The Gnarly Stuff

The last time I saw him, he was setting a copy of the Hong Kong Macau Michelin Guide on fire. It was not particularly tough looking since he was doing it with a crème brulée torch over a nonstick frying pan. But if you knew Dan, you’d know he wasn’t trying to make a joint, but make a point.

“The people that believe in the Michelin stars are just a bunch of BLEEPING BLEEPS. It’s all about the street food, baby,” he said in a sort of hippie, free-loving way. Now, I have my own bone to pick with some of Hong Kong’s rating guides, but fanatical book burning was never my thing.

Dan is part of the anti-movement. Thanks to the Anthony Bourdains of this world, and their glorification of plastic stools and neon lights in dim sidewalks, a legit foodie’s job description just got a little tougher. I get it; I’m all about rooting for the underdog too.

And so on my trip to Beijing to visit the recently relocated Dan, I dragged my just-off-the-plane bum 40 minutes out to the some shady—gee, where am I again?—night market. Then I sat there sweating in the humid heat, flashing a few glazed looks of approval as he proceeded to order a Fear Factor-inspired list of dishes. Pork chitterlings (read: asshole)—which weren’t actually all bad, except a tad under-seasoned. Rocky mountain oysters (read: bull testicles)—these were chewy and otherwise forgettable, and I doubt they were from a real bull. And some chicken ass, which frankly, tasted like ass.

A cook came out from a nearby stall, hocked a loogie, scratched himself, and went back to his business. “So, what’s your story?” my friend shouts at a husband wife duo running the stall next to us (apparently this is another sign of true foodiness—these spontaneous first-person interviews). “Why did you decide to open a stall here?”
“Huuuuh?” the woman shouted in Mandarin, annoyed. The rest of what she said roughly translated to: “Stop wasting my time and buy something.”

Let’s not romanticize it. Sometimes the guy in the shady stall isn’t a hidden gem with the soul of an artist escaping the superficiality of it all to dedicate his life to making some simple comfort food. Sometimes he’s the one with the profane mouth who hates his job and produces crap food that could seriously contain real crap in it (of which I’m convinced was the case with the chicken ass). It’s not hip or extreme or adventurous, just foolish.