Read Online Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Paterniti
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spooned it up.
And this time there was no doubt; his response was immediate. “It’s a natural ravioli!” he said, nodding, Yes, yes, yes. “We can serve it just like that.” He turned and walked away, turned back again. He could hardly contain himself. Again, everyone tried one. “That’s it,” he said, on the verge of levitation. “We can try other things with it, but that’s it!” He turned to me. “This is when I’m happiest. Finding the egg.”
And here’s what it tasted like: It tasted like a first—the first time you dove into an ocean wave or made something good or touched her lips. The first time you jumped from fifty feet, that feeling in the air when you forgot the gorge was beneath you, air and sun rushing, and you kept falling, and you opened your eyes and you were in the bright, underwater lights of a kitchen in Barcelonabefore an elfin man with hair springing from his head, quail yolk in your belly, and you could think of only two words to say, but you said them at least two times before you stopped yourself.
“Thank you,” you said, laughing. “Thank you.”
10. [ON THE PLEASURES OF THE TABLE]
On the last of our August days in Spain, Ferran said simply: Bring your wife and arrive by nine. Of course, I did as told. Being here had done our family good. We had swum. We were tan. Back home, phones were ringing, bills were piling, office workers were shooting each other dead, but the higher we climbed the mountain, the easier we could breathe again. It was the simplest thing.
Ferran had reserved us a table on the patio, beneath a stone arch and a nearly full moon. Even before the meal began, we experienced the odd sensation of being alone for the first time in many months, without Baby. The calm was almost exotic.
I had no doubt that somewhere back in the kitchen, Ferran knew everything that transpired at our table. While I at least had some vague sense of what might be coming, Sara was a neophyte. We barely got past “a childhood memory” (the dried quinoa) before she was smiling. By the time we spooned up our “cloud of smoke,” we were both simply untethered from any concerns but those of the table. Taste became our cynosure, night a thing to be eaten with stars and moon. Ferran Adrià revealed himself in every bite now.
“It’s as if he’s climbed inside my mouth,” Sara said, laughing, taking a second nibble of trout-egg tempura, caviar grazing her lip and disappearing on her tongue.
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
“It’s … disorienting, but fine by me because, really, it’s”—her face brightened—“so fantastic.”
Next, in a rush, came corn ravioli with vanilla, wasabi lobster, sea urchin with flowers of Jamaica—each one of these dishes weaving the unexpected with the vague outline of something we recognized. At some point, I’ll be honest, I ceased to actually taste the food so much as feel it through Sara, who for the first time in months was no longer someone I passed at 3:00 A . M . but my wife, sitting across a table in a pink sundress, lit by a candle, hair falling to her shoulders, lifting against gravity. She closed her eyes, letting Ferran’s chocolate dust settle and liquefy in her mouth.
And what did happiness taste like? Let me tell you. It tasted like seaweed and air. It tasted like watching your wife shorn of worry or care. It tasted like watching her face pass through every expression of surprise and mirth on the high road to euphoria, eating delicacies that she’d never eaten before, that exist nowhere else on earth.
Afterward, having finished champagne, having discussed nothing but food, having sat there until the restaurant was nearly empty and the moon had reached its apex and begun its descent again, we went to find Ferran, but he was nowhere to be found. Somewhere down in the real world our baby boy was sleeping, and we were told Ferran had gone to bed, too, up in his furnitureless room. It was possible. Or maybe he was
And this time there was no doubt; his response was immediate. “It’s a natural ravioli!” he said, nodding, Yes, yes, yes. “We can serve it just like that.” He turned and walked away, turned back again. He could hardly contain himself. Again, everyone tried one. “That’s it,” he said, on the verge of levitation. “We can try other things with it, but that’s it!” He turned to me. “This is when I’m happiest. Finding the egg.”
And here’s what it tasted like: It tasted like a first—the first time you dove into an ocean wave or made something good or touched her lips. The first time you jumped from fifty feet, that feeling in the air when you forgot the gorge was beneath you, air and sun rushing, and you kept falling, and you opened your eyes and you were in the bright, underwater lights of a kitchen in Barcelonabefore an elfin man with hair springing from his head, quail yolk in your belly, and you could think of only two words to say, but you said them at least two times before you stopped yourself.
“Thank you,” you said, laughing. “Thank you.”
10. [ON THE PLEASURES OF THE TABLE]
On the last of our August days in Spain, Ferran said simply: Bring your wife and arrive by nine. Of course, I did as told. Being here had done our family good. We had swum. We were tan. Back home, phones were ringing, bills were piling, office workers were shooting each other dead, but the higher we climbed the mountain, the easier we could breathe again. It was the simplest thing.
Ferran had reserved us a table on the patio, beneath a stone arch and a nearly full moon. Even before the meal began, we experienced the odd sensation of being alone for the first time in many months, without Baby. The calm was almost exotic.
I had no doubt that somewhere back in the kitchen, Ferran knew everything that transpired at our table. While I at least had some vague sense of what might be coming, Sara was a neophyte. We barely got past “a childhood memory” (the dried quinoa) before she was smiling. By the time we spooned up our “cloud of smoke,” we were both simply untethered from any concerns but those of the table. Taste became our cynosure, night a thing to be eaten with stars and moon. Ferran Adrià revealed himself in every bite now.
“It’s as if he’s climbed inside my mouth,” Sara said, laughing, taking a second nibble of trout-egg tempura, caviar grazing her lip and disappearing on her tongue.
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
“It’s … disorienting, but fine by me because, really, it’s”—her face brightened—“so fantastic.”
Next, in a rush, came corn ravioli with vanilla, wasabi lobster, sea urchin with flowers of Jamaica—each one of these dishes weaving the unexpected with the vague outline of something we recognized. At some point, I’ll be honest, I ceased to actually taste the food so much as feel it through Sara, who for the first time in months was no longer someone I passed at 3:00 A . M . but my wife, sitting across a table in a pink sundress, lit by a candle, hair falling to her shoulders, lifting against gravity. She closed her eyes, letting Ferran’s chocolate dust settle and liquefy in her mouth.
And what did happiness taste like? Let me tell you. It tasted like seaweed and air. It tasted like watching your wife shorn of worry or care. It tasted like watching her face pass through every expression of surprise and mirth on the high road to euphoria, eating delicacies that she’d never eaten before, that exist nowhere else on earth.
Afterward, having finished champagne, having discussed nothing but food, having sat there until the restaurant was nearly empty and the moon had reached its apex and begun its descent again, we went to find Ferran, but he was nowhere to be found. Somewhere down in the real world our baby boy was sleeping, and we were told Ferran had gone to bed, too, up in his furnitureless room. It was possible. Or maybe he was
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