Many people who are passionate about food have at least one clear moment early on where they realized that food was something more than just a means of stopping yourself from being hungry. Anthony Bourdain's oyster moment, on a boat in France, comes to mind. Google kicks up 65 million results for 'early food memories', but only 15 million for 'great religious experiences'. So that should tell you something.
Growing up in the tiny town of Wallasey, I knew I was not the same as all the other white boys. Yes, I looked the same, but I had a Greek name, and a Greek father, and ate weird stuff like olives. My dad used to go down to the docks and buy the garbage fish for a pound - fish that today is endangered or highly desirable or both, but back in the Seventies if it wasn't cod or haddock, no one wanted it. So we'd have the most delicious fish soups - something that I always asked him to make. Sadly, he made it but a handful of times as he got busy, I got more busy, and our family disintegrated. I did try to let my friends in on the secret of the wonderful food I had been eating while they were gobbling down chips, beans and fish fingers, but the more they just went "Ewwww!" the less I spoke of it.
But one of my absolute favourite meals was when he'd come home with a big bag of whitebait: tiny fish about an inch or two long that he'd season, flour and fry. He would cut up some raw onions, and some lemons with the all the skin peeled off, and we'd eat them just like that. Pop a whole fish in your mouth, take a bite of onion, and a bite of lemon. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
This was, I now know, one of the great memories food creates. Not even my mother would join us as she hated raw onions, didn't like eating whole lemons, and wasn't too crazy about eating fish heads, bones and stomachs. So it was just me and my dad, partners in this simple, yet exotic feast.
I could re-create dish quite easily now, of course, but it wouldn't be the same. It never is, is it?
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One of the most memorable meals I had was in Japan in about 1985 or 86. We had just finished a big show, and we all went out to eat after at a restaurant whose name escapes me. I had long hair back then, and a beard and moustache, so when I came in all the dancers from the show started singing "Jesus Christ, Superstar..."
The meal went on forever, and the sake just kept coming and coming. Later, a bunch of us went out to do some more drinking and eating at bars where at least one of our party had a bottle with his name on behind the counter. Gradually, our party diminished as one by one people cried off, or just simply faded away.
Finally, there were just the three of us. Myself, Nagatuska-san and Ando-san. It was the middle of winter in Tokyo and f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g. Plus there was a howling gale - so strong that as we crossed the road the wind ripped Ando's scarf right off and flung it into the middle of the street.
As we got to the other side, I saw a small wooden hut.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Noodle," they said. "You want some?"
So we sat down, shaking from the cold, at this hawker stall. It was like a hawker stall if Ikea invented it. Everything had an exact place for itself. It all fit together like some Apollo space mission, and I am willing to bet it all folded up into a cart the owner could just wheel home when he was done and nothing would spill or break. There was a counter and small chairs, and the whole thing was made out of pine.
"Sake?"
"Yes, please."
"Udon?"
"Yes."
The sake was poured. None of the thimble-sized refinement you get at resaturants. Here they served it the same way the Chinese drink brandy at banquets - in straight six-inch high glasses. Each one held about four shots of the regular sake.
The noodles appeared right away, or so it seemed. Hot, beefy broth and thick, perfectly cooked udon. Bits floated in it that I didn't recognize, but I didn't care. Steam billowed up and we hunched down close to our bowls letting it hit our faces as this was the only way we could stay warm. The wind battered our backs as we sat, unprotected in the empty street. Our ears grew pink and chapped. But our faces and hands survived, thanks to the noodles and the hot sake.
The stall owner stood there, impervious. Not talking, not smiling, just waiting for us to finish so he could clean our glasses and dishes away.
We paid the bill, stood up and said our goodbyes.
Twenty years later, I met up with Nagatsuka-san and we still talked about that evening. What was it that made it so special? Yes we were drunk as lords, so drunk and so cold we could barely light our cigarettes or even speak in full sentences. But just in those few minutes, in those sub-zero temperatures in the middle of Tokyo just before dawn, memories were forged; memories of the time three friends sat and ate and drank together.
Could be possible to go back in time, even for a second, to breathe that moment?
Perhaps, in some way, we can. Who knows?
Or perhaps that is what this life is all about - so that at its end all we are left with is a collection of the sharpest memories of the times when we really, truly lived.
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