A wise man—OK, it was a character in a John Hughes movie—once said, “People don’t mature anymore. They stay jackasses all their lives.” I swear he was looking directly at me when he said it.
As much as I knew I should be doing some serious ear-to-ground reporting on
New York chef Sam Mason during his visit to Hong Kong—grill his culinary knowledge of hydrocolloids, ask for his response to Frank Bruni’s scathing New York Times review, uncover hidden Freudian complexes—I just couldn’t get myself to stop making jokes about shit.
The boys from Tailor (Sam’s restaurant) had just landed from a whirlwind Asia trip, and explained they had some stomach problems. Cue diarrhea joke. So I decided to order just one Sichuan-styled chili crab, which ended up eating us from the inside out. More jokes about hitting the thunder bucket.
I wish I could say it stopped there, but things got competitive. We talked about restaurant bathroom stalls that were inches deep with what Sam called “poop bouillon.” It was one-upped by a story about a restroom so heinous, you’d have do your business via some sort of Matrix-like jump up onto the wall and over the ceiling in order to avoid infection. And somewhere in there was a legend of a bar that used to have urinals right underneath the countertop so you didn’t have to leave your stool to go to the loo.
This was not my proudest moment. Neither was it the first time my conversation with a chef regressed into such juvenile silliness. The truth is, I’m pretty sure they talk about the subject much more frequently than the world average just by the sheer inventory of nasty stories I’ve heard them recall. Not to mention they think up the damnedest descriptions.
I’m just putting it out there—but I hope foodies never come to a point where they outgrow these jokes. It’s the quintessential lesson from Peter Pan. You lose a little something when you act too grown up. Food was so much more fun when you were mixing up some gross concoction of burger meat and M&M’s during your kindergarten lunch break for the sheer purpose of pushing your digestive system to the max. And it’s this kind of diabolical “inner child” that drives avant-garde chefs like Sam to pair foie gras with peanut butter.