Amuse bouche or amuse gueule refer to a little something traditionally served as someone sets down to a meal in a bistro or brasserie. Usually one or two bites, this can be rather savory and well flavored. Something to whet your appetite and put your mind on the meal to come. An amuse gueule also acts to shape your expectations of the chef and the direction of the meal. Perhaps it's very casual and succinct, or ornate and luxurious, or some playful amalgam of both. Regardless, the little tidbit before the real deal is an extension of greeting and hospitality.
So, welcome.
San Francisco is densely populated and runs just as rife with restaurants. In the neighborhood of my youth, the nearest restaurant was a Chinese joint on the corner. Across the street was an all you can eat Korean barbecue. Two down was another Chinese, an Indian buffet, across from them was our nearest greasy spoon breakfast joint. Two streets down and one over were our favorite sushi spot, Italian spot, Mexican spot. Thai restaurants down the way from there, another Italian joint, a big banquety sort of Chinese spot, I could go on ad nauseum and not even breach a 5 block radius. I was born and bred in a city where every culture and cuisine is represented, and usually a stone's throw away or a quick jaunt.
My parents cooked, but they also both worked full time and often on opposite or inconvenient schedules. It was easy to get picked up from school or come from an appointment and go out to eat rather than fire up the stove. My parents exposed me to foods of the world that I feel much of the country hasn't experienced - definitely not with as much frequency. For those opportunities growing up I am thankful. Formative years eating different cuisines helped shape my future openness and obsession for food.
I come from cooks. Both grandfathers and a grandmother cooked professionally in their heydays. My aunts can cook. My uncles can cook. Like I said, my parents cook(ed). There's a legacy of food in my blood. I consider cooking my heritage. My folks put me to work from early on prepping this or that. Sitting at a tv tray in the living room with a colander full of green beans pinching off stems. A little paring knife in my hand peeling fuzzy skins from peaches for a sauce or compote my dad wanted to try. Making honey mustard for the country style ribs we were to roast for dinner. When I was older and left to my own devices, my mother would leave instructions to pop the roast in at xxx degrees for xx minutes so that dinner would be ready by the time my parents got home. I'd make the side dishes - roast the acorn squash with butter and brown sugar and salt, cook the rice, get the vegetables steamed. The more I learned how to do, the more they relied on me to get meals ready for the three of us in their absence.
From middle school on I'd be the only one in the afternoons and early evenings a lot. A lonely teenage boy gets hungry. My first foray into experimentation and finding my own way was through instant ramen. It was easy for mom to grab the big pack from Costco - y'know, half chicken half beef and like a dozen deep of each. Get the water going and then... leftover sliced steak or some roast duck from the Chinese deli? A couple of gai lan or dry fried green beans from the same deli? Kimchi right out of the jar? Throw an egg in there. Sriracha for spice, maybe some oyster sauce for depth and sweetness. Three minutes, ding, pour that shit out into a big Chinese bowl. Sit down to MTV or whatever. A simple, quick after school snack would become a whole production. Dinner before dinner. This was the norm every week for years, maybe 3 to 4 afternoons of the week.
Full disclosure - I was a terrible student. I was apathetic and didn't apply myself to shit. I hated doing homework. I didn't study very often. I was on AIM or the internet doing fuck all more often than actually working on my grades. That I ever graduated from middle or high school is a miracle of sheer just-getting-by. I didn't have much of a future. I never thought I would amount to very much. In my senior year, I actually turned things around. I gave a shit, I got decent grades, and I was on track to actually get out of there. But what to do after that? We got the Food Network that same year. It was the heyday of Emeril and Tyler Florence and a pretty good line up of food personalities at the turn of the 21st century before everybody got played out and programming turned to shit. I would watch food programs endlessly. Even before that, on PBS there'd be Martin Yan, Julia Childs, Lydia Bastianich, all sorts of people to watch in intimate sets seemingly talking to just me about this or that dish.
Watching food on tv made sense. What made more sense was that I had a future in food. It wasn't a gradual decision. It was most assuredly an ah-ha moment, and I can pinpoint it exactly. We had a roast chicken for dinner. I had the task of making gravy. Dad was in the living room, mom was doing whatever, I was in the kitchen. We had instant gravy growing up. There was that plastic container of beef, chicken, sometimes even pork. You'd shake out the powder into water on the stove and stir and it would heat and thicken and you'd have soupy, watery, janky-ass gravy that vaguely tasted of the animal it was supposed to be ladled over. But there I was, spending half an hour on gravy. I started with the powder. I poured in the accumulated juices of the resting chicken. Salt, pepper to boost. Some worcestershire. I made a slurry of corn starch and water to lend more body. I used the immersion circulator that was as old as me at the time to blend it all smooth in the pot. I added a little milk to give it some creamy mouth feel. After what seemed like ages, I was finally satisfied with my gravy. It was far more effort than a meal of roasted chicken with no doubt canned vegetables and probably a pot of rice deserved. Yet, thinking back, I don't think I would've been able to stop myself from doing it exactly the same way. I would not have been happy with just gravy powder and water and calling it quits.
Bing. So it made sense. I didn't know how. I didn't know when. I just knew that, somewhere down the line, learning how to cook would be the next thing for me. I didn't have the grades for a UC, and not even for a Cal state. Bear in mind this was still my senior year, and even though I was in decent shape I never believed I was in the clear until I walked across stage. We'll get back to that. I remember distinctly in my first half of the year having an English assignment - to write my own eulogy. By then, my grandmother had passed and we'd spent a lot of time in her home cleaning and clearing things out. My grandfather and this grandmother had both worked at a resort in Palm Springs in the busy season. Grandpa was a chef garde manger, or pantry chef, meaning he with grandma's help made elaborate banquet pieces of, like, a hundred little bites of the same thing. I found/inherited his knives, his tools, his notebooks and notes and albums of pictures of them at work. Huge, lavish tables laden with whole poached salmons delicately covered in aspic and all manner of intricately detailed show pieces of food were his specialty. He did this for decades. I never knew or got to seem what he could do as a cook. He passed when I was young. Anyhow, I had his knives and his notebooks. I knew who he was and what he did as family legends. This eulogy I wrote was in the narrative of my best friend at the time. I had him talk about me growing old and dying in the kitchen. About how I'd gone to culinary school, worked my way up through various kitchens and done many different things. I wrote how I had followed in my grandfathers footsteps and become Chef Garde Manger myself, and how I became an old man doing the same thing.
I went through the year writing various other projects or papers with much the same goal in mind. Still unknowing how I'd reach that goal, my focus was just making it to stage. Friends and family knew and understood after a while that I was no longer directionless and dispassionate. I think people were just happy that I had finally figured out what I gave a shit about.
Graduation came. I got my diploma, and I was finally done eking out a public education. In the summer I applied to community college with the plan of just doing whatever general ed classes I had to. There was no major or degree in mind. It was just kind of, well, here's what I have to do now I guess. I did entrance exams. I had signed up for I think math, English, whatever classes.
BUT THEN! I saw fliers around as I traversed campus to different offices and counselors and was mind-blown to discover that there was a culinary program. It was 2 years long, it was an associates degree (not that that mattered) and it was right fucking there on campus. How had I not known this?! I went to the office of the culinary program's director or department head or whatever. I asked questions, just to see, and it turned out it wasn't too late to switch my classes around and get on the culinary track. That's precisely what I did, with my mothers help, and at $11 a unit to boot.
Oh shit, son. It was finally happening. We got text books. I got fitted for uniforms - 5 chef coats, 5 pairs of chefs checks, aprons, non slip shoes. Elsewhere, back on campus, I purchased my first knife kit and was assigned a locker and given my key to the locker room a floor beneath the kitchens. Chefs knife, paring, boning, other tools, all in this heavy ass canvas bag. I remember taking it home that night and just sitting in the living room with it open on a tv tray, steeling every single blade. I added a few on my grandfathers knives to my kit, as well.
Everything was squared away and this shit was real. I went from a boy with a bowl of snow peas to string, to a teenager with a steaming bowl of hella custom instant noodles, to almost a legit culinary student.
How was your first bite?
Your next course will be out soon.
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