A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal

Muslim always prepares more than is required for immediate use, anticipating that most important figure of lore – the hungry traveler in need – who might unexpectedly appear.

Those New York delis with the giant salad bars where all the health-conscious office workers go for their light, sensible lunches? You’re eating more bacteria than the guy standing outside eating mystery meat on a stick.

The combination of sugar, chocolate, hot dough, and grease is the perfect breakfast for a borderline alcoholic.

I find myself looking for any diversion, anything to take my mind off the nicotine yen: Focus on the snoring human compost heap across the narrow aisle, pretend that if I stare hard enough, he’ll explode.

So the next morning, at eight o’ clock, feeling none too fine from what had easily been the worst head I’d ever had,

I hadn’t, I realized, returned to France, to this beach, my old town, for the oysters. It wasn’t the fish soup, or the saucisson, or the pain raisin. It wasn’t to see a house in which strangers now lived, or to climb a dune, or to find a perfect meal. I’d come to find my father. And he wasn’t there.

I’d been looking to hook into the main vein on this stretch of my around-the-world adventure. I’d thought everything would be instant magic. That the food would taste better because of all my memories. That I’d be happier. That I would change, or somehow be as I once was. But you can never be ten years old again – or even truly feel like ten years

I’d hoped that all that would come rushing back when I slurped down one of Dominique and Jérôme’s finest. I knew I was trying too hard. I knew I was forcing things.

The day’s work done, we retired to their shack for a tasting of their wares, a few dozen fresh Arcachon oysters and a bottle of dry white Bordeaux. It was eight o’clock in the morning.