Perhaps no one says it better than Juan Mari Arzak, the more traditional chef-owner of the Michelin three-star restaurant Arzak in San Sebastian and Adria's staunchest supporter. "What Ferran does is very important" he said, sitting down to join us for coffee and cigarettes at the end of the meal. The two mena" Arzak, the pa.s.sionate Basque, and Adria, the driven, inquisitive Cataloniana"have become best friends. "We call each other at four in the morning all the time," Arzak says. " 'I have an idea!' one of us will say. He is moving cooking forward.'1''

Back in New York, Mr. Ripert is a little more equivocal. "He's a phenomenon. We need one Ferran Adria, not five. Not even three. I don't see anyone succeeding in emulating him."

In the final a.n.a.lysis, it was while Mr. Adria ate lunch the next day, at his favorite restaurant in the world, Rafa's, a simple twenty-seat eatery in nearby Roses, that his true nature, I like to think, revealed itself. The restaurant serves impeccably fresh seafood, almost always cooked with only a little sea salt and olive oil. Rafa, the proprietor, and his wife serve from a single stovetop and tiny grill behind a gla.s.s-front counter displaying the catch of only a few hours earlier. After tucking into a few slices of plain grilled sea cuc.u.mber, Mr. Adria attacked a plate of screamingly fresh local p.a.w.ns, greedily sucking the brains and juice from the head. His eyes wild, hands flying, he said, "Magic! It's magic! When we make prawns we dream of Rafa's prawns. This is what I want. To find my way to this."

In his own strange and transgressive way, that's exactly what he's done.

BRAZILIANBEACH-BLANKET BINGO.

at the end of a long shift, or six long shifts, I tend to look for a nice, soft, horizontal surface where I can slip quickly into a near-coma. Maybe, on the way, I'll stop for some raw fish and some liquor. Feeling, as I often do after work, like I've been beaten from head to toe with a garden hose full of ball bearings, I'm not likely to look for a nightclub. And since I work in a French steakhouse, the last thing I want to see at the end of the day is a skewer loaded with oversized hunks of Argentine beef. (In fact, after some of the things I've written, any waiter heading my way with sharp metal skewers usually has me reaching for my pepper spray.) I do love sushi, however. And I love caipirinhas, the deadly, delicious drinks made from cachaca (sugarcane liquor), sugar, and fresh lime. And I like Brazilian music as long as there's no question of me dancing to it. Whenever I work a double shift, usually on Fridays or Sat.u.r.days, I take a break in the middle of the afternoon and walk a few blocks down from my restaurant to Sushi Samba on Park Avenue South. There, sitting at the sushi bar in my reeking whites and food-spattered clogs, I enjoy a nice c.o.c.ktail, an order of sawagani (the tiny, insect-size crabs one sees skittering around in a fishbowl on the Sushi Samba bar), maybe some uni and unagi, a little toro, and an inside-out roll or two of fried soft-sh.e.l.l crab. For me, there were already many good reasons to like the restaurant and the people behind it, though until 2.II.

my recent Brazilian Expedition, I'd never met them. Not until I'd gotten the call.

I was in the back of a taxi on a cold, gray Seattle morning, rain drizzling down, headed out to the airport after a long, grueling swing across the country on a book-flogging tour. My phone rang, and it was the publisher of Food Arts, asking me if I wanted to go to Brazil.

Let's see. The beach? Rio? Palm trees? Tanned flesh in tiny little bathing suits? I don't know. I think I can do that. When he told me I'd be accompanying the Sushi Samba crew, chronicling their explorations of the food, music, and culture of Sao Paulo, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro, I said something thoughtful and measured, something along the lines of, "Dude, I am there!"

Once back in New York, I threw some cutoff shorts, a few T-shirts, sandals, and a bathing suit into a bag and headed for the rendezvous at the restaurant.

There were seven intrepid adventurers in our party. None of us spoke Portuguese. Shimon Bokovza, one of the Sushi Samba owners, a tough, energetic Israeli, was the only one who'd been to Brazil before. I was introduced to Shimon's partner, Matthew "Matty" Johnson, an ex-cop, legendary ex-nightclub owner, and one of those people who, ten seconds after meeting them, I decide is a compadre, an amigo, a Noo Yawk-talkin' wise-a.s.s ball-buster of the old school. With us also were Eiji Takase, aka Taka, Sushi Samba's j.a.panese chef; Michael Cressotti, formerly of Patria, who heads up the South American end of the restaurant's menu; Danielle Billera, Shimon's wife, our chief organizer/scoutmaster (responsible for keeping Matty out of jail); and Philadelphia-based food writer and author Aliza Green.

Sushi Samba, I was informed, was about to open a big, new store in the West Village, a two-hundred-seater with rooftop dining room. The idea of our trip was to flesh out and expand the Brazilian elements of the menu and design. We were going to eat "everyday" Brazilian food and investigate the markets, ingredients, lifestyle, and culture of the country. We were going to have a good time.

Matty, I discovered on the first leg of the trip, has an enviable ability to sleep anywhere at any time. One minute conscious, the next? Dead to the world. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d slept all the way to Sao Paulo (and on every subsequent flight). I kidded him it was his police training. It took a nicotine patch, two sleeping pills, and a c.o.c.ktail for me to get a brief, fitful nap, jammed upright in a center seat. I could hear Matty snoring, six rows away.

Sao Paulo is big. It's the third-largest city in the world, with fifteen million people, many of them living in absolutely abject poverty. The rest seem to spend all their time in cars (the traffic is unbelievable). The largest industrial center in Latin America, Sao Paulo has skysc.r.a.pers, banks, public buildings, monuments, parks, and museums that are offset by mammoth shantytowns called favelas, acres of dirt-floored shacks built out of cardboard, planks, rags, and pilfered construction materials that occupy any open s.p.a.ces where they are tolerated. The city, as Paulistas will cheerfully tell you, is for the most part ugly as h.e.l.l: a polluted, run-down, visibly crumbling sprawl where a thriving ultrarich upper cla.s.s "trickles down" little of its loot. Crime, the guidebooks a.s.sured me, is rampant, with an accent on muggings, home invasions, kidnapping, armed robbery, and pickpocketing. According to the guidebooks, while in Brazil you will inevitably be robbed at knife point, be stabbed by murderous transvest.i.te hookers, or have your jewelry snipped off by feral youths who live in the street and emerge from their lairs only to sniff glue and make off with your Rolex.

Antic.i.p.ating an aggressively larcenous populace and tropical climes, I arrived in Brazil with a ten-dollar watch bought at the airport, cutoffs, T-shirts, and sandals. Unfortunately, Sao Paulo, particularly in September, is cold. The throngs of knife-wielding miscreants never materialized. n.o.body even looked at me crosseyed, anywhere in Brazil. But I was freezing my a.s.s off.

On the first morning, our party rose early and walked to the Mercado, the market in the city's center. Shimon can't pa.s.s a food stall without trying it out; so within fifty yards of the hotel we were drinking sugarcane juice. The vendor simply takes a whole length of sugarcane, cranks up a loud, menacing-looking contraption of ancient gears, and feeds the cane in, crushing and squeezing the bark until a dribble of the ultrasweet juice trickles into a plastic cup. Breakfast! A few yards down the road, Shimon honed in on a mob of Paulistas cl.u.s.tered around another stall, this time eating bolinhos (little fried b.a.l.l.s of salt cod or manioc) and pastels (delicious meat pies that look like flat zeppole), which the locals tear open and douse with hot sauce. We dug in. We soon found that these stalls are everywhere, serving deep-fried meat and vegetable pies, breaded fried b.a.l.l.s of who-knows-what, and candied chunks of coconut, just about all of it greasy and delicious. I saw Shimon, Michael, and Taka taking it in as they ate, thinking, no doubt, "Bar menu!"

The Mercado, situated in an old limestone Beaux-Arts palace long gone to seed, was quiet but impressive. Live poultry, Amazonian fruit, mushrooms, dende (palm oil), hearts of palm, okra, sugarcane, ginger, graviola (custard apple), marajuca (pa.s.sion fruit), beterraba (beet root), all were displayed in neat stacks. We hit a quiet restaurant for a lunch of whole roasted fish and Chilean wine and then headed off to Liberdade, the j.a.panese district.

Sushi and samba together is not as kooky-sounding a concept as you might think, some awkward hybrid of cuisines that shouldn't have anything to do with each other. Brazil hosts the largest population of j.a.panese outside of j.a.pan, and has since they started coming over to farm and do business in 1808. Sushi is very popular here, even in traditional cburrascarias, where a buffet loaded with sushi and sashimi is considered an additional enticement. Liberdade is filled with sushi bars, yaki-tori joints, karaoke bars, shops, pac.h.i.n.ko parlors, and j.a.panese steakhouses. Sad to say, however, the quality and variety of sushi we saw was less than spectacular. When we returned to the area for dinner, we were disappointed to find Sushi Ya.s.su, said to be one of the best in town, closed. We ate instead at Restau-rante Suntory, a big, sw.a.n.k Benihana-style steakhouse-sushi bar-nightspot where an inept griddle cook hacked listlessly at some undistinguished meat. Taka and Michael and I (the chef contingent) cringed each time he brought his knife blade down against hard metal, then sc.r.a.ped it across the surface like a spatula. The sushi was decent but unsurprising. I'm only guessinga"Taka is a man of few wordsa"that this lame re-creation of j.a.panese cuisine was excruciating for him.

Late that night, some of our posse went on to a cachacaria where more than two hundred different brands of the potentially lethal cane liquor are offered (I wisely, and uncharacteristically, declined to go along). The next morning, Michael and Taka looked like they'd been dragged through a battlefield by their heels. They still managed to get down an impressive Brazilian breakfast, though: three varieties of fresh fruit juice, great coffee, cold cuts, chorizos, baked goods, and eggs. I ducked out after breakfast and bought a sweater, then did a little sightseeing in the city center. For lunch, I stopped at the lanchonetes, little stand-up eateries selling snacks and beer and sodas. To my delight, my inept Mexican-infected kitchen Spanish, while amusing to the Portuguese-speaking locals, was apparently understandable.

The next day, we visited Ibirapuera Park, Sao Paulo's largest. The weather was beautiful, and the park was mobbed with tens of thousands of school kids and locals. At first look, Brazil seems to be a Utopia of race mixing and integration. Black, white, every hue of coffee-colored person, seem to hang out, intermarry, make love, and socialize with little or no distinction. I'm sure it's not all that simple, and there are centuries of backstory, but it looks idyllic, particularly compared to New York.

Lunch was in Bela Vista, Sao Paulo's Little Italy. The chefs became decidedly more enthusiastic at this meal. Platters of spicy grilled shrimp, ensopados (Portuguese-style stews), whole fish, squid stew in a hearty tomato-c.u.min broth like I've enjoyed in Provincetown and New Bedford, and heaps of good stuffa"little of it Italian. Michael and Taka scrawled notes furiously, asking for menu copies and even taking a tour of the kitchen. A late-night trip to another cachaqaria lifted everyone's spirits further and the following morning we left for the airport. Next stop: Bahia.

Bahia is a whole different story. We knew it before the plane hit the tarmac. There was sand. There were palm trees. And when we descended from the plane, the balmy, tropical heat was exactly what I'd been hoping for. Bahia is the African heart and soul, the main vein of everything one dreams about when one imagines Brazil. Sensual, spiritual, boasting spicy African-influenced cuisine, colonial architecture, percussion-heavy tro-picale music, voodoo, and some of the best beaches in South America, it's everything I like in a place, somewhere one can easily imagine reinventing oneself as a beach b.u.m, mystic, fugitive, or permanent expatriate. You know you're somewhere else in Salvador, Bahia's capital and major city. Favelas climb steep hillsides and bluffs, sleek hotels tower over the Bay of All Saints, and there is music and magic and food everywhere.

Until the late nineteenth century, Salvador was the center of the Portuguese slave trade. Forbidden from practicing their religions, the unwilling transplants simply went undergroun with their spiritualism and their culture, conducting ceremonii in clandestine groups and folding them into Portugues approved Catholic services. Ultimately, as with so many thin Brazilian, the natives absorbed the Portuguese and were a sorbed by them, intermarrying, mixing in their okra and thespices and their spiritual view of the universe, opening the wa for the music, food, and culture of Brazil to become the fabulo gumbo it is today. Animism, superst.i.tion, fetishism, and vood (candomble being one variety) are as much a part of everyda life there as going to the market. Capoeira, a once-outlawe martial art developed by slaves, is now practiced everywhere, b children on the beaches, by street performers, and in well rehea.r.s.ed professional shows for the amus.e.m.e.nt of tourist zi6 with the berimbau, a single-string gourd instrument, keeping rhythm.

Our first night in town, we visited Pelourinho, the cobblestoned colonial-era neighborhood that was once home to the slave owners and the center of Portuguese power. Now quaint, un-threatening, and picturesque, the neighborhood that once housed the whipping post is a well-tended, well-policed tourist mecca, high on a hill. It's a place that could drive, and has driven, poets and artists mad with pleasure. Our taxis pulled up the bottom of a steep climb, as night was falling, and we climbed the hill just as a candomble service was winding down. I wish I could adequately convey the heartbreaking beauty of it all: the locals joining hands and holding candles, affixing lembrancas de Bonafini (little fe-tishistic ribbons thought to fulfill wishes) to their wrists, singing, and wishing each other well in the failing light of a centuries-old square, with the heady aromas of incense, dende oil, and things cooking everywhere. When the ceremony broke up, the crowds dispersed and we were swept along with them through the narrow cobblestone streets and alleys, pa.s.sing tantalizing glimpses of food and handicrafts in tiny shops and dimly lit storefronts, kids selling cigarettes and lembrancas nipping at our heels. Tropicalia issued from distant windows, words were exchanged in many languages, in strangely hushed voices between pa.s.sing tourists. Even the street hustlers were gentle if persistent. A boy approached and reached down to fondle my rope sandals, curious and completely uninhibited. I slipped him a few reals.

We ate at Sorriso da Dada, a tiny, much-loved place located on the ground floor of a plain, whitewashed colonial home, decorated with warm, colorful oil paintings. Dada is an imposing black woman, pictured in a painting on the wall in traditional garb, and considered to be one of the best Bahian cooks in the country. Her other restaurant, Tempero da Dada, situated in a somewhat rougher neighborhood, attracts the wealthy and powerful in their limousines; bodyguards and security goons are said to line the street, watching after their cars while the rich eat her wonderfully soulful and hearty home-style cooking.

2.17.

It was easily the best meal of the entire adventure: unpretentious, colorful, jacked with spices and flavor, unrestrainedly African, smelling so good we almost fainted while waiting to eat. The food was served family style, and we blindly ordered just about everything on the menu: moquecas (seafood stews cooked in coconut milk and fiery red dende), grilled piranha cooked in banana leaves, acaraje (fritters of black-eyed peas filled with dried shrimp), soft-sh.e.l.l crab, spicy shrimp, crawfish, prawns, lobster, all accompanied by the ubiquitous and intoxicating Bahian condiments, farofa (a starchy yucca side), cararu (a piquant mix of well-spiced okra, peppers, and dried shrimp), and vatapa (a bread and flour porridge with cashews, dried shrimp, and ginger). I don't remember it all; my head was swimming from the caipirinhas (made with fresh cashew fruit) and the tall Antarctica beers, as well as the frenzy of trying to get all that incredible food into my mouth.

Manioc, coconut, chilies, okra, dried shrimp, yucca, cashew fruit, and of course dende oil play significant roles in much Bahian food, but the broad range of textures and flavors, and the surprising array of seafood, can keep you busy exploring indefinitely. This is not boring food. It's a.s.sertive, muscular, unafraid. In larger restaurants, Bahian dishes appear side by side with Portuguese and German dishes, faux-French cla.s.sics, and workaday favorites. The menus can be a mosh pit of clashing flavors and cultures, an international riot of the cla.s.sic and the extreme. There was a lot of smiling and moaning at the table among our increasingly inebriated number, and once again, the chefs were hatching plans. Taka and Michael discussed where in New York they could buy the necessary ingredients, strategizing about moqueca and roasting fish in banana leaves. I was encouraged, as I didn't want to have to fly back to Brazil every time I wanted to relive this incredible experience.

After dinner in Pelourinho, we walked through the dark streets, heels clicking on cobblestones. Around midnight, I broke away from the group to sit in the central square, chatting with 2.18.

street kids in broken English and Spanish, giving out the occasional cigarette and real. Except for the reggae music from the idling taxis and the occasional tourist, it could have been the 1700s.

The Sushi Samba crew had a full day of sightseeing planned, but the following morning I decided I was going off the reservation: no churches, markets, or for-tourists displays of regional/ ethnic dancing and native handicrafts. It was a national holiday, Brazil's five-hundredth anniversary, and all of Salvador, I was convinced, would be going to the beach. The sightseeing portion of the week's entertainment was over. No samba lessons. No buffets. The surf was up.

I woke up late, left the hotel, and walked smack into a parade. Now, I hate parades. I'd rather hear the sound of my own teeth being drilled than the music of John Philip Sousa. But this was different. The streets were packed solid. Held in place by the throngs, I got an unexpected look at Bahia's idea of their best foot forward. First came the military, all the branches, one highly motivated unit after another. Each tried to outdo the other with loud, deep-throated chants of "Bra-ZEEL!!" "Ba-HEE-YA!!" "SALVA-DORR!" Army, navy, fire rescue, mountaineer units, sinister-looking folks in black pajamas and balaclavas, it was fascinating to see which groups were popular with the crowds and which weren't. Female cadets, goose-stepping in Cuban heels, got a big hand. The riot police, who paraded with their crowd-control gear, were decidedly unpopular. Representatives of the indigenous culture pa.s.sed to polite claps and what looked like embarra.s.sment. Indians everywhere, it seems, get the short end of the stick.

When the parade had finally gone by and the streets became pa.s.sable, I walked down to Barra, a long and imposing strand overlooking a magnificent beach. From the farol da Barra, an eighteenth-century lighthouse at one end, all the way to an open-air restaurant on a bluff at the other, the sand was mobbed. Thousands of barely dressed locals were packed around a cl.u.s.ter of thriving barracas, basically beach shacks that serve chopp (icy-cold draft beer) and food. Oiled up with sun products, they were swaying to music, splashing around in tidal pools, riding body boards in the surf, swimming, socializing, playing soccer, practicing capoeira moves, sunbathing, sleeping, making love, flirting, eating. I grabbed a plastic chair, ordered a chopp, which came in a helpful insulated sleeve, and dug in for the afternoon.

Food came at me from all directions. Vendors hawked acaraje, bolinhos, paper cones of dried shrimp, grilled fresh shrimp, paper tubes of sh.e.l.led nuts, boiled quail eggs, and pastels. Others came by with a mozzarellalike cheese on skewers (for a few centavos they'd dredge it in herbs and, fanning the coals in the metal buckets they carried with them, they'd toast the skewers until the outside was brown and crispy and the inside runny delicious).

People cracked open coconuts and served them with long thin straws. Spear fishermen, right out of the water, dropped still-twitching groupers, snappers, crabs, and lobsters right on the tables, offering to have them cooked up at the nearest barraca. Sitting only inches from the neighboring tables, I couldn't help but nearly join in with others' meals. People tore at whole grilled fish with their hands, handing out pieces and sharing chopps. Now and again, someone would get up to cool off under a running water pipe. Since the music was loud and seductive, and the mood bordering on orgiastic, each visitor to the shower felt compelled to do a little wriggling and dancing under the water for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the throngs. Women in white skirts and traditional headdress fried up little cakes and poured cacbaqa in coconuts. Couples nuzzled and hugged and kissed. Everyone was friendly, informal, a little drunk, and having a good time while their skin sizzled in the strong midday sun. The music played on. It seemed a paradise.

What can one say about Rio, except that it's all true. Everything you've heard. It's stunningly beautiful. The people are gorgeous. Our hotel was located right on the beachfront in Copacabana. On the way from the airport, Michael and Matty and Taka, noses pressed to the gla.s.s, gazed longingly at the white sands and blue-green water, the verdant green rainforests, and high bluffs and clifftops, listening with horror as our unexpectedly swinish Brazilian escort tried to hard-sell us a guided bus tour. We'd barely arrived at our hotel, and Matty was headed across the street like a heat-seeking missile, peeling off his shirt and calling for caipirinhas. There was no question of going anywhere that didn't involve a beach.

You know about the Corcovado, the high mountaintop sculpture of Christ with arms outstretched. You've seen Sugar-loaf. I've seen the pictures too. I'm sure that there were beautiful churches, fabulous museums, incredible public parks with unspeakably lovely waterfalls, a rich and fascinating history to be discovered. But I hit the beach. I had, I told myself, solid investigative reasons for this decision. In Brazil, and in Rio in particular, it is said there is no figure more important to the culture, no creature more admired and emulated, than the carioca. The carioca is a role model and the ideal state of being is his.

What is a carioca} Simply put, he's a lovable scamp, a guy who somehow finds a way, always, to avoid legitimate toil in favor of the popular Rio diversions of going to the beach, flirting, making love, dancing, and hanging out. He is a man who survives on charm and what are called jetinhos, improvisa-tional, amiable hustler/joker strategies to avoid work and keep doing what he's doing, which is basically nothing. Rio is filled with cariocas: crowded around cafe tables, playing volleyball with their feet on the beaches, surfing, tanning, swaying to music, hanging out at lanchonetes and barracas, usually with fabulous-looking women feeling them upa"in general behaving like aristocratic rogues in Speedos. Whether they go home at night to the walled compounds of the rich, or take the bus to a hillside favela, all cariocasa"in fact most Braziliansa"are shockingly sophisticated about fashion, culture, the events of the world, and stratagems for survival. Everyone, rich or poor, seems to know how to dress stylishly (even on a budget), handle themselves in most social situations, and make the most of their charm, winging it through life. Is there appalling poverty? Are there organized drug gangs, squalid housing, and rampant prost.i.tution? Yes. Do I oversimplify? Yes. Remember, I didn't get too far from the beach.

In fact, I confined my investigations exclusively to the coast, beach-hopping from Copacabana with its tourist hordes, big hotels, nightclubs, and family beaches, to the slightly mor~ segmented Ipanema. In Ipa, there are beaches for surfers beaches for gays, beaches for aging leftists and artists, a beac" with a band sh.e.l.l for live music. The surf is stronger, and th social strata more intricate. A few blocks back from the beach, it's like Sutton Place. Ten blocks beyond? Slums that make the South Bronx of the 1970s look like Club Med. I traveled down the coast, through mountain tunnels to Barra (another one), a Montauk-esque beach community with even wilder waves and a less crowded beacha"a sort of dress-down-if-you're-stinking-rich enclave strip of cafes and shops and modest but well-kep homes, a few full-bore pleasure palaces. I ate caldo verde (Portuguese kale soup), fried fresh sardines, and grilled chorizos and onions; drank cacbaca and chopp; and looked out for good places to return for dinner.

When the whole group was briefly reconst.i.tuted at the hotel, we set out for dinner at a cburrascaria, a highly recommended place in Copa with an extensive buffet. But the minute we sat down, we knew it was a mistake. The meal was awful, pointless, and touristy. The Argentine beef was bland, chewy, and uninteresting. I felt like a carnival mark watching the bolero-jacketed waiters carving slices off indifferently grilled meat. There was only sirloin, filet, and rounda"no skirt or hanger or kidneys or interesting bits. I hate all-you-can-eat concepts to start with. Few foodstuffs, in my experience, are actually better festering under heat lamps, or growing oxidized on a buffet. A late-night sushi snack the next night was equally dreary. Taka's face, previously filled with enthusiasm as he discussed the films of Werner Herzog, went slack as he laid eyes on the limp graying tuna, ZZZ.

the insipid California rolls. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds didn't even have j.a.panese beer!

What was sensational was my first experience of feijoada, the national dish of Brazil. Feijoada is traditionally eaten on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, in gargantuan, gut-busting portions, the idea being that after a full experience of this hearty mix of hooves, snouts, tails, and other meats stewed in black beans, one need not eat again for the rest of the weekend. Eager to find the best available, I strolled down the main drag of Copacabana, eyes peeled for locals, until I found a particularly busy cafe packed with cariocas happily digging in.

Major score. My feijoada arrived baked in a ma.s.sive earthenware crock, accompanied by plates of white rice, sauteed kale, and pork cracklins. It was breathtakingly good. Like so many truly great dishes, feijoada derives from desperate and humble circ.u.mstances. It's said originally to have been thrown together in impromptu fashion by African slaves, with leftovers pilfered or pa.s.sed along from their cruel masters' plates. Pigs' feet, ears, tongue, shoulder, spicy chorizo sausages, what looked like snout, some tail, all slowly braised in a hearty, heart-clogging mix of black beans and spices. Heaped in increments over rice and sprinkled with cracklins, it can take hours to eat at a leisurely pace. Mine was t.i.tanic in size and astonishingly good. The sun was setting over Sugarloaf beyond the dark turquoise water by the time I'd sc.r.a.ped every last morsel and mopped up the beans with a crust of Portuguese-style bread. Samba music was playing faintly in the background; beachgoers covered themselves with simple wraps and waited for the busses that would take them home, or strolled down the boulevard looking for friends and drinks and music. Lovers held each other by the waist wordlessly, friends chatted, hookers posed, food arrived at other tables, disappeared, was replenished. Bossa nova insinuated itself from the cafe next door, the chopps flowed, older couples sipped strong Brazilian coffee and stared blissfully out to sea. I sat for hours, perfectly content for a brief time at the center of the world.

THE OLD, GOOD STUFF.

i wa.s.standing on East Sixtieth Street in front of the uni spiring facade of Le Veau d'Or, one of those places you walk b without a glance (h.e.l.l, you've already walked by it a millio times), where faded, framed reviews from likely long-dea restaurant critics still hang in the window. I was having a la cigarette before going inside to meet a friend for lunch, when stranger approached me.

"You're going to lunch here}" she demanded.

"Uh . . . yes," I replied warily, a little afraid of what she mig' say next.

"You're going to love it" she squealed. "I adore this place! It' so hilariously, wonderfully old school!" Then, her face took on suddenly serious expression as she considered something sh hadn't thought of before. "Just don't tell anyone about it, okay?"

A few minutes later, the ancient proprietor-waiter of Le Vea d'Or threw my coat over an unused table and ushered me across a small, mostly empty dining room to join my friend. A couple sat at a corner table, side by side on an aged red banquette. A few lone diners, regulars from the look of them, ate silently by themselves, concentrating on their food. At forty-seven years of age, I was the youngest person in the room.

I was in The Restaurant That Time Forgot, an observation reinforced by one look at the menu, a historical doc.u.ment as untouched by the decades as the dining room. Reading down the list of menu items and the day's specials was like a blast from the past, a dizzying drop into a time warp. Even the typeface and logo looked like a 1940s film prop. As I read, I felt myself repeatedly catching my breath, inhaling sharply with each defiantly out-of-fashion offering: Celeri remoulade, saucisson chaud, poireaux vinaigrette, hareng a la creme, vichyssoise, endives roquefort . . .

"Oh my G.o.dV I spluttered idiotically, my face breaking into a big grin. "I can't believe this!"

Trout meuniere, navarin d'agneau, sauteed chicken tarragon, poussin en cocotte "Bonne Femme," rognons de veau Dijon-naise, coq au vin, tripes a la mode de Caen , . . one forgotten French bistro cla.s.sic after another. And the desserts! The desserts! Okay, creme caramel and tarte aux pommesa"still obligatory. One would expect to see those two here. But oeufs a la neige? Peche Melba!? These were preparations you had to go digging for in old copies of Le Repertoire de la Cuisine or Larousse to find. This was madness! This was insane! This was absolutely fantastic!

One might thinka"considering the sight of me giggling at Le Veau d'Ora"that perhaps I was appreciating this dino-era menu in a modern, post-ironic way. That I was somehow snickering at the proprietor and his improbable, almost irrationally unsellable choice of menu items, that there was something funny about how out of touch, days-gone-by, stubbornly incongruous and French Le Veau d'Or's menu wasa"the height of unfashionable, only a few feet from Bloomingdale's and Madison Avenue.

But one would be wrong.

My eyes filled with real tears. My heart sang. And as I ate my celeri remoulade and my proudly ungarnished rognons de veau, and later, my ties flottantes, I was bursting with admiration for the place. This was the good old stuff. This was roots cooking, the kind of French food I first came to know and love, the wellspring from which Ia"and many cooks like mea"came. And I know that I am not alone in my affection.

In Paris, of course, they continue to serve this kind of fare sans irony. On a recent trip, I found myself walking in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres with my editor, who'd grown up in the neighborhood. Every few blocks, she'd stop and excitedly point out a forlorn-looking storefront and say, "Oh! That place there makes the best rognons de veau flambeeV or "the boeuf aux carottes there is superb!" This is akin to walking through suburban New Jersey with an American and having them pa.s.sionately expound on the glories of diner meatloaf, or coffee-shop tuna salad. I love the French. Their maniacal obsession with the simple act of lunch has, I think, made the world a better place.

But what about us? What's left of the once common, even de rigeur, yet now forgotten cuisine bourgoise, and the more upscale "continental" cla.s.sics that seem to have gone down with the t.i.tanic} Who still loves them? Who continues to uphold the glorious tradition, against the forces of time and trend and simple good sense?

Riffing on old-school cla.s.sics is something well-known American chefs have been doing for some time. It's been decades since you could find a "napoleon" in a restaurant that in any way resembles the original pastry. Thomas Keller serves a faux "blanquette" (of lobster), and Eric Ripert serves a "croque monsieur" (of caviar and smoked salmon), and other hotshot modernists both here and abroad have been freely pilfering the kernels of forgotten cla.s.sics for ages. They're not serving the "real deal." But they're not laughing, either.

They'd serve rognons de veau Bercy if they could. I just know it.

It can be a hard thing for a chef to do "forgotten" cla.s.sics the old way, the way they're supposed to be done. Making a "real" blanquette de veau, for instance. Tradition dictates that you simmer veal neck or shoulder in plain watera"no jacking with stock or medley of herbs; that the mushrooms be uncaramelized; that you serve it with plain white rice. In short, that there be no color. No garnish. And no fancy black plates, either. This goes against every modern chef's first instincts, conventional wisdom, and all our training. The natural urge, of course, is to always zz6 seek color contrast, that presentation be bold and eye-catching, that chefs at the very least "tweak" all that pa.s.ses through their kitchens, no matter how cla.s.sic the dish, essentially making it, with the addition or subtraction of the odd ingredient, somehow their own. But blanquette de veau should be all white. Not even a single shred of chopped parsley or tuft of chervil to set off its uninterrupted monochrome. To change anything is to not make a blanquette. Not really.

This can be tough for a chef. To do it "right" can be a bold, almost reactionary move. Or, it can be a bald, thoroughly guileless expression of earnest and undying love.

Or, as is thankfully still the case in isolated pockets in America, it can be the still-offered fare of an inst.i.tution that for whatever reason has chosen to stay stuck in time and s.p.a.ce, a fly in amber, unchanginga"unaware, perhaps, or else afraid to change, or simply clinging to the old ways for the sake of an original clientele, one very likely dying of attrition.

Look at Louis XVI in New Orleans, where they still serve such Cunard Line-era monsters as oysters Rockefeller, feuillantine de crustaces (vol-au-vent of sh.e.l.lfish in Nantua sauce!), canard Montmorency (duck in cherry sauce), filet au poivre prepared tableside, and, most remarkably, the unthinkably retro, perennial ruler of the elephant graveyard, filet de boeuf Wellington! Think about that: A filet of beef slathered with foie gras and mushroom duxelle, wrapped in pastry, baked, and served with a truffled bordelaise (Perigordine). When was the last time you saw the words duxelle, truffle, foie gras, and pastry all in the same sentence? This heavy, labor-intensive, difficult to hold and reheat cliche of a dish has endured nouvelle cuisine, cuisine minceur, the single slice of kiwia"with fanned skinless poussin breasta"on large plate, pink peppercorns, Asian fusion, New American, quick grills, Atkins-mania, molecular gastronomya" and plain old good sense. And you've got to admire the folks at Louis XVI for it. They're like the Robert Mitchum, the Johnny Cash, the Keith Richards of restaurants: too old, too mean, and too cool to change. Louis? I salute you.

La Chaumiere in Washington, D.C., continues to feature quenelles de brochet (pike dumplings in Nantua sauce), a dish maybe one chef among thousands remembers, much less knows how to prepare. They also feature ca.s.soulet Toulousain, boudin blanc, tripes, and calves' brains. The tripe and calves' brains can hardly be flying out of the kitchena"especially in these fearful, troubled timesa"but kudos for sticking with them. It's a decision that borders on the heroic.

La Pet.i.te Auberge in New York City still sells coquilles Saint-Jacques, served in scallop sh.e.l.ls, just like my mom did back in the sixties. Frogs' legs with garlic, cha.s.seur sauce, and bordelaise sauce still take their place on the menu. It's been a long time since I've seen bordelaise on a menua"it's usually been long supplanted by the healthier-sounding "demi-glace" or "reduction."

New York's Pierre au Tunnel wins the Biggest b.a.l.l.s award for keeping the unthinkably scary-a.s.s tete de veau (essentially calf's face, rolled up and tied with its tongue and thymus gland and slowly stewed in court bouillon) on their menu. They must get a lot of old Frenchmen as customers, because even in Paris these days, you pretty much have to point a gun at someone's head before you can motivate them to eat a calf's face. Pierre? Good on you. I wish I could serve tete. Really I do.

For sheer number and frequency of lumbering, old-style, unapologetically French dishes, you've just got to give it up to (again New York's) Chez Napoleon. A trip down memory lane into inspired lunacy: rillettes de pore, veal forestiere (Remember that one from school? Anybody?), tripes, kidneys, liver, brains, boudin noir, coq au vin, bouillabaisse, hot soufleesa"and cherries freaking jubileel The mind reels.

At Boston's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, their Dining Room continues to prove the existence of the old-style professional waiter, serving Dover sole meuniere tableside. One wonders where one can find a server these days who knows how to fillet a whole sole with fork and spoon in front of an audience, or prepare the Dining Room's crepes Suzettes flambees without igniting themselves or their customers. It's inspiring to know they're there, and doing what they do.

Chefs, many of whom grew up with these dishes, are often pa.s.sionate about them. But are their customers? It's interesting to see how resolute and determined modern chefs try and slip in the occasional oldie through guile and seduction. At Vincent in Minneapolis, they have had to make concessions to the marketplace, dutifully offering up a hamburger and a "carpaccio" of beets along with the steak tartare and escargots. The escargots de Bourgogne, tellingly, are helpfully described on the menu as "a traditional bistro dish"a"as if to take the sting away from the more straightforward "snails." The "blanquette" is a compromise between urges and generations, a "braised veal shank . . . with cauliflower, wild rice, and green onions." "Les haricots persillades" sit next to "creamy yellow grits" on the list of side dishes. But, under the regularly changing header of "Something Strange But Good," they have managed to sneak in that beloved old warhorse, "Normandy-Style Braised Tripe"a"incredible.

The central irony of a subject already overloaded with ironies is that the market is, perhaps, beginning to come around full circle. Cult hero-to-chefs Fergus Henderson of London's offal-centric St. John just rolled out a widely touted new edition of his cla.s.sic Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating cookbook, and was feted by Alice Waters in San Francisco, Charlie Trotter in Chicago, and Mario Batali in New York. A posse of chefs, including Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Mark Ladner, Gab-rielle Hamilton, Patti Jackson, Mary Sue Milliken, Maurice Hurley, and Kerry Heffernan (as diverse a mix of modernists, traditionalists, Francophiles, and Francophobes as one can imagine) gathered to eat tripe and ca.s.soulet and talk about a shared love of the old school with Henderson. Pork belly is now a "hot" menu item on both coasts. Duck confit has permeated menus across the nation and "house-made" charcut-erie is everywhere.

Does this mean that Le Veau d'Or will suddenly find itself "hot" again, after all these years? Will air-kissing trendoids in little black dresses and loud-talking yuppies with beeping cell phones flock to their doors, looking to experience calves' brains in beurre noir} I kind of hope not.

They might have to hire another waiter.

DIE, DIE MUST TRY.

myfirst time in Singapore, I hated it.

The heat punched me in the chest every time I stepped outside, a thick, penetrating humidity made worse by relentlessly broiling sun. Three-shower-a-day, change-your-clothes-at-noon kind of heat; yet, whenever I ducked inside for a beer, the bars were refrigerated, with locals happily sipping Tiger beers in their T-shirts in the bone-chilling, meat-locker cold. R.W. Apple Jr. has referred to Singapore as "Disneyland with the death penalty," and for good reason. The list of things you can't do (spitting, littering, gum chewing, jaywalking) is as endless as it is hard to believe, and the government's mania for relentless social engineering and development has left much of what you and I would find charming replaced by ultramodern rabbit warrens of interlocking shopping malls. They censor the Internet, you do not want to get caught with drugs within its borders, and yes, technically, even b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs are illegal (though thankfully, readily available.) But now I love it. And I go back whenever I can.

Because Singapore is probably the most food-crazed, lunatic-eater's paradise on the planet. We're not talking about "gourmets" here. Singapore's "foodies" are nothing like the annoying, nerdy, status-conscious variety one finds in New York, chattering about Jean-Georges's new place, or how such and such a restaurant lost a star. Singaporeans do not collect dining experiences like stamps, to be discussed or bragged about later.

Singaporeans are not gastronomes. They simply eat. And living in a country where Chinese, Malay, and Indian cuisines are equally (and proudly) represented, they are accustomed to eating well. When they talk about food they tend to know what they're talking about. They are not sn.o.bs and are far more likely to gush about a bowl of noodles at a Mom-and-Pop hawker stand than to be concerned with the new "hot" place.

I learned this the hard way, when addressing a black-ti gathering of well-heeled Singaporeans in a sw.a.n.k hotel's ball room. There was a question from the floor, a fan wanting t know my preferred spot for the local specialty, chicken rice When I sheepishly admitted that I had not yet tried it, the entire room of five hundred people erupted in loud (if good-natured) boos. This was followed by near anarchy, as the crowd then began arguing pa.s.sionately among themselves over which of the hundreds of chicken-rice places they should recommend to the pathetically ignorant American chef-author. Chicken rice, by the way, in case you didn't know, is, basically, boiled chicken and white rice. It is to Singaporeans what chopped liver, pastrami, or pizza is to New Yorkers. Everyone has their favorite. Discussing the subject, people tend to get enthusiastic, even contentious. The question of who's got the best could very easily lead to a fistfighta"were fighting not illegal (and therefore unthinkable) in Singapore.

The next morning, I called my friend K. F. Seetoh, the "guru" behind the Makansutra Guide, a sort of better-than-Zagat guide to Singapore's hawker stands, eating houses, and street food. Eateries are graded not with stars or numbers, but by rice bowls signifying "good," "very good," "excellent"a"and the Singlish "Don't try, regret ah!" and the ultimate accolade, "Die, die must try!" Seetoh pointed me to Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, a closet-size food stall in the bustling Maxwell Road Food Centre, generally accepted as serving one of the very best versions.

I ordered a plate from the tiny one-room stall with the head-on chickens hanging from hooks in the window and settled down to eat a heap of soft, pillowy white rice with pale, juicy chunks of chicken piled in the center. A little cuc.u.mber, some supersticky spicy hoisin-style sauce, a little grated ginger, and a garlic pepper sauce are served on the side. You mix it all together to fit personal preferencesa"and they are as varied as the imagination. Looking around at other tables in the long hallway between rows of brightly lit hawker stands, I watched locals eagerly drizzling, dipping, and mixing the basic elements into personalized concoctions, no two plates the same. The dish is remarkable for such a simple thing, almost baby food for adults, a bone-deep comfort food for locals, a rea.s.suring trip down memory lane with every mouthful. And at Tian Tian it was, as advertised, wonderful. Next time I'm asked the question, I'll be ready with a very respectable answer.

From Tian Tian, I wandered down to stall number five, an establishment called, appropriately enough, simply "Oyster Cake." The woman proprietor proudly told me she's been serving the same dish, and only that dish, for forty-five years. I figured, correctly, that after all that time she had to be pretty good at it. A throng of local customers, lining up for the deep-fried, Foochow-style beignet of oysters, minced pork, prawns, and batter, seemed to support this conclusion. I sat down at a center table (all the businesses share and jointly maintain the bare, bolted-down center tables), poked a squeeze bottle of spicy pepper sauce into the center of my cake, and gave it a good squirt. Pure goodness, washed down with a tall cup of sugarcane juice from an adjoining stall.

Once I got started, it was hard to stop. At a business advertising "Pig Organ Soup," a brightly colored sign offered the appetizing-looking Malay specialty, ba ku the. I sat down once again and was presented with a brightly colored bowl of tender boiled pork ribs in a bowl lined with greens and clear, piping-hot broth. I ordered a freshly made mango juice and happily gnawed bones and slurped broth until full.

It was tough to leave. Left untried were dozens of specialties, including an entire halal section set apart from the other stands; fried mee suah, sporting a tempting-sounding combination of mussels, pig's stomach, prawns, chicken gizzards, liver, and squid; and nasi lemak, a spicy broth of seafood, noodles, and coconut milk. There was an enormous line of people waiting for a congee-style porridgea"as in Taiwan and Thailanda"and everywhere I looked, there seemed to be good, fresh, brightly colored stuff, br.i.m.m.i.n.g from crowded stalls with proud-looking proprietors. The place was clean, organized, friendly, and informal. Each business prominently displayed its grade from the health department. At the end of the day, in keeping with Singapore's stringent food-handling requirements, all leftovers would be disposed ofa"every business starting the next day from scratch with all new ingredients.

This is what a food court should be, I thought, as I waddled toward the door. Imagine if there were a food court near you, at the mall, for instance, where instead of the soul-destroying mediocrity and sameness of American fast food, a wide spectrum of ethnically diverse lone proprietorsa"all of whom had been perfecting their craft for decadesa"offered up their very best. Imagine independently owned and operated businesses next door to each other, each serving one specialty as far from and different from the adjacent offering as each individual culture. Imaginea"if fast food could be good food. That there were quick, cheap, delicious offerings that tasted unique to their locale, all across America. That people smiled and laughed as they ate at their brightly colored tablesa"as they do in Singaporea"that they talked and argued about food while they ate, taking pleasure in even this small, simple, everyday thing . . . instead of joylessly chomping at paper-wrapped disks of graying beef-flavor-sprayed meat before lumbering unquestioning toward cardiac apocalypse. Wouldn't that be something?

Flush with my experience at the food court, I called Seetoh the next day and put myself entirely in his hands. "Feed me," I said, "the very best."

The first place he took me was Sin Huat Eating House at the junction of Geylang Road and Lorong 35, a tired, dumpy- looking joint (one could barely call it a restaurant) in the red-light district. The dining rooma"such as it isa"had been taken over by a mean-faced server-prep cook who was busily peeling garlic and shallots, rarely bothering to look up. A gla.s.s-front refrigerator contained bottles of Tiger beer, and little else. We served ourselvesa"as the server didn't bother to offer. A few bare, unstable round tables sat outside, a perfect vantage point from which to observe the parade of lumpy and forlorn-looking prost.i.tutes, and the arcadelike s.p.a.ce was filled almost entirely with fish tanks, cases of beer, and Styrofoam and wood crates jam-packed with sh.e.l.lfish. All seafood, in fact, is kept alive and happy at Sin Huat until ordered by customers The overlit ambiance, dirty-T-shirted staff, and stray cats who patrol near the tables were not impediments to a truly great meal. This came as no surprise to me. As I have found in my travels, a certain degree of dirtiness, lack of refrigeration, and close proximity to livestock is often a near-guarantee of something really good to eat. If you see a crowd of locals lined up to eat at a filthy-looking little dunghole on the edge of town, it is often a sign of good things to come.

Referring to chef Danny Lee, who swung by the table to say h.e.l.lo in white T-shirt, shorts, and knee-high rubber boots, Seetoh volunteered that, "This guy is like a lotus flower. A lotus flower cannot bloom unless it sits in a swamp. It's about extracting heaven from h.e.l.l."

I don't recall actually ordering anything. I certainly never saw a menu. But what followed were seven courses of the tastiest, most screamingly fresh G.o.dd.a.m.ned seafood I have ever put in my moutha"a miracle of wild, pa.s.sionate, rule-breaking brilliance. I never saw a single vegetable, save a lone, half-hearted garnish of flowered scallion bulb. No rice. No sides. Every course arrived heaped with garlic, swimming in garlic, studded with garlic, or perched atop a Himalaya of garlic. Yet, each and every dish tasted distinctively, magnificently different, devoid of any garlic-related unpleasantness. Always, the principle ingredient (the fish) spoke loudest and most freely.

Gong-Gong, which translates, Seetoh said, to "stupid-stupid," was a stainless-steel serving platter of fresh whelks, steamed and sauteed in garlic. We twisted the tender, b.u.t.tery-light meat out of the sh.e.l.ls with toothpicks. Next came garlic prawns heaped with garlic stuffing and quick roasted; again, the sweet flavor of the prawns (only a few minutes ago skittering at the bottom of a fish tank) shone through, somehow beating the garlic into gentle submission. Scallops with roe, still in their sh.e.l.ls, arrived glazed in black-bean sauce, by which time I was eating with my hands and slurping every clinging streak or drop. A steamed spotted grouper arriveda"on the bone, of course. The highly prized one-and-a-half-pound fish costs about a hundred bucks a pop. I tunneled directly into a cheek, which pleased Seetoh no end. We ate frogs in "chicken essence" and a single stingray steamed with scallion, which inspired my mentor to exclaim "Shiok!" and "Steam!" meaning, I gather, "f.u.c.king good" in Singlish. (He explained the local dialect as "think in Chinese, speak in English" before commenting on the next course, Sin Huat's famous crab bee boon: "Good-ah! Hot-Hot!") The ma.s.sive Sri Lankan hard-sh.e.l.l she-crab had been hacked into hunks of roe-studded goodness, crisped in hot oil, and simmered with a magical mystery sauce of home-brewed soy and stock and tossed with rice noodles, chilies, and garlic. "You eat the noodles first," Seetoh advised, his eyes getting a glazed, faraway look. By now the table was a wrecking yard of prawn sh.e.l.ls, emptied scallops, frog femurs, fish bones, and empty Tiger bottles. Blissed out on food, beer, and what had now become a warm and welcoming environment, I became suddenly nonconversational as I sucked, slurped, and dug at my crab.

"Seetoh, old buddy," I slurred, absolutely sincere, "I have eaten all over this earth. I've eaten fish most have only dreamed of. I come from a long line of French oyster fishermen. I've been to Tsukiji market in Tokyo. I've eaten two-hundred-dollar-a-pound otoro tuna off the still-quivering fish. I've had the fullpress treatment at Le Bernardin for Chrissakes! But this, this is the best seafood meal I've ever had!"

Seetoh smiled, sucked a little crab fat out of a sh.e.l.l, and looked up at me indulgently. "Why you wanna talk when there's good food-ah?"

A TASTE OF FICTION.

A CHEF'S CHRISTMAS.

itwas about a week before Christmas and all through the restaurant, not an employee was stirring, not even the usually hyperactive busboy, Mahmoud, who sat bolt-upright at the end of an empty banquette, staring into s.p.a.ce. The decorations (six hundred forty-nine dollars worth, Marvin recalled with dismay) had been hung in the foyer and front picture window with care (five hundred dollars to some overpaid drapery queen) in the hopes that if not Santa, then at least a few walk-in customers would materialize. A tree (another three hundred smackers to the sorriest-a.s.s, coverall-wearing, Pine Barren-dwelling, inbred motherf.u.c.ker Marvin had ever seen) had arrived yesterday by truck and now twinkled and glittered with muted white and silver lights by the host stand, where Laurie, who was working tonight because she'd swapped shifts with Alexandra, the good hostess, slouched over the reservation book and covertly prodded a zit.

Marvin had, at the last minute, decided against Christmas music. That would have been too much: happy sleighbells and songs about sugarplum fairies and reindeers and s.h.i.t. A week ago, when business had been better, he'd briefly considered budgeting for music, then abandoned the idea, sensing the potential for truly painful irony. Things were bad enough, thought Marvin. He didn't need excruciating background music. Bing Crosby walks in the door right now, he mused, starts in with that "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" s.h.i.t? He'd never get to finish the line. The whole floor staff of the beleaguered Restaurant Saint Germain would race each other to beat him to death with the nearest bar stool. Instead of carols, French "lounge" music oozed out of the bar's recessed speakers as always. Innocuous enough and what people liked these days, according to Rob.

Marvin sat by the service end of the bar, glumly observinga" but not reallya"the three regular customers drinking Chimay-at the other end, and the deuce on table number seven who were already looking furtively around Saint Germain's empty dining room and whispering to each other. They were going to lose the table. Marvin knew it without having to look over at them. They hadn't ordered food yet and were clearly reconsidering their options over drinks, planning an exit strategy. Th body language: purse repositioned on lap, the male half of the equation looking around for a waiter while he balled up his napkin, said they were ready to bolt, ready to blurt out some ridiculous lie like "We weren't really as hungry as we thought," or "my wife is having an allergy attack" or "I le the gas on" before they were out the door and in the wind. Gone. Like Marvin's entire stake. Twenty-two years of sweat and toil, warehouses full of m.u.f.flers and brake pads, trailer loadsa"container loads evena"of radial tires and retreads, blown up and away, two turns around Madison Square Park and into the void like a lonely, wind-buffeted snowflake. A thing of no consequence. Never existed.

Marvin drank his second scotch and water of the evening and tried to avoid thinking about numbers. He didn't want to think about the loan he'd personally guaranteed so that the busboy, three waiters, and the twelvea"count 'em, twelvea"cooks Rob had insisted they absolutely had to have, could all sit around the kitchen doing jack-s.h.i.t. The half-million-dollar kitchen with th brand spanking new Jade ranges and All-Clad pots and pans and induction burners and Pacojet machine and marble counter for the patissier and the custom-made rolling racks and reach-ins and the tandoori oven that Rob had used once and never again as far as Marvin knew, all of which it had been insisted they absolutely had to have.

And where was Rob, anyway? Where was "America's s.e.xiest Chef"? Why wasn't he here to share the pain, the humiliation, the deatha"in incrementsa"of all their dreams?

This is what he got for wanting to play the Bogie part. This is what he got for all those gin-soaked evenings in the Hamptons, still flush with the acc.u.mulated liquid a.s.sets of years in the auto parts biz, those sweet, lazy afternoons by the pool, dreaming of a white dinner jacket, a smoldering cigarette, of signing checks for favored customers in his very own place. "Okay, Rick." Or, "Okay, Marvin" in this case, swanning around the dining room of his very own place, the hottest place in town, his favorite songs playing in the background. Ingrid Bergman, or someone very much like her, waiting for him in an upstairs apartment. It had seemed so serendipitous at the time, meeting the young Rob Holland just down from Boston, weekending with the Haver-meyers, who had taken a place at the beach. "The hottest chef in the Northeast," Ellie Havermeyer had confided in whispered tones, beaming like she was showing off a prize Pekingese. "And the s.e.xiest f.u.c.king thing in checked pants," added her sister Cissy in a slightly more strident aside, coloring as she said it. This had impressed Marvin, as Cissy liked to use the word f.u.c.k a lot, and never blushed for anything.

Chet the bartender, a long-in-the-tooth ex-model who'd long ago resigned himself to slinging drinks for the rest of his life, wiped the bar and, from the corners of his eyes, glanced pityingly at Marvin (as much as bartenders can feel pity). Chet looked worried, thought Marvin with some satisfaction. Probably because the place was so d.a.m.n slow the miserable, thieving son of a b.i.t.c.h couldn't even steal like he used to. About a hundred bucks a night he'd been taking down, Marvin figured, back when things were good. Those were acceptable losses for a busy house with a good bartender, like back in the days when the dining room had been full of wine drinkers and hurrying, upselling waiters moving Calvados and magnums of expensive burgundies and twenty-year-old ports, the bar packed three de with giggly, well-dressed women wondering "Is Rob here t night? Is the chef around?" Now Marvin wished he could hav all that money back. A hundred dollars a night, four shifts week, times the year and a half Chet had been with SaGermaina"that was enough to pay down the D'Artagnan bi D'Artagnan, who quite sensibly wouldn't even take COD an more because the restaurant was so far in arrears, requiring R to buy even-more-expensive French foie gras from the dairy a provisions company (who were also, of course, on COD, an likely to suspend deliveries any day now).