Gail Simmons - Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater

Dedication

For Jer

Contents

Eat. Write. Travel. Cook.

I love to eat. Not in a gluttonous way. Not in a pack-it-in-as-much-as-you-can-as-fast-as-you-can sort of way. I love the ritual of eating. How the way you hold your knife and fork (or chopsticks or fingers), and what you choose to put between them, determines so much about who you are, where you are from, how you came to be eating this very meal.

I love how everyone in the world has a different palate, different likes and dislikes, nuanced phobias or aversions, obsessions or cravings, which shape the way we nourish ourselves. I love how, like a thumbprint, no two peoples noses and tongues perceive smell and taste the same way. I, for one, have come to realize that I much prefer salty, savory foods in the morning. Runny poached eggs with spicy Sriracha, hearty grain toast and butter, avocado, smoked salmon, bacon.

I am pretty democratic in my love of food and its applications for lunch and dinner. I love vegetables and fruit as much as I love meat. I love fish, seafood, and whole grains. I absolutely love dessert. Not a lot, not every day. But most days certainly, I adore a bite or two of something rich and sweet at the end of the last meal of the day. Or as a midday snack. Ice cream. A simple fruit tart, especially when the fruit caramelizes on the outside but is still a bit juicy within. A chocolate clair.

I also know I love vinegar and I love chilies: pickles and heat. I love creamy, pungent cheeses. Maple syrup. Fresh corn that you can basically eat raw. Peaches (my favorite white peaches are Opals, and Cal Reds are the juiciest you will ever taste). Spaghetti alla carbonara. I love dark chocolate. So does my father. But I love how its possible that one of my two older brothers, raised eating largely the same meals as me for the first two decades of their lives, doesnt eat vinegar and the other doesnt eat chocolate.

From an early age, I knew my biggest interest was food, but what could I do with this information? No teacher at school suggested I might be able to make a living as an eater. Back then, our cultural obsession with food wasnt nearly the juggernaut it is today. Reality TV was just in its infancy when I graduated from college in the late 1990s, so the thought of judging professional chefs on national television would have never entered my mind.

On the eve of adulthood, my friends would declare with confidence: Im going to medical school. Im going to law school. Im doing an MBA. Im getting a masters in art history. Im going to law school. Im going to law school, too!

Nothing against law school, but how did they know? Was I the only person without a clue about the next step? It sure felt that way. My parents and my friends parents expected great things from their children, and great things usually involved postgraduate degrees. Graduate school is great if you know what you want to do. But I didnt have the foggiest idea. None of the things my friends were doing interested me. Especially law school.

I felt at the time like the only one in my crowdfull of so many bright, strong young womenwho really didnt know what she wanted to be. So where did that leave me?

Well, after college, it left me back at home, in my parents basement to be exact, where I spent a month or two feeling sorry for myself and depressed. I was lost. I couldnt believe that not one professor or advisor, in four years of attending one of the best colleges in the country, ever said, Lets start planning for when you leave here. I couldnt believe Id never thought about it myself. Then one day at a family dinner, my mother, who was starting to worry, made me sit down with the accomplished daughter of one of her closest friends. She was about ten years my senior. She listened to my dilemma.

Then she handed me a pen and said, Make a list of what you like to do. Not jobs. Just anything that comes into your mind.

On a random piece of paper, I wrote: Eat. Write. Travel. Cook.

It seemed like a ridiculous exercise. But this wonderful woman (who now works for the Food Network Canada, of all places) smiled.

See? she said, pointing at my paper. Youre not lost. Whats your mom so worried about?

Like an eerie fortune cookie, that scrap became the trajectory of my life.

What do I do for a living? I eat endlessly as a judge on Top Chef , write and talk as a food authority in the media, travel the country and beyond for Food & Wine , and regularly cook at events, online, and on television. Without a map, Ive actually managed to turn my curiosity, enthusiasm, and passion into the life of my dreams. Fifteen years ago, I never could have imagined all that could add up to such a satisfying life.

Thats at least in part because the job didnt exist yet. How could any of us have knowneven as recently as the 1990sthat a love of good food and the people who make it would spawn an industry so much larger and more layered than just chefs and restaurants?

It hit me more than ever the night of Top Chef s Season 3 finale, which we shot at the top of Aspen Mountain. We ate the final dinner from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. It was Augusthot and beautiful, with zero humidity. There was a three-hour break while the crew reset. In the meantime, Bravos senior vice president of programming, Andy Cohen, came up and interviewed us for a short video that appeared on the shows website.

The sun went down and it was soon below freezing at the top of the mountain, ten thousand feet above sea level. We had blankets on our laps under the table. It was absurd how cold it was.

The cameras rolled on Judges Table from 11:33 p.m. to 4:06 a.m. But we could still not agree on the seasons winner. Finally our producers sent all but one of the camerapeople home, and for another hour we continued to debate between chefs Hung Huynh and Dale Levitski. They literally forced us to sit in a room together until we all were unanimous in our decision. If theres even one judge holdout, he or she has to relent and be comfortable with the outcome before we can continue.

We agreed that Dale had higher highs and lower lows. But Hung had been more consistent throughout his meal. Two of Dales dishes, scallops with purslane and grapes and lamb with eggplant, tomatoes, and squash, left a substantial impact on us, but his foie gras mousse and his lobster with gnocchi in curry jus were quite flawed. Hungs were technically precise, beautifully presented, like his pristine shrimp with palm sugar, cucumber salad, and coconut foam, but not always as exciting. They didnt hit us in the face with flavor the way Dales two dishes did.

Our question came down to this: Would you rather have really exciting food that sometimes misses the mark by a mile, or would you rather have a consistently good, well-crafted meal? Tom and I were down for consistency and Padma and Ted Allen were arguing for excitement.

We were freezing and exhausted. In the end, we decided that the sign of a more mature chef was a consistent experience, and picked Hung.

As the sun rose all around us, we knew we had to walk away. It was six in the morning by the time we headed back down the mountain.

As I watched the sunrise from the gondola, I realized my job was about to change the course of two young chefs lives.

All because I loved to eat.

My Mothers Kitchen Counter

MY MOTHER BAKES plum tarts every year in late August. The smell fills the house. As they bake, the juicy plums sink into the vanilla cake base. Im smitten by the smell, the vanillaness of it. My mothers kitchen counter overflows with bowls and vessels. So many that it is often hard to find room to cook. There are ten different kinds of vinegars and oils. A smattering of porcelain teapots. A giant wooden bowl shaped like a carrot, always filled with peanuts in their shells. A little glass cloche containing soft runny cheese. A bowl of dried fruitpears, apples, prunes, and apricots. A beige ceramic butter dish with soft butter, one of hundreds of ceramic pieces my parents have collected over the years. Clementines in winter. Peaches in summer. Wasabi peas. Spiced pumpkin seeds. Whole walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds alongside an ornate silver nutcracker. A loaf of zucchini bread with flecks of green.