It was the truffle week at this restaurant (in the hotel I was staying) in London. Lucky me! or what?
How come I know what a truffle is? Well, knowledge-bites like these are gained by watching the numerous culinary programmes (my 4th favourite, after sports, news and TV commercials that sell exercise machines which makes your abs look like Superman costume) on TV here.
Truffle is an edible subterranean fungus considered a delicacy in European cuisine. Trained pigs or dogs are used for tracking this thing which looks like small potatoes. The waiter comes and tells me that they're having a truffle week and the chef had personally gone to the slopes of Italy to get the best truffles.
I suppose many of the esteemed guests who patronize such elite establishments are impressed by these words. As for me, the first thought that came into my head was "Oh, Is that so? Is this guy a pig or what, to go around sniffing out truffles in Italian mountain slopes??" And what's so impressive about going to Italy to get fungus? If he kept himself from washing and changing clothes for a few days in the damp London weather, he could have made some real home-grown fungus. Suppose if he got George 'with us or against us' Bush to get one of his B-52 bombers to precision (?) airdrop truffles down the chimney into his kitchen, that would have been something to brag about. No, our man went to Italy. It's like Idli Paakaran going all the way to Andhra to pluck black beans for his idli. No, Paakaran didn't. Even in that un-globalized economy, he knew he could walk 10 metres down the street to a shop that sells beans from Andhra or in extreme cases even possibly go and steal from a central government godown where these things are kept for rotting as part of the state policy on alleviating hunger and poverty. Our chef went to Italy.
Anyway, I asked the waiter, no - the maitre d' (that's what they call themselves. High-sounding, but essentially a guy that takes your order in a restaurant, a waiter) for a tagliatelli with truffle shavings in it. It wasn't bad, but was it worth this guy's trip to Italy? Did he have to tell me all these things in the first place? I already had enough troubles of my own looking at the table and wondering what I'm going to do with the panoply of spoons and forks and knives and glasses spread across it. Another big snob show; this spoon and fork show in these places. A spoon for soup, another set for salad, a fork for scratching your fungus infected areas. A glass for water, another for wine, another for champagne. The list is endless. For someone like me with plebeian tastes, who is more at ease with drinking beer from bottles and wiping hands on lungi-ends the whole thing was very amusing, albeit a bit intimidating.
Back in Tokyo, our company was giving away food and clothing to the homeless people around the Tokyo station (yes, there are homeless in Japan too) as part of the Xmas, New Year charity feel good thing. Talking about the poor and homeless, there was this interesting scene in Tokyo Railway Station last week, where I was waiting to catch a train to Hiroshima. It was close to 7 in the morning. Everything was warm and cosy inside the huge edifice that is the Tokyo Station as opposed to the cold outside. Predictably, there were a bunch of homeless people lying around inside. At the stroke of 7, this Station guy walks around shouting 'time's up' and all these people got up, packed their belongings neatly into their backpacks and vacated the area. Everything very neat, tidy, disciplined and quiet. Impressive. One thing about the homeless people in Japan is that they seldom (never!) go around begging. They all seem to be reasonably well off, reasonably well dressed and in most cases chose this lifestyle of their own free will. Wish them free birds and all of us (who live under the myth of freedom) a Happy New Year.