http://www.observer.com/pages/book1.asp

From Kitchen to Table, A Miracle Meal Anatomized
by Adam Begley



A Meal Observed, by Andrew Todhunter. Alfred A. Knopf, 228 pages, $23.


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There are as many ways to write about food as there are recipes for
apple pie. When Toni Morrison describes someone at work in a kitchen,
you start to salivate—a neat trick, but that's actually only the
beginning of her remarkable talent. She sees all the way around the
business of making and eating food, from peeling and chopping to
washing up; she registers the generosity of the cook, the desire of
the eater and those pinches of bitter spice—dependence, resentment,
contempt—that can flavor even the simplest meal. A.J. Liebling,
vigorous and astonishingly voracious, turns eating into a competitive
sport; his writing about food is delightful and endlessly informative,
though the heroic scale of his appetite can be daunting. Jim Crace
insists on allegory: The food he serves up in The Devil's Larder
(2001), though it seems real enough to taste, always leads the reader
in a particular thematic direction, like Hansel and Gretel's trail of
crumbs.

And here comes journalist Andrew Todhunter, who had a delectable idea:
work for a while as an apprentice in the kitchen of a truly great
restaurant, then return with his wife as a paying customer and order a
splendid dinner. His book, A Meal Observed, looks at the gourmet
experience with split-screen awareness: the sumptuous luxury enjoyed
at the table by the pampered guest, and—in the kitchens, out of
sight—the sweat and skill lavished on a great chef's creations.

The meal in question was consumed between roughly 8:30 p.m. and
midnight on July 13, 1999, at Taillevent in Paris, a legendary
three-star restaurant. Gougères ("a three-star cheese puff of flour,
egg, and Gruyère") are served as an amuse-bouche with the apéritifs,
then come the formidable fireworks of the dinner itself: Crème de
Cresson au Caviar Sevruga; Escargots braisés, Sauce Poulette; and
Mousseline d'Oeufs aux Morilles et aux Asperges. That's for starters.
The main course is Daurade à la Tomate et au Basilic and Homard poêlé
aux Chtaignes. Then the cheese, of course (Mr. Todhunter reminds us
of Brillat-Savarin's dictum: "A dinner that ends without cheese is
like a beautiful woman with one eye"): a Saint-Nectaire, a Livarot, a
Pont-l'Evêque, a Crottin de Chavignol, among others. By the time the
cheese plates have been cleared away, Mr. Todhunter and his wife are
"in a state of caloric shock," but they still find room for dessert:
Fantaisie aux Pêches et à la Verveine; Mille-Feuille aux Fruits rouges
et aux deux Vinaigres; and Moelleux au Chocolat et au Thym. (As Mr.
Todhunter points out, "a good menu is like an onslaught … each word or
phrase … particularly something like ‘sautéed in truffle juice,' or
‘roasted in smoked butter,' thumps and shudders like a depth charge in
the animal mind.")

There are no disappointments, and two standouts: the lobster with
chestnuts ("If there is anything I have ever eaten that could be
called a work of genius, this is it") and the verbena ice cream that
comes with the peach fantaisie ("the palate knows that it has met
perfection"). When, at last, he stands up to leave, Mr. Todhunter
realizes that he's "overdone it": "[T]he sensation of mass and density
in my midsection is startling." And yet he and his wife agree: This
was "the best single meal of our lives."

The scene backstage is less consistently engaging. Too often, Mr.
Todhunter veers into interview mode. He corners a cook and starts to
lob questions ("I ask if he is frustrated by the transitory nature of
his work"). At times, it seems that our author got tired of writing
and just decided to leave the tape recorder running.

Though Mr. Todhunter begins with a sweet idea and seems equipped with
the skills to carry it off, and though he has a distinct message that
he wants to share (here's the moral of the story: The "precision" of
fine cooking "represents a kind of faith that sloppiness denies, the
faith that, despite the endless tearing down and vanishing of things,
we must build our sand castles with care"), his book is
disappointingly shapeless. It lurches forward course by course,
following the chronology of the meal, but it's also aimlessly
digressive. Why do salt and thyme warrant mini-disquisitions and not
basil or morels? Is this whim or laziness? We suddenly learn, about
two-thirds of the way through the book, that in the fall of 1999, chef
Philippe Legendre ("a major figure in the culinary pantheon of
France") quit Taillevent, partly because he loathed the owner,
Jean-Claude Vrinat. Why not use this information to give a narrative
structure to the behind-the-scenes episodes?

Another mystery: Though Mr. Todhunter concludes that the magic at
Taillevent has more to do with the service than with the food—despite
the glories of Mr. Legendre's kitchen—he tells us next to nothing
about the waiters. Why name the salary of a commis in the kitchen and
not the salary of the man who brings the check?

A Meal Observed should have been as perfect as one of pastry chef
Gilles Bajolle's impeccable confections. The writing, which should be
consistently exquisite—as mouth-watering as Ms. Morrison's, as
provocative as Mr. Crace's—is stiff in patches, and often curiously
formal and self-conscious. ("Repressed may it be, an aptitude for
cooking lurks within her." Or this: "Entire volumes can and have been
written about salt, but I will make do with a cursory glance.")
Someone should have pushed Mr. Todhunter to polish his work. The book
is carelessly edited. On one page we get, "Call me a culinary
lightweight, but … " and two pages later, the same vulgar
construction: "Call it an unfair prejudice, but …. " A shame in a book
where sloppiness is sternly deprecated.

But Andrew Todhunter is in fact a talented writer. A phrase or two
from his ode to post-dinner bliss convinced me that he has the spark.
What do you do after the waiter has brushed the crumbs from the
tablecloth? You "sweep the white expanse with an open palm." The
gesture is part caress, part unconscious mimicry. "The candlelight
soaks into the cloth and glimmers on the surviving silverware."

Just because A Meal Observed isn't a three-star performance doesn't
mean it's not nourishing, at times even scrumptious—a cozy
neighborhood bistro of a book.