Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

served after a four-course meal are not an indulgence but a tasty transition between the richness of the dinner experience and the emptiness of the long journey home.

For men, food is a well-earned indulgence. For women, it inspires ambivalence. They sit down with the general presumption that the best meal has the least food. Men are gastronomically guided by an inner glutton, but women almost never feel comfortable enough about themselves to eat what they desire. It’s a miracle they ingest enough to survive. Ultimately, most women become perverse portion-control tech-nicians who look upon delicious food as the enemy of health. They resent men who refuse to join in their obsession.

I believed Sharon Stone would be different somehow, more like a man, but as the months and then the seasons passed and still our dinner date failed to materialize, I felt increasingly hopeless. Her evasive tactics suggested she cared little for food, yet my sources in California reported seeing her in restaurants all the time. What concerned me was whether I had tried too hard, made myself too available. As a movie star, she would expect anyone like me, a meek supplicant, to have total disregard for his own needs and make myself eternally available.

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However, this is precisely the wrong way to treat women, who respond to excessive tolerance with disdain.

Finally, after months of waiting, I got the call. Battle stations. This was not a drill.

Her person was on the line. I picked up the phone. Dinner was imminent, I was informed. “What is the cuisine?” her person asked.

(A note of clarification here: At no time in the course of any of the calls and cancellations did I speak with Stone herself. Throughout the negotiations, she relied on subordinates—seconds, if you will—to speak for her. I tried looking at this in a positive manner, imagining it a form of Old World formality. Instead of an arranged marriage, we were to have an arranged meal.)

I told her person I had selected the Manhattan restaurant March, a fine and thoughtful establishment. The chef, Wayne Nish, approaches the dining experience with restrained originality. I wanted the food to be correct enough that she would not think me careless, but creative enough that she would have little opportunity to be bored.

The cuisine, I said, was “eclectic.”

“How should she dress?” her person asked stiffly.

“Appropriately,” I replied formally. I realized we were assuming the roles of characters on Masterpiece Theatre.

I was astounded how in control I felt. For the briefest moment, I was a partner, not just a pawn, in the life of Sharon Stone. I was her future companion, not the social equivalent of the guy who drives the catering truck to the set.

That phase of our relationship ended immediately. Her person told me that Stone would be available for dinner from eight p.m. until ten p.m. With that pronouncement, I felt the star had ducked back into her darkened limousine, leaving me gaping on the sidewalk. How like a woman, I thought, to insist on ending an evening at the very hour when civilized persons are ordering port.

She was allotting me two hours. What are two hours at a dinner table with a woman? A gathering of men could eat a great deal in such a meager allotment of time, but women do not believe in relentless 3 1 4

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consumption. Women waste minutes fussing over the fat content of dishes. They spend enormous amounts of time doing whatever it is that women do when they leave their seats and disappear in the direction of the restrooms.

I asked Nish if he could feed us satisfactorily in such a brief period.

He said he had envisioned a tasting menu of seven courses and seven wines and could get the food to us in the specified time. He explained that he, too, had endured the heartbreak of dining with women.

He told me this story: Many years ago, he and his ex-wife-to-be set out to eat the meal of their lives. They had saved for it. He ordered a stellar Bordeaux, one so expensive he was certain they could never have it again. When the captain took their order, she requested scallops, a disastrous pairing with a Cabernet Sauvignon–based wine. Horrified, Nish asked her what she planned to do about the Bordeaux, the wine they had waited so long to enjoy together. She replied, “Oh, you go ahead and have the wine.”

Yes, Nish understood.

Sharon Stone arrived almost on time. She was escorted from her black limousine to the foyer of the restaurant by a bulky but cordial gentleman who waited by her side until I came forward and acknowledged receipt of the valuable property. I felt as though I were being handed classified documents.

I told Stone how nice she looked. She smiled genially but did not reciprocate. She looked much as I thought she would, only better. She wore a black crêpe Vera Wang cocktail dress, and I was flattered, since Vera Wang is what everybody is wearing to the right places with the right people these days. Hers was low cut, but modest. She wore no jewelry. She needed none.

The maître d’ seated us at a corner table tucked away in the back.

Stone stirred her Bollinger Champagne with a spoon to dissipate the bubbles, a French custom she must have picked up at some banquet in Paris, while telling me of the sacrifice she had made in order to be F O R K I T O V E R

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with me. She was supposed to have gone to a reading, but she had canceled. I was tempted to make a little joke, ask if it wasn’t a little late in her career to have to read for a part. I kept my mouth shut.

She asked me about the restaurant. I told her it was