#400 Cool-inary

I once was a cook in a restaurant. We were new in town so we were very interested in the reactions of our customers to our food. We had this one guy who came in about every lunch. He gobbled, literally gobbled, down his food, with loud, smacking, gustatory grunts of satisfaction. It was pretty obvious this guy liked what he was eating. Had another guy, he was pretty quiet. Took smaller bites, seemed to take more time chewing, looking off into space with what appeared to be an expression of appreciation, but it was hard to tell. Never actually ate the whole plate, but would always ask for a doggy bag. One time I asked him what he did with the leftovers. “I eat them later on,” he said, as if my question was a stupid as it sounded. “Your leftovers are almost as good as when the meal is fresh.” I guess you could call it a complement. But it was hard to get. It was a slightly more involved and considered opinion than, say, loudly emptying the plate inside of five minutes. So part of me was content to gratify the gobbler but part of me wanted to please the picky eater. What finally decided it was when I was out at another Italian restaurant one night doing some industrial spying. The plate of food I had in front of me, a combination of spaghetti and lasagna, was nasty to the nth degree, the sauce was burnt, the meat in it tasted half rancid and the noodles had gone past al dente somewhere in the previous decade of over-boiling they must have been subjected to. You’ll never guess who came into the restaurant. The gobbler. He ordered what appeared to be the same dish I had. And when it came to his table, reeking of too much oregano, he gobbled it down with all the grunts, lip smacks, and general hog slopping he did at my place. I’ve gone for the picky eaters ever since. Because I realized, if I want to be good at something, I need to be tested in a hotter crucible. To make another analogy: Banging out an iron sword is relatively easy. Forging steel is hard. Iron melts at a lower temperature and is easier to work with and mold to the desired shape. Steel is a lot harder to work but the results are so much more satisfying. Because steel lasts and lasts. It doesn’t chip, warp and lose its shape, it holds an edge, it doesn’t get rusty, and it doesn’t snap off just when you need it the most. So if I wanted to be good at cooking, I needed customers who would tell me the truth. I needed a critic, not a gobbler. And so the epicurean connoisseur that ate his food slowly and silently savored every bite became my best customer. I asked him once if he’d ever been to the restaurant where I had seen the gobbler wolfing down that horrible mess. He said once. He felt sick for a week afterwards. “At least they’re cheap,” I said. “Yeah,” he said. “I can get you a big heaping plate of cowpie. For free. But free cowpie is still¾cowpie. You get what you pay for.”
America, ya gotta love it.