Book Review: 'The Last Chinese Chef', by Nicole Mones

 

How do you distill the culinary essence of 5000 years of history into a single short book?

<= Kinda like this. Note the cover blurb by Ruch Reichl- which at the time was shorthand for people in food media to take the book somewhat seriously, and to help goad dabblers into a purchase. (The other cover, seen below, is better.)

The Last Chinese Chef is one of those books where even if you don't know a thing about the subject matter to start, you will by the end. Moreso, you'll likely be grateful for it. The more you know to start with though, the better you'll probably like it. I'm definitely a fan of this approach, which the book handles well- I would recommend it to anyone who has a care for the relationship between food and culture, food and family, or food and more food! In that way it's a lot like a Fuschia Dunlop book, which makes perfect sense given both the subject matter and the intended perspectives.

Written by Nicole Mones, who also penned Lost In Translation (you may have seen the movie adaptation, and if not you should- it's not the easiest watch but Bill Murray gives a truly inspired performance), it weaves the story of a food writer and a great chef into an already bright tapestry of Chinese literature, art, culture, and food.

Much of the main story is outlined by parables and Chinese idioms which serve to flesh out the story, making it seem a liiiittle less thin than it would otherwise read. While I noticed, knowing full well who this book was marketed at, not everyone will notice or even care. There are a fair number of interesting coincidences in the book too, but that's just... sort of how literature works in settings like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China anyway. It's really hard to break out of that whole 'Asian Mystique' trope, I've found.

This manuscript also bears a lot of underlying resemblance to Jennifer Lee's "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles", which I'll post a review for sometime this week. Not in execution of course, but rather in intent. Serving not only to educate, but to illuminate and fascinate the reader. It reveals answers to questions you might not know you had, and subtly brings out the desire to explore further even as it does.

There's one fairly robust caveat to the book though. It was published in 2007, and the story's then too- in the period leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Using that context, the story fits superbly- the journey of a chef alongside the journey of his homeland, both seeking greatness, belonging, and approval as what they were and what they strive to be. The deliberate time and place setting serves to highlight the past, analyze the present, and inspire hope for things yet to come. It was a superbly chosen parallel at the time, but looking at it now? The messages ring hollow indeed.

In spite of that one bit of bother, this book is well worth a read. It might be indirect in its messages, but they could never be called vague. Chinese style, by a non-Chinese.

And that's the point, really. Read it- you'll see what I mean.

Ugh. My head.

 

I have never minded the dentist. But I've been too poor for anything resembling viable dental care for... nigh on twenty years.

Root canals aren't so bad, I guess.

But I really wish that teeth weren't mistreated as Luxury Bones by the US imitation of a healthcare system. I'm a foodservice professional. I need my mouth in perfect condition. It should never be a worry for me. Instead, I'm probably going to go into an appalling amount of debt just to return to normalcy.

At this point in my life, my share of contribution is long since done. I am obliged provisioning in accordance with that. Debts are not things I owe- they are things I am owed.

I am likely to die before I ever manage to claim even the smallest fraction of them.

A quandary.

 

How does one explain to a well-known well-poisoner that the cause of their social isolation is staring at them in the mirror? 

Say, for example, you built an environment that gathered people together and evolved over a couple of decades into a happy, thriving community, all at essentially no cost.

Would you be happy you did something that enriched all those lives, that turned them into more than the sum of their parts? 

Or would you expect to be reliably fawned over, get upset and offended when it didn't always happen, eventually wipe out the whole thing in a fit of pique, then continue to complain after generously being invited into its replacement by those who gathered and made the place anew?

Damn good thing the member list survived, is all I'll say.

The psychological breakdown of this sort of aberrant behaviour is both interesting and topical. Insecurity induced selfishness accounts for a lot, and adding in a constant need for positive reinforcement, approval, validation, etc. is no real reach.

But to also be petty, vindictive, and passive aggressive, nettling people while pretending at victimhood just makes you seem a thorn in everyone's side.

Small wonder they're a pariah- could take their win from the tech money lottery and be content. But no.

Most of the people they're bitching about remain a community at least in part because they weren't so lucky, and benefit from mutual support in times of trouble. Don't think for a moment I'm not one of them, either. A couple years ago during the plague, the UV coating on my eyeglass lenses fragmented. Was like looking through a window spiderwebbed with cracks. Wearing them gave me splitting headaches every single day, and I can't see a damn thing without them. But I hadn't had a job since 2020 when the plague shut everything down- I was flat broke. So a friend from that group sent me a couple hundred bucks. Didn't ask, it just showed up one day.

There's a reason my Christmas/holiday card list is so long. I pay that generosity both back and forward as best I can. Even if it's only a couple times a year, it never hurts to remind people that you're thankful to have them in your life.

This sort of social ostracizing happens when you don't do that.

Or when you don't even know how.

Book Review: "Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies guide to hosting the perfect funeral", by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hayes

I’ll start by stating the obvious: This book is about a very different world from mine.  

But a world that is, in its own way, still familiar.

"Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies guide to hosting the perfect funeral"

The title alone evokes a lot of things, centered around a tradition so insular and severe it borders on self-parody, and after reading... I'm not sure which side of the line it's on.

Now as someone who has been a chef, caterer, and many other things, event planning is not new to me. I’ve done weddings, birthdays, baby showers, book releases, orgies, and plenty of other interesting happenings- but funerals are one I haven't been tapped for. Now I’m not inexperienced with them by any means- I've been to… well, a lot. 

But there's a world of difference between going to one and handling one. You can in theory attend, grieve, and be gone, and think no more of it. However, not everyone does, or even can. To those who live in the Delta (shorthand for a sizeable chunk of the American Deep South), funerals are an experience like no other, one that's not unlike like surfing a wave, or carving down a slope of fresh powder. There's what's historically or traditionally expected, the variables and variations on the theme, and hidden under a thin veneer of Maybe lies the vast potential for comedic catastrophe.

Spoiling the book would be difficult, because so much of it has eased into the cultural subconscious. But if I attempt to add much in the way of detail, the mood will be off and the impact will suffer, so I'll keep it short.

One key component of funerals like this is something the book's authors are very dedicated to: community. It may not be pretty, and it may not even be nice. But it's theirs, and so it's worth fighting for. Not everyone can, will, or even should find their own community in which to thrive. But once you've got one? People do tend to dig in- and this book makes much and more of that tendency to great effect.

Another key made clear this book is Food. Funereal tradition is absolutely awash in food, so there are a lot of recipes in this book- enough that there's an index in the back. While many of these use the term 'recipe' as loosely as has ever been allowed, and quite deliberately so, Being Dead Is No Excuse goes into painstaking detail about the minutiae of the food and drink of the Southern funeral tradition. In no small part this is a cookbook full of funereal foods that could easily lead to a follow-up death- and they won't deny it for a second. Bring on the mayo and the cream of mushroom soup.

What is perhaps the most interesting part of it all is the underlying Christian denominational turf war- but I'll leave it at that because the joy is truly in the telling.

If you want a good laugh in the manner of Noises Off or perhaps My Fair Lady, this will do you right. I had my eyes closed and my face in my hands at many a point. Sometimes from the stories, sometimes from the snacks, but always with a smile.

Book Review: "Baking Yesteryear", by B. Dylan Hollis

Food media has done some Weird Shit in its time- this is known. But the notion of short form cooking with unusual or unexpectedly interesting recipes is about as common and timeless as it gets (or as much so as the internet gets, at least). That said, carving out a niche of one's own while doing something comparatively common is not easy, requiring a vast amount of luck, charisma, and apparently hair gel. 

Friends would reliably send me little clips of this fellow B. Dylan Hollis. I believe my first experience was "Ice Cream Bread", which I thought about for a second and went "Oh, it's going to end up like pound cake!" before hitting play  (I was right, for the record, and it's a pretty good one.) I looked with care, considered the source, and made a point to take notes on any of them I happened to see. Because it might be a gimmick, but it's a solid gimmick.

Random and/or retro recipes are inevitably a roll of the dice- something I know all too well, having no small amount of the same sorts of cookbooks he pulls from for many of his clips, and for much the same reasons. No small part of the fun of those recipes (and in this case watching him) is wondering of what's actually going to happen, and his endearing boyish charm more than covers the rest. He's the strawberry mimosa sort of twink whose hair I want to muss, then grin at the petulantly frazzled result before I pull him onto the couch to cuddle and watch a movie. If he happens to read this... blush away, kid.

But this is less about his online presence and more about his first book. Not too long before his second one will come out (it's due in May of this year) I decided to pull Baking Yesteryear from the library's shelf and give it a proper look. Yes, I'm a little late to the party, but that's the usual for a poverty-stricken professional like me. Besides, it's not like the recipes are new! Everything in the book is 20th century, and cuts out in the 80s somewhere. There's no real rush- they'll keep a little longer!

The intensity and enthusiasm Hollis has for desserts comes through in near every sentence of the book as readily as it does in his innumerable cooking and baking video clips. In his own words: "it dawned on me that each recipe writer was, in their own way, simply trying to share something that made them feel good... the sharing of a dessert and how to make it was an exercise in sharing happiness." It has the ring of truth to it, and contrived or not, brand or not, it's delightfully charming and as endearing as can be. 

His mien is more or less 'Favorite Grandson goes through Grandma's cookbooks as saucily as if he were a guest on The Golden Girls'. So... me, with more glitter and pizazz but far less precision and expertise. He himself also notes “I’ve often said I’m perhaps one of the only well-known food creators on the internet who hasn’t a clue what he’s doing”.

...I had to pause for a moment there and just laugh. 

And laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Such a dear sweet innocent boy. Small wonder his earnest words ring true!

Before the culinary trip through time begins though, there's a note or two. The recipes break from modern convention and call for salted butter unless otherwise specified. Recall that refrigeration is a 20th century thing, and remained somewhat rare till midcentury. Given butter's consistent expense, it was commonly sold salted to ensure longer shelf life. 

Hollis also hedges his bets here by offering terminology, common ingredients, measurement conversions, and his default cookie scoop (It's a #60, if you were wondering. Mine's a #50- I like them a little bigger.) as well as a superlative pie crust recipe and a basic vanilla buttercream frosting. Those last two likely in case some of the potential components of the recipes as written seem a touch too intimidating or equipment-prohibitive (Not everyone owns a candy thermometer or stand mixer, after all!). He mentions by name the Boiled Frosting, which sounds equal parts complicated and outlandish until you read it- it's basically just Swiss Meringue. Tricky, yes, but not outlandish at all. 

Baking Yesteryear's recipes go through most of the 20th century, decade by decade beginning with the 1900s. Every decade begins with no small amount of stage-setting, sprinkled with personal anecdotes, historical miscellany, and other cleverness to keep you reading and put you in the proper frame of mind for the time and place. Each is as unique as the recipes and circumstances from which they came, and read hungrily.

There are three sections that aren't decades though.

Dates: Something he adores but never seems to get enough of.

No-Bake: Because there were enough of them to justify a separate category.

Worst of the Worst: Explains itself, really. Whooooooo boy.

Bereft of ego, I'm probably one of the best possible people to review this sort of book. I know exactly what Dylan's talking about, where it's coming from, where his approach is coming from, and how to approach it. On every relevant level I understand the subtext- including how to jumble subtext right.

For someone who didn't do food for a living until now, he did a damn fine job with this book. The recipes are clear, succinct, and none too complicated. The concept is sound, the execution stellar, and the voice underneath as clear as can be. It's a good solid read that takes a lot of old things and brings them out of mothballs into the light again. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, and it's not the most useful as a practical cookbook, but as a compiled reference text, coffee table book, and way to get in touch with Grandma, it's a fine work indeed.

With minimal fanfare, Draeger's San Mateo is closing for good.

 

Now I don't live in San Mateo any longer, but I'm not at all surprised to see this happening: SFGate: Gourmet Bay Area grocery store closing after nearly three decades
 There were rumors during the plague that the plot of land had been sold -the buyer varied depending on who you talked to-, but the flux of the pandemic let a lot of useful intel slip by unnoticed.

Let me add that I no longer have skin in the game as far as Draeger's goes. I was one of their cooking school's lead instructors for most of the 2010s, and enjoyed myself thoroughly there. An almost-independent department, we were a solid moneymaker, and what we brought in from private events and classes subsidized the in-house restaurant 'Viognier' quite well. The pandemic closed the cooking school for what we all thought was for good, (Worth mentioning that the restaurant permanently closed at the same time. The story in SFGate talks about a decline in fine dining... but that dining room was empty more often than not.) and so the Scions of the Draeger's Cooking School scattered. 

I'll miss that place. We had a lot of good times there, as a department. Abby ran a delightfully tight ship, and had the most incredible Customer Service mien I've ever seen in action. Oliver and the wine crew were extraordinary, and the housewares department was something out of legend. Jorge was a wizard with that stuff- truly incredible sense of style and a knack for placement that managed to make egregious expense avoid looking tacky. No small feat.

Heading back to downtown San Mateo is going to be a very different thing as the next few years go on. I wonder how this supposed mixed-use space is going to look... "Developer Lane Partners is planning to erect around 100,000 square feet of office space and 10 below-market-rate units, with around 17,000 square feet dedicated to an unnamed grocery store, according to the San Mateo Daily Journal"

That's corporate construction speak for "We want to pretend we're making this a more livable space while gouging the city and the locals". It's also interesting that the grocery store is unnamed, because one of the rumored buyers of this location was Target. Their grocery would do some most unpleasantly tacky things to the look of downtown, and I do hope that's not what ends up in the location. Blech.

I have contacts down there still, so hopefully there will be more information as things develop. Assuming they do, of course. We'll see.

Book Review: "The Man Who Ate Too Much" by John Birdsall

 

A James Beard Biography is a very tricky thing to look at. The man showed a refreshingly simple face to the world, full of bonhomie and circumstantially cogent expertise- enough to get interest, but not enough to get in trouble…mostly. A fine showman, exemplifying ‘larger than life’. But as with so many others, underneath the surface was the relentless tide of insecurity that comes from being so much more than he ever thought was safe to reveal. And so we have “The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard”, by one John Birdsall. A fellow culinarian and author (ironically, a two-time James Beard Award winner) who, as I read between the lines, seems to harbor many sentiments not unlike my own about the man. But this is Beard’s bio rather than Birdsall’s, so let us be about it.

First and foremost, the man known as James Beard came from luxury, and with connections. The reassembled minutiae of his early years is awash in expansive excess. Months spent in far-off locales, not even working for ages at a time- something utterly unthinkable for almost anyone who might pick this book up today. It boggles the mind to see how carefree people once had the privilege to be. Given such ease, how much more could have been done is a hard thing to consider. Nonetheless, his ability to flimflam fickle fortune began early and never ceased, blind luck leading him over and over to the absolute perfect persons to kickstart every facet of what would become his career, and with a mix of relentless clever schmoozing and discreet deference, such ways were kept open as long as might have been managed.

Made abundantly clear over and over again is Beard's knack for keeping things quiet till the time was right. His first cookbook? Largely pilfered recipes from early business partners and sometime socialites, mingled with mostly made-up attributions, all hidden behind an ironclad façade of rambunctious reputability- in what would seem to eventually become a tradition. A giant who stands on the shoulders of others, their faces carefully, even artfully obscured. People, ideas, opinions, all devoid of definition- for the protection of the man behind their use.

This biography also makes no small point of viewing the man through the lens of his queerness, but it's an approach far more robust than Beard’s own. Known in abstract, if not in common, James Beard lived the life of a man who wished to hear the music of love but knew not from whence the tune might come, nor how to carry it. Deeply repressed by the culture around him and the needs of the moment, sharp and acerbic beneath the bombast of his public face, Beard’s well-concealed intimates come across as ephemeral as his expertise often was. Small wonder so much of his life seemed so lonely.

More bothersome still, work ethic and disciplined consistency were the man’s lifelong bugbears. He never once managed a repute for reliability, something truly miraculous for one who managed to find his sort of success in the world of food- where showing up five minutes early, ready to go full speed for the next however long has ever been the standard.

What that and so much else of this manuscript also none-too-quietly shouts is how exhaustingly easy it can be for someone of means to succeed whether they deserve the privilege or not. To dawdle about universities, flirting with professors and professionals. To have friends get you jobs teaching things you know little and less about, reading two weeks ahead of your students to maintain the charade. To breathe a false life and meaning into illusion via artifice and imagination. Miracles of days gone by, impossible now.

The years passed, the man aged, the world changed, and then he was gone from it. I suspect the notion of a true successor had vanished from Beard’s mind decades in the past, but that of a legacy was one he held tightly to, and so he maintained his disciplined discretion all the way to the end. A long, rich, full-seeming life, yet somehow as thoroughly hidden away as could possibly be.

In some ways, it's best he died when he did. Fragile as his mental health was, the AIDS crisis would surely have broken him, as it did so many it didn’t kill. Perhaps worse still is what later became of the world in which we now pretend to live. Life’s whimsy and joy has been ruthlessly stripped away by those born to wealth then raised to selfishness and greed. Men like James Beard are ground up and molded into nameless drudges in flavorless locales with no hopes, dreams, or futures. I know many of them. I worry I may well be one, no matter my mastery.

If you wish to read a fine story, The Man Who Ate Too Much will serve you well. The best way to remember a showman like Beard is, perhaps, through the telling of his tale in a manner he’d understand. One can hear his voice in the pages- both the one you’d hear in public… and the much quieter one at the back of his mind he tried so hard to forget.