Sublime

even though molten cheese adhered like napalm to the roof of my mouth and I was never sure if I was dislodging mozzarella from behind my braces or a small piece of my own seared flesh.

I have a great fondness for boudin noir, which I think of as one of the aristocrats of the sausage family—a blood sausage made with pork, usually served on a warm bed of thinly sliced cooked apples. Smooth and rich and dark, it is a dish to be eaten in front of the fire on a day when there is frost on the ground and an icy wind butting against the

burgundy

“But I thought you helped casinos?” I asked him. He beamed a sly, glazed-over grin. “Sometimes, my friend,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, his voice falling to just above a whisper, “you have to play both sides.”

I know a vegetarian who can’t pass up the occasional bite of roasted duck, avid carnivores who order soy lattes, and cooks at award-winning earth-to-table restaurants who have a fondness for Coke Slurpees and late-night fast-food drive-thrus. I love that!—it seems very human.

Ernest signaled the waiter to replenish the daiquiris. Looking at my littered plate, he gave me a puzzled look. “Why’d you leave the shrimp heads? That’s the best part.” He picked one up and crunched it happily. I crunched one but not happily.

Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As is Nicolas Freleng's The Kitchen, David Blum's Flash in the Pan, the Batterberrys' fine account of American restaurant history, On the Town in New York, and Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Read the old masters: Escoffier, Bocuse et al as well as the Young Turks: Keller, Marco-Pierre

boxes in the States: Tastee

dyspeptic