Best Food Writing 2010 Part 5

AU REVOIR TO ALL THAT.

By Michael Steinberger From Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France

Has France-the country that gave the world haute cuisine haute cuisine-truly ceded its place as the epicenter of all things culinary? Known for his controversial wine columns in Slate.com, journalist Michael Steinberger argues the case in fascinating detail.

On an uncomfortably warm September evening in 1999, I swapped my wife for a duck liver. The unplanned exchange took place at Au Crocodile, a Michelin three-star restaurant in the city of Strasbourg, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. We had gone to Crocodile for dinner and, at the urging of our waiter, had chosen for our main course one of Chef emile Jung's signature dishes, Foie de Canard et ecailles de Truffe en Croute de Sel, Baeckeofe de Legumes Foie de Canard et ecailles de Truffe en Croute de Sel, Baeckeofe de Legumes. Baeckeofe is a traditional Alsatian stew made of potatoes, onions, carrots, leeks, and several different meats. Jung, possessed of that particular Gallic genius for transforming quotidian fare into high cuisine, served a version of baeckeofe in which the meats were replaced by an entire lobe of duck liver, which was bathed in a truffled bouillon with root vegetables and cooked in a sealed terrine. The seal was broken at the table, and as soon as the gorgeous pink-gray liver was lifted out of its crypt and the first, pungent whiff of black truffles came our way, I knew our palates were about to experience rapture. Sure enough, for the ten minutes or so that it took us to consume the dish, the only sounds we emitted were some barely suppressed grunts and moans. The baeckeofe was outrageously good-the liver a velvety, earthy, voluptuous ma.s.s, the bouillon an intensely flavored broth that flattered everything it touched.

We had just finished dessert when Jung, a beefy, jovial man who looked to be in his mid-fifties, appeared at our table. We thanked him profusely for the meal, and my wife, an editor for a food magazine, asked about some of the preparations. From the look on his face, he was smitten with her, and after enthusiastically fielding her questions, he invited her to tour the kitchen with him. "We'll leave him here," he said, pointing at me. As my wife got up from the table, Jung eyed her lasciviously and said, "You are a mango woman!" which I took to be a reference to her somewhat exotic looks (she is half-American, half-j.a.panese). She laughed nervously; I laughed heartily. As Jung squired her off to the kitchen, I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of Gewurztraminer.

By now, it was midnight, the dining room was almost empty, and the staff had begun discreetly tidying up. After some minutes had pa.s.sed, Madame Jung, a lean woman with frosted blonde hair who oversaw the front of the restaurant, approached my table, wearing a put-upon smile which suggested this wasn't the first time her husband had taken a young female guest to see his pots and pans. Perhaps hoping to commiserate, she asked me if everything was okay. "Bien sur," I immediately replied, with an enthusiasm that appeared to take her by surprise. I was in too much of a stupor to engage in a lengthy conversation, but had I been able to summon the words, I would have told her that her husband had just served me one of the finest dishes I'd ever eaten; that surrendering my wife (in a manner of speaking) was a small price to pay for such satisfaction; and that I'd have gladly waited at the table till daybreak if that's what it took to fully convey my grat.i.tude to Monsieur Jung.

In the end, I didn't have to wait quite that long. After perhaps forty-five minutes, Jung returned my wife to the table. She came back bearing gifts: two bottles of the chef's own late-harvest Tokay Pinot Gris and, curiously, a cold quail stuffed with foie gras, which had been wrapped in aluminum foil so that we could take it with us. We thanked him again for the memorable dinner and his generosity, and then he showed us to the door. There, I received a perfunctory handshake, while my wife got two drawn-out pecks, one to each cheek. She got two more out in front of the restaurant, and as we walked down the street toward our hotel, Jung joyfully shouted after her, "You are a mango woman!" his booming voice piercing the humid night air.

Early the next morning, driving from Strasbourg to Reims in a two-door Peugeot that felt as if it was about to come apart from metal fatigue, my wife and I made breakfast of the quail. We didn't have utensils, so we pa.s.sed it back and forth, ripping it apart with our hands and teeth. As we wound our way through the low, rolling hills of northeast France, silently putting the cold creature to an ignominious end, I couldn't help but marvel at what had transpired. Where but in France could a plate of food set in motion a chain of events that would find you whimpering with ecstasy in the middle of a restaurant; giving the chef carte blanche to hit on your wife, to the evident dismay of his wife; and joyfully gorging yourself just after sunrise the next day on a bird bearing the liver of another bird, a gift bestowed on your wife by said chef as a token of his l.u.s.t? The question answered itself: This sort of thing could surely only happen in France, and at that moment, not for the first time, I experienced the most overwhelming surge of affection for her.

I FIRST WENT TO FRANCE as a thirteen-year-old, in the company of my parents and my brother, and it was during this trip that I, like many other visitors there, experienced the Great Awakening-the moment at the table that changes entirely one's relations.h.i.+p to food. It was a vegetable that administered the shock for me: Specifically, it was the baby peas (drowned in b.u.t.ter, of course) served at a nondescript hotel in the city of Blois, in the Loire Valley, that caused me to realize that food could be a source of gratification and not just a means of sustenance-that mealtime could be the highlight of the day, not simply a break from the day's activities.

A few days later, while driving south to the Rhone Valley, my parents decided to splurge on lunch at a two-star restaurant called Au Chapon Fin, in the town of Thoissey, a few miles off the A6 in the Macon region. I didn't know at the time that it was a restaurant with a long and ill.u.s.trious history (among its claims to fame: It was where Albert Camus ate his last meal before the car crash that killed him in 1960), nor can I recollect many details of the meal. I remember having a pate to start, followed by a big piece of chicken, and that both were excellent, but that's about it. However, I vividly recall being struck by the sumptuousness of the dining room. The tuxedoed staff, the thick white tablecloths, the monogrammed plates, the heavy silverware, the ornate ice buckets-it was the most elegant restaurant I'd ever seen. Every table was filled with impeccably attired, perfectly mannered French families. I hadn't yet heard of Baudelaire, but this was my first experience of that particular state of bliss he described as luxe, calme, et volupte luxe, calme, et volupte (richness, calm, and pleasure), and I found it enthralling. (richness, calm, and pleasure), and I found it enthralling.

Other trips to France followed, and in time, France became not just the place that fed me better than any other, but an emotional touchstone. In low moments, nothing lifted my mood like the thought of Paris-the thought of eating in Paris, that is. When I moved to Hong Kong in 1994, I found a cafe called DeliFrance (part of a local chain by the same name) that quickly became the site of my morning ritual; reading the International Herald Tribune International Herald Tribune over a watery cappuccino and a limp, greasy croissant, I imagined I was having breakfast in Paris, and the thought filled me with contentment. Most of the time, though, I was acutely aware that I was not in Paris. On several occasions, my comings and goings from Hong Kong's airport coincided with the departure of Air France's nightly flight to Paris. The sight of that 747 taxiing out to the runway always prompted the same thought: Lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. over a watery cappuccino and a limp, greasy croissant, I imagined I was having breakfast in Paris, and the thought filled me with contentment. Most of the time, though, I was acutely aware that I was not in Paris. On several occasions, my comings and goings from Hong Kong's airport coincided with the departure of Air France's nightly flight to Paris. The sight of that 747 taxiing out to the runway always prompted the same thought: Lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

In 1997, a few months after I moved back to the United States, the New Yorker New Yorker published an article by Adam Gopnik asking, "Is There a Crisis in French Cooking?" The essay was vintage Gopnik-witty, well observed, and bristling with insight. Gopnik, then serving as the magazine's Paris correspondent, suggested that French cuisine had lost its sizzle: It had become rigid, sentimental, impossibly expensive, and dull. The "muse of cooking," as he put it, had moved on-to New York, San Francisco, Sydney, London. In these cities, the restaurants exuded a dynamism that was now increasingly hard to find in Paris. "All this," wrote Gopnik, "makes a Francophile eating in Paris feel a little like a turn-of-the-century clergyman who has just read Robert Ingersoll: you try to keep the faith, but Doubts keep creeping in." published an article by Adam Gopnik asking, "Is There a Crisis in French Cooking?" The essay was vintage Gopnik-witty, well observed, and bristling with insight. Gopnik, then serving as the magazine's Paris correspondent, suggested that French cuisine had lost its sizzle: It had become rigid, sentimental, impossibly expensive, and dull. The "muse of cooking," as he put it, had moved on-to New York, San Francisco, Sydney, London. In these cities, the restaurants exuded a dynamism that was now increasingly hard to find in Paris. "All this," wrote Gopnik, "makes a Francophile eating in Paris feel a little like a turn-of-the-century clergyman who has just read Robert Ingersoll: you try to keep the faith, but Doubts keep creeping in."

I didn't share those Doubts: To me, France remained the orbis terrarum orbis terrarum of food, and nothing left me feeling more in love with life than a sensational meal in Paris. I refused to entertain the possibility that French cuisine had run aground; I didn't see it then, and I still didn't see it when emile Jung took off with my wife two years later during that Lucullan evening at Au Crocodile. Sure, I knew that it was now pretty easy to find bad food in France if you went looking for it. I was aware, too, that France's economic difficulties had made it brutally difficult for restaurants like Au Crocodile to keep the stoves running. In 1996, Pierre Gagnaire, a three-star chef in the industrial city of Saint-etienne, near Lyon, had gone bankrupt, and the same fate had almost befallen another top chef, Marc Veyrat. I also recognized that I was perhaps p.r.o.ne to a certain psychophysical phenomenon, common among France lovers, whereby the mere act of dining on French soil seemed to enhance the flavor of things. Even so, as far as I was concerned, France remained the first nation of food, and anyone suggesting otherwise either was being willfully contrarian or was eating in the wrong places. of food, and nothing left me feeling more in love with life than a sensational meal in Paris. I refused to entertain the possibility that French cuisine had run aground; I didn't see it then, and I still didn't see it when emile Jung took off with my wife two years later during that Lucullan evening at Au Crocodile. Sure, I knew that it was now pretty easy to find bad food in France if you went looking for it. I was aware, too, that France's economic difficulties had made it brutally difficult for restaurants like Au Crocodile to keep the stoves running. In 1996, Pierre Gagnaire, a three-star chef in the industrial city of Saint-etienne, near Lyon, had gone bankrupt, and the same fate had almost befallen another top chef, Marc Veyrat. I also recognized that I was perhaps p.r.o.ne to a certain psychophysical phenomenon, common among France lovers, whereby the mere act of dining on French soil seemed to enhance the flavor of things. Even so, as far as I was concerned, France remained the first nation of food, and anyone suggesting otherwise either was being willfully contrarian or was eating in the wrong places.

It was the swift and unexpected demise of Laduree just after the turn of the millennium that caused the first Doubts to creep in. Laduree was a Paris inst.i.tution, a charmingly sedate tea room on the rue Royale, in the eighth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. It was famous for its macaroons and pastries, and it also served one of the best lunches in Paris. I usually went with the artfully composed, perfectly dressed salade nicoise, which I chased down with a gla.s.s or two of Marcel Lapierre's violet-scented Morgon (a Beaujolais) and a deliciously crusty roll. At some point, I discovered Laduree's praline mille feuille, which was also habit-forming: I would finish every lunch with this ethereal napoleon consisting of almond pralines, praline cream, caramelized pastry dough, and crispy hazelnuts. Of all the things that I routinely ate in France, it was the praline mille feuille that made me the happiest.

But returning to Laduree, after a year's absence, I walked into a restaurant whose pilot light had been extinguished. The first sign of trouble was the lack of familiar faces: The endearingly gruff waitresses who had given the restaurant so much of its character had been replaced by b.u.mbling androids. Worse, the menu had changed, and many of the old standbys, including the salade nicoise, were gone (so, too, the Morgon), replaced by a clutch of unappetizing dishes. The perpetrators of this calamity had the good sense to leave the praline mille feuille untouched, but I had to a.s.sume that it would soon be headed for history's flour bin. While Laduree was an adored inst.i.tution, it had no standing in the gastronomic world-no famous chef, no Michelin stars, no widely mimicked dishes. Even so, I now began to wonder if the French really were starting to screw things up-if French cuisine was genuinely in trouble. You might say it was the moment the snails fell from my eyes.

A few days after my dismaying visit to Laduree, I was in the Macon area, this time with my wife and a friend of ours. As the three of us kicked around ideas for dinner late one afternoon, I felt pangs of curiosity. Did it still exist? If so, was it still any good? I quickly began leafing through the Michelin Guide, found Thoissey, and there it was: Au Chapon Fin. It was now reduced to one star, but the fact that it still had any was mildly encouraging. Several hours later, we were en route to Thoissey. By then, however, my initial enthusiasm had given way to trepidation. For the dedicated feeder, the urge to relive the tasting pleasures of the past is constant and frequently overwhelming. But restaurants change and so do palates; trying to recreate memorable moments at the table is often a recipe for heartache (and possibly also heartburn). And here I was, exactly two decades later, hoping to find Chapon Fin just as I had left it.

Well, the parking lot hadn't changed a bit-it was as expansive as I remembered it, and most of the s.p.a.ces were still shaded by trees. Sadly, that was the high point of the visit. One glance at the dining room told the tale. The grandeur that had left such a mark on me had given way to decrepitude. Those thick, regal tablecloths were now thin, scuffed sheets. The carpet was threadbare. The plates appeared ready to crack from exhaustion. The staff brightened things a bit. The service was cheerful and solicitous-perhaps overly so-but they were doing their best to compensate for the food, which was every bit as haggard as the room. The evening pa.s.sed in a crestfallen blur. What the h.e.l.l was going on here?

En route back to Paris, my wife and I stopped in the somniferous village of Saulieu, at the northern edge of Burgundy, to eat at La Cote d'Or, a three-star restaurant owned by Bernard Loiseau. He was the peripatetic clown prince of French cuisine, whose empire included the three-star mother s.h.i.+p, three bistros in Paris, a line of frozen dinners, and a listing on the Paris stock exchange. Loiseau's brand-building reflected his desire to emulate the venerated chef Paul Bocuse, but it was later learned that it was also a matter of survival: Business in Saulieu had become a struggle, and Loiseau was desperate for other sources of revenue. The night we had dinner in Saulieu, the food was tired and so was he. It was another discouraging meal in what had become a thoroughly dispiriting trip. Maybe the muse really had moved on.

IN 2003, the New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine published a cover story declaring that Spain had supplanted France as the culinary world's lodestar. The article, written by Arthur Lubow, heralded the emergence of published a cover story declaring that Spain had supplanted France as the culinary world's lodestar. The article, written by Arthur Lubow, heralded the emergence of la nueva cocina la nueva cocina, an experimental, provocative style of cooking that was reinventing Spanish cuisine and causing the entire food world to take note. El Bulli's Ferran Adria, the most acclaimed and controversial of Spain's new-wave chefs, was the focus of the article and graced the magazine's cover. Lubow contrasted Spain's gastronomic vitality with the French food scene, which he described as ossified and rudderless. "French innovation," he wrote, "has congealed into complacency . . . as chefs scan the globe for new ideas, France is no longer the place they look." For a Francophile, the quote with which he concluded the article was deflating. The Spanish food critic Rafael Garcia Santos told Lubow, "It's a great shame what has happened in France, because we love the French people and we learned there. Twenty years ago, everybody went to France. Today they go there to learn what not to do."

But by then France had become a bad example in all sorts of ways. Since the late 1970s, its economy had been stagnant, afflicted with anemic growth and chronically high unemployment. True, France had a generous welfare state, but that was no subst.i.tute for creating jobs and opportunity. By the mid-2000s, hundreds of thousands of French (among them many talented chefs) had moved abroad in search of better lives, unwilling to remain in a sclerotic, disillusioned country. France's economic torpor was matched by its diminished political clout; although prescient in hindsight, its effort to prevent the Iraq war in 2003 struck even many French as a vainglorious blunder that served only to underscore the country's weakness.

A sense of decay was now pervasive. For centuries, France had produced as much great writing, music, and art as any nation, but that was no longer true. French literature seemed moribund, ditto the once-mighty French film industry. Paris had been eclipsed as a center of the fine-art trade by London and New York. It was still a fas.h.i.+on capital, but British and American designers now seemed to generate the most buzz. In opera and theater, too, Paris had become a relative backwater. French intellectual life was suffering: The country's vaunted university system had sunk into mediocrity. Even the Sorbonne was now second-rate-no match, certainly, for Harvard and Yale.

Nothing in the cultural sphere was spared-not even food. The cultural extended into the kitchens of France, and it wasn't just haute cuisine that was in trouble. France had two hundred thousand cafes in 1960; by 2008, it was down to forty thousand, and hundreds, maybe thousands were being lost every year. Bistros and bra.s.series were also dying at an alarming clip. Prized cheeses were going extinct because there was no one with the knowledge or desire to continue making them; even Camembert, France's most celebrated cheese, was now threatened. The country's wine industry was in a cataclysmic state: Declining sales had left thousands of producers facing financial ruin. Dest.i.tute vintners were turning to violence to draw attention to their plight; others had committed suicide. Many blamed foreign compet.i.tion for their woes, but there was a bigger problem closer to home: Per capita wine consumption in France had dropped by an astonis.h.i.+ng 50 percent since the late 1960s and was continuing to tumble.

This wasn't the only way in which the French seemed to be turning their backs on the country's rich culinary heritage. Aspiring chefs were no longer required to know how to truss chickens, open oysters, or whip up a bearnaise sauce in order to earn the Certificat d'Apt.i.tude Professionnelle Certificat d'Apt.i.tude Professionnelle; instead, they were being tested on their ability to use processed, powdered, frozen, and prepared foods. France still had its outdoor markets, but hypermarches hypermarches-sprawling supermarkets-accounted for 75 percent of all retail food sales. Most ominously, the bedrock of French cuisine-home cooking, or la cuisine familiale la cuisine familiale-was in trouble. The French were doing less cooking than ever at home and spending less time at the dinner table: The average meal in France now sped by in thirty-eight minutes, down from eighty-eight minutes a quarter-century earlier. One organization, at least, stood ready to help the French avoid the kitchen and scarf their food: McDonald's. By 2007, the chain had more than a thousand restaurants in France and was the country's largest private-sector employer. France, in turn, had become its second-most-profitable market in the world.

Food had always been a tool of French statecraft; now, though, it was a source of French humiliation. In July 2005, it was reported that French president Jacques Chirac, criticizing the British during a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin and German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, had harrumphed, "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad." In the not-so-distant past, Chirac, simply by virtue of being France's president, would have been seen as eminently qualified to pa.s.s judgment on another country's cuisine-and, of course, in disparaging British cooking, he merely would have been stating the obvious. Coming in the summer of 2005, Chirac's comment revealed him to be a man divorced from reality. Was he not aware that London was now a great food city? Just four months earlier, Gourmet Gourmet magazine had declared London to be "the best place to eat in the world right now" and devoted an entire issue to its gustatory pleasures. As the ridicule rained down on Chirac, his faux pas a.s.sumed metaphoric significance: Where once the mere mention of food by a French leader would have elicited thoughts of Gallic refinement and achievement, its invocation now served to underscore the depths of France's decline. magazine had declared London to be "the best place to eat in the world right now" and devoted an entire issue to its gustatory pleasures. As the ridicule rained down on Chirac, his faux pas a.s.sumed metaphoric significance: Where once the mere mention of food by a French leader would have elicited thoughts of Gallic refinement and achievement, its invocation now served to underscore the depths of France's decline. They've even lost their edge in the kitchen They've even lost their edge in the kitchen.

French cooking had certainly lost its power to seduce. Several days after Chirac's gibe made headlines, members of the International Olympic Committee, despite having been wined and dined for months by French officials, selected London over Paris as host city for the 2012 Summer Games-fish and chips over foie gras.

There were other indignities, less noted but no less telling. In October 2006, New York's French Culinary Inst.i.tute marked the opening of its new International Culinary Center with a two-day extravaganza featuring panel discussions, cooking demonstrations, and gala meals. The FCI was one of America's foremost cooking schools, but it was also a wellspring of French cultural influence-a culinary consulate of sorts. Its faculty included Jacques Pepin, Andre Soltner, and Alain Sailhac, three expatriated French chefs who had helped unleash America's food revolution. To a.s.sure a suitably splashy debut for its new facilities, the FCI brought ten eminent foreign chefs to New York. Amazingly, though, the list was headed not by a Frenchman but by three Spaniards: Adria, Juan Mari Arzak, and Martin Berasategui. Not only that: the other seven chefs were Spanish, too. The French Culinary Inst.i.tute threw itself a party and didn't invite a single chef from France.

All this was a reflection of what was happening in France. Twenty-five years earlier, it had been virtually impossible to eat poorly there; now, in some towns and villages, it was a struggle to find even a decent loaf of bread. The France memorialized by writers like M. F. K. Fisher, Joseph Wechsberg, Waverley Root, and A. J. Liebling; that inspired the careers of Julia Child, Alice Waters, and Elizabeth David; that promised gustatory delight along every boulevard and byway-that France, it seemed, was dying. Even those epiphanic vegetables were harder to come by. When Waters started regularly visiting France, she would smuggle tomato vine cuttings home to California; now, she smuggled vine cuttings to her friends in France.

It saddened me to see this way of eating, and being, disappearing. In France, I didn't just learn how to dine; I learned how to live. It was where my wife and I had fallen in love, a bond formed over plates of choucroute, platters of oysters, and bowls of fraises des bois fraises des bois (Laduree pastries, too). When we began traveling to France as a married couple, great meals there weren't just occasions for pleasure ; they were a way of reaffirming our vows. The calendar indicates that our children couldn't have been conceived in France, but from the moment they were able to eat solid foods they were immersed in our Francophilia. They became acquainted with creme caramel before they ever knew what a Pop-Tart was. But it now appeared that the France I grew up knowing would no longer be there for them. (Laduree pastries, too). When we began traveling to France as a married couple, great meals there weren't just occasions for pleasure ; they were a way of reaffirming our vows. The calendar indicates that our children couldn't have been conceived in France, but from the moment they were able to eat solid foods they were immersed in our Francophilia. They became acquainted with creme caramel before they ever knew what a Pop-Tart was. But it now appeared that the France I grew up knowing would no longer be there for them.

A REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PRESENT.

By Alexander Lobrano From Gourmet Gourmet

Forget the Michelin-starred gastronomic temples with their cutting-edge cuisine, countends Lobrano, an American food and travel writer based in France. Paris is still studded with wonderful vintage restaurants-if you know where to look.

On a stifling August night in 1974, I was led down a steep flight of stairs into a vaulted bas.e.m.e.nt in the Latin Quarter. In my madras jacket, I immediately felt like a dork. Everyone else in the dining room was wearing jeans, and my mortification was magnified by the fact that both of my brothers were also wearing madras, while my sister was sporting a daffodil-yellow frock. Plunged into the heart of bohemian Paris, a place I'd always dreamed of, I was suddenly desperate to be elsewhere and furious with the aunt who'd told us we couldn't miss this restaurant, a real old-fas.h.i.+oned bistro that had been a memorable find on her most recent trip to Paris.

Still, I liked the slightly musty smell of the room, which reminded me of a country well, and the sour stink of the Gauloises that were sending up small curls of blue smoke from every table but ours. The bread was delicious, and it was a relief when the waiter understood Mom's French, especially since a wonderful salad of sliced tomatoes in a silky mustard vinaigrette-so simple, but so good-arrived a few minutes later, along with a pocked white porcelain plate of sizzling snails for Dad, who insisted I try one (I gulped it down with a big sip of water). Then, after a stately pause, the graying waiter returned with a heavy copper ca.s.serole, which he set at my end of the table. Lifting the lid, he released a fleeting cloud of steam. The mingled aroma of wine, beef, and onions was so intoxicating it seemed an eternity before everyone had been served and I could dig in. I burned my tongue, never quite realizing that I was experiencing my first round of primal pleasure at table. Nothing had ever tasted as good to me as the s.h.i.+ny mahogany sauce, an amazing mixture of wine and b.u.t.ter, that glazed the tender chunks of beef on my plate. That boeuf bourguignon boeuf bourguignon , served at a long-vanished restaurant on a street I barely remember how to find, left me with an irresistible craving for more-more Paris and, most of all, more French food. So much so that 21 years ago I moved to Paris. , served at a long-vanished restaurant on a street I barely remember how to find, left me with an irresistible craving for more-more Paris and, most of all, more French food. So much so that 21 years ago I moved to Paris.

Last fall, I decided that spending all my time chasing talented young chefs around the city as they moved from kitchen to kitchen (usually before opening places of their own) was only part of the culinary equation. I set out to rekindle an old flame, tracking down those restaurants that, while not especially chic anymore, deliver the kind of soul-satisfying boeuf bourguignon boeuf bourguignon on which French cuisine was built. I started with on which French cuisine was built. I started with L'Amba.s.sade d'Auvergne L'Amba.s.sade d'Auvergne, which continues to serve some of the best regional food in Paris. Anyone who loves real French cooking cannot afford to live in fear of fat. At this outpost near the Marais, creamy lentil salad comes with a healthy dollop of goose fat, while blanched cabbage leaves are layered with a fine filling of pork, salt pork, pork liver, Swiss chard, and fresh bread crumbs before being popped into a hot oven where all the flavors fuse into a superb terrine-a brilliant work of edible masonry. The "emba.s.sy" also understands basic tableside theater: After serving a generous length of grilled auvergnat auvergnat sausage, the waiter returns with a copper saucepan and a wooden spoon to whip the sausage, the waiter returns with a copper saucepan and a wooden spoon to whip the aligot aligot-that heavenly concoction of potatoes, cheese curds, and garlic-into a cascade of melting sheets, a coup de theatre that dazzles the occasional tourist while rea.s.suring the serious Parisians that French cuisine is still alive and well.

Running late for my next stop, I rush into La Grille La Grille, a peculiar dining room (it reminds me of Miss Havisham's) festooned with lace, straw hats, and dusty dolls, as my friend waves away my apologies. "What a wonderful idea to eat here," she says. "I'd forgotten about this place-so much character." Genevieve and Yves Cullerre have run La Grille for nearly half a century, turning out almost anthropological cla.s.sics like duck terrine with hazelnuts, mackerel poached in white wine, and his plat de resistance, a superb grilled turbot in black fishnet stockings (thanks to the scoring of the grill) with a sublime beurre blanc. I live in dread of the inevitable day when the Cullerres retire to some sunny place by the sea. Then again, I might just tag along.

I also hope that Michel Bosshard ("Boboss") at Auberge Le Quincy Auberge Le Quincy won't hang up his indigo cotton ap.r.o.n anytime soon. With his blue-framed gla.s.ses and teasing style, Boboss is as much a part of the ambience as the bric-a-brac that fills this cubbyhole of a restaurant. After greeting me with a big slice of won't hang up his indigo cotton ap.r.o.n anytime soon. With his blue-framed gla.s.ses and teasing style, Boboss is as much a part of the ambience as the bric-a-brac that fills this cubbyhole of a restaurant. After greeting me with a big slice of saucisson saucisson to nibble on while reading the menu, he insists I have the to nibble on while reading the menu, he insists I have the caillette caillette, an Ardeche specialty of small patties of grilled pork, pork liver, Swiss chard, and herbs that have been rubbed with fat from the caul (the lacy membrane enclosing an animal's abdomen). I'd been dreaming all day about the foie gras, but he is firm. "If you hate the caillette caillette," he says, "I'll bring you some foie gras." But I don't, not this caillette caillette-whose bed of mesclun dressed with vinaigrette is the perfect "gra.s.sy" foil for the rich meat. I move on to rabbit cooked in shallots and white wine, ending the meal with one of the best chocolate mousses in Paris-all fine with Boboss.

For a meal that's equally animated but more anonymous, I love La Tour de Montlhery La Tour de Montlhery, one of the last of the night restaurants that fed the workers at Les Halles before the market decamped to the suburbs. Like the decor, the menu here is as authentic as a Doisneau photo-grilled marrowbones, oeufs en gelee oeufs en gelee, calf's liver with bacon, and ma.s.sive cote de boeuf cote de boeuf, all accompanied by a cheap but harmless Beaujolais from the barrels inside the front door.

Atmosphere is also the lure at the magnificent Le Train Bleu Le Train Bleu, inside the Gare de Lyon rail station. The nice surprise here, though, is that aside from being the best place in town to savor the visual opulence of fin de siecle Paris, the ornate dining room also serves some surprisingly good French food. Ignore the contemporary dishes (like scallops sauteed in tamarind-spiked jus de poulet jus de poulet) and go straight for the escargots or oysters to start, followed by grilled sole, steak tartare, or the succulent leg of lamb, which is carved tableside on a silver-domed trolley and served with a delicious potato gratin made with Fourme d'Ambert, a wonderful blue cheese from Auvergne.

As an American, I remain neutral in the ancient quarrel between the French and the English but still find it curious that the French derisively call the Brits "rosbifs" (roast beefs) when they're such avid boeuf boeuf lovers themselves. Just watch the way hungry Gauls go for the hearth-grilled lovers themselves. Just watch the way hungry Gauls go for the hearth-grilled cote de boeuf cote de boeuf at at Robert et Louise Robert et Louise, a rustic hole-in-the-wall in the Marais with exposed half-timbers and a grumpy house poodle. Almost everything here-from the crusty sauteed potatoes that come with the storied rib steak to the great dishes like boudin noir and confit de canard-is cooked over an open fire.

Beef is also very much the focus at Au Moulin a Vent Au Moulin a Vent, in the Latin Quarter, where the walls are decorated with s.h.i.+ny copper saucepans and the menu is vast. Make it easy on yourself and go for either the Salers beef chateaubriand with homemade bearnaise sauce or the veal kidney flambeed in Armagnac. But be sure to start your meal with the frogs' legs a la provencale a la provencale, little bites of juicy meat on tiny bones in a wonderfully garlicky sauce-the best to be found anywhere. No place in Paris quite channels the jubilation that ended the privation of the World War II years like this standard-bearer from 1946.

I have a soft spot for Chez Georges Chez Georges, a bistro that succeeds brilliantly by flatly ignoring the pa.s.sage of time. The last time I ate there, I had exactly the same meal I'd had 15 years earlier, when I met Julia Child, who also loved this place. "It's not often I get real bistro cooking anymore," she told me before ordering a frisee salad with lardons ("It never tastes as good at home as it does in France," she insisted) and calf's liver with bacon. I had the blanquette de veau blanquette de veau. Just before dessert, a French designer stopped by to pay his respects, congratulating Madame Child for "civilizing" the American palate. After he'd gone, she asked, "Who was that? Oh dear, I hope this place doesn't become fas.h.i.+onable." Well, it has, as a quick look at the antiques dealers and fas.h.i.+on-house bigwigs filling the banquettes makes clear, but the kitchen turns out the same guilelessly retro cooking it always has.

For anyone who lives in Paris, few things are more treacherous than the nostalgia trap, that fretful and despairing mind-set that insists that everything tasted better in the past. Sometimes, though, restaurants change for the better, as I find with Josephine Chez Dumonet Josephine Chez Dumonet, a beautiful 1898-vintage place near the famous Poilane bakery. Now under the management of Jean-Christian Dumonet, a second-generation owner, I find the food fresher and more vivid than it has been in a long time. The clientele has changed, too. Just as I finish a homemade terrine de campagne terrine de campagne, a ripple rises up in the dining room. Joey Starr, France's most notorious rapper, dressed in immaculate dove-gray sweats and a Yankees baseball cap, is shown to the table next to mine. After my meal-panfried foie gras; monkfish with white beans; and, finally, a plate of cheese from the nearby Quatrehomme fromagerie fromagerie-Starr and I exchange sheepish grins as our Grand Marnier souffles arrive at exactly the same time.

Later, walking home, I am elated that France's bad-boy rapper also chose this place. I have no doubt that Paris's old-fas.h.i.+oned restaurants will survive, and I also know that the boeuf bourguignon boeuf bourguignon I ate in the Latin Quarter 35 years ago had been every bit as delicious as I'd remembered. Maybe even better. I ate in the Latin Quarter 35 years ago had been every bit as delicious as I'd remembered. Maybe even better.

Address Book L'amba.s.sade d'Auvergne 22 R. du Grenier-St.-Lazare, 3rd (01-42-72-31-22). Auberge le Quincy 28 Ave. Ledru-Rollin, 12th (01-43-28-46-76). Chez Georges 1 R. du mail, 2nd (01-42-60-07-11). La Grille 80 R. du Faubourg-Possionniere, 10th (01-47-70-89-73). Josephine Chez Dumonet 117 R. du Cherche Midi, 6th (01-45-48-52-40). Au Moulin a Vent 20 R. des Fosses-St.-Bernard, 5th (01-43-54-99-37). Robert et Louise 64 R. Vielle-du-Temple, 3rd (01-42-78-55-89). La Tour de Montlhery Chez Denise 5 R. des Prouvaires, 1st (01-42-36-21-82). Le Train Bleu Gare de Lyon, 12th (01-43-43-09-06).

Someone's In the Kitchen

THE PERFECT CHEF.

By Todd Kliman From The Oxford American The Oxford American

Todd Kliman's day job-as dining editor for the Was.h.i.+ngtonian Was.h.i.+ngtonian magazine-was almost beside the point. His casual fascination with the food at a local Chinese restaurant eventually deepened into an obsessive quest, tracking down an elusive genius who didn't want to be found. magazine-was almost beside the point. His casual fascination with the food at a local Chinese restaurant eventually deepened into an obsessive quest, tracking down an elusive genius who didn't want to be found.

Before I got in my car and drove to three different states to find him, before I began tracking his whereabouts on the Internet and running down leads that had been pa.s.sed to me by people I had never met, before I had to admit that I had become a little crazed in my pursuit and that this was about more than just him, but about me, too-before all that, Peter Chang was simply somebody whose cooking I enjoyed.

I was just starting out as a food critic, and had learned through a tipster that a talented chef had taken over the kitchen of a restaurant in Fairfax called China Star, in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, forty minutes from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. In the world of serious food lovers, in an age of rapid information sharing, the real excitement over a new place happens far in advance of the published review in the paper or magazine and at a subterranean level, below the awareness of ordinary folks, those people possessed only of a mere casual interest in food and restaurants. Someone gets a tip and pa.s.ses on the news, and a following quickly builds-a kind of culinary equivalent of insider trading.

Despite my newness to the job, or perhaps because of it, I had made myself an inviolable rule about tipsters, and that was to take every one of their recommendations seriously. Often, this resulted in driving an hour and a half for dispiriting Thai or dessicated barbecue, and I would feel toyed with and mocked; driving home, I would curse my rule and vow never again, only to get back in the car and hunt down the next lead that came my way, because the truth was that I could be disappointed nine out of ten times but the tenth time, the success, would fill me with such a sense of triumph that it was as if those earlier disappointments had never occurred. As a critic, I was inevitably thought to be gorging myself on the good life, on endless quant.i.ties of champagne and caviar and foie gras, each meal richer and more luxurious than the last, but after a while, and to my great dismay-because I had made another vow, which was to not become jaded by an excess of pleasure-these meals blended into indistinction. No matter how exquisite something might be, a diet made up exclusively of exquisite dishes inevitably becomes normal, and normal is boring. The unrequited love is always more interesting than the requited love, and, as it had been with me and dating, so it was with me and restaurant meals. I lived for the chase.

In this case, my tipster was possessed of more than just the usual slate of dish recommendations. He had a backstory to pa.s.s on. This chef had won two major cooking compet.i.tions in China, a significant achievement by any reckoning, but especially in a culture that is disinclined to valorize the individual. He had cooked for the Chinese premier, Hu Jintao, had written culinary manuals, and had come to the U.S. to cook at the Emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton, which is where he had been working just prior to joining the restaurant in Fairfax. It all sounded promising.

NOT LONG AFTER, I showed up with a friend one afternoon at China Star, expecting some outward announcement of the great man's arrival, some manifestation of his specialness, only to find the usual list of beef and broccoli and orange chicken. But there was another menu, the Chinese menu, and on it was a parade of dishes I had never seen. Diced rabbit in hot oil. Sliced tendon of beef with cilantro. I didn't know where to start, so I started everywhere.

I sat with a friend at a corner table, our mouths afire from the incendiary heat of the Szechuan chilis, alterations that compelled me to keep eating long after I was no longer hungry-a desperate longing for that runner's high, that intoxication. At the same time, I was filled with a paradoxical sense that I had ordered too much and yet, somehow, not enough. I could have gone to China Star every day for a week and still not have eaten enough to know what Chef Chang's cuisine was or wasn't.

I returned not long after that initial encounter, ordered still more dishes, and felt, again, defeated. This time I was convinced there was a right way to order and a wrong way to order, and that I had ordered the wrong way. What was the right way? I wasn't exactly sure. But whatever it was, I felt certain that it was conveyed in clues offered up by the menu. The key was to decipher them, and I had not done that. Lacking any real guidance from the waiter (except to warn me that a dish was spicy, which in my eagerness to prove my bona fides-which was, really, to demonstrate that I was not the timid, fearful, judging Westerner that I might have presented, and had an active interest in duck blood and internal organs and other such delicacies-I conveniently ignored), it was easy to wind up with a table full of nothing but hot dishes, which was like reading only the dirty parts torn from a novel and concluding that the author has a one-track mind. I hastily devised a plan for my next visit: I would order both hot and cold (temperature) dishes, I would order both spicy and nonspicy dishes, I would seek, above all, balance-the balance that was, surely, there in the menu but that I had, foolishly, missed. I would enlist a group of friends to come along, reinforcements for a campaign that had become more complicated than I had counted on, their presence at the table less about communality and sharing than about subterfuge-masking my intent and allowing me to cover as much culinary ground as possible. I would do it right.

I WOULD DO IT RIGHT, and in fact, I did do it right, though I did not do it at China Star. I returned to the restaurant with my five-member crew, only to learn that Chang had moved on and was cooking at a place in Alexandria, fifteen minutes closer to Was.h.i.+ngton. The restaurant was called TemptAsian Cafe-in intention and appearance no different from tens of thousands of Americanized Chinese restaurants across the land. When I stopped in with my wife one night, two people were waiting for carryout orders, and hearing the manager call out the contents of the stapled bags for a man in running shorts-chicken and green beans, orange beef, General Tso's chicken-I thought I might have been mistaken in thinking this was Chef Chang's place. I whispered my doubts to my wife. A cheerless and brusque waitress materialized, directed us to a table, and handed us a couple of Americanized Chinese menus. Now I was certain this could not have been where the estimable Chef Chang had landed.

"Do you have a Chinese menu?" I asked.

She gave me a scrutinizing once-over, her brow knitting. It was as if I had misp.r.o.nounced the pa.s.sword, proving myself an interloper, undeserving of being handed the Chinese menu. For a long moment, she regarded my face, not simply for evidence of my seriousness but rather, it seemed, for evidence of my worth.

Stupidly, I smiled. Or rather, reflexively reflexively I smiled, because I had not wanted to smile. Even as I was smiling, I had not thought I was smiling, but I am an American, and that is what we Americans do in any situation where we are being denied what we think we indisputably deserve access to. We smile. Even when we do not know the native language. Even when we commit egregious acts of cultural ignorance. The smile, we think, is our badge, our pa.s.sport-the smile will erase everything else we have done or, as the case may be, not done; the smile will put us over; the smile will deliver us to the vital center. I smiled, because I had not wanted to smile. Even as I was smiling, I had not thought I was smiling, but I am an American, and that is what we Americans do in any situation where we are being denied what we think we indisputably deserve access to. We smile. Even when we do not know the native language. Even when we commit egregious acts of cultural ignorance. The smile, we think, is our badge, our pa.s.sport-the smile will erase everything else we have done or, as the case may be, not done; the smile will put us over; the smile will deliver us to the vital center.

I smiled, and the waitress turned and left. My wife and I raised an eyebrow at each other across the table, wondering what exactly had just happened. "Well, I guess it's just gonna be beef and broccoli then, huh?" she said.

And then, just as abruptly as she had left, the waitress returned and grudgingly handed over the Chinese menus, which, in contrast to the bound and printed regular menu, had been cobbled together hastily via the aid of a computer. This was more like it. Here were many of the dishes I had eaten at China Star, plus a good number more that I hadn't seen before, like a dish of fish with sour mustard greens that was preceded by a red asterisk, the universal warning that the preparation listed is going to be hot.

I pointed to the number on the menu, trying to order.

The waitress frowned. She directed me to something tamer, without an asterisk. I persisted, and she touted more aggressively the merits of the dish she had suggested. I knew from experience that we had begun that verbal joust that sometimes takes place in ethnic restaurants that don't know and don't court Westerners, and that each eager parry was going to be met by a forceful thrust. In some restaurants, the trick was to make multiple visits within a short span of time, demonstrating your sincerity by virtue of familiarity; then, and only then, was the staff likely to relent and allow you access to the real stuff, the good stuff, the stuff you'd truly come for. But I didn't want to wait. In my mind, I had already bypa.s.sed this tedious and time-consuming process by having eaten twice at China Star.

When I asked for the grilled fish with cold rice gluten, her eyes bulged for a split second before she shook her head no.

No, you don't have it in? I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream. Or no, you're not going to serve it to me, regardless? Or no, you're not going to serve it to me, regardless?

What the h.e.l.l did I have to do to earn the restaurant's trust to be able to taste Chef Chang's food again?

Whether my inner torment was visible on my face, and she had taken pity on me, or whether I had demonstrated a willingness to try any number of dishes that would have put a scare into most Westerners, or both, or neither, I don't know, but she relented and decided to bring out the fish with sour mustard greens.

It was wonderful, sour and spicy in a way that dishes featuring fish almost never are, but even if it had been merely ordinary, I would have made sure that we devoured all of it, in this way making the very unsubtle, I hoped, point that we were deserving of being shown the full extent of the chef's repertoire of dishes.

WHAT FOLLOWED WAS extraordinary: Chinese cooking like I had never tasted, better than anything Chef Chang had prepared at China Star-or maybe it was that I had learned how to order from him, in much the way that you need to read two or three books by Faulkner just to begin to grasp even a little of what he is up to.

There was a plate of cold beef that the chef had intended for us to fold into a fried wrapper of dough, a little sandwich. A seemingly simple thing, except that the thin-sliced beef, tender and almost gelatinous, had been scented with the famous ma la ma la peppercorn. The peppercorn. The ma la ma la peppercorn is not strictly about heat; for that, for pure heat, Chef Chang had also used the red Szechuan chili peppers. peppercorn is not strictly about heat; for that, for pure heat, Chef Chang had also used the red Szechuan chili peppers. Ma la Ma la numbs the lips as you eat, a sensation that can only be likened to the novocaine you get in the dentist's chair, though without the dawning sense of dread that invariably follows an injection. Why would this be desirable? Why would a chef want to numb a diner's lips? Because the numbing is also a cooling, and that cooling works in opposition to the scorching heat of the other pepper, producing an odd yin and yang, just as the sweet, doughy, chewy wrapper was set off in contrast to the slippery, savory beef. numbs the lips as you eat, a sensation that can only be likened to the novocaine you get in the dentist's chair, though without the dawning sense of dread that invariably follows an injection. Why would this be desirable? Why would a chef want to numb a diner's lips? Because the numbing is also a cooling, and that cooling works in opposition to the scorching heat of the other pepper, producing an odd yin and yang, just as the sweet, doughy, chewy wrapper was set off in contrast to the slippery, savory beef.

Out came a rattan basket of fried fish the color of a blazing summer sunset. Wait, was this the roasted fish with green onion we'd ordered? The name was a misnomer, it turned out. And the description on the menu had not fully prepared us for the taste of this fish. Wait, was that c.u.min? c.u.min, in a Chinese restaurant? On fish? It was odd. It was haunting. I couldn't stop eating it.

After a while, I knew that I was eating it not because I was hungry, but because I was eager to learn it, to burn the precise, sensory details of the taste into my memory, the way you do with anything that's good that you've never before tried, any experience, any phenomenon. With a book, you read and re-read sentences; with a dish, you eat and eat and eat, long after you're full. Being overstuffed, for the food lover, is not a moral problem. It's a practical problem.

We had not yet finished the fish when the pancakes arrived. I had had pancakes at Chinese restaurants before, delicate crepes into which you stuffed slices of crisp-skinned duck, or greasy discs of dough that had been flecked with bits of diced scallion. But never anything this dramatic. Never these big, poofy balloons that drew the eye of everybody in the dining room, and which gave up a little plume of steam when they were p.r.i.c.ked with a chopstick.

It was a law of reviewing that if you made three visits, almost without fail, one of those meals would turn out to be a disappointment, even if the restaurant was a good restaurant. Each meal here, though, was wonderful, and I began to feel not just that I was learning his dishes, but that I was advancing deeper into Chef Chang's canon and learning him him.

I wrote my review, which in every other instance meant that I was done with the place and had moved on to the next restaurant to be written about, to Thai, to Lebanese, to sus.h.i.+, to Salvadoran. But with TemptAsian, I did not move on.

I wanted more, so shortly afterward, I organized a group to descend on the restaurant when I learned that Chang had, again, and rather more mysteriously this time, left. Three departures in two years. Even by the diminished standards of the industry, whereby a chef at one location for two or three years is regarded as a crusty vet, this seemed like a lot.

IT WAS AT THIS POINT that the gossip and speculation began to float my way, in beseeching e-mails from diners who, like me, had also fallen under the spell of the bewitching cooking of the curiously peripatetic Chef Chang. His green card has expired, and he's on the lam. He can't stay for long in one place-as soon as he's reviewed, he has to leave. No, no: He's running from a vindictive former employer, out to exact revenge upon his star chef for leaving. Wrong, all wrong-he's had his taste of Western-style freedom and celebrity, and can no longer abide working for owners who do not treat him as the glittering talent he is. His green card has expired, and he's on the lam. He can't stay for long in one place-as soon as he's reviewed, he has to leave. No, no: He's running from a vindictive former employer, out to exact revenge upon his star chef for leaving. Wrong, all wrong-he's had his taste of Western-style freedom and celebrity, and can no longer abide working for owners who do not treat him as the glittering talent he is.

Strangest of all was the theory that was trotted out by one of these obsessives: He fears success He fears success.

In the absence of a place to eat his cooking and commune with him, the obsessives needed an outlet to express their sense of neurosis. They turned to e-mail. They took to the web. Where would Chef Chang turn up next? Would Would he turn up next? Could this have been-no, don't speak it-the last chance to taste his pepper-fired genius? he turn up next? Could this have been-no, don't speak it-the last chance to taste his pepper-fired genius?

I pa.s.sed along some of these e-mails to my wife, with wry notes attached to the top, wry, distancing notes about these cult-like p.r.o.nouncements. I was laughing at the lengths that ordinary folks could go in their love for a few dishes. The truth, though, was that I was just as caught up in this as they were.

HE TURNED UP, many months later, at a dismal-looking place, again in Fairfax, called China Gourmet, with garish green pile carpet that had lost most of its nap and a drink menu featuring Mai Tais. The owner had been following Chef Chang for some time now, he confessed to me over the phone, having attended an "extraordinary" fourteen-course banquet at the Chinese Emba.s.sy and then, later, having become a regular at both China Star and TemptAsian Cafe. So the owner was one of us, I thought, except that he had been studying more than just the intimate magic of ma la ma la and finger peppers. He'd purchased this particular restaurant because it was less than a mile from where Chang's daughter attended high school. He gave Chang the go-ahead to hire his own staff, which meant the chef could hire his wife, Hongyong, a specialist in cold dishes. Having intuited that control was important to the chef, he even allowed him to choose the restaurant's new name: Szechuan Boy. and finger peppers. He'd purchased this particular restaurant because it was less than a mile from where Chang's daughter attended high school. He gave Chang the go-ahead to hire his own staff, which meant the chef could hire his wife, Hongyong, a specialist in cold dishes. Having intuited that control was important to the chef, he even allowed him to choose the restaurant's new name: Szechuan Boy.

There was a sweetly childlike quality to this name, but also something grandiose, an atypical rejection of the Chinese need to recede into the background. This was a pa.s.sionate embrace of foreground, a bold a.s.sertion of his individuality and independence. The place belonged to him, the chef, the Szechuan boy.

I MADE MY FIRST VISIT three days after Chang started, a marked contrast to the three weeks I ordinarily waited before dropping by a restaurant for my initial a.s.sessment. At his other stops, I had gone with one other person, but now I took groups, the better to sample a raft of dishes in a single sitting. I had learned from experience to be firm and insistent about what I wanted, to bark out instructions. I sounded like a stranger to myself, like a petty tyrant, or a football coach, but it worked. "Yes, sir," the waiter at Szechuan Boy said, over and over again, as I placed my exhaustive order. I was in.

My parents were my guests for that first meal. They had eaten a lot of Chinese food, from New York to San Francisco. My mother had taken cla.s.ses in Chinese cooking. They regularly hosted dinners of Chinese corn soup, homemade egg rolls, steamed fish in ginger. And still nothing prepared them for their encounter with Chef Chang, for the c.u.min-scented ground-beef hash that we tucked into tiny steamed buns, for the chicken consomme seasoned with microscopic dried shrimp and topped off with delicately fas.h.i.+oned dumplings, for the ma po ma po tofu with its squares of jiggly, custardy bean curd poking up from a broth so glossy and red it resembled a new fire truck. "It's like I've never eaten Chinese food before," my mother said, awestruck. tofu with its squares of jiggly, custardy bean curd poking up from a broth so glossy and red it resembled a new fire truck. "It's like I've never eaten Chinese food before," my mother said, awestruck.