Read an Excerpt
CURRICULUM VITAE
What are my qualifications to write this book? None, really. So why should you read it? Here’s why: I’m a little fat. Okay, to some I might not be considered that fat, but the point is, I’m not thin. If a thin guy were to write about a love of food and eating, I’d highly recommend that you do not read his book. I’m not talking about someone who is merely in good shape. I’m talking thin. Skinny. I wouldn’t trust them skinnies with food advice. First of all, how do you know they really feel passionately about food? Well, obviously they are not passionate enough to overdo it. That’s not very passionate. Anyway, I’m overweight.
I’ll admit it. I consciously try not to take food advice from thin people. I know this may not be fair, but when Mario Batali talks, I always think, Well, this is a guy who knows what he’s talking about. He actually has experience eating food. This is why some sportscasters wonder what’s going on in a player’s head during a tense moment in a game, but the sportscaster who was once a player knows what’s going on in a player’s head. When I talk about food, I like to think I’m like one of those sportscasters who used to play professionally. I’m like the Ray Lewis or Terry Bradshaw of eating. I’m like the Tony Siragusa of eating. Well, that’s a little redundant.
When a thin person announces, “Here’s a great taco place,” I kind of shut down a little. How do they know it’s so great? From smelling the tacos? If they only ate one taco, the taco could not have been that great. Or maybe it was great, but the thin person cared more about the calories than the taste: “I had to stop at one taco. I’m on a diet.” A taco that won’t force you to break your diet just can’t be that great. Fat people know the consequences of eating, but if the food is good enough, they just don’t care. Overweight people have chosen food over appearance. When a fat person talks about a great place to get a burger, I lean in. They know.
Speaking of thin people, another person it makes no sense to take advice from is the waiter. Why do fancy restaurants always hire thin, good-looking people to be the waiters? “I’ll have the hamburger, and I want someone who is at least an 8 to bring it over to me. Can I see some headshots?” Why would we care what the waiter looks like? Even if we did, why would we take the waiter’s advice? We don’t know him. He is a stranger. “Well, he works there.” Does that make him have similar taste in things you like? Does that make him honest? Not to sound paranoid, but the waitstaff does have a financial incentive for you to order something more expensive: “Well, I highly recommend the 16-ounce Kobe Beef with Lobster and the bottle of 1996 Dom Perignon.”
What restaurants really need is a fat-guy food expert. Many fine-dining establishments have a sommelier—a wine expert—to assist in wine selection, but if a restaurant really cares about food, they should have a “Fattelier.”
FATTELIER: Well, I’d get the chili cheese fries with the cheese on the side. You get more cheese that way.
ME: Thank you, Fattelier.
Although they can’t be thin, the food adviser can’t be too fat. If they are morbidly obese, then you can conclude that they will probably eat everything and anything and do not have discerning taste. This is not to say that they won’t have valuable views. I’d still trust an overly fat person over a skinny one any day. The best adviser would have a very specific body type: pudgy or just a little overweight. This makes it clear they have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with food, but not a clinical problem. They are eating beyond feeling full. Sure, I am describing my own body type, but that’s why I am qualified to write this book about food. What other credentials do you need, really? Stop being a snob. Read the book already.
STEAK: THE MANLY MEAT
As a child I was confused by my father’s love of steak. I remember being eight and my dad ceremoniously announcing to the family, “We’re having steak tonight!” as if Abe Lincoln were coming over for dinner. My siblings and I would politely act excited as we watched TV. “That’s great, Dad!” I remember thinking, Big deal. Why can’t we just have McDonald’s? To me, my father just had this weird thing with steak. I thought, Dads obsess about steak the way kids obsess about candy. Well, my dad did. I’d watch him trudge out behind our house in all types of weather to the propane grill after me or one of my brothers barely averted death by lighting it for him. He would happily take his post out there, chain-smoking his Merit Ultra Light cigarettes and drinking his Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch alone in the darkness of Northwest Indiana. He’d stare into the flame like it was an ancient oracle relaying a prophecy that solved the mysteries of life.
Given the sheer joy that standing at the grill gave my father, I was always amazed by how bad he was at cooking a steak. Maybe it was the grilling in virtual darkness, or maybe it was the Scotch, but his steaks were usually really burnt and often had the flavor of cigarette ashes. At the table he would try to justify the charred meat in front of the family: “You like it well done, right?” Again, my siblings and I would politely lie. “It’s great, Dad. Thanks.” I think I actually grew to enjoy the taste of A.1. Steak Sauce mixed with cigarette ash. A.1. was always on the table when my dad would grill steaks. It seems everyone I knew had that same thin bottle of A.1. It always felt like it was empty right before it flooded your steak. Ironically, the empty-feeling bottle never seemed to run out. I think most people still have the same bottle of A.1. that they had in 1989. Once I looked at the back of a bottle of A.1. and was not surprised to find that one of the ingredients was “magic.”
By the time I became a teenager, I generally understood that steak was something unique. It had some kind of a deeper meaning. I still preferred McDonald’s, but I realized steak was certainly not something my father would’ve been able to eat growing up as the son of a denture maker in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1940s. I remember thinking that maybe eating steak was actually my father’s measure of success. He wasn’t poor anymore. He and his children could afford to eat burnt steak. Even in my twenties, when I would go home to visit my father after my mother passed away, he and I would always eat a cigarette-ash-infused steak that he had overcooked on the grill. Many years later I realized that following my mother’s death, my father pretty much ate steak every night. Probably because my mother was not around anymore to say, “Well, obviously you shouldn’t eat steak every night!” When I think back to my father eating steak day after day, year after year, I can only come to one conclusion: my father was a genius.
I don’t know what happened, but steak makes perfect sense to me now. I was really overanalyzing it as a teenager. My father was not cooking steak on the grill to get away from his family or eating it daily to prove to himself that he wasn’t poor; my father was eating steak because consuming a steak is one of the great pleasures we get to experience during our short time on this planet. This was probably one of my most profound coming-of-age realizations. Steak is really that amazing. Steak is so delicious, I’m sure the first person to go on a stakeout was eventually disappointed: “Been sitting in this car all night and still no steak! Not even a basket of bread.”
I’m actually relieved I inherited my father’s love of steak. Where I was raised in the Midwest, all the men around me seemed to love three things: fixing stuff, cars, and steak. I learned that a real man loves fixing stuff, cars, and steak. Well, at least I’ve got one of those three. If eating steak is manly, it is the only manly attribute I possess. I’m not handy. I can’t fix things. Whenever something breaks in our apartment, I just look at my wife sheepishly and say, “We should call someone.” I don’t even call. My wife calls. I can barely figure out the phone. When the handyman comes over, I just kind of silently watch him work. I don’t know what to say. “You want some brownies? My wife could bake us some brownies. I’d bake them, but I don’t know how to turn the oven on.” I try to act like I’m working on something more important. “Yeah, I’m more of a tech guy. I’m really good at computer stuff . . . like checking e-mail.”
