EAT YOUR HEART OUT
an excerpt from Jim Harrison's first Smoke Signals food column
after being promoted from Assistant Food Editor to Top Chow

Dear Mike,

You said you were curious about my meals with Orson Welles, who of 
course, is a bit of a trencherman. The most memorable was at Ma Maison 
(the restaurant with the unlisted phone number out there in 
Glitzville.) The two of us were accompanied by a beautiful Hungarian 
countess who left in either boredom or disgust half way through the 
meal. You see, Mike, she was slender and could not comprehend our 
great, sad hearts, choked as they were with fatty deposits.

Orson began by clearing his palate with a half dozen bull shots in 
quick succession. As we were hungry, the first course was a half-pound 
of fresh caviar with an iced bottle of Stolichnaya. (Politics! In Palm 
Beach 2 years ago a liquor store refused to supply me with Stolichnaya 
because of what the Russians were doing in Afghanistan. I explained to 
him that the residents of that sorry country of Afghanistan were 
Muslims and don't drink vodka. My account was such that I got my 
vodka.) The next course was a wonderful ragu of sweetbreads in pastry 
covered by a half-quart of black truffle sauce, accompanied by a rare 
old burgundy, the name of which would mean nothing to the impoverished 
hippies who read your magazine. Then without a moment's rest arrives a 
whole poached Atlantic salmon in a sorrel sauce and a white Bordeaux. 
At this point the countess wrapped herself in her cape and spun into 
the night.

Her departure enabled me to ask Orson how he snagged Rita Hayworth at 
the top of her form. He said he was in Rio at the time her picture 
appeared on the cover of Life magazine; he took the next plane to L.A. 
and literally brow beat her into the marriage bed within ten days. It 
seems, though, that romantically the great man's true weakness was for 
hat check girls. To tell you the truth, I was beginning to lose some of
my appetite at this point, my life at the time being submerged in a 
number of business and romantic failures. My spirits arose however when
the next course arrived; an immense plater of slices of rare duck 
breasts in green peppercorn sauce accompanied by beautifully braised 
and sculpted root vegetables. With this, quite naturally, we had a very
rare Romanee-Conti. I was astounded that Mr. Welles had remembered the 
day before over an ample lunch that this was my favorite item, 
perfected by the great Paul Bocuse before he submerged himself in the 
cuisine minceur, a method even more fraudulent than psychiatry. This 
last course nearly put me under and I looked down happily at the record
of the meal left in the shirt front. I rejected the platter of desserts
and rushed to the bathroom. A certain unnamed actress had given me a 
vial of white powder which she told me I should use to keep awake. I 
know you can vouch for the fact that I don't use drugs, but this seemed
an exceptional occasion. I poured the whole gram on my palm and snorted
heavily so that anyone coming in the bathroom might think I was washing
my face. I have no memory really about what we talked about other than 
food and sex.

But back to food and politics. . .I won't drink Polish vodka because of
the long record of anti-Semitism in that country. I generally avoid 
German restaurants for the same reason. So I am not without my 
politics, am I? I avoid the cooking of my motherland, Sweden, because 
it is a land without garlic, a land without sunshine. I avoid Jewish 
cooking because it is basically lousy. A certain tribe mentioned in 
Levy-Strauss's The Savage Mind eats bear shit for constipation, not 
political reasons. Perhaps when no one is looking Nancy Reagan licks 
her new china. I do know that of all Mother Westwind's children, the 
mammalian group, man alone cooks. Man alone is capable of looking over 
a girl's shoulder while he fucks at a coffee table laden with 15 
appetizers, as he stares into the blank eyes of the Dungeness crab that 
will be transformed into a mere turd.


  (copyright) 1982-2007 Smoke Signals