I created “Dinner and a Movie”, because I love writing and I love movies. Starting a blog gave me a platform to combine the two. The inspiration for the title came from a quote by Hitchcock (“A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it”) and I became quite fond of the concept. However, this meant that I had to justify the dinner in the title, and so I took to writing about food. This happy accident produced an unexpected passion and fascination for the culture of cuisine, particularly when I realised that chefs too, are artists, driven by a genius of craziness and creativity.

 As I delved deeper into this world I unearthed an entire segment of culture I was hitherto quite unaware of. It is a world rampant with passion and energy, and many a times the slogan “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” is just as fitting in the madcap world of culinary capers. Unsurprisingly, this frenzied swirl of zeal brings with it the egos, the posers and the hangers on, whether it is an anarchic sous-chef, a misbegotten critic or a self-important square setting the standard for the Joneses.

I recently read William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch which included a passage delightfully portraying this tumult of pretension. It was written over 50 years ago, but at no time is it more pertinent than right now as social media and reality TV consume our culture. Since Friday marks the anniversary of this great writer’s death, I felt it was an opportune moment to share this little morsel of his Naked Lunch.

A.J. once reserved a table a year in advance Chez Robert, where a huge, icy gourmet broods over the greatest cuisine in the world. So baneful and derogatory is his gaze that many a client, under that withering blast, has rolled on the floor and pissed all over himself in convulsive attempts to ingratiate.
       So A.J. arrives with six Bolivian Indians who chew coca leaves between courses. And when Robert, in all his gourmet majesty, bears down on the table, A.J. looks up and yells: “Hey, Boy! Bring me some ketchup.”
       Thirty gourmets stop chewing at once. You could have heard a soufflé drop. As for Robert, he lets out a below of rage like a wounded elephant, runs to the kitchen and arms himself with a meat cleaver…The Sommelier snarls hideously, his face turning a strange iridescent purple…He breaks off a bottle of Brut Champagne…’26…Pierre, the Head Waiter, snatches up a boning knife. All three chase A.J. through the restaurant with mangled inhuman screams of rage…Tables overturn, vintage wines and matchless food crash to the floor…Cries of “Lynch him!” ring through the air. An elderly gourmet with the insane bloodshot eyes of a mandrill is fashioning a hangman’s knot with a red velvet curtain cord…Seeing himself cornered and in imminent danger of dismemberment at least, A.J. plays his trump card…He throws back his head and lets out a hog call – and a hundred famished hogs he had stationed nearby rush into the restaurant, slopping the haute cuisine. Like a great tree Robert falls to the floor in a stroke where he is eaten by the hogs: “Poor bastards don’t know enough to appreciate him,” says A.J.
       Robert’s brother Paul emerges from retirement in a local nut house and takes over the restaurant to dispense something he calls the “Transcendental Cuisine”…Imperceptibly the quality of the food declines until he is serving literal garbage, the clients being too intimidated by the reputation of Chez Robert to protest.

SAMPLE MENU:
The Clear Camel Piss Soup with boiled Earth Worms
***
The Filet of Sun-Ripened Sting Ray
basted with Eau de Cologne and garnished with nettles
***
The After-Birth Supreme de Boeuf
cooked in drained crank case oil,
served with a piquant sauce of rotten egg yolks
and crushed bed bugs
***
The Limburger Cheese sugar cured in diabetic urine,
doused in Canned Heat Flamboyant…

So the clients are quietly dying of botulism…Then A.J. returns with an entourage of Arab refugees from the Middle East. He takes one mouthful and screams:
       “Garbage God damn it! Cook this wise citizen in his own swill!”

Photo credit: npr books

Originally published on Dinner and a Movie.