Garlic and Sapphires (10 page)

“Thanks,” I said. I waited for her to say more; I could feel that there was something else, something she still had to say. But she remained silent and after a moment, not knowing what else to do, I said, “I think that's my phone ringing,” and retreated.

“I have the Secretary of State for you,” said a faraway voice when I picked up the receiver. It was, indeed, Warren Christopher calling from Washington. He was on his way to New York and wanted advice on where to eat. We chatted about restaurants for a while and then the other line begin to ring. I picked it up to hear Gregory Peck's unmistakable voice. He wanted to discuss steak. Then Mike Nichols called in urgent need of a vegetarian cook. No wonder Bryan was sorry he had given up the job, I thought; these calls once came to him.

But Bryan was not alone in wishing he was still the critic. The city was filled with people who did not think that Shanghai dumpling parlors, Korean barbecue places, and sushi bars merited serious consideration. They did not want these restaurants taking up the space that properly belonged to the French, Italian, and Continental establishments they were accustomed to seeing reviewed in their Friday morning paper. “Bring back Bryan Miller!” they howled in their letters to the editor.

But I was determined to give Asian, Indian, and Latino restaurants the respect that they deserved. I would certainly not be the first
New York Times
critic to do so. Mimi Sheraton had not reserved her stars for fancy restaurants, and I had once heard rumors that Raymond Sokolov, who had been the food editor of the
Times
in the early seventies, had been pushed out because of his excessive fondness for ethnic food. He was now the culture editor of the
Wall Street Journal,
and I decided to ask him about it.

“Of course I'll have lunch with you,” he said when I reached him on the phone. “Why don't we go to my favorite Korean restaurant? It's just a few blocks from your office.”

I walked through the depressing ghost of Times Square, the dreariest section of Manhattan. The renaissance of the area was still a few years off, and when you exited the
Times
building and navigated the grimy streets it did not seem possible that this unlovely part of the city could ever be brought back to life. The movie theaters sat empty and disconsolate, and the boarded-up girlie parlors shouted out ancient invitations. Occasionally I'd pass a broken-down bar that burped alcohol into the street when the door swung open, or a cheap deli redolent of old grease and garlic. Grim shops selling bogus electronic equipment stood on every corner. The streets felt raw and dangerous, and I clutched my purse each time a person shuffled past.

Things got better below Forty-second Street, where the boutiques overflowed with discount dresses and the coffee shops were filled with the people who sewed them. The city's pulse quickened even more as I approached Macy's. By the time I reached Thirty-fourth Street, Manhattan had changed back into the city it wanted to be.

And then I turned onto Thirty-second Street and found myself transported to a completely foreign place, a teeming Asian metropolis where all the signs bellowed incomprehensible phrases. It was as if an entire Korean city—barbers, butchers, florists, pharmacies, and accountants—had been picked up by a tornado, swirled halfway around the world, and restacked into a single crowded block.

Entranced, I walked slowly from Sixth Avenue to Fifth, following the seductive aroma of beef grilling on charcoal. The scent pulled me along, past shops displaying beautiful little pastries and herb emporiums whose windows were forests of twisted ginseng and reindeer horns. I crossed the street and doubled back, losing myself among the kiosks selling newspapers with indecipherable letters and the restaurants offering homemade tofu and big bowls of milky white soup.

In this vertical city every inch was made to count; looking up, I saw signs offering massages, spiritualism, translation, and twenty-four-hour doctors. This compact little enclave offered everything you could possibly need. How had I missed it all these years?

I found Ray near Sixth Avenue, standing in front of a restaurant called Kang Suh, tapping a rolled-up paper against his palm. He would have been hard to miss even if he hadn't been the only other Caucasian on the block. An elfin man with a head slightly too large for his body, he seemed perpetually amused, as if life were a private joke that the rest of us don't get. “Wonderful, isn't it?” he said, waving his arms proprietarily up the street as if he had just conjured it up.

We went inside, passed a dark sushi bar, and climbed the stairs. On the second floor the air was thick with smoke as young men scurried about with buckets of glowing coals to fuel the braziers at each table. Slim, dark-eyed women carrying platters of marinated raw meat and little dishes of mysterious condiments pushed brusquely past us.

I slid into a booth as a waitress set six little bowls of
panchan,
the cold dishes that Korean restaurants offer free with every meal, on our table. I picked up pointed steel chopsticks that looked like knitting needles and took a bite of marinated cucumber; it was cool and delicate, shimmering with sesame oil. I held it in my mouth for a moment, savoring its musky, familiar flavor. “I thought that you had to go to Flushing if you wanted Korean food in New York,” I said. Now my mouth was on fire from the cabbage kimchi laced with red chilies.

“Strange, isn't it?” said Ray, spearing a bit of marinated watercress. “It's right here, right in midtown. The food is wonderful and cheap, and you'd think there would be lines of people out the door. But you never see anyone here but Koreans.”

I picked up the menu, which went on for pages offering fiery stews and rich soups and half a dozen different kinds of grilled beef. “Americans should love this food,” I said. “It's got every flavor we most admire. The meat is beef, it's salty and sweet at the same time, and you get to cook it right at the table. I don't understand why Korean barbecue doesn't have a huge following.”

Ray shrugged. “You could change that,” he said. “You're the restaurant critic of the
New York Times.
At least you could try.”

This was my opening. “Ask him what happened when he was at the
Times,
” I urged myself, but I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. It seemed so impertinent. Instead I said, “It might help if they translated the menu. Especially if they played with the language a little. You know, they could call
gul pajun
‘our version of Hangtown Fry.'”

“‘Try our omelet,'” he intoned. “‘Made of farm-fresh eggs and tender oysters from Blue Point, Long Island, it is the Korean version of the San Francisco classic. Ours, however, replaces the bacon with sprightly just-picked spring onions from the Union Square Greenmarket.' Who could resist?”

“Bulgoki,”
I said, getting into it, “the barbecued beef of the Far East. Our highly trained chefs cut prime steak into strips, marinate them in an irresistible mixture of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and chilies, and bring them to your table where they are seared to perfection over glowing coals.”

“Jap chae,”
he said, “intriguingly transparent strands of spaghetti in a light and lively meat sauce.”

“Jo gae tang.”
My turn now. “Clams from the shores of New England steamed in a crystal clear broth.” I studied the menu for another minute and then asked, “Do you think we could come up with any euphemism that would make grilled tripe enticing to an American audience?”

Ray shook his head. “That,” he said, “would be asking the impossible.”

He was a champion eater, matching me bite for bite, and we sat for hours drinking Korean sweet potato vodka and languidly eating the fiery food. Ray spent a long time telling me what was wrong with the paper's cultural coverage, which offended his ferocious intellect. I nodded, slightly sleepy from the heat of the coals still glowing in front of me, as I munched on the last crisp bits of meat from the grill.

It was time for the check and I still hadn't worked up the courage to ask Ray why he had left the
Times.
I had a sudden, vivid memory of my mother reading his review of Sammy's Roumanian in the early seventies and deciding to try it. When we got there, she was horrified by everything: the gritty Lower East Side location, the bottles of schmaltz on the table, the coarseness of the food. “To think that the
New York Times
is endorsing this,” she said, looking disdainfully down at the length of tough skirt steak on her plate. “They should sell this meat by the yard. I'll never believe another word that paper writes.”

And then I realized that I didn't need to ask Ray why he'd left. Twenty-five years later, nothing had changed.

 

 

 

 

 

M
y first caller on the morning my review of Kang Suh ran was Claudia. Her voice was dramatic as she began to read it out loud. “‘The sweet smell of garlic and sugar and chilies still clinging to your hair . . .' How extremely unappetizing. My darling, are you determined to lose this job? What can you possibly be thinking?”

Claudia went on and on, appalled by what she insisted on calling my “reckless disregard for people's true feelings about food.”

“Just come with me, once,” I cried. “I'm sure you'd like it.”

“Absolutely not!” she said.

“But the food's wonderful,” I protested.

“Fine,” she said. “I am certain that you have many friends who will enjoy it. But I am not among them.”

“Look,” I said, desperate, “I make this really great Americanized version of Thai noodles. Everyone loves it. Will you come to our house and at least try it?”

“No!” cried Claudia. “Thai food is filled with garlic. It is not for me. Please, my darling, let me be. After all, it is only food.”

I was suddenly angry. “It is not ‘only' food,” I said heatedly. “There's meaning hidden underneath each dish. Why do you think politicians go around munching on pizza, knishes, and egg rolls on the campaign trail? We all understand the subtext; with each bite they're trying to tell us how much they like Italians, Jews, and Chinese people. Maybe New Yorkers really won't like
bulgoki
and chicken
mole
and sushi, but how are they going to find out if they don't at least try them?”

Claudia drew a deep breath, and even through the phone I could sense her standing up very straight. “You will
never
get me to eat raw fish!” she declared. “Never! No matter how hard you try.”

Here was a challenge I could not resist. That night, as I stood in the kitchen making Thai noodles, I thought that if I could just get this recalcitrant old lady to eat sushi, I could probably get anyone to eat it.

I spent the better part of a year looking for the perfect sushi bar, the one that would persuade Claudia to try raw fish. Then, in the spring of 1995, it found me.

It was one of those days when the sky looks as if it has been washed clean and the air is so pure it pulls you along, forcing you to stay outside. I walked across Central Park, past all the delirious children on the carousel, exited at Fifth Avenue, and continued downtown. Just as I passed Bergdorf Goodman, the door opened to disgorge a stylish Japanese fashion plate. From her Manolo Blahnik shoes to her Hermès scarf, she was dressed entirely in designer clothing. As she tripped elegantly along I found myself following her, and when she turned west on Fifty-fifth Street, some impulse made me turn with her. Her destination, it turned out, was a modest restaurant I had never noticed halfway down the block.

I blinked when I walked in; it was quite dark, and quite empty. When my vision cleared I saw two Japanese men at one end of the sushi bar, and a bearded American wearing Birkenstocks in the middle. Vacant seats stretched between them.