How I Learned to Cook Again: A Culinary Tragedy

"(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- My long-lost friend Keith found me on Facebook in the middle of May. He’d retired from the U.S. post office and, with nothing to do in New Jersey during the lockdown, was surfing links and lists—and there I was. I hadn’t heard from him in almost 20 years. I could tell from a rush of likes that he’d clicked through scores of the hundreds of photos I’ve posted of my meals at some of the best restaurants in the world. Under the most recent one, he commented: “Who’s got it better than you.”.“You don’t understand,” I replied from isolation in London. “I used to have it better than me. I used to eat out every day. Every day! Now, I have to cook. And do the dishes. And complain about what I prepare.” Most of my best pictures were months old. He’d put the comment under one of my home-cooked meals from the day before: a microwaved sausage roll and a cup of tea. I was flabbergasted. Didn’t he get the irony? He replied with an emoji howling with laughter..It’s a ridiculous situation. I’m one of those stereomythical city dwellers who use the kitchen to store shoes, books, and the odd tax form. When I lived in New York, I pulled the plug on my refrigerator—it was on only for ice and made this awful rattling sound that scared the neighbors. When I moved to London two years ago, the real estate agent showed me a lovely flat with a spectacular view but apologized that the fridge was barely bigger than half a dozen stacked shoeboxes. I took the apartment. The kitchen was my least concern. I lived alone. I ate out every day. Restaurants defined my existence..The pandemic, of course, changed that. I’d just moved to a new flat in hipsterish Shoreditch, close to my favorite dining spots. It had a full-size fridge, which didn’t matter to me until it did: There were restaurants, restaurants everywhere, but not a place to eat. I hadn’t cooked since about the last time I saw Keith. So there I was, learning all over again with pots, pans, and cutlery hurriedly ordered from Amazon.com. I Instagrammed pictures of what I cooked at home or had delivered from the couple of takeaway services that met my criteria, interspersing them with nostalgic remembrances of the spectacular dishes of meals past. Sad emoji. With teardrop..My sainted mother—the best cook in the family—had taught me a few basics ages ago, and, after my family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines in the early 1980s, I’d cooked for my parents and siblings, because I was usually the first one home from school and work. Once I was on my own, I liberated myself from the kitchen and lived off the culinary skills of others. Before Covid-19, it was possible in New York to have dinner in a different restaurant every day for more than 80 years. I chose to be a regular at about two dozen. I miss them still: the bar at Momofuku Ko and its crazy good daily specials, the deconstructed wine bar and gorgeous food at Wildair, the sumptuous nouvelle banchan at Atoboy, the empanaditas at Maite in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, brunch at Estela, pizza by the slice after midnight at Joe’s Pizza in the West Village ….In the early days of lockdown in London, friends sent me helpful messages like this one: “Don’t forget to put the ice cream sandwiches in the fridge. They melt.” Ha ha. (But good reminder, thanks.) I joined a biweekly subscription service for fresh meat, fish, and poultry. In a similar vein, a restaurant I patronized pre-Covid began supplementing its income by delivering vegetable boxes from an organic supplier. But I still had to figure out how to get that produce from a raw state to a condition I’d be willing to put in my mouth. And swallow..There were so many things to learn and relearn: discerning baking soda from baking powder; washing my hands every time I touched raw chicken; measuring the right proportion of water to rice; cleaning out the organic shit between the folds of fresh leeks; using the flavorful water in which you’ve rehydrated shiitakes; deciphering the strange workings and beepings of my Siemens oven and hob, as they call range tops in London. And holding the onion you’re slicing, terrified as you fight back tears, so you don’t slice off a fingertip. That might yet be how I die..Still, I’ve made chicken soup from a 1.5-kilo bird—twice—and boiled down 3 kilos of beef bones for more than 12 hours to make broth, freezing it in the event of a graver apocalypse so my instant ramen won’t be so watery. I learned from chefs who post recipes and techniques on Instagram. I made an excellent onion omelet based on directions from @studiokitchen1 (Shola Olunloyo, the best chef without a restaurant before all chefs had no restaurants). I apologized to him for taking several shortcuts and excused myself saying I lacked skills. His reply on Instagram: “Repetition is the key to mastery.”.A sense of accomplishment comes from all this. Soon that satisfaction transfers to having washed the dishes—over and over. It also takes a lot of practice to master the art of turning leftovers into more than leftovers. I would eat and wonder how much to keep and which other leftovers to match with it the next time. Menu planning with scraps may be an opportunity for creativity, but mostly it’s an opening for desperation. Repetition becomes drudgery, and drudgery becomes a part of your domestic self-esteem. The repetition stung in other ways. I used to make fun of my mother for wearing her showy diamond engagement ring all the time, even while cooking. But when I started being splattered by hot cooking oil, I realized why she did it—to draw attention away from the many tiny burn spots that were aging her lovely hands..The unending cycle of domestic life brought me back to restaurants. They may not have been perfect or had the most ethical business model—many were financially unsustainable, works of love rather than commerce, and prey to real estate vultures. All that, combined with the pandemic, has made the plight of their unemployed workers particularly stark. But restaurants and the people who labored in them provided me and other city dwellers with a great gift—the luxury of time..Restaurants were my antidote to solitude. They were a diversion from the time-consuming drudgeries of domesticity, letting me savor the fleeting joys of urbanity. At any of my regular spots, I was happy to be alone with a book and food, or deep in conversation with the bartender, or rhapsodizing over the subtleties of a new dish with the chef, or catching up on gossip with the server, or delighting in a new wine with the sommelier. I still enjoy those things a lot more than fretting about cooking: finding ingredients, chopping onions, washing dishes, sorting leftovers, and, of course, buying the essential kitchen gadget I forgot during the latest shopping trip. What am I really going to do with that £25 meat thermometer?.I’ve saved a huge amount of money over the months of lockdown by cooking and eating in. But it takes time to plan a meal, chop and dice, watch knife edges and hot fat, do the dishes, repeat. I’m convinced the most important and seriously underpaid members of a restaurant team are the dishwasher and the prep cooks. They should be well compensated, because they make possible the evanescent pleasures of urban life—which in turn make me feel like I’m part of a philosophical continuum. Almost 2,400 years ago, Epicurus said, “Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”.That’s what I’m afraid we may lose altogether if a frightened world emerging from the pandemic decides to give up on restaurants. It would lead to the tragic end of a glorious golden age of dining out, of the art of enjoying life. The mystique is lost when curbside pickup service replaces a sense of arriving and being welcomed to a refuge from the rest of the world..Every time I visit René Redzepi’s acclaimed restaurant, Noma, in Copenhagen, I look forward to being greeted by Ali Sonko, a longtime dishwasher who welcomes every guest with a sure sense of ownership. In fact, he’s a part owner: A couple of years ago, Redzepi made Sonko a partner at Noma, which has become one of the most ambitious restaurants in the business, not only in terms of cuisine but also of social and environmental responsibility. It’s a bracing and embracing ethos..Noma is an oasis in the middle of a metropolis—what all good restaurants are—writ large. Last September, I sat in its garden after lunch service, listening to René in conversation with his old mentor Ferran Adrià, chef of the legendary El Bulli on Spain’s Costa Brava, one of the prime movers of the golden age. They were talking about how to preserve their legacies—a poignant conversation in retrospect, now that all restaurants are fighting for their lives in a world convulsed by calamities. Both have set up think tanks that are trying to figure out how to adapt. In the meantime, Adrià is on Twitter teaching his followers how to make vichyssoise, among other things. Redzepi is serving hamburgers in Noma’s garden until it’s safe to reopen the dining room..I’ve seen many favorite restaurants close even before the pandemic, and I’ve mourned them all, because each was part of how I tell my own story. I used to take dates to Anita Lo’s Annisa in Greenwich Village—and figure out if the guy was worth pursuing based on his response to the restaurant. I miss Annisa immensely since it closed three years ago. And I don’t date anymore..But there’s always hope that lost restaurants can come back to life. As I prepared to write this piece, I decided to check in on Elise Kornack, who ran Take Root, a tiny culinary jewel box in Brooklyn, with her wife, Anna Hieronimus, until 2017. They’d moved north to Ulster County, N.Y., to start over. How have they fared?.For more than a year and a half, Kornack and Hieronimus pursued the painfully slow process of getting a residential property in the town of Phoenicia rezoned so they could turn it into their dream restaurant. Just when all the paperwork was done, the pandemic hit and investors scurried away. That didn’t stop Kornack. “Funding is an important part of developing any project,” she says, “not the only part.” She’s been using the time to clear the property, which has long trails through meadows down to the edge of a brook where, eventually, diners will be able to sit in the middle of nature. The delay, she says, “gives you time to think things through and to see more possibilities.”.Elise Porter, a mutual friend who’s helping Kornack and Hieronimus with the project, says, “They’ve taken the necessary time to become a part of the community and let their relationships with farmers, locals, and artists organically shape the concept.”.The spaciousness of the property has become a potential lifeline. As people flee dense settings for fear of contagion, physical open space has become marketable. Kornack is again receiving calls from potential investors. What seemed like a sudden stop is now full of promise..I’m praying it does succeed. Just as I’m doing for all the restaurants I love, long for, and hope to dine in again. Let them be reformed and transformed by these trials but still sanctuaries of joy. And maybe the next time I see Keith, we can eat out. He’s single, too..*For more on these restaurant dishes go to #themagicofrestaurants on Instagram, and for more of my attempts at cooking go to #hcecooks on Instagram or @hchuaeoan..©2020 Bloomberg L.P."

How I Learned to Cook Again: A Culinary Tragedy