Pour One Out For Anthony

Pour One Out for Anthony

I love to eat.

I’m not a particularly good cook (if you’ve seen my stellar Facebook live trying to make mozzarella cheese, you can attest to that), but I love to eat. That’s one of the main themes of my One New Thing Project — food. I love the flavors, the moment when you get an entirely new taste, when you try to decide if you actually like something or hate it, and when you taste something you’ve never had and feel like it is the BEST thing you’ve ever eaten. More than that, I love sharing that experience with other people. And that’s something that I have in common with the subject of our new thing this month — Anthony Bourdain.

This One New Thing comes courtesy of my longtime friend, Rachael. She casually mentioned that she and a friend were going out to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain. Her friend was a huge Anthony Bourdain fan and was devastated by his death in 2018. When he died, they decided to make a list of all of the cuisines they hadn’t yet tried. Each year for his birthday, they would try a new one. If possible, they go to small, mom and pop eateries. This year, they were trying a tiny Turkish restaurant called Sheesh.

If I was honest, I had been fairly indifferent to Anthony Bourdain in his lifetime. I wasn’t really into cooking shows, much less extreme or innovative cooking when he died. But something struck me when he died. Anthony took his life by hanging three days after designer Kate Spade died in the same way. A woman that I was working with at the time was really upset by Anthony’s death. She said “he did things with his life. What did Kate Spade do? Make some pretty purses?” That bothered me. That she devalued someone’s life and death because she didn’t feel like Kate Spade contribute in the way that this woman thought was meaningful. My heart broke a little for Kate Spade at that moment. If I was honest, I was fairly indifferent to Kate Spade’s work at the time as well. Fashion for me was pretty utilitarian at that time. But I started to pay attention to both Anthony and Kate’s work after that. They were both extraordinary at what they did. And that woman that I worked with was pretty f**king insensitive. There. I said it.

Anthony Bourdain

Anyway. Back to our story.

Teapot from Sheesh. Isn’t it gorgeous?

So Rachael mentions that she and a friend are going to Sheesh (cool name, right?) to celebrate Anthony Bourdain’s life. This inspires me. So I share the idea with Rob. He loves it. We decide to go out the next night to celebrate, so we start researching restaurants near us that sound interesting. Within a few minutes, we agree on Korean. Not Korean fusion, but legit Korean. Kimchi Guys. It’s got strong reviews and is in one of our favorite parts of the city — Laclede’s Landing. We have a plan. I get dressed up in pink and black polka dots (go, Kate Spade!) and we’re off.

Ok, So Kimchi Guys looks a little more Qdoba than we had anticipated, but we’re going to roll with it. When we walk in, there aren’t any humans behind the counter to ask questions of, so we sit at the table, pull up the menu, and do the best that we can.

We didn’t want fried chicken or anything westernized, so we went with things that sounded good (and I had no hope of pronouncing). Tteokbokki for an appetizer (chewy Korean rice cakes, sweet & spicy chili sauce, fish cake, a hard-boiled egg, and some green onion) and a couple of Bibimbap Bowls (chicken for me, beef for Rob). Rob got a Hite beer and I got a Soju.

We entered our order and paid. Just like in Willy Wonka, a couple of fairly high looking college student oompa loompas wandered out from a door to prepare our food. They set it on a counter and wandered back behind the door.

This is where things went slightly awry.

First, I expected that my Soju was alcoholic. I did not expect that it would come with a shot glass. Soju is an indecently smooth rice alcohol (think vodka but drinks like water, and you’ll be close to Soju). Second, our Tteotkbokki appetizer was advertised as having a sweet and spicy chili sauce. It did, in fact, have a lot of flavor. And then there was what my friend, Stephanie, calls set your face on fire spice. Look, I’m no slouch when it comes to spice, but wowza. I could not tell if the heat after was from the appetizer or from my Bibimbap Bowl. And the drink that I had to douse these flames was shot after shot of Soju. Half a bottle gone and I was forced to summon the oompa loompas for a soda. Rob had gone through his beer at this point. Having ordered two sodas and glimpsing no sight of the oompa loompas behind the door, we grabbed our own cups and finally started to put out the flames in our mouths.

With that done, we could concentrate on our Bibimbap Bowls. Those were divine. Lots of vegetables, rice, a little plum sauce, and a fried egg on top.

Rob and I decided that this was a really good experience. He said he’d order the Tteokbokki again. I might from a different restaurant to see if it’s always prepared that spicy. I probably wouldn’t from the same place. We both decided that Korean food was definitely something to have again.

It takes a bit of retraining our brains and taste buds when we are trying new and different cuisines, so if it’s not your cup of tea the first time, don’t beat yourself up. When we are really little, our brains actually form pathways to accept tastes that are going to be prevalent in our environments, and prune away the ones that won’t be. It’s taken me a while to enjoy the taste of curry, and to be honest, I’m still on the fence about the smell of it. My family defined meat and potatoes cuisine growing up. About the weirdest thing we ate was the one time my mom tried a disastrous soy chicken recipe. After we all turned up our noses, it was back to the safety of shepherd’s pies, casseroles, and pot roasts. You can choose to become a more adventurous eater as you get older. That’s where trying things slightly outside your comfort zone comes into play.

We loved our Anthony Bourdain dinner. We’ve started a list of cuisines to try — Persian, Turkish, just to name a few. It’s going to be an annual tradition. Celebrate life. Celebrate love. Celebrate adventure.