Il Gustatorio

"I got the boys a spa day, really wanted them to enjoy it, you know?"

To my soft uptown ears, Hoof McKinnon's voice jars the ends of its open vowels: 

"I gart the bars a spar day, rully warnted dem ter injar it, ye nar?"

Hoof had pulled out all the stops for his capos, and real gentle-like. He wanted them to feel feted.

"I had to honor them somehow, they was good boys. Shame what happened to them."

That's right. The boss of the downtown mob had killed the fatted calf to celebrate two men who had recently testified against him, and they had gone like lambs to the slaughter. The butchery metaphors here are a gross irony of course, because, as we were all made aware of by this hale publication (in some crack reporting by agents whose identities are still being protected by the Legal & Commerce Brigade), the two underlings in question were none other than Chimp Whitaker and Ape Sanchez, two of the most baboonish fleshmongers to ever grace the streets of our fair burg, in all senses of that description (Does the name Babe 'N Steak mean anything to you? Yeah, it's those guys). And the spa day was just the culmination of what seemed practically a happy romp in Hoof's mind.

"Yeah, they got the whole treatment. Threw them a little dinner party at Fletcher's place to start out with, then offered a nightcap at mine." 

The Fletcher that Hoof is referring to is certainly noted fishmonger Bonobo Fletcher, long-time mob insider, painter and propietor of Blue Herring. Hoof's place is, of course, the The Frogpit Lounge, that dark and foreboding institution of visceral dining and moist entertainment. Hoof is relaying this tale to me in his private booth at The Lounge (which the establishment is idiomatically known as by most downtownians; Hoof calls it The Pit), a balcony-like booth that surveys the entire club while somehow escaping all notice from the bar, stage, loud dining room, and flooded dancefloor. Hoof has been out on probation for about four years now, and he seems to have truly gone straight. 

"I made a lot of enemies inside," Hoof tells me. "But then Whit and Ape disappeared and people seemed to stop bothering me. I don't much care for the allegations about all that, of course, I was in solitary for chrissakes, you know? It's a tragedy."

If the deaths of Whitaker and Sanchez were tragedies, they were damn well-orchestrated ones. The police did a bang-up job on the investigation. After a full night of increasingly finer food, liquor, and seductive attention, Chimp Whitaker and Ape Sanchez were brought to Lex, a private spa club of which Hoof is part-owner with Fletcher and other meaty mafiosos Babs Ryan, raucous baconeer, and the reserved poultry specialist Jack Howler. Whitaker and Sanchez were fed psychedelics, ushered into a series of increasingly relaxing and immersive baths, steam showers, and cold sprays before being led to sensory deprivation sleeping pods. The pod hatches closed on two euphorically exhausted men at 3:57 am on March 3rd, 1998, and when they were opened at 11:00 am that morning, Whitaker and Sanchez were found dead, foul play suspected as if a foregone conclusion.

"People was saying they should have seen it coming, but hell, the one guy who actually wanted them dead was behind bars at the time. They can't pin a thing on me. So here I am."

Hoof served a brief sentence for an unrelated crime and was released on probation to walk some rather frightened streets. But from all accounts, the boss has gone straight, and no one has seen fit to test that. Hoof still runs The Frogpit like one of the swamp boats he served on in the Unorganized Territories before returning downtown as a hardened veteran of the post-industrial wastes. It is the strange culture of our neighboring region that inspired the fare of The Frogpit Lounge, cuisine and entertainment alike. 

Hoof and I are sharing a bowl of cold-fried leopard frogs. Hoof's popular antipasto is a signature dish, and is served with a fiery marmalade dipping sauce. 

"In the wintertime," Hoof says, "We were taught to dig frogs out of the mud for a bush snack, and we'd fry them up on the mufflers of our airboats while we idled around from mudbar to mudbar. Course, it was about three centigrade out so they'd be about froze again as soon as they were cooked. You got the heat from whatever hot sauce you had in the glovebox." 

The hibernal hors d'oeuvres are just an example of the assorted oddments Frogpit's kitchen turns out. Terry Beeves is Hoof's chef, though Beeves says his role is more like that of a fixer.

"Mr. McKinnon will come in one morning asking for a savory fruit stew and needing it to taste just like his wife's to be worthy of the menu, only he doesn't know how to make it at all," Beeves bemoans. "But I don't bemoan it, of course. I'm really appreciative of our relationship. I help make his dreams a reality."

The stew in question is an able entree in its own right, a delightful bowl of spices, plantain puree, and tender chunks of sour cucumber. To Hoof, this is comfort food.

"When I came back downtown to work in my father's butcher shop, I really missed all those wild flavors from the Utes, so I tried to make them happen, but pop wasn't about it."

The McKinnon Beef is legendary, a mob feud unlike any in our city's recorded history. Father and son initially sparred over differing opinions regarding brisket preparation, but their hatred for one another soon boiled out into open war when Hoof left McKinnon Brothers Butchery to open up Jump Street Meats, taking with him a sizable chunk of his father's clientele. The elder McKinnon, whose older brother had just left him the business and was finally beginning to throw his weight around, was furious with his son.

"He had my windows smashed in, but I didn't do nothing about it. I just kept cutting meat," Hoof told me. 

Hoof Senior did in fact die as a result of the feud, but, as in the case of Whitaker and Sanchez, Hoof was exonerated by the opinion of the family. Old man McKinnon was never all that healthy, and the stress was getting him too, so it was no surprise that he had a stroke while balling his fifth wife in the tub. He fell and hit his head and that little war ended. 

"I cried for my dad, you know, but he was too hard on me. He was just too hard," Hoof croons to me as the evening's entertainment begins. 

On the docket tonight is a film-screening, with interpretive dancing to follow. The picture is a documentary, taking as its subject the furtively bachannal lives of UT guerilla bandits. It's supposed to be quite provocative, and a bit difficult, but Hoof assures me the dancing will be much more straightforward.

"It's interpretive alright, they're going to physically interpret your desires before your very eyes," he says. "You may want to hit the ATM for some ones." 

I'm weighing the cost-benefit analysis of staying for the performance when our waiter arrives with an entree that is tempting enough to risk fate in order to try to try. On a steaming platter and plated for sharing is a heap of fried dumplings surrounding a tureen of decadent whipped vegetable-butter spread. Fillings include minced pork and ginger, mushroom and sage, and peanut-pepper chicken, and the spread is redolent of fresh cream and sharp with leek and celery. 

"Grabbables are what we're all about here," Hoof tells me with a wink. The joke goes over my head until I write this sentence, so focused have I been on the immense flavors rippling over my nerves. As the film depicts a silent shower rave, I ask some inane question about portion sizing. Hoof is happy to educate me.

"We ate on the run in the UT. It was similar with downtown life, you know? Running from shop to shop, doing errands and busting skulls. Hotdog here, finch kabob there, see? People like that kind of thing, they can grab a bite and go right back to dancing."

It seems to be true enough. While some are doggedly witnessing the film from booths or corners, many patrons are jumping about on the dance floor under undulating green and amber lights to a tune that can only be described as squelchy. The sensation is reminiscent to Hoof of the bustle of the swamps in the UT, something he had never witnessed before leaving the few square blocks he grew up running around. 

"There was just so much animal noise, the bugs, the birds, the frogs. Even the fish were singing to us. We'd go out on patrol at night and the wind and water and grass would just roar at us out of the dark. I never got used to that, but I loved it somehow, like it reminded me of the city or something."

Hoof's eyes glaze over as he fixes on a point somewhere a mile or so behind the movie screen. Some minutes pass, until I clear my throat and work up the nerve to ask about dessert. 

"Dessert's about to come out on stage," Hoof says. I believe I may have gasped the word "yikes" audibly. After collecting myself, I informed Mr. McKinnon that I would not be partaking in that portion of the evening as it was rather past my bedtime already and that Sarah would be waiting up. Hoof looked offended for a moment, but softened and waved the waiter over.

"Bring him some ice cream," he said, and turned back to me. "I prefer that my personal guests get the full treatment, but I'm willing to make exceptions. As long as you've got an alibi."

The Frogpit Lounge is located on 1240 West Hatchery Row and does not accept reservations. 

**Single readers called Sarah are encouraged to write to the author post haste, for no particular reason.**

-BH

The landlord of any establishment providing for the rest and relaxation of cowhands, teamsters, and travelling schuysters is loth to overlook their duty of providing chuck for sleepy tenants, however short their stay. Chuck is an act of communion to the crowd of wayfarers who populate the revolving door of the Old Port, and tastes run on the violently defensive end of the connoisseur spectrum. One culinary provocateur is using this fact to his advantage: Uwie Strong. His most recent project is a pop-up he's entitled "Errant," a restaurant with many kitchens. 

Strong is a native of the Old Port, growing up just in the shadow of the Home for Retired Seamen. His earliest memories involve the institution of chuck. 

"Living there in the tenement beside the old sailors' house, their watering hole was right there under my bedroom floor, 'the scuzzlepuzz grill.' (Author's Note: since replaced with a burnt out husk of a noodle place, review forthcoming) Well, there was always a group of them would come over early in the morning when I was getting up for stevedore academy, and they'd burst in and order a proper chuck. They were adamant that the nurses were starving them or putting something in the breakfast that made their dicks stay limp, so they'd walk next door and demand a real, old fashioned chuck. And of course they'd talk all about what that actually entails over and over again every morning. You could've written a play about it, it was so damn poetic. So yeah, I guess they were sort of praying that over me every morning, eh?"

Strong keeps up a blistering monologue from behind the counter of Droybertson's, where he has recently been hired as a visiting head chef. It's understood that he's going to move on, and from the way the man talks, it's easy to see why. At the rate he's moving, trying to keep him from going would be like trying to lasso a twister. 

"So yeah, I was tapped into the talk side of it from a kid, and that was when it was really in its infancy, at least compared to what it is now, see? Cause back then, every restaurant was the damn same, right, so any sort of variation in the quality was so quantifiable, and if you know, if you liked your marshbass a little more well done, you went to The Grand Malleydaft Caffeteria on Dinkin Street." He pauses to look out over the dining room with a consternated look. "And Malleydaft hasn't been open since I was fifteen. Damn. Anyway, the choices weren't that many, but their taste for it was damn well-adjusted to fine scale variations. I guess I'm saying their oversensitive in certain areas and utterly dull to others. I'm trying to fix that."

He is indeed trying, and he's taken the battle to the streets a time or two. 

"Yeah I had an old fellow storm the kitchen over at Togus because a waiter refused to serve him ranger rice the way he'd always ordered ranger rice here and he'd been coming for thirty years and dammit if he wasn't going to have a say about it, and yeah, he beat my ass. But I kept cooking the shit the way I wanted to, and you know what? We made a boatload of money. It was popular, it was buzzing, there were critics like you, and that was pretty cool, you know, for a kid from the Port? In the paper for something that's not forklifts or knife-fights. Not to get political of course."

Strong's culinary revolution, while to him an honorable and strict braid of reverence and art before business comes into it, has come into play in the civil arena. Recently, the union bosses got the machine running and pushed through an ordinance that holds restauranteurs accountable for not being willing to serve a patron a meal in the manner that patron was expecting. It seems a bit backward, but it turns out that for the last three quarters, the single main cause of 75% of workplace disputes and fluctuations in workflow has been the issue of chuck. The tradition holds the Old Port in thrall, or at least so says Derek Oblerfeist, a representative from Consolidated Logisticians. 

"We all need breakfast, but here, it's a real cultural standby. It's the foundation of the work day, and these guys are damn proud of what they build on it. So when you mess with that without them knowing, you can really throw off someone's livelihood. All we're asking is provide an appropriate amount of time before changing a menu by so much, and it's an opportunity for businesses to get feedback."

Strong, as can be imagined, is inspired by the ordinance. 

"It means I'm doing something right. I'm stirring the pot, bringing up the heat. Things are really taking off in kitchens all over the Port, so I don't know how they can enforce this. Of course, I know that it's really meant to authorise a targetted attempt on my operations. Sounds weird when I say it like that, but yeah, this is an act of resistance. I want to cook what I want to cook where I want to cook it and where others want me to cook it. I haven't been out of a job since starting work on Errant, and that's something that needs to be considered. People are still paying for it, there's business value in it for the hospitality industry down here, which, sorry to say it, has really fallen off over time."

The malaise that Strong refers to is something that Oblerfeist's bosses are supposedly prepared to deal with on an aggressive basis. Oblerfeist told me as much.

"This ordinance is a good thing because it can slow down rogue sustenance technicians from agitating a very steady period of growth on all averaged metrics. So they're willing to defend that growth, yes."

Strong laughs when I tell him what Consolidated says about him.

"That's really rich. What are they going to do, send some hyenas to break my knees? What the hell is that going to do? I can still cook from a chair. And I'm not alone, you know? I bring a crew with me, a regiment!" 

He yells this to the cooks nearby who have been intensely engaged with our interaction at the prep station. Watching them is like watching scarred lieutenants adore their captain. Hoots of assent greet Strong's call. "See, Consolidated forgets about these muchachniks, my raggedy-ass ladle-swingers. They may not work the docks just now but they've got the street smarts they were taught from growing up in the Port. This is their territory too, and they have a right to take charge of it." 

As the smells of chuck warm the morning air, I am beginning to believe. We've been here in the basement kitchen of Droybertson's Fair Weather Inn since midnight. That's opening bell for the chuck-slingers of the Port. The Pre-Chuck crowd of gangsters, mail men, and other roustabouts can appear as early as three, so getting a head start means starting your day when most are winding theirs down. 

"It's shift work like any other, it's not like we're not laborers. I walk out the door when my kids settle down to watch a movie, and when I run early errands, for me at least, everyone just wants to get through talking to me so they can go home. It's disorienting, especially for something that is as ballyhooed as it is. I'm asleep when the reviews get published."

Strong's off-kilter schedule has been both a boon and bruise for the chef. He's avoided several out and out brawls fought in and against his name. And he's made some new friends.

"Yeah, you know, since everyone gets chuck, whether you're a guest, member of the house, or serving girl, it's a real hub of social capital. You're seeing execs rub shoulders with bums every day, so it's a really connective event. I know some of the cops who would be enforcing this new ordinance, and they bring their kids here on the way to school. I'll take my chances."

Time will tell. For now, Strong is finishing out his stint at Droybertson's this autumn, and where he goes after that remains to be seen. That's the whole point of Errant. 

"See, I really don't know what's next. I don't accept offers until I'm ready, you know, so if anyone wants me they've got about as much notice as I do, you know? Otherwise, I just reach out to see who's hiring and jump in somewhere. I'm really not picky as long as I keep getting to cook and make my case for rolling the dice on our most important meal. I mean come on, it's this whole blank canvas, and if it's making changes on the docks or up in the counting houses, I say that's a good thing."

As Strong waxes eloquent about his dreams for the Old Port's culinary scene, he is plating me his prix fixe chuck order for the day. It's a real doozy. 

I start my eating day with two prawn crisps topped with capers, chutney, and aioli capsules (a play on that Old Port staple, prawn toasties). Following this appetizer course comes a hot oat shake in a wide basin-like vessel. No spoon is provided, and the diner is forced to drink from his bowl, slurping the creamy oat slurry and uncovering a hot chunk of iron in the bottom. Historically, certain types of gruel were commonly cooked in workshops of all kinds as a forever stew of hot cereal to provide ready carbohydrates for grueling labor of any variety. The homage is clever. 

After the soup comes a truly daring meat course. A freshly boiled egg is presented to me in an egg cup, peeled, steaming. Beside the egg is a long, thin strip of uncooked, cold-cured steak doused in marinade, and at its far end sits a small ramekin of dried spices. An attached schematic instructs the diner to wrap the egg in the beef and coat the roll with the spices and consume it in a single, embarrassingly large bite. I can honestly say that I understand why someone would want to punch the guy that gave it to them with their morning coffee, but it is a gorgeous bite. 

After the steak and egg, a simple glass of mint tea is offered as a palate cleanser, brewed strong according to the Old Port taste, a bastion of tradition in a revolutionary menu. Dessert follows soon after, a honey-soaked morel, brulee-ed and still smoking, standing upright in a sweet seaweed gelee. Strong says that the sweet ending to his chuck bill is actually an homage to a rather painful memory.

"I remember when the river flooded so high during Hurricane Sybil that it got rerouted. I was working at Orobar, over on the highway side of the Port. I'd been there for awhile and it felt too dry to me, you know? I was used to living a block from the water, see? And there were gulls here but they were eating fries on the highway and fighting crows for the clouds over the railyard. But then the flood came and suddenly it wasn't dry anymore, and I realized that I missed it. When the road became the river, I realized it was always sort of that way to begin with. Like, the river was just a wet road and the road was just like a dry river, and that was really profound to me at the time. Of course, all of us staff there at Orobar took it upon ourselves to drink up the bar seeing that it looked like it was about to wash away, so that had something to do with it. It was pouring and we were just up on the roof looking out over the flooded roads and warehouses, and I was sucking on a jug of cinnamon whiskey, and I just remember looking out over this new river that used to be the lawn running out to the railyard and it was just so green, and the water tower at the yard looked like a great big mushroom. So yeah, that's probably the most personal plate I'm doing right now. That's what the Port is to me."

The kitchen is electric with Uwie's veritable sermon. There is a pause in the rush, but it picks right back up as orders keep pouring in. The host leans in and calls to Strong.

"Boss, there's a fella up there yelling that the oats are too thin, he's trying to send it back." 

Strong looks at me and shakes his head. I'm still reeling from the dessert.

"Excuse me for a minute, I need to go tell someone to make their own chuck if they don't like it so bad.

Uwie Strong charges out into the dining room and promptly enters fisticuffs with a stout laborer. It's not yet 7:00 am. 

"Too early for this, isn't it?" I asked the host. 

"In the Port? Hell no."

-BH

"DOORS!"

"DOORS," an echoed chorus.

A tense period of waiting.

"First one is...in! Paper!"

A pause, then a torrent of commands at high volume.

"ALRIGHT FOLKS HERE'S WHAT WE'VE GOT: ECO, FIRE A CREEK ANALYSIS, LEVEL THREE. INFRA, FIRE A GRADE TWELVE UTILITY EXPANSION. ARCHY, FIRE A FIVE OVER ONE, ZONE THREE TO SIX."

"FUCK THAT."

"ARCHY FIRE AWAY JUST SCALE DOWN THE ZONE RANGE, FOR CHRISSAKES. AGRO, FIRE ROOFTOP CITRUS SET-UP FOR ARCHY."

"Paper!"

"ECO, FIRE A MEADOW RECLAMATION LEVEL--SHIT--SIX."

"Shit."

"INFRA, FIRE A PAVE TO RAIL LEVEL TWO."

"Paper!"

"H&S, FIRE A PSYCH WELLNESS FOR YOUTH, SEMI-RURAL."

"Paper!"

"ART, FIRE A SALON EXPO, THEME BRUTAL ECOFEM, CONSULT WITH ARCHY AND ECO. AND INFRA? INFRA."

"Not again," Carl, the Infrastructure team-lead moaned.

"Do it, Carl! Paper!"

"Last one, Phil, unless it's a pol," Sanchez said to the manager before yelling to the studio. "AGRO, FIRE A POLLINATOR SYSTEM FOR--FUCK IT'S FOR THE CITRUS ORDER, ADD IT ON. Phil, who placed this fucking order."

"Hak," Phil said.

"HAK, YOU PLACE YOUR NEXT GODDAMN ORDER IN ONE FUCKING PIECE OR I EVISCERATE YOU."

A trembling voice called back from the lobby: "Yes, boss."

"Front, we are on a hold," Phil called out.

"Hold!" The front of house staff replied en masse. 

Sanchez surveyed the bustling studio, crossing her arms and nodding in time to the clicking of the metronome in the corner. Service at Progression, the hottest new innovation bar in town, was getting off to a passable start. I was perched on a stool in the corner, furiously typing on my travel-sized word processor with a fire in my stomach. I was not meant to be here, no sirree, but three separate writers had tried and failed to capture the scene at Progression. Two had left on the verge of tears halfway through service and one had not been heard from since. I was all that Horace had left. 

"I'm a restaurant critic for fuck's sake," I complained. "I've got a table at Linda's reserved that night."

"Cancel it. No, better yet, give it to me, I've got to schmooze a donor," he said, not for a moment removing the binoculars from his eyes as he stared through them, out his window and into the park. "Payback for the tab you ran up here the other night."

"You said we were even on that," I said.

"He said that you were close, and that you would get even. Not the same thing," Amos coughed from his deep armchair in the corner, wreathed in a cloud of cigar smoke. 

"Fine," I said. And that was that. I handed over my seats at Linda's (and with them a promise of ecstasy from the old gal herself that would have to wait until another evening) and bought a carton of cigarettes and headed to Progression. I arrived just as Hazel Sanchez, head innovator and ultimate liability holder for all proposed solutions, was lecturing a wet-behind-the-ears designer in a taut alto roar.

"-- told you to innovate on your own fucking time and bring it up when you are fucking asked. You are wasting our time, now go go go go. (She points to a workstation, but the young man does not move.) GO GO there are plenty of people who would love to fuck off and do your job for you if you cannot DO IT WHEN YOU ARE ASKED."

The designer scurried away and Sanchez turned to me with a broad smile. 

"Hi, Bart."

I briefly met Sanchez when she was the sous at a avant-sushi place that really bears forgetting. She seems young for a chief purveyor of fine ideas, but a series of deep lines between her eyebrows whisper otherwise. Sanchez has been doing this a long time, and she has seen it all, but there's always more. 

"You'll be over here. (She points to my stool, hard, unforgiving, out of the way.) Please stay put during service. You'll want to visit the restroom after joining us for family so you can remain there, ok?" 

In a room where every inch of space and ounce of thinking meat must be utilized to the highest standard of efficiency, I am a wayward lamb. I promise to keep out from underfoot. It turns out to be very easy once I witness the chaos of service.

When the doors open at 5:00 pm on the dot, a crowd of people flood into the lobby, waiting to be shown to deep conversation booths, supplied with snacks, beverages, and artistic materials by busboys, and waited on by porters in matching white denim coveralls. The customers come in pairs and trios, singles and heptets. The larger groups are served by senior porters; their orders are complex, multilayered, often requiring the services of many individual stations. Taking their order with the utmost accuracy is a crucial step in ensuring that the studio serves them the right idea. I saw then, from behind the narrow service window, why I was the right man for the story. But the dishes served up in cuisine au futur were unlike any I had ever tasted. 

"ECO IS OPEN," Sanchez yells as a designer slaps a folder down on the table in front of her.

"Paper!" Phil yells.

"ECO, FIRE TRAIL DESIGN PROTOCOL, BOUNDARIES ON YOUR STATION."

Another designer delivers a dossier to Sanchez. She scowls at the young man she lectured earlier, and he rushes away without meeting her gaze. Her eyes flicker between the report from the Ecosystem Team in one hand and the Infrastructure Team in the other. She crosses out a line here and there, jots some marginal notes and sketches a graph on a free page. 

"HANDS ON TWO," she yells, and a porter takes the sheaf of papers from her hand, shuffling them into order as they leave the studio for the lounge. I watch them deliver the packaged innovation, see the eyes around the four-top brighten with glee. They begin to discuss the combined write-up, gesturing with excitement and scribbling notes of their own on paper provided by their attentive porter. Sanchez chances a sidelong look at the table, nods once, curtly, and keeps screaming at her team. 

The service shift continues on, striking an arrhythmic groove as the designers compile, Sanchez curates, and the customers devour a striking array of ingenious plans, daring gambits, and productive initiatives. Everyone leaves happy, except for one man with a forgettable face and a drab gray suit. Even I would have missed him had he not worn a look of singular gloom as compared to the elated throngs of professionals discussing with glee plans for new building permit approval workflows, a duck pond, and an oil painting and addiction rehabilitation interest group. I point him out to Phil Jardine, Sanchez's general manager and one-time Stringphone correspondent-abroad in Mongolia. 

"Oh him? He's a spook," Phil said with a roll of his eyes. "We get about a handful of them a month. They come in, order some kind of complicated foreign intelligence problem and leave when we don't have the background research to put together a satisfactory request. I mean, we try, but Sanchez is adamant that we serve local innovations for local problems. It's on the fucking website. If they ask for something different, that's on them. We'll try, but if it's outside our wheelhouse, it's getting a stamp of plausible deniability. Let the Agency overturn its own Oceanian socialist republics, we got better shit to do here in town."

On the whole, it seems that Sanchez's strategy is working out. In the time that Phil took to elucidate an answer, porters carried out the blueprints for a sustainable housing project in the Old Port, a business plan for a minority-owned deli chain, and two suspiciously similar proposals for cancer awareness fundraisers. As these last two went out the door, Sanchez called for the host. 

"Marty! (A tall Frenchman, Martine Laurent, lately the maitre'd of Simone Beckett's Rougarou in VanDyke Alley, pokes his head into the kitchen.) Those two H&S tables that just went out, put them together and send them a couple bottles of wine. They're duplicating efforts."

"Oui, madame."

"Get a grip, folks," Sanchez mutters. Service continues, and I ruminate on the short interview Sanchez offered me earlier as she busied herself skimming over the daily data reports and research summaries from various departments. 

"Why am I so focused on efficiency? Because I'm sick of things not getting done," she said, leafing through an environmental impact study on a revolutionary form of water treatment technology. "I grew up watching this city cannibalize itself every couple of years. Money and brains getting tossed around from need to need with no rhyme or reason by lazy people at City Hall. I said enough was enough, we needed to flood the scene with big ideas with punch, do the same work as all these interest groups in one-one-thousandth of the time it takes them to just get a grant to do the preliminary research to begin with. They get to just implement it."

"But don't you think that the process is important? That thinking it through themselves is part of the value?"

"Yeah for some things. We don't do art, we don't do story. We just give them the bones and the time to do it, all for the price of a nice meal."

"But they don't get a meal."

"They get snacks. We can't do it all. And we have a damn good bar. They get ideas, that's what they're paying for."

Our conversation naturally turned to intellectual property. Wasn't she sending a lot of value right out the door?

"Do you ask a chef if she's sending a lot of value out the door in a stomach full of caviar and champagne and dehydrated duck liver or whatever the fuck? No, because it's about the experience and the inspiration. They can go home and try to make what we gave them, and it's going to be different and it's going to be theirs. It was my favorite part about cooking, and then I lost my tastebuds after drinking some bad tap water over in the Commerce District. The Commerce District! 'What the hell is our city coming to?' I thought. If I couldn't feed my neighborhood with good things to eat anymore, I wanted to feed it with ideas."

Service that night ended on a high note, with a city councilman toasting Sanchez and her team for helping him crack the case of a convoluted zoning debacle. The chief innovator entered the lounge for a brief moment, bowing with a tight smile before returning to the studio to supervise the next big ideas. It sure seemed that the neighborhood was eating it up.

Be sure to catch Sanchez's forthcoming talk at next month's TEDx event at Milton Playhouse, entitled "All I Can Taste is Revolution."

-BH

"Come Together" was playing on the stereo and I sipped apple cinnamon tea with a chaser of lime water because two drinks is fancy sauce/pants. 

"Is it fancy sauce or fancy pants?" I wondered aloud. I then shrieked.

"Oh! My review is due!"

Sauce/Pants. That's the name of the newest sexy, chicurban trouser boutique plus craft bistro-saucier in Houghttie-Weux Heights. And you know what is above that heinous garlic and denim point of sale? You guessed it, subsidized housing for gay sculptors, that's what. Their names are Chad, Earl, and Lenorous, and the art they create as a collective (it's simply called, "ralpf") is truly indescribable, and literally so, as it seems. So far not one critic has touched it with a ten foot pole, not even Snurge (isn't that WILD?).

Sauce/Pants was originally conceived of as a joint venture between local restauranteur Janisse Schmidt and Herling Wandersson, the acclaimed trouser merchant lately from Hamburg. The plan was to combine her talent for decanting delicate international ragus with his keen eye for the best in fabric from the waist down. However, when the former's Tibetan yak restaurant (rumored haunt of a certain loud local poet) really started to take off last month, she had to step away after only perfecting a single sauce: her patented Gass Blaster Pot Sauce, ganja and ghost chili (which many, including a team of crack lawyers, contend she stole from her previous business partner Raygun "Chester" Collins). By all accounts the experience of the place is rather different from originally promised these days. I went to find out.

Walking into Sauce/Pants is a bit like walking into a hip Commerce District coworking space, that is to say it is full of suave-looking people and utterly empty of taste. It was also pretty empty of joy. Under the shower of spotlights reflected off the ceiling and through a forest canopy of chinos sat a writhing crowd of ignorant acolytes before the altar of the more than unholy. The amount of soul-evicting wails that one is allowed to hear in a fine-dining establishment is typically zero. The air in this dining room rang with them. Under it all was a resonant thrumming, as if from a hidden choir of basso trolls, which I later found out to be the sound of ralpf's pottery wheels upstairs. 

The screams of course were coming from various couples around the room. Sauce/Pants is somehow a magnet for first-date-goers. A word to the wise: never go to an unknown restaurant on a first date (or a concert for that matter). If it's bad and you chose it, you will feel a need to apologize, and if you are apologized to, you will feel the need to put a brave face on, and if you are shown a brave face from a prospective lover then you will feel that possibly this could be the first silly incident in a comically romantic series of incidents in which you both feel madly in love, which in turn makes you make a face. All that to say, no matter how bad it is, if it's not arguably that bad you may just put up with whatever comes. Even, apparently, if that is a variety of small plates doused in a sticky quarter to one-and-one-half million Scoville units. 

The soup had a dash of Gass Blaster Pot Sauce, and came in a bowl cunningly fashioned from two back pockets from two pairs of pants, laminated together with epoxy. The salad had a viniagrette that used a dash of the concoction (that actually amplified the effects, and that's when the table got loud if you catch my drift). We were positively swimming when the fish course came glazed in the stuff, and by the time the beef was delivered, blazing, we were dripping mucus, blazed. Dessert was thankfully a dish of house gelato, but we found to our chagrin that it had tiny Pot Sauce tapiocas embedded in its layers of honey and olive oil delight. Whatever feeling you are imagining, dear reader, whether you be a smoker or saucer or both, is incorrect. It must be lived to be felt, but never has a man felt it that he wished to go on living, so what is it really worth in the end?

After the meal, I stopped by the boutique side and purchased a lovely pair of Todd Snyder Japanese relaxed fit selvedge pants in olive, and at a real bargain price too. At the door I ran into the trio from upstairs coming down, clay-bedaubed and slick with sweat. One of them handed me a hand-written setlist. In my state, the question of why a pottery collective would have a setlist was unfathomable, but it proved an interesting memento to store in the melamine-button-fastened coin pocket of my new trousers, and made me quite pleased. That said, I can't in good conscience recommend the journey it took to get there. One out of five stars. 

As a side-note to our dearest editorial team: I admit to being fooled again, fair and square. You got me the first time when I got a last minute assignment to cover a restaurant that combines scheduled substances with mouth-fire oil. Fool me once. But then it happened again (on twentieth day of April no less; stupid, trusting me) and I didn't do my research or due diligence to my gut health. I bet you're all chuffed. Bully for you, but next time you're paying for my Pepto.

-BH

The formation of an Faux-Almost-Aristocratic Neighborhood polycule is by no means an easy process but a simple one. Simply a bottle for the wino, an artist, a joint for the stoner, a social worker, tequila for the southern one (from Virginia), and a 'Gannsett for the amoral New England businessman. Tequila and Stoner are married, and so are Wino and Lager. They meet at an charity event for A Private School For Orphans (Stoner and Wino are on the board and are distant acquaintances with a positively gravitational awareness-of-one-another-from-a-distance at meetings). Tequila and Lager bond from being metro-hustle girl-bosses, marketing and finance respectfully (they're both known to be Ruthless). After too many rounds of too many fixes, the Stoner asks "are we doing this?" as "All Night Long" by Lionel Ritchie plays in the background. It was a sitcom writ in the stars. 

The bar/grille/lounge I visited (hallucinated?) yesterday evening felt like the type of place where the above scenario could most probably occur. (In fact, I am willing to argue, most certainly but we'll get to that later). The marquis simply read "bar/grille/lounge" in Times New Roman, and we in the culinary criticism community are rather at a loss for the actual name of the place. It was never advertised, you just knew about it, and none of the waitstaff had any clue either. When asked what restaurant they worked for, they would say "well, you know, the restaurant, haha," and laugh you off as a tourist. 

"Of course it's not like that in our City. We have the Restaurant and we have the Theater and we have the Stadium and we have the Police Station, you know, like on the Television Infotainment Media System Late Night Shows?" These are the kind of things these people say, it was so gauche ("and that's in, honey," Wino says to Stoner).

The music was avant-jazz-Brooklyny-noise-pop from the in-house band, A Universal Symbol Language (review forthcoming from Celeste Sterling). The light was dim, the walls were eclectically styled with pop art, patches of brick with exposed rebar, and macrame mandalas from the Village ("how kitsch," Lager said to Tequila, who said "damn right" and they both meant it). There were also stripes on the wallpaper that shimmered a bit, which was off-putting.

The bartender pointedly ignored me by looking off into space and drying glasses as I spoke my order, then absent-mindedly made my drink after an arcane amount of time his drifting indolence determined subconsciously. A woman down the bar said "it's a piece of performance art, you know" (Lager and Tequila roll their eyes and Stoner says "how brave" to Wino, who agrees). 

I had heard that the only drinks you could order at the bar side of the bar/grille/lounge (which someone there told me was actually called Unknown...I doubt it) were gin cocktails, so I was rather surprised to find that the aviation I ordered turned out to be a Lone Star, the National Beer of Texas, poured into a rocks glass with a float of rye and an orange slice. It was a damn good drink, and the patron who offered Unknown as the possible name of the place was adamant that it had something to do with the unexpected cocktails. 

"It's called Unknown because, ya see, you can be told the only liquor here is gin, and order anything you like with gin in it, and you never know what the hell you're gonna get. My boyfriend Starr ordered a G&T and actually got one! How bizarre!" (Wino gasped and Stoner gaped, Tequila and Lager laughed.) I agreed and moved on to my waiting table in the grille.

A man dressed as a Geisha emerged from a curtained portal in the wall and led me away from the bar and back through the wall. I was shown to a table in a brightly lit replica of a Southern US diner: yellow neon, formica, bacon grease, and all that. (Lager and Tequila erupted in choruses of joy: he had gotten his MBA down South and she had vacationed to the quail plantations with her first beau and had fallen in love with the land and out of love with him. Stoner and Wino were deflated, but mutually buoyed in their discomfiture.) I ordered a hashbrown bowl and waited. When a plate of beef tartare tacos, a salad of pickled collards and herring flakes, and a pie filled with borscht-inspired rhubarb and peach custard filling. It was heavenly (everyone agreed on this point, but Stoner wondered aloud if he might get another slice of pie).

"Son, some of the folks who eat here say it's just another place, that it's generic, that it's mysteriously plain and self-referentially effacing because ain't they all? That's hogwash. It ain't called Mason/Dixon, it's just the Restaurant, you know?" (Even Stoner was a bit confused now.)

The old man hung his greasy head down and laid his stubbly cheek in a plate of sunny side up egg. I stood, laid aside my napkin and passed him by, skipping the restroom line and making for the backroom, from which a cozy orange light and smooth bass rippled wantonly. I fairly trotted through the door and passed from greasy linoleum whiteness to a velvet and musk-tinged mid-century conversation pit. It was massive and I could barely see five paces through the murk of sepia (Stoner visibly shook with glee, Wino yawned cavernously, and Tequila and Lager stepped close, frightened).

The lounge area was clearly peopled from the sounds of distant laughter and a stuporous buzz of conversation I heard in the mists. In the cottony orange glow there was suddenly a burst of white light and I was drawn to it. I stepped forward, dodging sweetheart tables with little lamps and beanbags beside fireplaces until I began to approach the source of the white light: an aquarium wall, round and wide, surrounded by overstuffed armchairs and chaise lounges and cocktail hour standing tables. All around-people were lounging (Stoner and Wino sank into a deep pillowy shape, and Tequila and Lager draped themselves into a brutalist loveseat, and they all began to watch). 

At the bottom of the tank is a round, green and gray tiled floor, in the center of which is a large, porcelain clawfoot tub, white as the dawn of creation. There are potted ferns tastefully flanking a gilded mirror vanity and a candle burns there. Beside the bathtub is a towel warmer with a mauve towel the size of a schooner sail hung over itself, warming. In the tub sits an old man with a droopy throat and liver spots, and in his hand is an old-timey bath brush, and yes, he is washing his back amidst a cheery mob of suds (Lager thought of his great-uncle, the source of his drive for success, Stoner thought of how great the old man's balls must feel in that tub, Tequila shook her head, and Wino simply looked on, nonplussed). 

Ordering (and actually receiving) a dirty martini, I sat and watched, overhearing the sleepy purr of a young Elite Music Conservatory student as she explained to the consulting intern she was about to devour that night.

"See watch, the Old Man is almost done, it's five minutes to ten now. The grandfather clock in there is set to Central Time. He's getting up now, and he's drying off, and he's putting on the robe that matches the towel that was hung all this time on the Shaker chair, and he's leaving through the door, just like he does every night. And here comes the Young Librarian. She's walking in just as he leaves at precisely 9:57 Central, and there! The clock switches to 5:32 AM Pacific. She disrobes, gets in the bath, which is still steaming, see? She reads...and reads...and reads...and wait...right...now, she will clear the steam from her glasses with her towel, lean her hed back and close her eyes with a sigh. It's the same, every single night. There's more too, more I'm trying to figure out. I've already spent nearly all my fund disbursement this month on coming back here, isn't that so irresponsible of me? That's why they named this lounge Etna, because my dead grandma's bank account has been funding this place for weeks now, isn't that rich?"

I don't know what Lager and Tequila (sparring with their legs quite openly by this point) and Wino and Stoner (melting into one another in drowsy heat) thought of all this, because they left after only a couple drinks, likely making their way back to Lager's great-uncle's ultra-sleek penthouse to utterly debauch away Thursday night and complicate the second decade of their late middle age (I overheard that two of their children later married, but I lack the faculties to imagine what sort of comedy of errors that event was, or whether it happened to the foursome I observed or another, separate but equivalent polycule). I sat for hours, the crowd in the lounge growing and shrinking in time with my respiration it seemed, watching bather after bather cleanse through erroneous timelines. I could almost feel the steam, hear the drip of the brass faucet. There are no reservations at the bar/grille/lounge but it always seems full. 

-BH

Social creatures are ALWAYS similar to another social creature. We cannot perceive creatures that are truly beyond comparison to us or our related creatures. 

It cannot be rendered by our consciousness no matter how hard we analogize. It is the philosophical arcane from the eldest days, the Lemurian scripts and Atlantean curses, the divination of the deepest ocean abyss. spirit of darkness, of true nothing, of disappearance and permanent impermanence, the commonest form of relation between consciousnesses: change. Entropy or its opposite, cursed hope that it is, are infinite evolvers, light-speed developers of self-referential ontological power. Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, and Moses, followed swiftly by Captain America and Flea and that raccoon character from television (you choose, they're all the same, Charlie Kelly and Rigby alike), this is our birthright, our tariff, our accord (or any other inheritance, tax, or Honda vehicle). 

Nothing is compromised, because every choice splits into two equally true universes, or three or eight or ten of them for that matter, all equally true in that they could happen within the known laws of physics, by such a window as this that moves over the surfaces of the millennia as a Atom-All Safe-T Razr TM over a stubbly throat. The infinite advertisement of a better world. Such is the concept of change, maturation or infantilizing. It's downhill either way, and the only good fix is mainlining the very fact that change is occurring to get yourself off. Dimensionally lubed up bobsled kiddo, this ain't like Cool Runnings, and it certainly ain't the universe of Outlander or Downton Abbey or whatever where people are really sexy for some reason, it's a lot  uglier in the sense that three-legged dogs are just sad, not inspiring. It's just fucking sad. It's even sadder than the worlds that they speak about in those spoken word urban tunes of punkish angst, sadder than the world of John Denver, Biggie Smalls, and Milk Sweat alike. Narratively sad type shit. That's the apocalypse, or the experience of eating at that new upscale neon steakhouse casa del awesome-sauce-surf-shack-and-dive-bar. Utter trueness is terrifyingly pleasurable, and The East Avenue Boxing Club Dojo of Macho Bistro delivers up Armageddon and keeps changing its name (damned athletic marketing bros and their weed).

Yes, this entire diatribe was about a speakeasy-club-style psychedelic-hot-wings place in a strip mall in the Old Port. You all know the place. My typewriter is COVERED in psilocybin-Delta-9_buffalo.sauce.txt, and you'd love how it feels on your amygdala. Use the code HUGGSY to get 25% off your order on odd Tuesdays in August every third leap year. 

-BH

It was with inebriated excitement at a mostly-forgotten New Years party that I penciled into my calf-leather planner the year's first culinary rendezvous for January the 8th. It read: "Meet (illegible) at new Tibetan place, lunch." Upon reviewing the appointment through bleary eyes the next afternoon, I felt I was in for an adventure, for a Monday at least. 

I arrived at the unassuming corner of Watkins and Triumph at precisely 11:53, wanting to scope out the lay of the land before my mystery companion arrived. Leaning against a catastrophically dented post office drop-box, I took in the facade of Sam-Gi-Mi-Gyap. Nestled between a derelict punk boutique and a tangled nest of artists' lofts, my lunch awaited behind a set of frosted windows etched with a series of Tibetan characters reminiscent of Sanskrit and to my untrained eyes utterly illegible. Fittingly, the name of the cafe translates literally as "something that the mind cannot capture." Figuratively quaint, and as I was soon to find out, terrifyingly literal. 

As I pondered the opaque forms of prayer flags through the windows, I was hailed from the opposite side of Watkins Avenue by a basso roar.

"Barty-Boy, are you ready for your yak?"

I turned and watched in surprise as Robbie Perflanigansharpol, the poet, lurched across the bustling street towards me, dodging bicycle couriers, taxis, and beer vans. The scene will be familiar to many readers, that of the fur-coated giant drunkenly shambling into traffic with little regard for safety, either his own or that of passing motorists for whom colliding with his mountainous form would mean certain hospitalization. Upon making my side of the thoroughfare, Robbie bruised my shoulder with his catcher's mitt hand, the other gesturing towards the waiting storefront with a half-empty bottle of Chateau Haut-Brion Pessac-Leognan, if my nose served me correctly. Through a flustered and slurred set of greetings, I was shoved roughly through the door ahead, and our lunch began.

As anyone who has had the pleasure of spending time with Robbie may attest, the Welshman's raucous desire to be heard is only eclipsed by his ursine appetite for fine food and drink, and often the two join forces to inundate the local atmosphere with hearty brayings expounding the value of various delicacies, in this case, yak. There had been no small buzz among foodies and Buddhists alike when Sam-Gi-Mi-Gyap first appeared at the very edge of the arts district, but Robbie's grandiloquent descriptions of the menu put all the scuttlebutt to shame. The orange-robed waiter could barely get a word in edgewise to take our drink order. I took sparkling water and Robbie shook his bottle, declaiming his ability to provide for his own thirst.

I bent my head to peruse the menu, allowing Robbie's throaty diatribe to cascade over my head. The proprietor's name was listed prominently over the bevy of starters: Janisse Schmidt. It didn't strike me as a Tibetan name, and through later research, it became evident that Mx. Schmidt was a serial restauranteur from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She opened a series of acclaimed fast casual charcuterie bars before undergoing a crisis of faith and traveling to the Himalaya to find a new direction. Apparently that direction involved yak, and judging by the menu, lots of it.  

Yak shabhalep, yak flatbread, yak dumplings (three types), noodle soup with yak, and so on. Even the dessert offerings were colonized by Bos grunniens in the form of butter and cream. I was hard-pressed to find a dish which did not contain the beef of mountain cattle, finally finding a side salad on the rear of the menu, nestled at the bottom of a series of tame American dishes listed in miniscule type under the heading "Our Take on American 'Favorites.'" The disdain was evident; Mx. Schmidt's enlightenment had clearly taken hold. 

While I was engrossed in my search through the yak-infested menu, Robbie had taken it upon himself to order us a litany of his favorite dishes, nearly a dozen by my count, coaching the waiter to bring them out all at once. I nearly protested, but no sooner than I raised my hand to hale the server than Robbie shoved a glass of bordeaux into my waiting fingers. He had produced a brace of full bottles from his voluminous coat and was busy uncorking them with a screw affixed to his keychain (it has been remarked upon my many in the literary community of our fair burg that good Mr. Perflanigansharpol consumes roughly six bottles of luxurious French reds on a daily basis, but this is an overly stingy estimate by my judgment). Plied by the gregarious giant, I was soon happily rolling.

I heard Robbie speak of many things while we waited for our food, but few remain to my recollection. As the fine vintages clasped onto my imagination, I was struck by the sheer number of prayer flags hanging from the dining room ceiling, all flapping gaily in the blast of central heating. Beyond them, there was little to remark upon in the plainly appointed space. It was not unpleasant.

Our food arrived via a triple-decker cart, and when I heard it clattering along from the kitchen behind me I fully expected a yak to be pulling it along, but alas it was not to be. Our waiter loaded our table down with fourteen steaming dishes, all bearing the telltale odor and brownish pallor of yak prepared a gaggle of ways. It was a frightfully expansive spread, but Robbie fell to with a will. 

I had hoped to find respite from his booming monologue as he ate, my ears having begun ringing from the volume, but alas, he kept up his heroic declamation around full dumplings, gulps of stew, slurps of noodles, and delirious quantities of 1983 Petrus Pomerol. I sampled, amongst the wreckage of the poet's gustatory stampede, a delightful turnover of golden dough, filled, I would bet my life, with spiced yak. It was crisp, it was tender, it was everything one could want from a light lunch pastry. Alas, I cannot recommend the dish to readers seeing as it was unidentifiable among the host of similarly composed dishes all being attacked indiscriminately by the Brobdingnagian bullhorn. 

Never before have I seen so palatial a feast destroyed so wantonly, nor so speedily, and I could do little but gawp and sip my wine (a delectable 1996 Chateau Margaux, Premier Grand Cru Classe). I attempted to sneak a few morsels as Robbie droned on, but gave up as the majority of the dishes became increasingly demolished. Hoping that the meal would not be a total loss, I asked the waiter if Mx. Schmidt was available for comment, but it turned out that she was busy meditating on the roof. 

My head began to pound from expensive alcohol, unsated appetite, and cacophonous diatribes devolving into doggerel, and so I excused myself to the washroom and made good my escape through the kitchen door. Dear Robbie, no doubt, continued on as if I had never left, and good for him. I snagged another of those delectable pastries on my way out, and I can conclusively say that Sam-Gi-Mi-Gyap is worth the excursion if only to try one of them. I wish I could tell you what to order. Perhaps you can find out in Mr. Perflanigansharpol's forthcoming collection of poetry entitled WHAT WE LOST TO SILENCE, VOL. 14 (Peregrine Editions, 2024). 

-BH, 1/7/24