I'd Learned Something... Food Had Power. It

If You Go To Working Class, And Working Poor Areas Of America, The Food Sources That Are Relegated To Them Are Generally Limited To Unhealthy Ones.

Few Things Are More Beautiful To Me Than A Bunch Of Thuggish, Heavily Tattooed Line Cooks Moving Around Each Other Like Ballerinas On A Busy Saturday Night. Seeing Two Guys Who'd Just As Soon Cut Each Other's Throats In Their Off Hours Moving In Unison With Grace And Ease Can Be As Uplifting As Any Chemical Stimulant Or Organized Religion.

I'm Sure One Of The Frustrations Of Being A Western Enthusiast Of Japanese Food And Culture Is You're Confronted Every Day With The Absolute Certainty That You Will Die Ignorant.

When My Father Passed, I Was Still An Unsuccessful Cook With A Drug Problem. I Was In My Mid-thirties, Standing Behind An Oyster Bar, Cracking Clams For A Living When He Died. So, He Never Saw Me Complete A Book Or Achieve Anything Of Note. I Would Have Liked To Have Shared This With Him.

The Notion That Before You Even Set Out To Go To Thailand, You Say, 'i'm Not Interested,' Or You're Unwilling To Try Things That People Take So Personally And Are So Proud Of And So Generous With, I Don't Understand That, And I Think It's Rude. You're At Grandma's House, You Eat What Grandma Serves You.