MEMORABLE MOMENTS

Sitting on Thailand’s Phuket Laem Sing Beach sand, a week after a week in Paris, I was contemplating what true luxury really is. And whether guarantees it?  If you pay through the nose, is the red carpet always silk, the ice still squeaking from the freezer in your room when you arrive, the air-con already on, and the telephone operator supplied with your name the moment you pick it up? 

That had not happened at the famous and expensive George V. But now I had walked to the end of the beach by the rocks and found a small bar with its own little inlet.  With perfect music, sand, and warm tropical water. When I asked if they had an umbrella, I was told ‘yes,’ and moments later a small local appeared with a banana tree he had cut and plunked it down in the sand next to me.

I had found luxury.  

Photo Courtesy of Hotels.com

While in Paris, Ken Hom, famous BBC Chinese chef, invited me to lunch at the three-Michelin-starred L’Arpege. It was recently famous again because its genius chef and owner had declared that he was now turning the menu vegetarian.

Not quite, as it turned out, but almost entirely. He’s a friend, Ken told me, so he will treat us well. And pick up the tab. I took that to mean we would be drinking Batard-Montrachet instead of Pouilly-Fuisse.

I saw truffle soup on the menu. An additional 50 euros. Ken said “Go ahead, order it.” What arrived was a large, open, white soup plate filled to its inner rim with a puree the color of a Paris winter sky threatening to storm.

I dipped my properly large soup spoon into the aromatic liquid, lifted it into my mouth, and nearly fainted. A puree of perfect Perigord black truffles with France’s finest cream.

Also in Paris, I tried the new Le Comptoir. A very small bistro impossible to get into without months of advance notice. We had. You can sit outside and they provide lap blankets in winter, but we were snugly inside. I resisted the famous cassoulet.

And hesitated at the Lievre a la Royale. Usually and in les talented pots a gooey, smelly, mess of flour-thickened blood. And dry hare leg. This version was made into a galantine and served as a slice in the plate sauced with the real thing, the blood of the hare.

Fabulous.

Still peckish at midnight, I thought of Bofinger, usually still hopping at that hour and one of my favorite brasseries.

When I entered, stunning was the two thin couture house famous models of extreme physical presence eating their way through a Plateau de Fruits de Mer “Imperial.”

A pyramid of ice-filled trays groaning under all the best shellfish and crustaceans that both the Atlantic and Mediterranean could offer. Larger than I had ever seen or been able to finish at La Couple even with four people.

I stared.

At each of them with long, Elizabeth Arden fire engine red lacquered nails. Using their little finger nails for picking crab meat out the shells and transporting the delicacy onto their tongues between lips the same color as their nails.

When we left 90 minutes later, they were still there, still working on all that sacrificial seafood. Right, I said, I want a restaurant where this happens. And Stars happened.

Before getting on the plane to Thailand, I had to get some more oysters. “Off to Le Dome,” someone said. In Montparnasse.

On arriving I saw on the corner next to it “Le Bar à Huitres” and in front was this.

In the grey wet is my favorite time to eat oysters. Preferably in the sidewalk glass-covered part of a restaurant along a boulevard. As we sat inches from the sidewalk, and I unfolded a huge, starched damask napkin on my lap, I knew I was home. Nothing for it but a bottle of Deutz champagne as we tried to figure out what to eat from the mountain of shellfish we had passed on the way in.

Langoustines for sure, and obviously the Belons. Not so obvious for me (after so many mediocre to downright nasty sea urchins) were the oursins. The waiter told us not to hesitate. They turned out to be the benchmark for the beast, hours out of the water from Iceland. As perfect as the mountain of house mayonnaise I ordered. Chablis Fourchaume, St Marcellin cheese, a bottle of Chinon.

Just a light lunch.

Then I was invited to present New California Cuisine to Australia at the Regent Hotel in Sydney. After the event was over it was time to see what the best of New Australian cuisine was all about. The most adventurous location was the Berowra Waters Inn. Perched along the bank on the beautiful Hawkesbury River an hour north of Sydney, accessible only by seaplane or boat. We reserved on Sydney Seaplanes, and then set off from the hotel to Double Bay in the harbor to climb aboard the single engine plane.

By pouring a magnum of Bolinger during the flight, I was able to ignore the thought of how many sharks were waiting in the harbor to have their own lunch of us should the one engine fail.

“No worries,” the pilot told me. “We haven’t had an emergency landing in weeks.”

Worry I did until we walked up the gangplank of the dock, into the restaurant.

To be greeted by the smiling sunburned face of the hostess who whisked us to a table adorned with another bottle of Champagne.

For the next three hours, we ate the best of Sydney’s rock oysters, Balmain bugs, Barramundi, lobster, and roast lamb.

Finally, it was time to walk back down to the plane in a glowing and very pink sunset, and not care a whit if the pilot could find his way back to Double Bay or not.

Next, I was invited to tour Japan with the Japanese Restaurant Association. The occasion was their leader being made a National Living Treasure by the emperor. The first time that anyone in the hospitality industry had made the grade. Of all the cities we visited, by favorite was Kyoto, in great part because it was the first time I heard of and then tasted shabu shabu.

A platter covered with what appeared to be cocktail napkin sized tissue thin slices of beef at least 80 percent fat took my breath away. Not just because of the fortune it cost, as I knew from our $500 sirloin steak a few days before in Tokyo. But also because I was not sure what to do with it, and as a guest of honor I had to take the first piece.

Photos Courtesy of Tajimaya Shijo Kawaramachi

My hosts enjoyed my ignorance in the most perfectly Japanese mannered fashion by the eldest of the group wielding his chopsticks at the same moment I took up mine.

With that first mouthful I thought we had left the meat too long in the hot broth. The next piece I left in for half the time and swooned with pleasure.

Both were fabulous, but I loved the least cooked best as thoughts of what else could be dipped like this and introduced at Stars to San Francisco. Thin carpaccios of lobster, Petrale sole, Jerusalem artichokes in a black truffle infused broth, and even pounded out honeydew melon in a cool hibiscus flower ‘soup.’

Another of my fondest swoonings was the Cochinillo or Suckling Pig at Casa Armas in Manila.

Once a week while living in Manila in 2000 I would go for hairy crabs cooked in butter, garlic, and lashings of black pepper.

One night the Chinese owner asked me why I never ordered the sucking pig. I was not aware they had it on the menu. It wasn’t, but was available.

The next night, one appeared at the table splayed out, boneless, with its back to the heavens in true Chinese fashion.

The piglet was no bigger than a large platter. The owner cut through its body and its very crisp skin with the edge of a bread and butter plate.

“Showing off,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said, “but not like the pig, you will admit, once you have tasted it.”

I have never bothered to order it anywhere else for where can you get a pig only 28 inches long, perfectly cooked, with true pig flavor and not just roasted suckled milk?