Tall Poppy

Xanh: Style With A Side Of Substance

On the website for Xanh - a trendy Vietnamese restaurant in Mountain View - the chef's bio ends with the following: "she learned the beauty of uncomplicated recipes, the honesty of fresh ingredients and the simple premise that no matter how bright and talented the cooling[sic], the presentation cannot be neglected." This sentence, down to the typo, is a perfect representation of what it's like to have a meal at Xanh.

Walking into Xanh, I tend to feel some combination of annoyed and underdressed. The place isn't formal, it's just achingly, painfully hip. The bar area sports the most useless and uncomfortable (but gosh they're nice looking) bar stools I've ever seen, and the lounge is full of this long, low banquette seating. The lighting is blue and indirect, and metal beaded curtains hang just about everywhere. Overall it looks like the set for a credit card commercial where you'd see young, attractive people partying in order to make you wish that you too had an interest rate that allowed for that much joie de vivre.

The point of Xanh's decor is to make you feel like you're not cool enough to be in there, and it works. The place is populated by 20-somethings who pepper their sentences with words like "leverage" and are desperately hoping that no one notices they have no idea how to act now that they're out of college, and baby boomers who figure they can buy cool at expensive restaurants if they can't get it any other way.

The food is a lot like the 20-somethings in that it would be immeasurably better if it could just get out of its own way. Unfortunately both the presentation and the service hamper the meal from start to finish. The staff had no sense of the flow of the meal, bringing out our three small plates all in a jumble, delivering the bowls for the soup half-way through the appetizers but not delivering the actual soup until after the larger dishes had arrived. They've had this problem constantly, and when I once commented to a waiter that he had brought everything we'd ordered in a big jumble to our table he blinked at me and said, "oh, did you want this coursed out in a specific way?" As though it was my job to instruct him on how best to present the meal.

Service, as haphazard as it is, is actually less of a hindrence than presentation. The Catfish in Clay Pot is one of my favorite dishes, partially because it's good but partially also because it's just served in a damn clay pot with a spoon, unlike everything else which involves a ridiculous amount of fuss. The Crispy Shrimp Clouds (which I like, but V poopood as "wedding food") are stupidly hard to eat, and this is primarily because they are plated with nothing but presentation in mind. They're very pretty crispy cakes topped with verticle shrimp with the spear of apple through it, but they're too big to be a bite and too inconvenient to nibble on.

The Spicy and Sour Soup, which was one of the better dishes, had a profoundly ridiculous service that was so stacked in the bowl that the waitress had to painstakingly shift a bit of each element to each bowl with chopsticks, a process which took several minutes. Tableside presentations are one of my favorite things when done well, but this isn't a tableside presentation, it's a 19-year old awkwardly trying to fill a bowl with soup, an activity which would have been much easier if the ingredients had been cut smaller, and the soup had been served in a larger bowl, with a better ladle and more broth. It also came out after the Catfish in Clay Pot, a bold, spicy-sweet dish that completely squashed the flavors of the soup.

Almost everything we had was, in one way or another, inconvenient to eat, and almost all of it could have been plated slightly differently to drastically reduce that difficulty. Everything is very pretty, but presentation should never come at the expense of the diner.

After being open for about a year, Xanh moved to a space about four times their original location, and it tends to be packed just about every night. They've sold their image, and they've done it well, successful by most measures of a restaurant. The unfortunate thing is that I believe there's a very fine chef there in the kitchen -- someone with a deft hand and a nice sense of the value of fresh, simple flavors -- and she's wasting her time on flash. She will impress the upwardly mobile 20-somethings and the downwardly hip boomers, but her menu will sit firmly at "good" when it could be "really good."

I like the food at Xanh. I'll go back and order the Tuna Tartare (which is served perched precariously atop a vase full of dry ice) and the Spicy and Sour Soup and the Catfish in Clay Pot, but I'll always come away thinking more about what should have been different than about what was perfect just as it was. To me, no matter how good your food is, that's a mark of failure. Squandered potential like that makes me want to go into the restaurant business, but I just sit quietly with my head between my knees until that feeling subsides, and it always does.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing

Writing for an audience is a tricky bit of business; it's hard not to get caught up in the performance of it. Like a kid who wants to show mom how totally high they can jump, you want to do something clever and applause-worthy. Cleverness and eloquence is a double-edged sword though, and it's easy to come off stilted and inauthentic. Many of Obama's detractors complained about this, that he seemed distant and unavailable. I'd argue that in a statesman, that's not such a bad thing, but in a blog it's deadly.

It's hard to write to you and not at you. I tend to write the way I speak, but that works better if I'm writing the way I'd have a conversation, not the way I'd recite a speech. It's hard, but it's worth figuring out. I am here, in part, to learn to be a better writer, and that doesn't happen if I simply rest on the certainty that my writing is good.

Don't get me wrong, my writing is good. But it could be better, it could always be better. I would like to write something better to you.

Passions: Storytelling

I cannot remember a time when I did not love storytelling, both as a creator and a consumer. I read passionately and constantly in my youth - books are the best friend of an only child - and I continue to consume media of all kinds enthusiastically. There are many different ways to tell a story of course, but writing has always been the place where I am most at home. I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with fiction, but mostly it's off-again. In writing, the place where I am most at home is the essay. If I can show an audience what I saw, or convince them of what I believe, if I can express my view with an elegant turn of phrase, that's what turns me on.

Biographical essays, like The Soap Maker's Passion, are among my favorite to write. There's something to be said for the old cliché about writing what you know. My work - I'm a fundraiser for a very non-traditional non-profit - also demands a great deal of writing from me, which is one of my favorite things about it. In fundraising, crafting a good story is the difference between another enthusiastic donor and another person who walks away thinking you're a crank.

Storytelling is the second passion I share with my father. My father was a frustrated writer. I don't mean that he was unsuccessful in writing - though he was often unsuccessful in publishing - but rather that he seemed to write by dragging the words from underneath his skin by main force. Of all the things I'm glad I didn't inherit from my father, this ranks highly. Working creatively is emotional draining at times, but it's never the constant ache of dissatisfaction that it was for my father. I can find imperfections in anything I write, but there's enough of it that I can look at with real pride to make the failures seem worth it in the end. I'm not sure my father was ever even halfway happy with anything he wrote, and I can't imagine living with a passion that was so endlessly cruel.

It would be unbalanced though, to credit this passion to my father entirely. My mother is a storyteller of another kind. It was from her that I learned how to craft a convincing argument, how to talk about people and ideas in a way that will matter to your audience. Storytelling is about connecting; it's about learning how to speak to someone in a language that they will hear, and that ability to connect is something I learned - and learned to love - from my mother.

I've told my own stories, I've told other people's stories. Some of them mattered to me deeply, some of them were just ephemeral. In the end, it hardly matters what you're talking about. What matters is only that your audience leaned in; eyes fixed on your face, pulse beating in time to the cadence of your speech. What matters is that you spoke to them. That feeling - even far removed as it is in this context - is one of the best things I've ever experienced.

Storytelling is more about delivery than ideas. Isaac Asimov came up with remarkably compelling ideas, but he wasn't much of a storyteller when it comes down to it. Conversely, Shakespeare is often criticized by those who find it fashionable to do so, for having cheap, borrowed plots. It's a fair criticism, but it also doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that "star-crossed lovers" is the oldest story in the book, what matters is this:

ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take,
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

Romeo and Juliet isn't even - in my opinion, at least - one of his better plays, but this interaction is everything teenage infatuation should be; it's charming and sweet, a bit naughty and oh so very dramatic. This is storytelling at its core, it doesn't matter that this is the oldest of all old stories told, we only care that through his words we can feel it as though it was we ourselves who never saw true beauty before this night.

This is the essence of what makes me passionate about storytelling; that commonplace human experiences like a young crush can become iconic and enduring because they were told in a beautiful way. Examined closely, no moment, no experience, no life is ordinary. Tell the story the right way and you can change the way we see it, you can make us love a person we've never met or understand a person we hate. By telling a story, we can make the world a more beautiful and wondrous place to inhabit, and that's the best thing that we could ever hope to do.

Last Meals

My lunch, still lingering on my tongue, was the solitary leftover serving of the Lamb and Lentil Stew that V made last night. I could tell you in aching detail about the earthiness of the flavors, the slight tooth to the lentils that kept it from being soggy, the richness of the roasted cumin, but I'd rather simply say that it was just the perfect thing for lunch on a grey and wintry afternoon. I wrapped my hands around the bowl and watched the steam rising off of it drift in front of my window. It was warm and filling and V was absolutely right, it was even better the second day.

Yesterday it also served as a final meal in the United States for MCB's former coworker, Red. She's off to Thailand and points unknown for the foreseeable future, having an adventure while the economy rights itself. V didn't know he'd be cooking for Red when I asked (alright, told) him to cook, but I'm glad he did and I hope that he is too. I would have cooked for her - your last meal before an adventure should be something cooked at home - but I didn't have that lentil stew in my repetoire, and it was just right. It was warm, simple and delicious, and she said on her way to the airport this morning that she would remember it well.

Recently, on his very own blog, V talked briefly about last meals. I meant to make my own post at the time, but it got away from me until today. Sitting here and eating the last bowl of Red's last meal (of a different sort) I thought again about how I would conduct my final meal before my death.

I'd have the last meal of my life in the capacious central room of my grandparent's summer home, around that beautiful thick-legged old table that is scarred and unpretentious, but comes from a time when people cared something for the craft of carpentry. If I could choose it would be late summer, and all the windows and doors would be open. The gas lamps that used to light the place in my childhood would, if I could wave a magic wand, return for one night, to light this meal.

I would have my family there, my beloved MCB, my very dear ex-husband, and a few friends who would understand a meal like this. We would begin early and let the courses go slowly into the night, as we progressed I would move around the table, to talk with a different person through each dish.

I do not think I could draft a menu for this, in the end I might turn that duty over to someone else because the choices would simply be too hard. I know that I would want simple things; rich, briny olives; sharp, pungeant cheeses; sweet summer fruits and bright fresh vegetables. I know that I would cook some part of the meal, possibly the dessert.

Eating that stew today it occurred to me, the thing I'd like best would be dishes prepared by the cooks who joined me at that table. I tried to find the words for what that would mean to me, but like V, I simply am not ready.

Passions: Food

As may be obvious by now, passion is the center of what this blog is about. I've had abortive attempts to create specific subject matter blogs in the past, and so this blog isn't about any one specific thing. Instead, it's about the things that move me, the things that move other people, and how passion shapes our lives. It is from passion that all excellence comes, and if we're to be breaking Jante law, then we must be passionate.

V has chastised me for being insufficiently personal in this blog. He's right of course, though I'm inclined to be private, I simply cannot talk about passion without talking about myself. So I've decided to speak about my passions, how I came to them, and what they mean to me. As I've said before, my passion is fickle and changeable, but certain things have remained more or less constant. Today, I'll begin with food.

My father was a serious cook. He worked briefly as a chef, though never went to culinary school, and had a long list of tried and true dishes that were drooled over by family and friends. Food is one of two chief passions I share with my father, and it was the first one I picked up. As a small child I was fascinated by the kitchen process, I would watch cooking shows (on PBS of course, this is before The Food Network) and stand in the kitchen observing and helping when I was allowed.

My father's hand is still echoed in my kitchen today: a tendency to think of Mexican, Italian, and Chinese flavors as home-base; a habit of under salting; an urge to cook at high heats even when this is not a particularly sensible choice; a love of vegetables cooked only just as much as they absolutely have to be, and no more; a fondness for rustic presentations of the foods favored by peasants.

When my parents separated, I went with my mother, and so my kitchen experimenting began in earnest. My father tended to be very tightly in control in the kitchen, but alone I was free to try and fail as spectacularly as I wanted. The first meal I ever cooked entirely alone was Coq Au Vin, a ludicrously difficult meal for a novice chef that miraculously turned out edible - though not great by any reasonable standard.

These early experiments led to an ongoing love of the kitchen, cooking and food, and it became one of my deepest passions. Food is an easy thing to be passionate about, it's sensual, it (literally) sustains us, and dining is one of our most important social rituals. I understand that many people do not find food as interesting as I do, but I am perplexed by those who are indifferent, and those who take a purely mechanical view of eating.

My physical trainer -- with the best of intentions -- often tries to tell me that food is fuel, tasked only with maintaining our bodies. To me, this assertion seems equal to the idea that sex is only for procreating. From a purely biological standpoint it's true, but to ignore the pleasure in eating or in sex, to ignore the communion and the connection that comes with them, these would seem like true sins against god.

So my trainer and I part ways here, because food will always be among the first of my passions. I value my health, of course, but only to the degree that it serves my enjoyment of life and my ability to take part in it. If the duck curry I had for dinner last night shaves a few minutes off of my life, that is a sacrifice I remain ever willing to make.

It is difficult to order my thoughts about cooking and food. Within each idea, each sentence, a dozen stories spring up. Food is intimate and complicated, our relationship with it cannot easily be defined. Each meal, each dish contains something unique. Here, in this dish I cooked you, the memory of my father's kitchen. In this one, thousands of years of Jewish heritage. Another, my joy of discovery, my curiosity, my excitement. And this, my love for you.

In putting knife and fire to food we can say things that can be said in no other way. We can ease suffering and calm uneasy hearts. We can speak in a language that anyone, anywhere in the world can understand. We can connect the present to the long and winding road of history. Even if eating and cooking were not sublime sensual pleasures for their own sake, they would still remain inescapably vital to our humanity. This is true of all of my passions, but food perhaps, most of all.

The Soap Merchant's Passion

A recent edition to the roster of weird at my local Farmer's Market is The Soap Merchant. He set up shop with his modest little stand, placing thick slabs of homemade soap on saucers and piling a stack of shimmering gift-wrapped soaps into a large basket off to the side. There are no signs bearing health claims to be found, not even a price list; he comes to the farmer's market armed only with his soap and a cheery smile.

Now as it turns out, I'm nuts about good soap. My skin is fairly sensitive but even if it wasn't, smell is such an important sense to me that I'm very selective about what goes on my body. So as soon as I saw those simple, lush looking bars, I knew I was going to have to try them. As is often the case, I had a slightly embarrassing stock of soap at the time he first showed up at the market, so I had to wait until last weekend to finally sample some of his wares.

When MCB and I approached his stand, he engaged us immediately, asking if we had ever tried his soaps before. When we acknowledged that we hadn't he immediately began to rhapsodize about his ingredients. This is the first good sign, he does not talk about his methods, he talks about his ingredients. I won't bore you with his technical details, but I know enough about soap making to know that he chooses high-quality ingredients that probably mean nothing to 99% of the people who buy soap from him, and eat significantly into his bottom line.

MCB and I eventually decided on 3 soaps for the (on the high-end soap scale) very low price of $15. He threw in one of those little packages of heart-shaped soaps wrapped in plastic and tied with a ribbon. As we were about to walk away he stopped me and said earnestly, "the first time you use this soap, really, just take a moment to -notice- your skin."

You might be inclined to think that he's just a good salesman, but I assure you, he's not. He didn't have a patter down, he didn't flatter me or joke with MCB the way a salesman would. All he did was speak with passion and excitement about the thing he makes and loves. Soap is his livelihood, yes, but only after it is his passion.

Is it weird to be passionate about soap? Sure, it's a little weird to be passionate about anything. You have to be a little strange to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to the perfecting of something, but it is these chasers of perfection, these passionate specialists, that we should seek out for anything and everything that touches us.

If I told you that you should buy art to hang on your wall that was made by someone with passion, you would roll your eyes and nod, "of course, of course." When it comes to art, we consider a need for passion so obvious that it's ridiculous to state, but when it comes to simple, everyday objects, when it comes to food or clothing or anything that fulfills a need, it doesn't even occur to us. Passion seems like a strange bedfellow for necessity, but I think that's because we overlook how much we need passion in our lives.

When I showered with this soap for the first time, the smells burst forth and filled the room. It had a tart tang of sour cherries and the rich sweetness of almonds. It went onto my skin like cream and came off like velvet. Because there are no preservatives, it's melting with alarming alacrity in my shower, in no time I'll be on to the Rosemary-Mint or the Honey, Milk, and Oatmeal. I could buy cheaper soap that lasted longer that wouldn't do my skin any harm and smelled fine enough, but I wouldn't enjoy it in the same way.

Using his soap, it is hard to imagine why one should settle for less than this. In the mornings I am provided with a moment of focus, a moment of pleasure, and it is due to this passion. We should seek this passion in the things that touch our lives, we should demand it of ourselves. Passion is hard, it's exhausting and frightening and it turns ordinary failure to crushing defeat. Still it is undeniable that anything else is unavoidably lesser, and how can we abide that?

I'll admit that I have in my heart a deep envy for passionate specialists like the soap merchant. I've often wished that my heart had a true calling that rose up above the rest. While I pride myself as a roving curious mind, I must admit it would be easier to love one thing above and beyond all reason and anything else in the world. Passion is a harder beast to manage if it will happily wander off into the fields, leaving you to chase it and lash it to whatever cart you're driving to market today. I lose focus easily, it's the reason that this blog is about anything and everything, rather than being focused on any one particular subject. All I can give you is the passion that moves me today.

We do need passion in our lives. Unquestionably we can exist, we can sustain ourselves, without it, but why? We - in the first world, at least - live an existence more freed from the effort of sustaining ourselves than anyone previously in history. We are so far up Maslow's Heirarchy that most of us will barely have to consider the bottom rungs in any real way. Do we not then have an obligation to use the energy we no longer have to dedicate to watching for lions for doing something grander? I'm not talking about a societal obligation; I'm talking about an obligation to the self, and the extended self of those we love.

I endevor to give you passion, my best beloveds, because it is the best of me. The way a passion for soap and scent is the best of the soap merchant. If ever I should fall short in my duties, forgive me; passion is neither easy nor clean. Like the soap merchant who knows he sounds a little nuts when he talks about cold-pressed essential oils I am sensitive to the idea that passion can be uncomfortable when viewed too closely, and like anyone I fear what you will think of me if I lay my heart bear. Even in this public setting, intimacy exists, and I would like to be intimate here; because it is the best of me.

Sunday Dinner

When we talk of our symbolic relationship of food, we talk about breaking bread together. It is the act of sitting down to a meal in the company of friends and family that we regard as significant. It is significant, of course, but for me real test comes not in eating with someone, but in cooking for them.

Cooking, for me, is a religious act. It is an act of love and faith and above all, passion. The way people speak of being moved by the spirit of god, so am I moved by food. It is a thing both vitally needed, and hedonistically enjoyed, equal parts form and function. If I sound pretentious, it's only because I am trying to impress upon you how strongly I feel. The best food is utterly unpretentious, pure celebration of ingredients met with simple, carefully practiced technique.

The best food people feel this way. We are slightly embarrassed when speaking of our passion for cooking and for truly good food, because we end up waxing poetic about that perfect dish while our friends get glazed over looks in their eyes. Cooking is an emotional experience for us, and a point of extreme vulnerability. MCB's coworker, V, is one of these passionate food people, and so perhaps you can understand the significance of the thing, when I tell you that this last Sunday, he prepared a meal for us.

We started, as good meals do, at the Farmer's Market. V purchased ingredients from various stalls while MCB and I trailed along, picking up groceries for the week. Back when the Farmer's Market here first began, it opened at 7AM. I wish it still did, because there is nothing so refreshing and centering as stepping out into the largely deserted lot where the market is held and wandering through the stalls before most people are out of bed. Now it opens at 9, and you have to fight the crowds from the very beginning.

After the market and a few other brief stops, we returned to the house to prep. It is only fair to note that MCB and I rent, which means that V was working in a small, terrible kitchen with an electric stove; these are serious handicaps and not to be overlooked.

The menu was Salt Crust Rock Cod in Lemon Beurre Blanc, Mushroom Risotto, and Roasted Beets. We had some theories about a salad, but they never really came to fruition. Though I spent most of my time watching and chattering from the sidelines, V did allow me to help. Altogether we spent about 6 hours in the kitchen; cooking, talking food and generally boring the pants off of MCB, who enjoys food but does not geek out about it the way that we do.

The rock cod, which was a new dish for him, was really quite good. The saltiness of the fish hit the tongue beautifully and the beurre blanc provided a nice, creamy contrast. The lemons at the Farmer's Marker were unsatisfying, so we ended up with Meyer Lemons (my suggestion). It was an interesting experiment, and I think there's probably a dish for which Meyer Lemon beurre blanc is exactly the right thing, but the lack of acid was unideal in this case.

Now let's take a moment to talk about risotto. If you're a food geek, as I am, I suspect you had some kind of emotional reaction when you saw it on the list of dishes. If you are not, let me try to explain. Risotto is a perfect example of the kind of unpretentious, yet challenging food that makes up the best cooking. The process of making it is very simple, but success is extremely elusive. It must be stirred constantly, ingredients must be added at just the right moment, and you have to eat it as soon as it's cooked. You can talk theory for hours, but risotto is all about a deft hand and hard won experience. It is a finesse dish; when it goes right, it's magic, but when it goes even just a little bit wrong, it's a gluey, starchy mess.

And let me tell you, oh my best beloveds, V's risotto is magic. Like some bound-to-be-defeated imp in a fairy tale, my instinct is to steal his power by use of some kind of trickery and make it my own. Sadly, that always goes badly for the imp, so I'm just going to have to ask him to teach me.

Breaking bread with people is an act of kinship, to the extent that we in the western world ascribe any meaning to the idea, it makes them a part of your community. Cooking for people is an act of kinship, and an act of service. It is a gift that should be respected and valued, whether you're an obsessive food nerd like V and I, or just someone in need of a decent meal. There is little else that brings together our ability to sustain each other and our joy in such perfect harmony, little else that brings such equal pleasure to giver and receiver.

I'm not a religious person, but surely there is divinity in this; passion, joy, artistry and kinship brought together at a sunday dinner table.