A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain Page A

the past and is now a nearly unrecognizable man-shaped figure of uninterrupted scar tissue beneath the little crown of black hair. Every inch from the waist up (and who knows how far below) is scar tissue. He has no lips, no eyebrows, no nose. His ears are like putty, as if he’s been dipped and melted in a blast furnace, then yanked out just before dissolving completely. He moves his jack-o’-lantern teeth, but no noise emanates from what used to be a mouth.
         I feel gut-shot. My exuberant mood of the last few days and hours comes crashing down. I just stand there, blinking, the word napalm hanging inevitably over me, squeezing every beat of my heart. Suddenly, this is not fun anymore. I’m ashamed. How could I come to this city, to this country, filled with enthusiasm for something so . . . so . . . meaningless as flavor, texture, cuisine? This man’s family has very possibly been vaporized, the man himself transformed into a ruined figurine like some Madame Tussaud’s exhibit, his skin dripping like molten wax. What am I doing here? Writing a fucking book? About food? Making a petty, useless, lighter-than-air television fucking show? The pendulum swings all the way over and I am suddenly filled with self-loathing. I hate myself and my whole purpose here. I blink through a cold sweat, paralyzed, certain that everyone on the street must be watching. Radiating discomfort and guilt, I’m sure that any casual observer must surely associate me and my country with this man’s injuries. I spy a few other Western tourists across the street in Banana Republic shorts and Lands’ End polo shirts, comfortably shod in Weejuns and Birkenstocks, and I want suddenly and irrationally to kill them. They look evil, like carrion-eaters. The inscribed Zippo in my pocket burns, no longer amusing – suddenly about as funny as the shrunken head of a close friend. Everything I eat will taste like ashes now. Fuck writing books. Fuck making television.
         I’m unable even to give the man money. I stand there useless, hands trembling, consumed by paranoia. I hurry back to my refrigerated room at the New World Hotel and sag back onto the still-unmade bed, stare at the ceiling in tears, unable to grasp or to process what I’ve seen – or to do anything about it. I go nowhere and eat nothing for the next twenty-four hours. The TV crew thinks I’m having a breakdown.
         Saigon . . . Still only in Saigon.
         What am I doing in Vietnam?

Where the Boys Are/Where the Girls Are
    There was barely a sound to be heard in the empty streets of San Sebastián’s parte vieja , just the clip-clopping of my boots on wet cobblestones echoing against four-hundred-year-old buildings. It was late at night, and Luis Irizar and I carried food through the dark.
         Luis was the main man at the Escuela de Cocina Luis Irizar, the cooking school that bears his name, a capo, maybe even a consigliere, in the city’s vast culinary subculture. Had it not been so late, and the streets so empty, there would have been passersby waving at him, shopkeepers calling out his name, former students coming out to give him a hug, a handshake, and a hearty hello. Everybody who has anything to do with food in San Sebastián knows Luis. Where we were headed at this late hour was an institution particular to this food-crazy city, the Gaztelubide, an exclusive all-male clubhouse for one of San Sebastián’s many gastronomic societies. If you love food, San Sebastián’s got it all: an unwavering faith in its own traditions and regional products, a near-religious certainty that it’s got the best cuisine in Spain, a language and culture that go back – literally – to the Stone Age. And more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere else in the world.
         If you listen to the locals, San Sebastián isn’t even really Spain. It’s Basque country, that vaguely defined, famously independent area of southwest France and northern Spain where the