The Food

The food.

I sit staring at a plate containing something that might be beef stroganoff. Meat over noodles would be more accurate. Just days ago I sat at one of the finest restaurants in Chicago. Now I am wearing a two day old uniform, and my rifle. Days ago I was wearing a suit, dressed to the nines, down to my shoes. My companion wore her strapless dress (don’t ask me to describe it I can identify tanks, not women’s clothing). The line was long today, about 15 minutes. Reservations for Alinea should be made one or more months ahead. My concierge at the Wyndham works miracles.
On a good note this pile of calories cost only my signature on a sign in roster. Alinea cost more than a valve job and a new rear tire on the Kawasaki. It was worth it.
We live our lives in such an ordinary way, we experience ordinary things. We commute to work, for me just a shuffle down stairs. We see the same so often, I like to step out of the ordinary. Sometimes that extra ordinary experience involves a luke war cup of coffee in a tin cup heated over a fuel tab. Watching the sun rise or fall over a remote landscape. It can take your breath away. There have been moments spent in line at the tank range, resting against the front slope and watching tracers play down range, giving color to the inky blackness of night while the steel releases the heat of the day against your back.
My favorite are hours spent playing with gravity as I swoop up and down the mountains. The sound of the engine screaming at me from between my knees. These are experiences of the sight and feel. Dinner was one of taste and smell. It is fortunate both of these has have been dulled by years of smoking. I might have died of sensory overload.
In any profession there are professionals, experts and artists. After the first course I desperately tried to come up with a comparison. My mind went home to motorcycles. I was in the professional space of the Valentino Rossi of cooking. A man who has passed out of mere mortal status to become an Icon. Each of the courses are a visual work of art. The man at the next table takes a picture with a professional camera before eating each of his 14 courses. This is the short meal. A mixture of flavors and smells does not so much assault my senses as infiltrate past my tongue and into the brain to overload.
Fish eggs from some special pond in the last corner of the virgin wilderness of North America, wines from some guy in Italy who only has 25 acres and sells it only to the poshest of posh. I thought I had seen it all half way through the meal. My mind was reeling from course to course. Then they brought out the beef I know what the effects of cryogenic gasses looks like. It is distinctive. That was a piece of beef that had been dipped in a gas cold enough to be liquid.
I thought I was out of my depth when there was no sign other than a valet out front when we gratefully jumped from the cab driven like I used to drive in Iraq. When there is liquid nitrogen involved in keeping raw meat from cooking at room temperature all bets are off. The staff had skill and professionalism of an SF team, and I do not use the comparison lightly.
A three hour meal, of the highest quality and artistic style available anywhere. I beautiful experience to store for when times are not so wonderful, but not something to contemplate in an army chow hall while gazing at beef over noodles. I reach for the salt and open my latest book about long rides. It is simply a matter of self defense.