it’s my pleasure.” And life was good once again. We
followed her to a table at the back of the restaurant, the wooden floorboards creaking underneath
us, a marker of the restaurant’s hard-earned status as a near-historical landmark. Not a minute
later, a basket of baguettes and a plate of a half-dozen fresh pats of beurre materialized on the
small, unsteady, wooden table as if out of thin air. This waitress knew what she was doing. I
watched her flutter around the tables, almost effortless, hopping to each one like a honeybee in a
flowerbed.
“The water is different here,” my friend said, her mouth packed full of bread. “It’s
different in Paris and that’s why the bread is so good,” she said with a haughty authority, as if I
wasn’t the French chef here. I was bemused, but he was right. French water and bread are
just…different.
At that point, my jet lag (and hunger) must have kicked in. Despite having sought out the
restaurant for its famous sandwiches, I decided to go in a completely different direction, and
ordered an entire bistro lunch.
I scanned the room and found the board that listed the plats du jour. I began reading it,
my poor brain cells moving as fast as they could to attempt to decipher the French words well
enough to know what I was ordering. Sure enough, the first plate of the day was the famous
oeufs mayonnaise – what better dish to start off my culinary adventure? We decided to pair the
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oeufs mayo with an order of the soupe oignon gratinee, for two reasons: first, French onion soup
is almost as iconic as, say, sole meunière or entrecôte et frites. Second, when in France.
The soup arrived promptly. Suddenly, I was overtaken by the familiar smell of melted
Gruyere, something unmistakably French. If we’re being honest, though, my inner critic jumped
out when I noticed that the cheese on top, in certain patches, was burnt. Quel dommage!!!
Nevertheless, I dug in, enthusiastically anticipating a life-changing, brothy experience.
The soup was good. Good– but not great. Sadly, it would have benefited greatly from a
bit of salt or acid. Instead of being a deep, earthy amber color, the soup was a light brown, a bit
watery, and loaded with what seemed to be rehydrated onions as opposed to sliced, caramelized
onions–the ones you’d expect in a €14 soup. Now that I’m thinking about it, the soup needed a
stronger taste of brandy. Perhaps, given my sobriety, the omission of that ingredient was a good
thing.
Then, the order of oeufs mayo arrived. I was struck by its simplicity and minimalist
presentation. On the plate in front of me were two perfectly hard boiled eggs, yolks golden and
the tiniest bit creamy, chilled and sliced in half. The egg halves were face up, and covered in a
dollop of fresh, unmistakingly handmade mayonnaise, the finest French mayo I’d tasted since I’d
made it myself at school. Scattered across the plate were snippings of parsley and chives–and in
the center, a generous scoop of a cold, creamy vegetable salad consisting of small-diced carrots
and parsnips and peas–macedoine des legumes froid, as it was written on the menu.
The velvety mayonnaise draped over each egg had the perfect blend of tang, sweetness,
and eggy-ness. I could tell that the base had been made up of a bit of dijon and perhaps lemon, or
a white wine vinegar. I’m not completely sure, but the flavors were layered gorgeously–unlike
anything you’d find in a jar in America.
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For our main dishes, we decided to order the waitress’ recommendation, the plat du jour:
a whole, pan-fried sea bream with a red bell pepper puree, something akin to a romesco but not
quite as Spanish. Alongside the fish and the sauce scattered a smattering of sauteed red peppers
and onions, which felt like they’d have been more appropriate in a fajita bowl as opposed to an
afterthought next to the whole fish. The sea bream’s skin was perfectly crusty–the only way to
eat fish skin–and when I dug the serving spoon into the flat filet, I knew I was in for a treat. It
was delicious, made better when paired with the sauce, although a bit… fishy. Hmm, I thought to
myself. Perhaps there was a reason why the sea bream was the plat du jour…
Needing a bit of greenery to balance our heavy dejeuner, we ordered the “La vendôme
salad,” a hefty €18, but well worth it. The salad was composed of fresh frisee, pomme de terres
(potatoes,) jambon de pays (cured ham,) cantal (a hard French cheese, reminiscent of an English
farmhouse cheddar,) tomates (tomatoes,) and, to top it off and add to my gastronomical quest,
oeufs dur (hard-boiled eggs). The salad was dressed with a typical French vinaigrette, the same
pale yellow one that seemingly dressed every salad I’d eaten throughout the trip: white wine
vinegar, dijon, oil, tarragon, and a little something sweet. It was the perfect way to finish the
meal.
At that point, we were full, and we asked for the bill. The tiny bistro had begun to fill up
by that time, and while waiting for the check, I struck up a conversation with a young French
couple next to us, a handsome Parisian named Loic and his girlfriend, Claire.
“Do you come here often,” I asked, “or is this kind of a touristy restaurant?”
“Ah, no,” Loic replied, wiping the corners of his mouth with his paper napkin, and
swallowing a particularly chewy bite of baguette and beurre. “This is where I tell people to go if
they do not want to be a tourist.”
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Chapter Seven: The Torrents of Spring
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Only weeks before my departure, my continuing (and lingering) lack of confidence, along
with my deluded psychosomatic dependence upon my old group of friends, caused me to invite
an old “best” friend along for the ride. While I’d been able to see France with Christina while I
was abroad in college, I felt like having a companion would keep me comfortable while across
the pond. I did so even though our relationship had long been toxic and even though she had
little to offer in terms of my food writing, or really, anything related to my trip. It was a gut
reaction to my nervousness about spending ten days alone by myself in a foreign country, with
all of the old temptations. It was an act of enablement – by me, for me.
I questioned whether I could drive by myself from city to city in France, or try to order
meals in French, or interact with locals without a friend as a security blanket.I didn’t trust myself
to be alone – a fallacy that would prove to be costly at first, but ultimately transformational. I
began our trip sitting next to one of my high school friends on a direct flight from LAX to CDG,
and I abruptly ended it on a rainy morning three days later, after I dropped her off at a train
station in Normandy with enough money to make it back to Paris. I was crying. She wasn’t.
For the first couple of days of the trip, the interactions between my companion and I were
strained but not overly volatile. It had been a while since we had been together. I had undergone
a transformational change, in every sense of the word, while she continued to be plagued by her
own emotional/psychological issues and her own addictions. It was not a match made in heaven.
It was a constant reminder of the world I had left (or was trying to leave).
But it was not all bad.
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On our second day in Paris, my companion set off to find flea markets, while I made my
way to Montmartre. This jaunt to the famous white church on the hill north of Paris was the first
solo thing I’d do on that trip–but surely not the last, although I didn’t know it yet.
But first – navigating the Euro. Trying to buy a ticket proved to be harder than it should
have been. Luckily for me, a handsome French man walked by, pulled me close to him, and led
us through the metro gate together.
Upon arriving at Montmartre, I began my walk up a steep, ancient cobblestone hill
leading to the basilica. There, I found a cute tea parlor, a perfect place to wait out the cold spring
rain which was beginning to fall. I slid into a table on the terrace for a cafe au lait and a Galoise
Blonde. like the water and bread, cigarettes are just different in France!
The tea parlor proved to be a great people-watching spot. As gray storm-clouds rolled by
and thunder rumbled overhead, I watched throngs of tourists, handfuls of chic Parisians, and a
gaggle of tiny French children walking by, hand in hand. I might not have had any company, but
the passersby kept me entertained while I wrote, steaming cafe au lait on the table next to my
iPad and a smoldering cig resting in an ashtray to my right.
I remember thinking, I’m literally Carrie Bradshaw. ‘Emily In Paris’ can go fuck herself.
The espresso was the perfect antidote to my current jet lag/friend-fighting mental state.
As I wrote, I felt like my feelings were pouring out of me onto the page. I wasn’t emotional, per
se; or at least that’s what I told myself. Once again, while I projected a steely, confident front,
self-doubt continued to lurk underneath.
Dead in front of me was Le Sacre Coeur.
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Le Sacre Coeur is a basilica seated on a hill in Montmartre, on Rue De Chevalier in the
18th Arrondissement. Sacre Coeur’s “summit” is the highest point in the city. I, too, wished I
was the highest in the city.
I paid for my coffee and began my walk up the ancient cobblestone hill to the base of the
basilica. The stone steps up to the church were mostly empty, a result of the rain showers that
had driven most of the tourist groups into nearby train stations or cafes. The rain was steady as I
ascended the staircase, step by step, and I looked skyward at the immense white stone domes that
jutted up into the gray sky.
I planned to sit down in the basilica, perhaps to say a prayer to the God who had, at least
in part, been responsible for my journey into sobriety, but by the time that I reached the entrance,
the basilica was closing down for the night. “No more visitors,” said a kind-looking woman at
the front door. “Come back tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I replied, feigning disappointment. “But since I came here all this way through
the rain, can I just light a candle? Eh… Puis-je allumer une bougie?” (While I’m no polyglot, I
always try my best.)
I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket, showing her that I was willing to donate to
the church to light one of the votives. “Ah,” she said. “De rien. Go ahead … but be quick.”
“Allez! Allez!!!” I scurried past her and into the giant vestibule of the church, both awed by its
grandiosity and worried about the ticking clock I’d winded for myself.
Within seconds, I found myself reflecting – almost meditating - in the church. It was hard
not to do so, with its colossal, swooping arches illuminated only by the darkening sky jutting
through stained glass windows and the hundreds of red prayer candles lining the back, front, and
sides of the vestibule. Sure, the simple act of lighting a candle and saying a prayer could be, for
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most, one of the mildest forms of atonement possible. But I had not been in a church in my sober
state of mind in a long time, let alone one of the most famous ones in the world, so I pushed €2
into the metal donation bucket, and grabbed a pair of tall, red votive candles. I lit one and
thought about my grandmother – the one I never met yet felt like I knew so well. Up to that
moment, I had planned on lighting one of the candles for myself – God knows I needed any help
I could get. But I ultimately ended up lighting the second candle and saying a prayer for my
parents. Or, at least, I lit it with the intention of praying for them. I placed the candles in a dark
corner, and sat for a second in silence, letting my feelings wash over me while I watched the
flickering flames illuminate the gray marble wall behind it.
As I rose to leave, I considered pocketing one of the smaller votive candles as a souvenir
of my spiritual, lonely moment in the church. I suppose that I wanted to somehow bottle the
moment. But for once, I resisted the temptation to try to symbolize my feelings in physical form.
I chose instead to bottle the experience in my mind – to allow it to live inside me – to reappear
when I needed those memories most. And at that moment, I promised myself to make the most
of the trip, to re-ignite the purpose that led me on this path, and to fully embrace my inner self.
After leaving Paris, we visited Omaha Beach, both to visit the famous beaches where so
many American lives were lost during World War II, and to sample the famous egg dishes in
Normandy. Unfortunately, my companion was not in a good state. Having failed to take her
medications, having spent all of her money in flea markets in Paris, and showing clear signs of
psychological and emotional distress, she quickly reminded me of how toxic she could be and of
how unhealthy our relationship had become. But this time, I could not ignore her or avoid her by
slipping into a drunken haze. I was sober, painfully sober, and raw at the same time.
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During our last day in Paris, and on the drive to Omaha Beach, she became particularly
nasty, mocking my project, telling me that my intended career was a joke, and resorting to the
familiar jab that I was “entitled” and “did not deserve” to go on the trip. When I tried to respond,
she resorted to name-calling, labeling me as “fat” and “ugly,” an “asshole” and a “dry drunk.”
At a certain point, I could take no more, and the bubble of resentment that had lay within me for
years finally burst.
That night, I had insane dreams. I dreamt of friendship and loss, of alcohol and of relapse,
and I was left with a lingering feeling of deep pain. It almost felt as if something had been cut
out of me. It was as if one of my limbs was sawed off and then immediately cauterized.
The next morning, without much protest, but with much continuing abuse, I drove her to
the local train station in Bayeux. I gave her enough money for a fare back to Paris and bid her
adieu. As I sat in the car after she walked into the train station, I felt consumed with guilt, but
also knowing I had no other option. I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between the
raindrops streaming down the dashboard window and the tears leaking out of my puffy eyes.
I wasn’t crying because I was sad; I wasn’t even crying because she was leaving. Rather,
I was crying because I knew that I was suddenly and undeniably alone in a foreign country,
because my childhood, in a way, felt like it was well and truly over, and because I was
experiencing, real time, the death of a true friendship.
Once a dear friend – a very close friend – she was now someone who either couldn’t see
me for the sober twenty-six year old man that I’d become. She remained fixated on the
twenty-two year old drunk. That drunk was dead and buried. And like that drunk, I needed to
also bury my relationship with this person. Once again, my own rebirth could not begin without
another death: the death of a long-standing, but fully spent friendship.
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The loss of a friend is symbolic of the ephemeral nature of life. While there may have
been beautiful moments in the past, there are times when you have to leave them there, and
appreciate them for what they were. To this day, after all that happened on this trip, I remain sad
about how many beautiful moments we could have shared together in a place that was so
important to me. But it was not to be, and I am truly glad for that. When forced to abandon her
and continue on my own, I learned that I could make my own beautiful moments with myself as
my inner guide. And I decided to make that my truth.
After leaving the train station, I pointed my rental car west, to make the trek to Mont St.
Michel and the infamous souffles at La Mere Poulard. A man alone, fueled by French cigarettes,
espresso, and my anti-depressants, I began the most important part of my trek – not just due to
my long-awaited return to the family home in Burgundy, but due to my long-awaited return to
my true self.
As I set off on my own, I thought of what Ernest Hemingway wrote: “If you are lucky
enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it
stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” Determined to make Paris, and for that matter, the
rest of France my own movable feast, I felt a cold chill run up my spine as I navigated myself
into unknown and uncharted territory. It wasn’t fear that I felt any more; rather, it was pure thrill.
As I would make my way east, and then south, and then west along wide motorways and
tiny cobblestoned streets, I would continue to learn to trust myself, and more importantly, love
myself. With no one but myself to depend on, I would be forced to talk to others, integrate
myself, be open, and relax. As an addict trying to find his way in big, strange cities, and small
unfamiliar towns, I would come to understand that I could enjoy myself without alcohol and still
be attractive to others. And most importantly, I would finally experience the catharsis of
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re-experiencing my heritage, and returning to the place which gave birth to the blood running
through my veins and through those of the woman who so inspired me: Mamie France. In the
meals that I ate, and through the people I met, I would experience a rebirth and renewal of my
life time and time again.
Slowly, I began to experience the symbolic, mythologic, and most of all, transformative
power of the egg and the physical, mental and emotionally charged impact that it had on my trip,
imbuing my journey with its own historic symbolism of death, transformation, and the promise
of a new life.
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Chapter Eight: Not Cheaper by the Dozen
“‘My,’ she said. ‘We’re lucky that you found the place.’ ‘We’re always lucky,’ I said and like a
fool, I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
For a long time, Julia Child was the English-speaking face of French cuisine. From across
the world, she charmed millions via her television shows and through her cookbooks. She is
aptly remembered as one of the most influential American chefs in history. If Julia Child was the
American face of French cuisine in the 1900s, then, across the Channel in Britain, Elizabeth
David was the British equivalent.
In fact, Julia Child herself “spoke highly” of David’s writing, which is generally regarded
as being revolutionary when it came to reintroducing and revitalizing home cookery in the
United Kingdom in the mid-twentieth century.
In an article for The Guardian, Chef Margot Henderson openly admired the simplicity of
David’s approach: “What should an omelette taste like? ‘It should taste of fresh eggs and fresh
butter.’ The way she says it, you can see the omelette – ‘a soft bright golden roll, plump and
spilling out a little at the edges’ – and you can almost taste it.” That, my friend, is good writing.
In her 1952 book An Omelette And A Glass of Wine, described by Henderson as “more a
collection of opinions and thoughts than a book of recipes,” David’s titular essay introduces her
readers to a place that has fascinated millions throughout centuries: Mont St. Michel.
David starts:
Once upon a time, there was a celebrated restaurant called the Hôtel de la
Tête d’Or on the Mont-St-Michel just off the coast of Normandy. The
reputation of this house was built upon one single menu which was served
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day in day out for year after year. It consisted of an omelette, ham, a fried sole,
pré-salé lamb cutlets with potatoes, a roast chicken and salad, and a dessert. Cider
and butter were put upon the table and were thrown in with the price of the meal,
which was two francs fifty in pre-1914 currency.
But it wasn’t so much what now appears to us as the almost absurd lavishness of the
menu which made Madame Poulard, proprietress of the hotel, celebrated throughout France. It
was the exquisite lightness and beauty of the omelettes, cooked by the proprietress herself, which
brought tourists flocking to the mère Poulard’s table.
You see, the omelettes at La Mère Poulard aren’t supposed to be your average,
run-of-the-mill eggy envelopes. Rather, with the grand reputation that precedes them, they are
made (and still made to this day) using what David calls:
A particular magic with which Madame Poulard exercised over her eggs and her
frying pan in terms of those culinary secrets which are so dear to the hearts of all
who believe that cookery consists of a series of conjuring tricks. She mixed water
with the eggs, one writer would say, she added cream asserted another, she had a
specially made pan said a third, she reared a breed of hens unknown to the rest of
France claimed a fourth. Before long, recipes for the omelette de la mère Poulard
began to appear in magazines and cookery books.
One day, a Frenchman wrote to a retired Madame Poulard and asked her to, once and for
all, clear up the long-fabled rumors about her recipe. Shockingly, she responded, in a 1932
magazine called La Table:
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Here is the recipe for the omelette: I break some good eggs in a bowl, I beat them
well, I put a good piece of butter in the pan, I throw the eggs into it, and I shake it
constantly. I am happy, monsieur, if this recipe pleases you.
“So much for secrets,” observes David.
Prior to my departure, while researching and planning my itinerary, I came across
David’s essay about Madame Poulard and her famous omelettes – which, as anyone who has
tasted them will attest, appear more like souffles. After reading about its history, I knew that
Mont. St. Michel, and Madame Poulard’s still-operating restaurant, were destined to be included
amongst my adventures.
Mont St. Michel was, in a word, stunning. A behemoth of stone, it rises up out of the
Atlantic like a great, majestic rock, with a beautiful abbey carved into the top and quaint old
buildings scattered across the island like latticework. It loomed over me as I drove up the
gravelly path into a collection of car parks just as the pink-hued late afternoon sun began to burn
through the gloomy gray skies, creating a sort of godlike shimmer off of the puffy cumulus
clouds around the abbey. I had trouble finding parking, but once I did I quickly packed my
weekender with enough clothes for one night.
I had not been back to Mont St. Michel since I was a young boy. When I was nine, my
family traveled through France with another family– four adults and eight children - and after
visiting the beaches and famous cemeteries of Normandy, descended upon Mont St. Michel. We
had spent one night on the island, and I remember running free with my friends late into the
night all over the castle, among the medieval architecture. I remember feeling like I was Harry
Potter at Hogwarts.
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When I told my parents that I was going to return to Mt. St. Michel on this trip, my father
offered some advice. “It’s an incredible place,” he wrote in an email. “But it’s tiny. You really
don’t need to do a full day, or even a full night on the island. There’s very little to do. It’s one
thing to run through the cobblestone streets at night when you are nine years old. It’s another
when you’re twenty-six.”
“But,” I replied, “the omelettes. That’s why I’m going.” And logistically, why rush?
Why not stay one night on the island to have a great meal and write about my gastronomical
experience – sure to be breath-taking - before departing for Macon? The next day, I received
another email from my father. “Mont St. Michel and La Mere Poulard,” the subject title read.
Attached was a reservation for dinner at La Mère Poulard and a reservation for one night’s stay
in their accompanying hotel. C’est magnifique!
And here I was. I crossed the bay on a walkway (the tide rushes in at night, the ocean
reassembles itself, and the island literally becomes an island), and found myself staring up at a
series of steep stone staircases. Remembering my father’s advice to pack lightly, and making a
mental note to thank him, I shouldered my overnight pack, climbed, and navigated through many
a narrow arched walkway. I found my hotel–easy enough, as it’s one of only three on the
island–and checked in and settled into my basement bedroom. The time was 5:30; a perfect
arrival time, since the Abbey closed at 7:00 P.M. and I had dinner reservations after that.
The cumulus clouds that had looked puffy and pretty just an hour before appeared, now,
to just about to burst upon the mountain. And burst they did. Just as I began to ascend the
mountain to get into the Abbey, a torrential downpour began. Fellow tourists began ducking into
the few restaurants that were open, or scampered down the now slippery stone staircases. Many
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were very dramatic about the rain, but I stormed on, determined to reach the top of the castle,
putting my legs to work and hopping up each ancient step.
When I reached the top, the gates and doors in front of the abbey had been locked, and
the place looked like a ghost town. There was no one to ask if the church would reopen at any
time and there was nowhere to go; all the shops and cafes around the church were closed since
the tourists had fled. So, I took the loss, and returned to my hotel room. My dinner reservation
was still an hour away, so I was able to shower and get dressed for my first dinner in a restaurant,
alone, probably ever.
When you walk into La Mère Poulard, you’re faced with the famous open kitchen and
fire-burning stove that the “mother chicken” herself used so many years ago. Next to the stove, a
chef was sorting through a basket of fresh eggs, and slicing pats of butter to ostensibly fry the
omelette that he was somehow mixing at the same time. The restaurant was mostly empty. I was
ushered to a table, where I sat alone, a few tables away from the only other occupants: a French
family was sitting in the corner, speaking in hushed tones and looking at me strangely.
I gazed around the place and noticed the walls, adorned with hundreds of black and white
(autographed) photographs of famous movie stars, politicians, athletes, and others. It was a
strange sight: an ancient old stone restaurant – born from humble times and still carrying its own
authentic character – paying homage to the likes of James Dean and Brigitte Bardot.
When presented with the menu, I was shocked to see that David’s description of it still
held up, this many years later. I was also shocked to see the prices. €45 for an omelette! Well,
as they say, when in France.
In my best French, I ordered a Diet Coke and the famous omelette. For a filling, I opted
for lardons –and, pourquoi pas–why not? I was starving, so I also selected the Chicken Supreme,
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which came with really no description, but this growing young man needed protein, and bacon
(lardons) was not going to cut it.
When the omelette arrived at my table, I was shocked by what lay in front of me. It was
like something I’d never seen before: a monstrosity of foamy, undercooked egg squirting out
between two burnt egg folds. Alongside the foamy omelette were a few strips of grilled bacon
and tiny mushrooms with garlic. Interesting, I thought. The bacon looked as wet as the omelette,
and to use the word “grilled” is, perhaps, overly generous. Needless to say, the sight of what
appeared to be an undercooked Hormel turkey bacon strip more likely found at Denny’s in
Phoenix was shocking to someone who was expecting a crispy lardon. Hell, if I got lucky, there
would even be a sprinkle of cheese involved. I’ve traveled this far for this, I thought, so, what the
hell …bon appetit.
I dug in. Well, perhaps I’m being generous again. I didn’t so much dig in as pierce my
fork into the wet, wet omelette. More undercooked egg foam squirted out, and I sliced a piece of
bacon and mushroom and popped the whole bite into my mouth. The taste was certainly… eggy.
Again, while I expected there to be bacon inside the omelette (perhaps too American of me?), the
interior of this “delicacy” consisted plainly of just, this gross, egg foam. This could not possibly
be the stuff of legend. This could not possibly be the omelette/souffle that had attracted so many
famous people to the northwest shores of France. This could not be the dish of which David
Leibbovitz and other famous food critics spoke so fondly. Zut alors!!! But, while I was visibly
disappointed (and visibly disgusted), I was also too tired to attempt to translate any complaint to
my waitress. I just finished what was on the plate. At least I was getting my protein …
When the chicken supreme arrived, my stomach turned. They say that you eat with your
eyes, and mine were not impressed by the grey, poached chicken breast sitting in front of me.
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Fortunately, looks don’t always kill. When I took my first bite, doused in the accompanying
dijon sauce, we were back on track. The sauce was incredibly favorable, garlicky and
mushroomy, and lemony and mustardy, all at the same time. Umami personified. Next to the
chicken, was a Staub croquette containing Le gratin Delphinois, which proved to be a luscious,
velvety escape of creamy, cheesy, gratineed potatoes. Yum. How ironic that I had come for the
eggs, but would come back only for the chicken and potatoes. As I thought about it, it dawned
on me that this is the magic of food. You have to sample, and taste, and experience it for
yourself. Don’t rely on what others say – good or bad – dig in.
By the end of the meal, it occurred to me that I had not even thought once, during my
jaunt up to the top of the island, or during my degustation of one of the world’s most famous egg
dishes, about the fact that I was alone. I was so enthralled by the experience of being in the
same place that I’d read about in Elizabeth David’s book and in Leibovitz’ blog, and so intent on
experiencing that meal for what it was, that the fact that I was literally sitting at a “table for one”
and having a deep (internal) conversation with my, myself and I for the first time in a very long
time didn’t even cross my mind. The anxiety that I’d experienced since jettisoning my travel
partner – the dread of being alone – simply evaporated and was replaced with a joy of having
conquered that emotion.
The bill came in at a cool €80.
I paid for my meal and walked fifteen feet up the stone pathway from the restaurant to the
hotel as a new man. Exhausted, I showered off the long day, got in bed, smiled, and fell asleep. I
was on my way - literally and figuratively. The old family homestead awaited.
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Chapter Nine: The Green Hills of Burgundy
“I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange things and comic things that
happened in the worst time…”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I woke up in my hotel room in Macon – deep in the heart of Burgundy, France, and
looked out my window. It had been too dark for me to see anything when I’d arrived in my
jetlagged haze. I didn’t even realize that the little Mercure where I was staying lay right on the
slow-rolling, wide and majestic Saone river.
Something magical happens when you travel alone. Each day seems to open up in front
of you and present new experiences, whether you have a plan for that day or not. I’m not exactly
a high maintenance traveler. My year living abroad in Rome during college had surely prepared
me for the drama and chaos that comes with traveling around Europe as a young person with
pennies in my pocket. However, I still like to have things done my way. My rampant ADHD,
paired with my anxiety, can sometimes team up in these situations, and as soon as I begin to feel
disorganized, rushed, or stressed, it’s easy for me to isolate myself or lash out. But when I found
myself alone that morning in Macon, with not an idea in my head as to what my day would be
like, the feeling wasn’t one of nervousness or stress to achieve something. I found myself to be
quite calm, as if I wanted the day to present itself to me. I literally had nothing on my agenda
until the afternoon, when I would make my long-awaited triumphant return to St. Catherine. And
that was OK.
I had been on the road at this point for a week. My clothes had begun to adopt a certain
odor; one reminiscent of a camembert fondue mixed with Mediterranean food. So – after
grabbing an espresso, I walked along the banks of the Saone to the nearest laundromat:
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Launderie Maconnais. There, I spent a few hours watching my clothes tumble through the
industrial-sized washer and dryer and writing about my trip.
So engrossed in my writing was I that I failed to notice the withering and dirty looks from
les grand-mères (the grandmas) scattered around the laundromat, clearly in a tiff that I’d
somehow hijacked their favorite washing machine. C’est la vie.
Later, as I placed my suitcase full of freshly laundered, still warm clothes in the back of
my car, I noticed that my travel partner had left a twenty pound pair of white, leather Doc
Martens in the back seat. Not wanting any further reminder of days gone past, and perhaps to
atone for my sins in the laundromat, I grabbed the shoes, took them into the lavanderie, set them
on a counter, and left. Someone scored that day.
A few hours later, as I whizzed past the fervent, meticulously manicured vineyards that
dotted the Burgundian countryside, the same ones that I’d never really taken the time to notice so
many times in my childhood, I felt two distinct feelings. First, a strange tinge of deja-vu washed
over me. Fatigued (both physically and emotionally), and traveling back to such a nostalgic
place, created an entourage effect of excitement, clarity, and mild euphoria As the French
countryside rolled by, childhood memories kept springing to the surface, creating an
indescribable warmth that spread over my insides. I started to feel a certain calm that can’t be
described but that feels just right. It was the calm of coming home. At the same time, I was a
little bit nervous. I would be spending the afternoon with Genevieve Le Grand de Mercey
(affectionately called “Tante Veve”), my great aunt and the keeper of the estate – a ninety-two
year old, spry, but very conservative woman with strong political and social opinions that I did
not share.
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As I drove, I pondered whether or not I wanted to pull the same singular, double-punch to
the gut move on my highly conservative, devoutly Catholic French great-aunt that I had pulled
on my Catholic parents. I did not know if she knew that I had was a gay alcoholic in recovery. I
did not know if I should “come out” to her as I had to my parents. My sense was that she really
only knew me as a child, and not as a man, and we would be establishing a different kind of
relationship this time around. But the need to come clean about who I am tugged at me. I’m not
exactly sure why I wanted to truly reveal myself to Tante Veve. Perhaps it had something to do
with the fact that she was Mamie France’s sister and best friend – the closest person in the world
to my grandmother – and I wanted someone so close to one of my greatest inspirations to know
that I was so proud of my identity and wanted to fully be myself in front of her.
When you’ve experienced a place as beautiful as Ste. Catherine, you build it up so much
in your mind that it’s hard to imagine it being even more beautiful until you actually return there
again. The worst part about beautiful places is that we often associate them with specific
moments, or more likely, specific people. The sad thing is that when we return to these places,
some of those people aren’t here anymore. Most of the time, we’re greeted by the realization that
those people, and those moments, have come and gone and cannot be replaced.
Still, the important places in your life can be exhilarating. Just being there can suddenly
flood you with intricate and convoluted emotions.
As I neared Ste. Catherine in the afternoon sun, zooming down little country roads barely
wide enough for one vehicle, surrounded on all sides by rows and rows of grapevines just
starting to bear fruit and extending towards a horizon dotted by fourteenth century chateaus, I felt
nostalgic. Nostalgia, in my experience, is, at its core, a longing for home, a longing that perhaps
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can never be completely fulfilled. Most of the time, this is because we tend to romanticize the
places we’ve been and the things we’ve done. We often forget the reality behind them.
Nostalgia can be a funny thing. We naturally build up our memories of a place, or a time,
as something much bigger (and perhaps better) than it really was. We remember the giant
mountain that we had to bicycle up on our way to school, and then return as adults to see that the
“mountain” was nothing more than a little hill. Often, when we return to a place from our
childhood – a place we have romanticized in our memories, we can be disappointed if the reality
doesn’t quite match up to our expectations. We forget why we may have once wanted to leave
the place – or a person - only to be reminded of that when we return again. It can be a nasty
cycle.
But this was honestly different. This place was special. This more than met my
expectations – and perhaps because, in the past, I had taken it for granted, had not fully
appreciated it, and thus had not really romanticized it. Without question, I’m doing that now. Ste.
Catherine, however, is a piece of history. It speaks for itself. I can’t really do it justice. I’m not
sure it can be romanticized enough.
I passed a yellow, paint-chipped road sign that read “MERCÉY .” I followed the sign onto
a tiny rutted road that led me into the “town” (a collection of about seven houses) named after
our family. As I passed the last house, and then drove through a thicket of trees lining each side
of the road, the green leaves forming a canopy in front of me and slightly obscuring what lay
ahead, I gasped as the leaves gave way to a cloudless sky and an almost symbolic sight, one I'd
seen sober for the first time in years: Sainte-Catherine.
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Ste. Catherine is a 700-year-old chateau first built by the Knights Templar in the late
1200’s. It was built along the old Roman road, and the warring soldier/monks acted as protection
for the pilgrims making their way to Rome. Surrounded by a twenty-foot high wall, and dropped
in the middle of vineyards that stretch as far as the eye can see, Ste. Catherine is composed of
eight large buildings – almost a small town itself. The main home is fourteen bedrooms and one
bathroom. The surrounding buildings house old wine-making equipment, barrels, an old clay
oven for baking bread, and various outbuildings that were used in the past for farming and
wine-making purposes. The piece de la resistance, however, is the chapel – which sits in the
middle of everything, and which is the reason why Ste. Catherine is classified as a “monument
historique” in France and regularly visited by historians and archivists.
The chapel – also built by the Knights Templar – is covered in carvings of the pascal
lamb, angels, the Templar cross, and similar images. In the 1700’s a lav-a-beau (baptismal
fountain) was removed from one of the walls, and sold to a collector. It is now part of the
medieval collection at the Cloisters museum in New York. Inside the chapel, there are thirteen
frescoes – recently restored by one of the most famous restorers in the world, an artist from
Japan. The frescoes are more than 700-year-old paintings – on stone – of the twelve apostles and
… you guessed it … Saint Catherine of Alexandria – a saint long revered by the Knights
Templar.
Imagine the scene: rolling green hills of grapevines descending down into a little pasture
just below Ste. Catherine’s walls, where a small stream spills through families of milky white
dairy cows gathered around a disintegrating water well that has been largely unused since the
1700s. And looming spectacularly above, the chateau; a thirteenth century home, proudly
flaunting its mossy, seemingly crumbling limestone walls, adorned with pristine white shutters
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and Knights Templars iconography. Time had stripped the chateau of its once noble veneer, but
not of its unassuming beauty and charm.
My car gently pulled into the narrow driveway. The sound of the tires rolling over the
gravel took me back to my childhood–a faint recollection, a sound I’d last heard while exploring
the property with my brother and sister the summer before I’d turned ten.
The car windows were open, and the air smelled fresh and pure; innocent in a way, as if it
hadn't been marred by the real world. I suddenly felt like I was a part of something bigger,
something intangible. I was overcome with emotion–and hunger. I reached down into the door
compartment where I’d stashed a bag of truly pungent Brie-flavored chips I’d picked up at the
last road stop, a gas station in Beaune. At that point, I’d have eaten a jar of Grey Poupon with a
spoon. Luckily, I knew that Tante Veve would be preparing lunch – and the French women in my
family can cook.
As I stepped out of my car, I imagined my grandmother and her sisters running around
the garden to my right, interrupting a game of hide and seek to pick and eat a fresh strawberry,
raspberry or red currant. The garden was teeming with them. I gazed with fondness at the rows
of red fruit, the very same currants that my grand-aunt harvested to make the syrup that
sweetened the drinks of the people she loved to entertain. More importantly, I imagined what this
place could one day be. Somewhere where anyone could experience such an intense feeling of
home.
“Grayson?” my grand-aunt asked me as she stood on the driveway in front of Ste.
Catherine, her back hunched, peering at me through vintage sunglasses. For 92 years, Tante
Genevieve has led a simple farmer’s life at the château, maintaining the lush grounds with her
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tractor and meticulously harvesting her bountiful garden – famously working from dawn to dusk
even into her nineties.
“Oui,” I smiled, nervously. “C’est moi! Je suis Grayson,” I replied in French—rusty at
best. I asked her if she remembered me. “Te souviens-tu de moi?”
“Oui, oui, oui,” Tante Veve replied. I couldn’t tell if she actually did remember me, and if
not, I couldn’t fault her. These days, her mind can be a bit foggy, and though I’d seen her only
five years before, I had also grown a foot taller. I also couldn’t fault her because my arrival
must’ve been overwhelming. I also had a gnawing feeling that Tante Veve’s mental health had
drastically declined over the past few years, given her age and her completely isolated existence
due to the pandemic.
The afternoon went as planned. Tante Veve gave me a tour of the property before we
meandered into the kitchen to prepare a late lunch. I watched as she hobbled around her tiny
kitchen, chopping fresh heads of frisee and slicing fresh radishes from the garden. In my best
French, I asked her if I could make the vinaigrette. But first, I asked, did she have an egg? But
of course! This was France, and one of her neighbors had dropped off a dozen earlier that
morning – freshly laid.
Ten minutes later, I was maniacally whisking a beautiful dark orange egg yolk in an old
metal bowl, emulsifying a mixture of white wine vinegar, olive oil, dijon, and of course, egg. We
topped the fresh salad with the vinaigrette, which she mixed with her hands in a large mixing
bowl. We walked outside to the sprawling lawn and began to eat our salad, in a sort-of awkward
silence. Any ambition I had of pulling my double punch had long fleeted by that point; why, I
asked myself, make things more complicated?
69
The irony of the situation was that we were sitting in the shadow of the Chapel of Ste.
Catherine, steps away from the fresco of that famous saint, who was known for her spiritual
writings and for her willingness to speak truth to power — an exceptional trait for a woman in
the third century. The patron saint of scholars and philosophers, her mere presence should have
given me the courage to speak my truth. But as I looked at my 92-year-old great aunt, I just
couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk upsetting her. For the first time in a few years, I had to think of
someone other than myself.
After lunch, she went inside the house and returned with a stack of dusty photo albums,
tearfully showing me dog-eared photographs depicting three generations of children who grew
up at the chateau following her family’s return from Morocco at the end of World War II; her
family, my father’s family, and finally mine. I wondered whether there would one day be a
fourth generation of children running through the maze-like hedges around the property, playing
on hay bales and enjoying bumpy rides on a wagon full of potatoes being pulled behind my great
aunt’s tractor – my and my siblings’ children. And then, as per usual, she saw an opportunity to
put her strapping young American great-nephew to work–specifically, some yard work that she
hadn’t quite finished.
Our day at Ste. Catherine came to a close just as the cows began to slowly trudge home
through the pasture, towards a small opening where the farmer was waiting to put them in for the
night. Tante Veve had retired to her bedroom, exhausted. I was finishing up with one of the
hedges, clipping its wayward branches. Busy work. But sometimes, busy work has a tendency to
provoke introspection – to help one find his own place of zen. That happened to me as dusk
settled in. I looked at the cows, steadfastly clipping away, and then looked back at the house
and the chapel. Unexpectedly, I began to cry.
70
I cried because at that very moment, I realized that none of us knew what would happen
to Ste. Catherine once Tante Veve passes away. Having been its gatekeeper, its custodian for so
long, she has been the person who our family has depended on to keep its doors open. When
she’s gone from this world, my father and his siblings will own it, but as absentee owners, trying
to manage a huge stone fortress from thousands of miles away, across the pond. It’s a dark
thought, but something one can’t ignore. Dark thoughts are tough and often sad, but always
provocative.
I also cried because I thought about Tante Genevieve’s dedication. She never married.
She never had children. This place, for all practical purposes, was her child. For decades, living
by herself, and getting up each morning at the crack of dawn to roll up her sleeves and go to
work, she kept Ste. Catherine a living, breathing relic of a time gone by. I cried because I knew
how important this place was to my father, his brother, and his sisters. I cried because this was
the childhood home of my grandmother, who I never met because she died young, before my
birth. I cried for my brother and sister, who also never met their grandmother. I cried because I
knew how badly my dad wanted us to have met his mother – to better understand his (and our)
connection to Ste. Catherine. I cried for our great loss, and for the uncertainty of what would
come next. In many ways, that cry was a prophetic one – because I knew that my own future
was uncertain as well.
I dropped the pruning shears and ripped off my work gloves as the sun set, casting a rosy
sheen on the walls of the house and the chapel. I looked up at the stone arches jutting into the
pink summer sky. The beauty conjured feelings of deep rapture, but also a simultaneous ache of
longing. I couldn’t figure out why such beauty made me so sad.
71
I thought about the so many familial memories that were attached to this place. I thought
about the oil paintings scattered about my father’s home, landscapes painted by my grandmother
depicting the exact scene that I was looking at. I thought about the late-summer dinners that our
family had shared on the front lawn, in the shadow of the chapel, as the sun set, laughter and
good red wine aplenty. So many memories without the one person who we all would have loved
to have shared them with: Mamie France.
As I reflected on this place and my place in it, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I
felt still and quiet, and all at once, so did the world around me. This, I thought, must be a higher
power speaking to me. It’s a still, quiet voice, and it comes to me in moments like this. It comes
when I am focused on one thing, and often when I am using my hands. It comes when I am most
calm, and when anxiety can’t creep in. It comes during times of reflection and introspection.
In this case, that higher power found me at Ste. Catherine. Not because of the religiosity
of the chapel, or because Ste. Catherine is a particularly spiritual place, unless holiness can
include a longing for family or a connection to the souls who have gone before you.
I like to think that the voice of that higher power was my grandmother’s—not her
specifically, but her voice, through which that higher power chooses to speak to me. I’ve often
regarded Mamie France as my guardian angel. Maybe Ste. Catherine is a vessel for that voice.
Maybe I need to return to my roots more often.
72
Chapter Ten: Give Me a Quiche
“There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs
from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or
with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received
return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were
very poor and very happy.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
The next morning, I drove through the gates of Ste. Catherine, made my way through the
misty countryside to the A6, and then put the pedal to the medal all the way to Paris.
As I drove, I couldn’t help but notice certain flashes that seemed to pop up from the
roadside as I zoomed past one city and another. Little did I know that I’d been racking up
speeding tickets over the past few days, caught by roadside speed cameras likely hid in bushes
and other such places. While my mensch, Hemingway, didn’t have to deal with speeding tickets
when he embarked upon his famous trip across the French countryside, memorialized in his tome
“A Movable Feast,” I would not be so lucky.
In any event, I returned my trusty steed/rental car to the airport, gathered my belongings,
and took the train back into Paris – the place where this had all begun. I was excited to
experience the city, truly this time, alone. With little time left in this adventure, I wasn’t going to
sleep and miss out on anything, so I dropped my bags at my hotel and got to walking.
I strolled through the arrondissements, taking in my surroundings and appreciating the
first sunny day that I’d experienced since arriving in France. It was March in Paris, after all. I
couldn’t help but feel the same feeling I’d felt back during my first run on my birthday at the
rehab treatment center: I was wide-eyed, alert and awake, noticing the tiny details around me,
and realizing just how much the city was teeming with life.
I’d originally planned to go for a late lunch at a restaurant in the 2nd arrondissement
named Le Pied de Cochon, or “foot of the pig.” When I arrived, however, the patio was packed
73
with Americans and tourists. If I’d learned anything about brasseries in Paris, avoid the tourist
traps. Go to go where the locals are. Find spots filled with older Parisians smoking cigarettes on
a terrace with an espresso or glass of wine happily ensconced in front of them. The more Parisian
grandpas that you can see smoking, arguing and enjoying a drink, the better the brasserie is likely
to be. Be bold. Be brave. As Chef Frank told me, “get uncomfortable.” Step outside of that
cultural comfort zone.
So, I kept walking, in search of a place less touristy and more local. Eventually, I
stumbled across a small brasserie called Le Petit, directly across a busy boulevard from Les
Halles. I grabbed a small table on the terrace, and soon enough, a friendly waiter approached
with a menu. I began to peruse it and noticed something that I’d been craving the entire trip:
jambon de cru avec melon. Naturally, I ordered it but to my great desolee, learned that it was
sold out. Undeterred, I settled for a cafe creme and a slice of the quiche du jour.
When my quiche arrived–jiggly and steaming and gorgeous, a wedge of eggy, cheesy
goodness–I knew I was in for a treat. The maitre’d didn’t mention what type of quiche it was. I
had forgotten to ask what the ingredients “du jour” were. It didn’t take long, however, before my
first bite of deliciousness revealed that it was ham, leek, and gruyere. Exactly what I needed. The
crust wasn’t your typical crumbly pie crust. Rather, it consisted of a flaky phyllo dough basket in
which the golden egg mixture lay waiting. I was delighted when I began to chow down and
tasted the perfectly melty shreds of swiss cheese in every bite. I was in egg heaven. I cannot
express how good this quiche was.
While sitting there, I watched the Parisians drink their wine and smoke their cigs at 1:00
P.M., and I thought: Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it just be nice to enjoy a glass of wine, and
to feel the stress melt away with every sip?
74
Suddenly, a bird that had been scurrying around my feet looking for crumbs flew straight
for my plate and picked off the last remaining lettuce leaf. A sign, perhaps, and certainly a snap
back to reality. Was that my guardian angel once again looking after me?
75
Chapter Eleven: The End of Something
“This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be
sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches
were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be
spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
After spending my last day in Paris, I knew that I wanted to finish the trip with a great
dinner in a modern, groundbreaking, and quintessentially, gastronomically French restaurant.
The answer to this came through the form of “Le Sacre Frenchy,” a neo-brewery right off the
Etienne-Marcel stop in Les Halles.
Until this trip, I don’t think I'd ever have sat down to eat a meal by myself, in a
restaurant, in my entire life. “Table for one” was not something I think I had ever uttered. But
now, those words came easy to me, and the maitre’d, a very handsome older French man wearing
a dark denim pair of jeans and a chartreuse cashmere sweater, warmly received them and invited
me in. I asked to sit on the terrace, because why would I sit inside? It was my final night in Paris,
the night was dry and cold, the stars were out, and the streets were alive.
The menu was that of your typical French bistro, but with a modern, westernized vibe. At
the suggestion of my waitress (who looked like she was cast to be a Parisian waitress,) I ordered
a few tapas: the board, mixed, and the chicken croquettes.
It should be noted that the restaurant reserves part of its menu for the “Rotisserie.” If you
are hungry enough, you can order an entire grilled chicken, French-raised, or their famous
tomahawk steak, big enough for two to three people. Luckily, with all of the walking that I’d
done, I’d worked up a healthy appetite.
My tapas arrived and I was delighted to find that I’d accidentally ordered something
fried. The croquettes! When I bit in, my teeth punctured the crunchy, golden coating, and a
76
steaming nugget of cheesy, mustardy chicken fell into my mouth. Alongside the croquettes came
a golden dipping sauce, something akin to honey mustard, but spicier and stronger than you’d
find in the States. Something warm and wonderful all at once.
The petit plateau mixte came with a litany of cheeses and meats. I quickly noticed that
many of the charcuterie items weren’t French but Spanish. Iberico ham, a hard, orange cheese,
and spicy meats. I happily indulged.
For my entrée, I decided to order the Butcher’s selection beef, and my waitress informed
me that the cut of the day was a filet. The filet itself, aside from the perfectly maillard crust to the
perfectly medium-rare cook, was tender and juicy. Not bloody. Juicy. There’s a difference. The
beef was extraordinary - really special. I could almost tell that the cow had been raised with love
– perhaps in a pasture similar to that just outside of Ste. Catherine. I agreed with whichever chef
that night had decided that all that cut of meat needed was salt and pepper. Simplicity often
reigns.
For dessert, I ordered my final egg dish of the trip: pain perdu, known in the US as
French toast. The true translation of “pain perdu" is “lost bread." The name comes from a
tradition of French people making toast from stale bread so that the bread could be used in all
forms rather than being thrown away. To make pain perdu, you first dip slices of bread in a
mixture of beaten eggs, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla. Then you fry the egg-coated bread in a pan
until browned. The result, as you might expect, is salivating.
While waiting for my dessert to arrive, I took out my phone and checked my email. A
message couched between some advertisements caught my eye. The sender? New York
University. The message? “Graduate Enrollment Services has posted an important update on
your application status page.”
77
I’d almost completely forgotten about the MFA writing program that I had applied to six
months earlier - a program that I’d long been yearning to attend and one that I’d been rejected
from before. My stomach dropped, and I hastily clicked the link.
“On behalf of Dean Lynne Kiorpes and the Graduate School of Arts and Science,
I am very pleased to tell you that you have been admitted to the Master of Fine
Arts program in Literary Reportage. You may register for the Fall 2022 semester.
We congratulate you on this achievement.”
I sat back, mouth open in shock. There’ s no way.
“Okay,” my waitress said from behind me, as she placed a plate of steaming, perfectly
browned pain perdu in front of me, peppered with powdered sugar and covered in fresh berries.
“Bon appetit,” she smiled.
I was still in shock, but not too shocked to not immediately inhale my pain perdu. It was
custardy and sweet on the inside, with crispy golden brown edges. As I ate, I re-read my
acceptance letter. I looked up at the people passing on the terrace, and thought to myself, for the
first time, “This is what you’ve worked for. This moment is everything you’ve worked for. And
where better to experience it?”
I finished, paid the check, walked toward the front of the patio, and said thank you and au
revoir to the handsome maitre’d. “Wait right here” he said, dashing away and disappearing into
the restaurant. Five seconds later, he returned with a bottle of Calvados and two crystal shot
glasses.
“Special! For you! Us, together, on me,” he said, with a smile. My heart sank. “Oh, thank
you so much,” I said, flustered. “Unfortunately, if I drink that, I won’t be able to stop drinking
it.”
78
“Ah,” he said. “A pity.”
As I walked home to my hotel room, I couldn’t stop replaying the moment in my head,
thinking about what might have been had I still been drinking, and had I been able to sit down
for a cheeky shot with the maitre’d. Might that have sparked a new friendship? Or more?
But once again, a calm came over me. I felt no pity for myself. I felt no regret. Instead,
I felt more empowered than ever, both proud of myself for turning down a free drink and at the
same time proud of myself for being accepted into my dream school. Great things lied ahead,
and I wasn’t going to derail them by returning to the ghosts of the past. Sure, I didn’t know if I
was going to be able to stay sober forever. No one can ever know that. But at that moment, I
continued to be strong enough to resist, to refresh, and to look forward. At that moment, nothing
else mattered.
79
Bibliography
Kaufman, Cathy. “The Claw at the Table: The Gastronomic Criticism of Grimod De La
Reyniere.” Academia.edu, June 3, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/1149262.
Petrini, Carlo. “Grimod De La Reynière - UNISG - University of Gastronomic Sciences.”
Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo, May 24, 2021.
https://www.unisg.it/en/voices/grimod-de-la-reyniere/.
Willan, Anne, Mark Cherniavsky, and Kyri Claflin. The Cookbook Library: Four
Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2012.
80

Abstract (if available)

Abstract What begins as a culinary adventure – a hunt for famous egg dishes representative of the vastly different regions in France – becomes so much more: a journey of self-reflection, self-exploration, and ultimately self-acceptance. In “Finding My Own Moveable Feast,” the author – a culinary school graduate and food writer - travels from the cobblestone streets of Paris to the towering cliffs of Normandy to the majestic chateaux of the Loire Valley to the rolling lavender hills of Burgundy, describing in delicious detail his consumption of such French favorites as oeufs mayo, pain perdu, souffles, quiches, eggs in sauce, and, of course, omelettes. He marvels at the manner in which a simple egg can be transformed into a mouthwatering masterpiece and at how each dish has its own history and tells its own story. He interviews food historians, chefs and even physicians regarding the influence of the egg in culture and regarding their own personal culinary experiences and influences. But this is not just a collection of recipes. While on this expedition, the author examines how the egg can be a metaphor for life, rebirth, and transformation, and he reflects upon his own life and his own rebirth as he travels from town to town. What takes place is a raw and honest assessment of the challenges that he himself has faced while struggling to find his own identity. Indeed, the author ends up channeling Hemingway himself. Just as “Papa” used a stark and unsympathetic tone in “A Moveable Feast,” when describing his years as a struggling expat in Paris, the author is frank and unapologetic about his own, Anthony Bourdain-like struggles, and his own escape from the darkness of addiction – a fate not uncommon for many in the food and restaurant industry. And in the end, after a great deal of self-assessment and introspection, he reaches a conclusion that is perhaps very different than Bourdain’s: that life is worth living and that no obstacle is too great to overcome.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kelly, Grayson (author)

Core Title Finding my own moveable feast

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 11/14/2022

Defense Date 11/14/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cuisine,culinary,Eggs,Food,France,gastronomy,memoir,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seidenberg, Willa (committee chair), Garza, Oscar (committee member), Nguyen, Tien (committee member)

Creator Email kellyg@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112417910

Unique identifier UC112417910

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Legacy Identifier etd-KellyGrays-11316

Document Type Thesis

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Rights Kelly, Grayson

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Source 20221115-usctheses-batch-991 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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