Book Review: Jay Rayner's The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner

For the last few years, my favorite TV show has been Top Chef. So when I saw they were going to air a version of Top Chef called Top Chef Masters, featuring iconic, award-winning chefs competing against each other and being judged by equally well-established food critics... I couldn't set the DVR fast enough.

Oddly, while the chefs' performances didn't help them live up to the hype, I found the critics were definitely worth their salt. It was fun listening to them eloquently shower compliments on the great dishes and humorously, almost disdainfully rip on the bad ones - almost seeming to relish the opportunity to put these seasoned chefs-cum-mega restaurateurs in their place when it became obvious their time spent rubbing elbows with the rich and famous had degraded their skills in the kitchen.

One of the judge critics was Jay Rayner, of The Observer, an experienced critic and - maybe  more importantly - a Brit... one of a group of people who've dispalyed an inborn talent for dry-witted criticism.

After enjoying his performance on TCM, I decided to give his latest book a try: The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner. It's a quick read that takes its readers on a journey they could only experience through the eyes of a renowned, experienced restaurant critic.

Rayner starts out explaining his goal: to find the perfect meal. He has a problem, though, which is the paradoxical plight of all well-established food critics, having two parts: 1) that because of his recognition in the industry, he is no longer in a position to fairly judge whether the cuisine he is served is indicative of the food typically served there, and 2) because of the cushy expense account that covers the cost of his meals, his appreciation for the foods he eats is stunted because he did not, in fact, pay for it.

While relenting that there wasn't much of anything he could do to change the fact that he would be recognized nearly everywhere he went, Rayner makes the bold decision to pay his own money at each restaurant along the way. Nothing, he says, makes us measure the happiness we have gained from our purchases quite like handing over the credit card to a grinning cashier, clerk or waiter. I'm cheap. I hate spending money. So I couldn't agree more.

The stories of dinners eaten, the settings in which and company with which they are consumed, are recounted through a game of global leap frog. Rayner begins in Las Vegas and describes the history of the city and its culinary transformation. From the home of the two dollar buffet to what is now one of the most extravagant culinary centers of the world, the restaurant scene in Las Vegas, he says, is no different from the rest of the glitz and glam. Yes, there is great food to be eaten, but not the perfect meal. The restaurants and their offerings are more about the show (and, thus, the price) than what one normally seeks in dinner.

Next stop is odd to me, as I've never heard anything about it in terms of being one of the top food destinations of the world: Moscow. Rayner is a descendent or Russian Jews so he winds up here with a quest to answer whether deep within him, his soul is yearning for the foods of his heritage. The answer: no. In fact, he doesn't enjoy much of anything he eats while in Moscow, and at this point in the book, I find myself wondering whether this trip to Moscow was fueled by other motives, not explained to the reader. Moscow apparently has little to offer the scene of the world's best food, which isn't a surprise, so why'd he go there?

The third stop, Dubai, is equally fishy for several reasons. First, Dubai is the new Las Vegas. It's an entertainment Mecca in the middle of nowhere. Its focus is more on the extravagant than true quality (and to be honest, it hasn’t even developed a food focus near what Vegas has so far). Secondly, due to predominant religious views in that area, there are strict preparation guidelines regarding meat which completely cripple the restaurants in what is, to many people, the most important element of a special meal. Third, due to its remote location, everything must be flown in which doesn't necessarily disable its restaurants from serving the freshest meats, fruits and vegetables, but does present barriers which one would think must somehow manifest themselves in the end-result. So after the Dubai chapter, I'm firmly believing there are ulterior motives behind the locations he visits in search of the perfect meal. Considering Rayner's fame and ambition, I smell multi-tasking. And I feel a little ripped off.

In Tokyo, things take an exciting turn and we hear stories of exclusive, impossible to find, tiny restaurants to which he is given reservations through his widespread industry connections. Live seafood is plucked from containers by a skilled chef, cooking for the whole dining room, prepared immaculately, or not at all, and wolfed down in moment after moment of unprecedented bliss. Rayner seems to have enjoyed Tokyo the most - though not without some discomfort. I recommend reading this chapter alone, if not the whole book. The rest of the story pales in comparison to his trip to Tokyo.

New York comes next, and reading this section made me grow weary of Rayner's entire viewpoint on the subject of his profession. The chapter becomes almost a list in which he recounts all of the critically acclaimed restaurants and chefs there, rather than the food itself. Through the whole chapter, I felt as though an immature, eager-to-impress prima donna was name dropping. Dufresne, Vonrichten, Ramsay... Per Se, Bernardin, The Waverly. No doubt these are some of the most 'important' chefs and restaurants in the world, but here Rayner's outlook on food has clearly diverged from mine in that to him, the perfect meal should be expected to come from the most opulent, regaled restaurants in the biggest, fanciest food cities in the world. To me, the perfect dining experience needs to be something that is either sought out or serendipitously stumbled upon. There should be some measure of destiny... stars aligning. The perfect dish served in the perfect setting, addressing your psyche... perfectly.

London is his last stop and by the time I reached this chapter, I was as disinterested as it felt like he was. The story proved a sham - this was not a true quest for the perfect meal, just a smattering of reviews and stories from a year of his career mashed together.

In the end, I still found the book worth reading. The stories of extravagant meals, exposure of overpriced restaurants and trips to faraway destinations were a lot of fun. My advice in reading it, however, is not to take its title literally. Read it as a short memoir as opposed to a literal quest. With this approach, I think you'll find enjoyment from the book and avoid feeling as duped as I did.

The Anti-Comfort Food

As soon as I typed it, I realized that the title for this posting would convey the wrong meaning, but I'll keep it and try to explain.

Here's the deal: Thanksgiving always sends me through a cyclical mental process of comfort food desire and then comfort food phobia. Approaching Thanksgiving, like anyone, I start salivating just thinking about the traditional meal - the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes... that uni-colored amalgam of protein and carbs commonly smothered in a blanket of gravy. When the table is set, I go at it. No holding back. One rule - eat until you can't eat anymore. And since both my family and Elizabeth's spend Thanksgiving in Kansas City, somehow I do this for both lunch and dinner on the same day.

I skip breakfast in the morning to save room for lunch. After gorging at lunch, a quick few games of ping pong in my grandpa's basement loosen up some room at the top of my GI tract and suddenly I need pie.

A quick stop back at the house to walk our dog and prep the brussels sprouts for "T2", and off we go again.

Something about drinking a glass of wine while we linger in the kitchen and take in the smells of thanksgiving dinner must boost my metabolism, because only a few short hours after feeling like I would never eat again, I think I'm ravenous and load up another plate. Down the hatch!

The next morning I awake, like the rest of the world, from the depths of an unfathomable food coma and my whacked out food equilibrium is positively screaming for the opposite of comfort food. The anti-comfort food. For me, that means things like crisp vegetables, an abundance of spice (thai chili-spice, not cinnamon-spice) and umami. I want flavors I did not grow up eating. I want Asian food!

Here's one of my favorite Asian recipes from Food and Wine, which we made shortly after our Thanksgiving binge. Whip out the chopsticks to work out your dexterity and top this delicious, salty plate with as much spicy sambal oelek as you can stand. You'll feel like you really worked for this meal, which is a nice change from the previous day's gluttonous display.

Chicken Stir-Fry with Asparagus and Cashews

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup raw cashews
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup chicken stock or low-sodium broth
1 pound asparagus, sliced on the diagonal, 1 inch thick
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup chopped basil
1/4 cup chopped chives
Freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350°. Spread the cashews in a pie plate and toast in the oven for about 8 minutes, until they are nicely browned and fragrant. Let cool.
In a medium bowl, toss the chicken with 1 tablespoon of the fish sauce. In a wok or large skillet, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the chicken in an even layer and cook over high heat, turning once, until browned and just cooked throughout, about 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a clean bowl.
Pour the chicken stock into the wok and bring to a simmer, scraping up any browned bits. Add the asparagus slices, cover and cook over moderate heat until they are crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the asparagus to the bowl along with the chicken.
Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of fish sauce to the wok along with the oyster sauce, lime juice and cayenne pepper. Simmer until the sauce is reduced to 1/3 cup, about 2 minutes. Return the chicken pieces and sliced asparagus to the wok and toss to heat through. Remove the wok from the heat and stir in the cashews, basil and chives. Season the stir-fry with black pepper and serve right away (my note: ...with enough sambal on top to push you out of your comfort zone).

SERVE WITH
Steamed rice.

NOTES
One Serving 369 cal, 17 gm fat, 2.8 gm sat fat, 9 gm carb, 2.4 gm fiber.



Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

R Bar Has Ups and Downs

It's not often that I'm as excited about a restaurant opening as I was when I heard about R Bar. Few people seem to have heard of it so far. It's hidden down in the west bottoms across from the Golden Ox, near Kemper; an area I'm hoping will become revived in a more soulful way than was P&L.

Stoking my excitement, owner Joy Jacobs brought in Alex Pope, former Executive Sous Chef from The American, one of this area's most heralded restaurants, to run the kitchen. I'd been to The American and found some of the high-end menu's items to be rather unsuccessful (like a horrendously salty pumpkin gelee), but others to be exciting and decadent.

What I found at R Bar was a promising, but somewhat perplexing restaurant, showing some of the service issues that new restaurants almost always do. I left R Bar utterly conflicted about how to rate and describe it to others.

From the building's outdoor facade to the inside's decor, it was everything, visually, I was hoping it would be. Cozy, rustic, and a little Western in personality. Fitting, considering the West Bottoms' heritage as a massive, successful cattle stockyard in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The interior was designed by the same designer who put together one of my favorite bars in town - Harry's Country Club in the River Market. If you know Harry's, which looks like Johnny Cash as a bar, R Bar is more like Johnny Cash shaking hands with Cary Grant; Western-meets-early rock n roll, with an added dash of class.

The floors are hard wood and that old hexagonal white tile that has so much character. A beautiful, huge wood bar is offset with shiny bottles and mirrors that sparkle in the otherwise low-lit room. The star of the decor, though, is the giant metal letter R on the North wall, lit with small bulbs. A cool touch which, conincidentally, reminds me of my first apartment - a loft in the River Market - because very similarly, I had a giant letter N on my exposed brick wall. I'd found it at the Asner scrapyard there in the bottoms, and lined it with Christmas lights (wonder if that's where the R came from). For sentimental reasons, R Bar gains a half-napkin upgrade with that feature alone, whether fair or not.

If intimacy is critical to your dining experience, there are four booths in the back of the restaurant you may like. Otherwise, you're out of luck, because 95% of the rest of the seats are the bar and the tables that run along the north wall, where diners sit elbow-to-elbow and sharing conversation is common. Twice during our dinner we chatted with our friendly neighbors about the food but were then annoyed that we couldn't tune them out as they blathered about everyone they knew and exactly how much money they had and where they got it.

Having underestimated R Bar's popularity, we unwisely arrived with no reservation, and after a brief wait were lucky to grab two open seats at the bar. The drink menu is martini-heavy. Not being a big fan of martinis, but wanting to experience one of their signature drinks, I ordered the Corpse Reviver No. 2. The fact that I was still a little hung over from festivities the night before may have led me to this cocktail made with gin, cointreau, lillet blonde, fresh lemon juice and then a tiny drop of absinthe. It was crisp and citrusy, but I didn't need another.

On to dinner we went. Everything on the menu sounded good and deciding proved a difficult adventure, so we were delighted when the free appetizer was delivered. Not an amuse bouche, but a true starter-sized funnel cake, topped with an orange (from paprika) goat cheese sauce. We heard the materialistic neighbors scoff that it had been lambasted in some local critic's review, but we enjoyed it. Could have stood another 25 seconds in the fryer, as it was a tad too soft, but tasty nonetheless.

A light salad next: romaine with savory, smooth bacon vinaigrette, soft, sweet roasted pears and orange rectangles of crunchy butternut squash. Couldn't have been better. A great start.

Next up was the cassoulet slaw, and that's when things took a weird turn. I know cassoulet to be a classic, hearty French dish of beans and salty meats. I always pictured it being like a French version of pork n beans, classier and more complex in flavor than the simple canned American chow. However, Chef Pope takes some rather unexpected liberties with his interpretation. This dish is 90% slaw and 10% cassoulet... if you can consider a simple bean puree to be cassoulet. The off-white cannellini shmear was topped with the heaviest, most over-dressed slaw I'd ever eaten. Its creamy dressing was a promising sounding truffle creme fraiche, but it overpowered the other flavors involved and was an awful combination with the cannellini bean puree; the two earthy flavors together were muddy. Yuck. Moreover, there was just too much creaminess involved. The creme fraiche turned the cabbage into a globby blob, so the whole composition smacked of regurgitation on the tongue. The sage sausage was barely noticeable, and if there was any confit chicken, it was exceedingly well hidden. Overall, a real stinker of a dish that made me wonder what the chef thought he liked about it.

Wiping the "what the heck was that" look off our faces (and drowning it with some delicious yet inexpensive Leaping Lizard 2007 Chardonnay), we moved on to our entree. A seasonal, plump breast of turkey came presented naked as a baby's bottom on a celery root puree and pad of stuffing, with bay leaf gravy and pickled grapes. The odd look of the plain turkey breast was, if not flat-out gross, confusing. Some parsley or even just the gravy and black pepper over top would have made it more comfortable to look at. I have to admit, though, it was easily the most moist turkey breast I'd ever eaten. I had to use my phone's flash light to inspect the inside to convince myself it wasn't undercooked - and it wasn't - so it was truly delicious.

A square, crusty cake of stuffing lay in the gravy, under the turkey, looking almost like carpet padding, but no one ever said stuffing was supposed to look good. I'm not sure of the cooking method, but I believe the stuffing, once cut into its square slice, was perhaps pan fried. It had a much needed courseness that offset the moist bird and creamy puree and gravy just right.

The star, though, was the celery root puree. I am currently obsessed with the stuff. There's a big hairy celery root sitting in my cupboard right now, waiting for me to locate a good recipe that I think will allow me to produce a similar puree of my own. If you haven't had celery root puree, think of mashed potatoes, but instead of the background flavor being that of, well, dirt - like you get with mashed potatoes - CRP leaves a more complex, cleaner flavor on the palette. It was so good, yet so simple, I was dizzy eating it and screaming , internally, for more. MORE!

A garnish of a few split grapes were necessary for cutting the rich, savory components of the dish, but not as successful as I'd hoped. The fact that they were allegedly "pickled" was silly. Grapes have a tight, non-pourous skin and it didn't seem as though their flavor or texture had been affected by the pickling process at all. They were merely halved grapes that fell short of their duty in the composition.

Our other entree was a more enjoyable mushroom tart - a beautiful crust with cheese filling and dark, caramelized shiitake mushrooms on top. It was wonderfully simple in comparison to the other dishes, making the turkey and cassoulet seem over-thought and silly. Had I eaten salad and this entree, only, I'd have beena little disappointed with the portion, but I suppose it was reasonable. (I'd have needed dessert, though.)

When this meal was over, I was almost relieved. The food was a little too much of a roller coaster for me that night, but with such a fantastic vibe, had I not already done so much partying that weekend I could have sat there for another hour and half, splitting a second bottle of wine and enjoying the live music and  atmosphere.

Given the pedigree of the chef and the fun ingredients used throughout the menu, I'm actually eager to return to R Bar. It may have a couple bombs on its menu now, but I think there's some greatness there, too. And I want to see what the spring menu will entail.

But for now, I'll have to think of it as a three napkin restaurant with a two napkin rating, because the fantastic atmosphere fell victim to that god-awful cassoulet mess. I hope Chef Pope keeps editing.

Rating: two napkins