I became aware of Edward Lee as a contestant for the Top
Chef show on Bravo, the Austin Texas edition. I identified with him because we
are both of Asian descent, and we don’t see too many Asian folks on shows like
Top Chef. In addition to that connection, I noticed he is from Louisville, a
city I travel to quite often, at least twice if not three times a year. So, I
kept track, hoping that he would open up his own restaurant, I wanted to taste
what I saw.
Over time, I had eaten at three of his Louisville
restaurants: 610 Magnolia, Milkwood, and
Whiskey Dry, I enjoyed all of them and it made me a big fan of his culinary
skills. When his first book: Smoke and
Pickles came out, I was a bit more cautious, I was not a regular reader of
cook books and I wasn’t about to start. I have read other books from famous
chefs, Anthony Bourdain being one, but his books were different, they had a
point of view and they were not all about the recipes.
It was with this mindset that I happened upon this second
book of his while I was visiting my favorite bookstore in Louisville, Carmichael Books. After flipping through
the book, I realized that there was much more to the man’s writing than that of
a chef discoursing on cooking, taste, food, and the food culture. He was in
fact, much like Anthony Bourdain than I had realized. In addition, I figured that there is a certain
amount of predestination involved since I was in a Louisville landmark thumbing
through the book written by another Louisville landmark. So, I bought it.
This book is divided into sixteen chapters, each have a
story or two to tell, some times they coalesce into a tidy narrative, mostly
they don’t, and that is the beauty of Lee’s story telling: nothing is
intentionally meant to be completely self-contained, everything is a bit messy,
and that is its charm. He goes off and wanders these United States as someone
who is not completely assimilated, someone who’s difference is written on his
face. He goes into places where he is not completely welcomed, he is an
outsider wherever he went. More to the point, he asks a lot of question, as a
writer should, and he often invites suspicious scrutiny from those very people that
he most wanted to have a conversation with. He does persevere, and he does have
fascinating conversations, about the food of course, but also about his
subjects lives here in America, about how they got here, what they think, how
they feel about issues that are important to their daily lives. The chapters
always end with his own interpretations of the recipes he speaks about in the
body of the chapters, some are significantly different while others are
tweaked, according to how he feels.
More important than the reportage of the stories is his own
assessment of the stories, he speaks plainly and bluntly about what he
experienced, there is always an elegiac feel to his prose. He conveys the sense
of the immigrant experience both in terms of the fulfillment that comes from
being satisfied with where they ended up yet also with a sense of sadness
regarding the loss over the thing that defines the speaker’s past and culture.
But, there always the description of the food, he is blunt and honest about the
food he tastes, and he will call out a bad interpretation, but when he goes
into the food, he is all at once evocative and descriptive. The only thing that
he was not able to evoke is allow us to actually smell and taste the food, but
he comes awfully close. He also does not insist on authenticity, because
authenticity is not real to him, people will cook and eat differently as they
evolve within this American stew, only the quality matters.
The stories are told as a main piece that brings us to
social and cultural points, points that are made subtly but clearly. It gives
us a sense of what the feelings are with the people telling Lee the stories but
are not overpoweringly obtrusive.
I enjoyed the food writing, the travelogue, the stories, as
well as the thoughtful reflections. It made me appreciate the breadth and depth
of a meal, it could be just a satisfying meal, which is all that we ask, while
it can also be a cross cultural exploration, if you converse, reflect, and
question your experience.
Lee always went to the small, inconspicuous places in search
of honest foods that reflects the cultures that are the most representative of
the subject in each chapter, so it was with great excitement that I discovered
that I had actually been to one of the places he focused on. Shapiro’s in
Indianapolis is not small, nor is it inconspicuous, it is an icon in south
Indianapolis. I happened to eat there while I was on my way home. It was a
delicatessen in the finest sense of the word, and as I read Lee’s account of
his visit, I could visualize the scene as I was there myself. I of course
excitedly tweeted the picture of my meal at Shapiro’s to Lee, a reader lives
for those little moments.
Finally, as he was winding down his book, he took us into
his personal reflections about his life, his wife, his daughter, his Korean
background and family. It is a very important point for me, it took a certain
amount of courage to expose his thoughts, his fears, and his past history to
the readers; and the humanity of what he had to say made the book that much
more welcoming and honest. Going back to our shared Asian background, I felt
his battles with the parental and cultural expectations. I was able to
appreciate the frustrations and fears coming from the younger Edward Lee even
though he rebelled against those expectations and took the road less traveled,
while I took the well-trodden familiar path, only to be rebelling in my later
years. The last few chapters, in speaking
of those challenges in his life as well as speaking about his adopted hometown
of Louisville, was a very nice ending, it made the book journey more meaningful
and the stories already told that much more appreciated.
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