Taste: My Life through Food(48)
The first time we ate at the Ledbury, Felicity suggested we order the tasting menu so we might partake of as much of Brett’s food as possible and the accompanying wine pairings. Each dish, from the Kumamoto oysters to the stuffed loin of rabbit, was extraordinary. Our subsequent visits inevitably found us ordering the tasting menu almost every time. One night after yet another extraordinary meal, Brett was kind enough to invite us into the kitchen for a tour.
The kitchen was small and unremarkable considering the quality and complexity of the food it brought forth night after night. After a few minutes of perusing, we both noticed two pheasants, quite dead but still intact, feathers and all, lying in a tray on the countertop. We started oohing and ahhing over them and were about to ask Brett how he might prepare them when he asked if we would like to take them home. My wife is an agent and I am an actor, and therefore we both know a good offer when we see one, so, after Brett had explained how to “cold pluck” them, we spirited the fowl, tray and all, upstairs to her apartment and put them in the fridge overnight.
The next morning was a Saturday, and we awoke with the excitement that comes with knowing one has a passionate mission to complete. We pulled the pheasants out of the fridge, made a morning beverage, and plopped ourselves in front of the television to watch my new favorite show, Saturday Kitchen, and pluck our birds. An hour and a half later, our dressing gowns covered in feathers, in the tray lay the denuded carcasses of the avian gifts Brett had bestowed on us the night before. It had been a perfect morning. Two food nerds becoming more emotionally intimate by tearing the feathers from a pair of dead birds. It makes no sense that this would give us both such joy, but in a way, it did. First of all, if you’re a food lover, there is always something gratifying about connecting with the vegetable, the fruit, or whatever animal, whether you’ve grown it, raised it, or hunted it, before it becomes your food. But to make that connection and then connect with someone else simultaneously is an exalted, almost spiritual level of foodie intimacy. To me it was one of the most romantic mornings I have ever spent sitting down. I struggle to remember how we prepared the pheasant, but in this case, it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes the process is more satisfying than the result.
Up until the Ledbury’s sudden and very unfortunate closing,I Felicity and I would always go there for dinner on special occasions, and even though Brett was always adding new dishes, if it was on the menu, we’d always order the pheasant as a lovely reminder of when, together, we first plucked.
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The second restaurant we would frequent was the now-also-defunct L’Anima, run by chef Francesco Mazzei. (I am actually beginning to wonder if Felicity and I are bad luck.) Like my family, Francesco hails from Calabria, yet his cooking is not focused only on the recipes of that region. Francesco is one of those chefs able to take classic recipes and breathe new life into them without overcomplicating the process or compromising the integrity of the dish. The first time Felicity and I went there our meal lasted a good three hours. There came course after course after delicious course, which we washed down with copious amounts of wine. I finally reached a point where I had to stop eating, not only because my jet lag was kicking in but simply because I was close to bursting.
However, Felicity, dear, slender Felicity, was not ready to stop. She finished her final course as well as the rest of mine and continued chatting away as though it were not close to midnight and she didn’t have to be in the office the next morning. Then suddenly, out of the corner of her still-hungry eye, she spotted a cheese cart being rolled through the dining room.
“Oh, a cheese cart! Yum! Let’s have some cheese, shall we? Would you like some cheese?”
“Well, I mean… sure, if you—”
“Excuse me! Can we please take a peek at the—???!!!”
She had caught the attention of the waiter with the wheels on wheels and successfully intercepted him even though I am sure he was on his way to another table. (When she wants something, she has the gift of charmingly commanding attention in the way only the British do. Is it the accent? She is not posh, but when she speaks, her education is immediately evident, as are her innate intelligence and warmth. I guess the combination of all these attributes is the reason she is so successful, she has so many lovely friends, and I never win an argument.) Well, anyway, before I knew it the cheese cart was before us and she was interrogating the waiter about the lactic makeup, provenance, and flavor profile of each cheese. She then ordered quite a few slabs, which she quickly devoured as though she hadn’t eaten in days, along with some dessert wine, compliments of the chef. What happened after that is a blur, but before I knew it we were dating seriously and staving off gout became a part of my daily routine.
Whenever I came to visit Felicity in London, whether with or without my children, we always made it a point to go to L’Anima. Francesco was more and more generous with every visit, oftentimes, in true Italian fashion, refusing payment completely, especially when the kids were with us. We loved his food and the spartan, contemporary design of the space so much that we decided to have our wedding reception there a few years later. Of course we had a series of tastings to figure out what the canapés and various courses would be. (My father-in-law Oliver joined us for one of these gustatory marathons and he still talks about it to this day.) After a few of these ancient-Rome-like ingest fests we decided on a menu that was to feed 156 attendees. When the three-course meal had ended, guests would be encouraged to mingle and casually pluck their way through tables filled with various dolci and freely pour from bottles of every digestif available in Great Britain. Francesco suggested that if there were enough wine-soaked stragglers still roistering after midnight, he could serve up “una spaghettata!,” which is basically a shitload of spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce. We agreed. Thanks to Felicity’s meticulous planning, the brilliant staff of L’Anima, and Francesco’s culinary prowess, the wedding day was a delicious success.