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

their way onto American menus are what Batali does incredibly well. The pig’s foot was a thin, crisp cutlet, all crunchiness and fat. I liked it a lot.

During dinner, I got into a conversation with a Los Angeles couple at the next table, and I asked them if they were disappointed that Batali wasn’t cooking. The answer, I thought, was a compliment to the food.

“Is he the chef?” the woman asked. They came to the restaurant whenever they were in the city not to see a chubby man with a red face running around in implausible clothing but because they admired the cuisine. They didn’t care who was preparing it. “It’s wonderful,” she said.

She was almost 100 percent right. I enjoyed every dish except the breast of veal, a special of the day. I remember how wonderfully well my mother made her breast of veal, and this dish wasn’t nearly as tender, moist, or luscious. For the second time, a celebrity-chef meal had reminded me of dinner with Mom. This was not how I expected this adventure to work out.

Getting a table at Emeril’s isn’t as difficult as it used to be, but satisfying the reservation clerk is demanding. She wanted the number of my hotel (I hadn’t booked one) or my cell phone (I don’t own one). She told me 2 3 4

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when to reconfirm and how to dress. Although it isn’t expressed explicitly, the idea behind the dress code at Emeril’s is that restaurant patrons not resemble the studio audience at Emeril Live.

Somehow I got through the qualifying tests. Although I had made a reservation for two, I came alone. (A beautiful young blond prostitute solicited me on the streets of New Orleans while I was walking to Emeril’s, but unfortunately it was a guy.) The hostess said, “I’ve got a great spot for you at the chef ’s food bar, overlooking the entire kitchen.” I’d purposely asked for a table, not the so-called food bar—I don’t like perching on a stool while I eat. I decided not to argue. The open kitchen at Emeril’s is supposedly a laugh riot, every night remindful of Mardi Gras.

The night I arrived, Lagasse was not among the kitchen cut-ups.

Seated to the left of me were Sally and Bill from Newburyport, which is just north of Boston. Seated to the right of me was a local couple from nearby Metairie, just engaged. I asked Sally if she was disappointed that Emeril wasn’t around, and she replied, “Oh, I knew he wouldn’t be here. He owns three restaurants around here. He’s never at any of them.”

She then proceeded to relate a celebrity cautionary tale involving two of her children: one went to a celebrity lacrosse camp—who knew that lacrosse even had celebrities?—and the famous player was barely there. “He said two words and that was it. He wasn’t on the field. He wasn’t cheering the kids,” she said. The other attended a celebrity hockey camp featuring Mario Lemieux, and he was around for “maybe five minutes.”

Sally, relentlessly upbeat, had decided that Emeril’s kitchen staff needed a lot of cheering up. “They’re pretty down guys,” she said. She pointed to the salad guy, whom she described as really glum. Hearing that, the young blond on my right, who identified herself as Emmily (yes, that’s how they spell “Emily” in Louisiana) chipped in. “I thought there would be more interaction, like at a hibachi,” she said.

I ordered the “dégustation,” or tasting, menu, and everybody else’s food was a lot more fun than mine. Such a menu has many small por-F O R K I T O V E R

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tions, and tiny food is not what Lagasse does best. I got to try a lot of Sally’s dinner, and it was wonderful, particularly the grilled rib-eye steak with foie gras butter.

I learned a lot from Sally. She ordered better than I did, and she knew more about celebrity pitfalls. Although it was her first visit to the restaurant, she understood what to expect, a lesson those who patronize celebrity restaurants should bear in mind. “If you’re sitting here thinking Emeril is going to show up,” she said to me, “it isn’t going to happen.” Did it matter that none of the chefs were at their restaurants? As far as food preparation was concerned, it did only at Olives, the restaurant of Todd English. His recipes are knockouts, and a competent chef watching over the underachieving kitchen would have made an enormous difference. The food was up to par at Spago, Chez Panisse, Babbo, and Emeril’s. Even if Rocco had been on Twenty-second Street, he couldn’t have rescued Rocco’s on 22nd.

Where gratification and pleasure were concerned, their absence did make a difference. Perhaps if we went to restaurants to sustain ourselves nutritionally, it wouldn’t matter if they showed up—and if that were the case, Chez Panisse might then be thought of as the finest restaurant in America. But that isn’t why we dine out.

We go for a breathtaking experience, much as we go to the theater, to be part of something spectacular. Without the star cooking the food, or at least striding through the dining room, there’s only a fraction of the expected thrill. Or we go to be coddled, to take pleasure in being someplace where we’ll be welcomed. For most of us, a visit to a celebrity restaurant is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We’re never going to get to know the maître d’ or the waiters or the girl who brings the bread, so only the presence of the celebrity chef can make us feel special.

I thought I’d be immune to all this. I set out believing that I didn’t care about celebrity chefs. I’d had enough of celebrities back when I was a reporter for People magazine. Yet I felt something was lacking everywhere I ate, even at Spago, where the food could not have been better.

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