Nathalie Bouffe

Nathalie BOUFFE

So I’ve been in New York for three weeks now.  This means that for every eight miles I’ve walked I’ve probably ingested three pounds of crispy pork belly.  Good thing my new coat is a cape, or I would have had to start shopping for maternity wear.  Best meals?  Worst?

A sublime dinner—Berkshire piggy with fromage blanc spaetzle, guanciale and escarole—at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill followed Marco Canora’s genial, generous cooking at Hearth, courtesy of Carlisha.  The pizzas at Otto were delicious (not to mention the creamy olive-oil ice cream), if somewhat hampered by the Cheesecake Factory corral-type atmosphere—Lupa, where I shared a late-night porky feast with Saxelby, was much mellower.  Momofuku’s gets mixed reviews; it’s good, I think, but ultimately overrated (Jables and Freakock, whose Momofuku’s came back up after it went down, were nonplussed).  Café Leon, on the under hand: totally underrated!  They toss a mean salad.  Boqueria: tasty but banal.  Fatty Crab: fatty indeed, but no less delicious, who knew watermelon married crispy pork so well? Mexican and margaritas on Houston, empanadas on first, David’s Bagels on thirteenth, woo woo wee wee woo!

The best things I ate weren’t always in restaurants.  When John and Judy came home from lunch at Peter Luger’s they had a doggie-bag steak that we ate cold in the wee hours, rending the flesh apart like…dogs, kinda.  Ferris Bueller and I stank up one smart apt with the smells of Tennessee bacon swizzled with eggs.  And I’ve munched a few ideal bagels on the subway. 

MY GOD this is quite the list.  No wonder that every time I reach my fifth-floor apartment door I can barely breathe.  Or is there something else I should blame that on?  Let’s save that one for our next discussion.  Or never.

This needs to stop.  I am hemorrhaging money. 

No one's ever described the place where I’ve just arrived

Despite the fact that I’ve now moved out of my car and into a bedroom, I still can’t seem to stop driving.  Miami’s temperatures have glided gracefully down to where we like them best: the sun keeps us ever so slightly salty, and the gentle breezes of the moon wick off the sweat, blowing at once coolness and warmth, like a lover's whisper.  Outside at midnight, in shirtsleeves and sundresses, we count ourselves lucky to live in the tropics in November.

I drove up to Ft. Lauderdale to meet my friend Tom for a drink tonight and then followed him to Plantation’s only authentic Irish pub (!), where Fire in the Kitchen was playing.  The band consists of a Chinese fiddler called ShaSha, an Irish keyboardist previously of Dexy’s Midnight Runners (“Come on Eileen”), and a fat man who, throughout the course of the evening, put on and took off a little Irish mandolin, a fiddle, a drum, an Elvis mask, a knit Rasta cap with attached dreads, and a plaid Fat Bastard beret.  The less-than-likely trio serenaded and whiplashed, mulled and marched, all to Celtic melodies.   They were remarkably...effective.  Affective.

Who says I’ve stopped traveling?  The Paul Theroux quote above underscores how adventure will only be defined by state of mind; an odyssey can self-contain itself inside one's own backyard. 

11,000 miles since we left Rhode Island.

Nathalie's Famous!

Check me out in Mississippi...

I take exception to the first sentence, though.  OF COURSE I came to enjoy the Southern cuisine!  I ate fried catfish that very night....

Unfortunately, it gave me food poisoning.

Soundtrack to a Million Miles

My last six months have been set to music.  Whether you’d call them self-employment or unemployment, the truth is I was often my own boss and only company, and it meant I chose the soundtrack, or it chose me.

The beginning, after I’d just left London, was heavy on the pretentiously indie electronica.  Still in a strung-out state of mind, not really, in my head, having left yet, I listened to Aavikko and Emir Kusturica and chain-smoked the toxins out of my system.  A few weeks later, I’d mellowed.  Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin had rolled by, green, robust and wholesome, and mostly I listened to the folksy twanging of Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, indulged in a little Matchbox 20 even.  I was thinking about a lot of things. 

In France my cousins uploaded me a bunch of French music.  But once they’d left there were weeks I wouldn’t see a single person I knew other than the grocer, and the music was constantly, continuously on.  The soothing invariability of noise was like having another person there, I guess.  I ate lentils, leeks, poached eggs, baguettes and nutella every day, in some new configuration—it became like a game to figure out new relationships for them.  Those days I’d just press ‘random’ and a thousand songs could defile between tea or bathroom breaks without my ever focusing on one.  Once, I listed to the first four hundred or so, in alphabetical order.  A lot of work got done. 

After a brief and perplexing, acid-house pop back into London, I got to Cork, where there was too much to do for music to play constantly.  When the day ended, though, I’d retreat into a world of headphones, rizla paper and literature.  It was the first occasion I’d had in years to read as much as I wanted to, and it lasted for weeks.  The music became backdrop then.  Baroque, acoustic, ambient, world.  It didn’t really matter; I wasn’t really listening.

Vickie doesn’t drive, so she DJed instead, and I discovered music I owned that I’d never paid attention to before: Röyksopp, Tricycle, Lemon Jelly.  The accordion in the music of La Rue Kétanou made us manic; we swerved in hilarity, circumventing sheep and old men. 

American Update

Forgive me for being such a fair-weather blogger, but every sentence I am capable of stringing together this summer belongs to MTV France, a circumstance unlikely to change until the beginning of September, unless I get my hands on some really strong alpine crack (anyone have a reputable source?).  But I still feel compelled to make a few comments about my recent dip back into the American food panorama, where I found the water warm, lightly salted, and very, very appealing.

Hey hey hey...

At least someone's paying me to write ...

America the Beautiful: More Wal-Mart Trucks and...Mennonites?

Despite having fed my Wal-Mart yen, once I got back on the highway I kept on noticing Wal-Mart trucks.  And other trucks:

A Municipal Solid Residual Waste truck
A truck pulling four truck cabs
A truck pulling a bulldozer
A truck pulling a gas tanker
A truck pulling a Wal-Mart truck
A truck pulling a crane
A truck pulling two bulldozers
A truck pulling nine new cars.

That was fun for a while, and then I sang out loud to bad Bruce Springsteen tunes, and after that, I amused myself by taking notes. Hey, whatever it takes to stay awake!

America the Beautiful: Wal-Mart

What, you’re wondering, are you most likely to pass on your drive between Philadelphia and Ann Arbor?  Wal-Mart trucks.  Wal-Marts themselves are a close second--and I’m sure my drive probably ranked low on the scale of national Wal-Mart density. 

It seeps into your unconscious.  On my way west I made a list of all the things I needed, and veered across three lanes when the Belle Vernon Wal-Mart in western Pennsylvania shook its boxy redheaded curls at me from across the median.  On my list were a compass, safety pins, fountain pen cartridges, and gum.  Wal-Mart, I was sure, would accommodate me largely.

The Belle Vernon Wal-Mart has a hair salon, photo studio where a prune-faced purple newborn was having its first portrait taken, bank complete with surly, long-nailed tellers, food court that smells of buttered popcorn, game room, video store, and alleys of toilets scribbled with lots of local phone numbers and what you can expect to find if you dial them.  Syncopated beeping from the scan guns of the sixty cashiers peppers the air immediately inside, but hiking purposefully out to a corner takes you to a place where you can be alone with floor-to-ceiling camo pants maturing under a humming fluorescence.  Really, you could spend decades at Wal-Mart without ever strictly needing anything from the outside, except, obviously, the will to live. Were you to atrophy, someone could request for you a motorized wheelchair equipped with an enormous shopping basket, into which you could certainly fit at least several of the following: deluxe rattan creel, E-Z Feet slippers, paintball rifles, a light blue “speaker pillow” for your ipod with glow-in-the-dark icons, electric dulcimer, candle creater, sno-cone-maker, or kilo bag of sunflower seeds. 

I left with everything but the fountain pen ink, which, I was told, was ‘yonder down in Crafts’ when I asked Stationery and ‘on the other side in Stationery’ when I asked Crafts.  By the time I left, I was also carrying silk flowers, a disposable camera and fishing hooks.  Why?  Why??  BECAUSE IT WAS THERE.  And the prices!!

Eventually I left, partly panicked because I couldn’t find my car key.  I found it in the keyhole of my car door.  Obviously I’d been a little overexcited about my Wal-Mart shopping experience.  Clearly, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, unless they want their car stolen and metaphors mixed. 

Recapitulation from Brownstown, PA and a note on the Cheese Steak Controversy

So, it’s been about three weeks I’ve been gone, or come back, depending on how you look at it.  I’ve slept on two plumpened inflatable air mattress and also one flat one, a rollout bed and four different sofas, shared a pillow with my sister and another with MPJ last night.  Jess Wilson in particular deserves a special mention—the valorous maiden gave up her bed so I could catch my winks in it.  Tonight Eileen asked jokingly how I liked living out of a suitcase again.  “Fine,” I retorted.  Seriously, where do people think I was living in London, the Ritz?  At least all my showers for the past three weeks have been hot.

I’ve been bitten by a dog and got lost for hours in the three-dimensional maze of Boston flyovers and Philadelphia gave me a parking ticket.  On the flip side, I had terrific sushi in the West Village and Coke from a glass bottle and Taco Bell.  And there’s a TastyKake for the road tomorrow!

I’ve also been eating a lot of American cheese.  You’ll be hearing more about that upcoming, as I plan to taste a whole lot more over the next two months.  My kindly hosts have been the beneficiaries of the guilt-purchase that inevitably results after some nice cheesemonger takes me through their whole counter.  Carlisha receieved a sweaty piece of Brigid's Abbey I picked up from the Cato Corner Farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket; David and Joel were sprinkled in Hooligan and Tomme DeLay from Anne Saxelby’s rockin’ new American cheese stall at the Essex Street market.  Adam got some Constant Bliss from the best new addition to Providence, and Zoe lucked out with an extra-nice batch of Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Murray’s.  Eileen took home a pot of the house cheese spread the cutie at DiBruno’s got me to taste, and MPJ acquired a wedge of Toussaint and some Evans family butter. 

Possibly the best American cheese I had today, though, came from Pat’s in South Philly and appeared in the form of Cheez Whiz poured atop a steak sandwich.  Pat’s, people think, makes the best cheese-steak in Philadelphia.  Unless they’re the type of people who like Geno’s better.  Until recently the debate limited itself to the crumb of the bread and the thickness of the chopped steak, but since the controversy, where one stands on the Pat’s vs. Geno’s issue has become a real galvanizer.

What have I got to say about it?

Burp.

On My Way

I've been going on some really spectacular walks lately. On Saturday, confronted with an untangleable knot of double-decker traffic at Dalston Junction, Amelie and I hopped off the bus and walked to St. John Bread & Wine for a lunch of olives with Chenin Blanc, grilled sardines and roasted crispy chitterlings perched atop a dandelion/watercress salad.  The madeleines we finished with trumped Proust's eponymous memory-sparks; they sailed out warm and doughy, fairly melting on our tongues.  We tripped down to Holborn and over to the river, where we watched tugboats bulldoze the waves, harrumphing black smoke; we wandered up to Covent Garden and over to Stamfords, where we whiled away an hour flipping back the pages of picture-books.  The sun had come out in the meantime, and it followed us to Green Park; we rested our blistered feet awhile before following Bayswater once it disappeared and chilled the air.  A pitcher of Pimm's on Kensington Church Street; a glass of wine and some more olives at my favorite Pembridge Road bar; a bottle of Albarino with tortilla and jamon serrano at Galicia near Ladbroke Grove.  And then, well into the early morning, a bumpy two-hour night bus ride home to Hackney, Amelie snoring on my shoulder all through the eight miles we'd covered through London on foot. 

I've been taking absurd walks all through my tenure in London--Clapham Junction to Clerkenwell, London Bridge to Homerton--but they've taken on a special glint since, two months ago, I decided to leave.  Nothing teaches you a city like walking around it, and two months wasn't long enough to only start paying attention. 

It's okay.  I'll be back.  For the time being, though, I'm launching myself off towards the next great adventure.  Caroline graduates next week, and I'm off to Providence to see it.  She's relinquished the Natmobile, and I'm riding the silver stallion to New York awhile, then Boston, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Minnesota-Dakota-Montana, Vancouver, Seattle. 

The car will stay there for some time while I'm in France, then I'll claim it back to finish off the trip: Seattle, Portland (for the American Cheese Society conference), San Francisco, and the long haul back to Miami. 

Do you happen to be on the way?  Because my wanderlusting ass will detour to come visit you.  Especially if (A) I know you, (B) you make cheese or other good things to eat, or (C) you want to exchange a cheese talk for a meal in your nice restaurant.   

Tonight after dinner I lit up a fatty and strolled up Old Bond Street.  There was a rare book shop that specialized in travel books, first-edition Dervla Murphys and William Dalrymples stacked haphazardly on shelves visible through the window (the map above, too).  They, and Jan Morris and AJ Liebling, Didion and Agee, were all I read this winter, dreaming only of slapping my shoes on and walking out of gray, brown Hackney into a quasi-imagined world of dervishes and madwomen and visionaries and scribes.  Yes, I know, everyone in the Midwest is too fat to be anything halfway romantic, but versions of these characters are bound to be scrounging around somewhere within.

After burrowing through the human crush at Piccadilly, I surfaced at chestnut-feathered Russell Square, where I took off my soaked sneakers and walked through puddles until Euston station and the 253.  What do you know?  Dervishes and madwomen galore.  Humph.