Read or listen to this excerpt from the first chapter ofDirt.
He was out of breath and sizable, not tall but round, and impossible to miss.
He had a modest white beard, a voluminous black shirt, tails untucked, and baggy black trousers.
(Baggy chef pants, I realize now.)
I studied him, wondering: I don’t know him, do I?
Of course I knew him!
By what algorithm of memory and intelligence could I not have recognized him?
Any moment the gate would open.
I waited, wondering if I should be offended.
As the man made his dash, I stepped into his path and, smack, we collided.
We stared at each other.
We were close enough to kiss.
His eyes darted between my nose and my lips.
It was an easy, uninhibited laugh.
It was more giggle than laugh.
It could have been the sound a boy makes on being tickled.
I would learn to recognize that laugh high-pitched and sometimes beyond controlling and love it.
I spotted him in the distance, padding down a platform.
In the last car, we found facing seats, with a table between.
I put our suitcases up on the rack and paused.
The window, the light, the October slant of it.
I had been here before, on this very same day of the calendar.
We were both magazine editors.
I was atThe New Yorker.
She was atHarper’s Bazaar.
I wanted to be taught by Italians how to make their food and write about it.
Couldn’t we go together?
It wasn’t really a question.
We never went back to being editors.
In the aftermath, I wanted to do France.
It wasn’t next on the list (as in Then we’ll do Japan!").
But I could never imagine how that might happen.
Jessica was the only one who identified all twelve wines.
Jean-Luc was baffled, and they were his wines.
(“Where do you work?
he asked her.)
By her second class, she discovered that she was pregnant.
It was a wonderful moment.
We promised ourselves that our lives would not change.
We will be gypsies, she said.
We imagined a worldly infant suspended in a sling contraption.
In fact, we panicked (a little).
The train pulled out.
Baltimore, the first stop, was half an hour away.
It wasn’t a mystery, was it?
Weren’t their names George and Frederick?
It also wasn’t so complicated I needed a kitchen and I hadn’t found one yet.
Once in a kitchen, I would pick up the skills.
I had met Dorothy Hamilton at another James Beard event, a charity gala and auction.
Hamilton ran what was then called the French Culinary Institute.
She wasn’t paid for it.
She implemented the x in her spare time.
I ran my idea by her: the learning-on-the-job shtick, etc.
“France is not Italy, she said.
You may, she added diplomatically, want to attend a cooking school.
I described what I’d done in Italy: i.e., arriving and figuring it out.
Historically, chefs have always learned on the job.
I mused), and follow that with three months in Paris.
She said nothing, as if pretending to reflect on my plan.
She asked, Do you know Daniel Boulud?
Boulud is America’s most successful serious French chef.
“He grew up near Lyon, Hamilton said.
“Yes, I’d heard that.
I had been to Lyon once, to get a bus at six in the morning.
I had no sense of it except that it seemed far away.
“Some say that it is the gastronomical capital of the world.
“Yes, I had heard that, too.
She could have been talking to my toddlers.
The training, the discipline, the rigor.
Hamilton drew the word out, slowly, like a nail.
For two years, Daniel cut carrots.”
Carrots, I said, are very important.”
You say you want to work in France for three months.
She illustrated the number with her fingers.
And what do you think you will learn?
I wasn’t about to answer.
“I will tell you what you will learn.
The auction opened and bidding commenced.
She gave me a copy of her school’s textbook,The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Cuisine.
I found a chair in the corner.
The book was impressively ponderous, 496 big landscape pages of double columns and how-to pictures.
I opened it and landed on Theory: General Information About Fish Mousseline.
Ten pages were dedicated to making a sauce from an egg.
The philosophy of a fricassee got three.
My life had been a happy one, not quite knowing what a fricassee was.
What person would I have to become to master half of this?
Hamilton sent one of the guests, Dan Barber, over to me.
Barber ran two restaurants, both called Blue Hill, one in Manhattan and the other on a farm.
I knew him and liked his cooking.
It was ferociously local and uncompromisingly flavor-dedicated.
He asked about my French project, but before I could answer he interrupted me.
“French training, he declared.
The statement was unequivocal.
It was also refreshing.
At the time, the charisma of France was at a low point.
People weren’t going there to learn how to cook.
They went to extreme outposts of the Iberian peninsula, or isolated valleys in Sweden during the winter.
I quickly spot cooks who haven’t been to France.
Their food is always he hesitated, looking for the right word well, compromised.
He paused so that I would appreciate the implications.
“You should work for Rostang.
Michel Rostang, he said.
The tone was imperious.
It was an instruction.
I knew the name.
Paris, one of the fancy guys linen tablecloths, art on the walls.
“Learn the classics.
I nodded, took out a notebook, and wrote: Rostang.
“Because Barber leaned in close he is the one I trained with.
“You worked in Paris!
came out as a loud blurt.
Barber looked over his shoulder, as if embarrassed.
I hadn’t meant to blurt.
I was just surprised.
“Yes, I worked in Paris.
The tone was: Duh?
I also hadn’t noticed that he was wearing a beret.
“You speak French?
Barber sits on panels in Washington and knew about the chromosome constitution of Hudson Valley garlic root.
The Frenchness was confusing.
Do people know this about you?
you’re free to’t get the skills anywhere else.
We reached the Chesapeake, its vast brackish sea, America’s largest estuary.
France would be six hours ahead, a Saturday evening, the dinner service about to start.
I’d lived in England for twenty years.
There it had been easy to imagine France.
It was a ferry away.
You could drive there.
A flight was an hour.
It appeared to be a slide show of French food.
Why did I think it was French?
Because the plates looked like paintings?
Because they had a sauce?
They appeared, one after another, a fade, a new image, very Ken Burns.
I turned to get a closer look and spotted a guy, about thirty.
I studied him: short hair, military buzz, skinny, tiny shoulders.
I couldn’t tell.
He didn’t speak.
He looked like a football thug.
It was his meanness.
I addressed my wife.
I nodded in the direction of the computer.
She twisted in her seat, looked, and sat back down.
God is talking to you.
“God doesn’t talk to me.
I peered over her shoulder.
Another guy was looking at the screen, his back to me.
It was the queue jumper.
I asked my wife, Should I talk to him?
“I think I know him.
Unless I am wrong.
I rose and walked to his table.
I am sorry to interrupt.
I do know this man.
It started with M.”
Michelin?
They stared up at me, this now famous-seeming James Beard guy and his hooligan.
I thought: Wow.
This is the man I just assaulted.
I said, Are you a chef ?”
I added, Are you, in fact, a very famous chef … by chance?”
The man didn’t move.
Maybe he didn’t speak English.
He took a breath.
Yes, he said, I am a famous chef.
I am very famous.
He was grand a little ridiculous, but grand people often are.
Allow me to introduce myself.
He extended his hand as though I should kiss it (Panic!
and declared, I am Paul Bocuse.
I’d got it wrong!
I’d assaulted Paul Bocuse?
Bocuse is the most celebrated French chef in the world!
Am I meeting Bocuse?
Now I was confused.
Also, wasn’t Bocuse 115 years old?
And didn’t he live in Lyon?
“No, no, no, no, the man said.
I am only joking.
(Oh, joke, right, funny.)
“I am not Paul Bocuse.”
“Paul Bocuse is dead.
I am being made fun of, and Paul Bocuse is dead!)
“Or maybe he’s not dead.”
(He wasn’t.)
“I don’t actually know.
I am Michel Richard.
The chef and patron of Citronelle, Washington, D.C.’s finest restaurant.
Michel he paused to give the surname the full operatic treatment Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-CHARD!
Copyright 2020 by Bill Buford.
Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Unlock Access to AARP Members Edition
Already a Member?Login
