The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones Read Free Book Online Page A

“Amazing! I’ve had only a few meals so far, mind you, but it hasn’t been like any Chinese food I ever tasted. Not that I’m an expert.”
    “You don’t write about Asian food?”
    “No.” Maggie dug her little book out of her bag along with her pen. “I do American food, and not the haute stuff, either — everyday food, regional food, the human story — you know, cook-offs, fairs. Festivals.”
    “What a lot of people really eat,” he said.
    “Exactly.”
    “To the Chinese way of thinking that can be very profound. We have a long tradition of valuing the rustic. Of all food we find it the closest to nature, the most human. How long have you been doing it?”
    “Twelve years.”
    He studied her. “So why’d they choose you for this?”
    “Because I had to come anyway.”
    “Right. You said something about other business.”
    “I did,” she said, and moved on. The less he knew about that, the better. With him she had a job to do. Besides, nothing made her appear old and pitiful faster than saying she was a widow; she had seen this fact clearly since Matt’s death. “To your question, though. To me the Chinese food here is completely different. I may not be a specialist, but, I mean — I work for a food magazine, for God’s sake. I have eaten in my share of Chinese restaurants. And what I’ve had all my life does not taste like what I’ve had here. Not even remotely.”
    “But anybody who knows the food here could have told you that.”
    “Really?” She folded back the book to a clean page.
    “Chinese-American is a different cuisine. It’s really nothing like Chinese-Chinese. It has its charms, no question. But it’s not the same.”
    “How?”
    “Chinese-American evolved for a different reason — to get Americans to accept a fundamentally different way of cooking and eating. They did this by aiming at familiarity, which was kind of weirdly brilliant. From the time the first chop suey houses opened, that’s what they were selling, the thing that seems exotic but is actually familiar. Reliable. Not fast food, but reliable in the same way as fast food. Here it’s different. It’s the opposite. Every dish has to be unique, different from every other. Yet all follow rigid principles, and all aim to accomplish things Western cuisine doesn’t even shoot for, much less attain.”
    She was scribbling as fast as she could.
    “I’d better get to work,” he said. He lifted an apron from a hook on the wall, looped it over his head, and tied it. He turned his back to her and stood still for a second, head bent, silent.
    She stared at his ponytailed black hair for a second, and went on writing. Casts his eyes down while he ties his apron. Looking for something, like an anchor falling, seeking the depths. She watched, saying nothing.
    First he piled plump shrimp in a colander and tumbled them under cold water, then worked a towel through them until they were dry. In went egg white, salt, and something squeaky-powdery that looked like cornstarch. She watched his brown knuckles, lean and knobby, flash in the mixture. He slid it into the refrigerator and washed his hands. “Now,” he said.
    She liked that he had turned his back to her to work. It was good that he was comfortable with her here. That made her feel at ease too. He seemed to be finished with the shrimp, at least for the moment, so she ventured another question. “You said Chinese cuisine in China tries to accomplish certain things.”
    “Yes.”
    “Things that set it apart from the cuisines of the West?”
    “Yes.” He thought. “For one thing, we have formal ideals of flavor and texture. Those are the rigid principles I mentioned. Each one is like a goal that every chef tries to reach — either purely, by itself, or in combination with the others. Then there’s artifice. Western food doesn’t try to do much with artifice at all.”
    “Artifice.” She wanted to make sure she heard him right.
    “Artifice. Illusion. Food