On Personal Growth in My Early 20s

Love Lost, Life Lived, and One Luscious Link

When I was twenty-three, with a broken heart and a mask of bravado disguising a fragile self, I moved to New York. Manhattan. The City. The gauntlet that is one's early 20s had left me feeling battered, and in work, love and life, I sensed I'd lost my way. Intent on starting anew, I hitched my wagon to a vaguely defined position at an educational marketing firm and sublet the living room of a 5th floor walk-up apartment two acquaintances inhabited. Looking back, I realize I was running as fast as I could towards what I hoped would be a brighter horizon; with youthful idealism and a sense of urgency born from sadness, I grasped for opportunities and took those that first outstretched their hands.

As it became clear, neither the job nor the apartment was what it had initially seemed. My boss,  a testosterone-amped alcoholic, alternately hit on and raged at the females in our office (indeed, there were no other men save for a middle-aged manager who seemed perpetually anxious but was unbelievably, furtively kind). We women, mere wisps of women really - girlish waifs in high heels and make-up - just tried to keep our heads down and our assignments completed on time. The hours were long and the stress was high, but "home" was no oasis either.

The apartment was a long, narrow shotgun with a floor so slanted that if you closed the door too forcefully  on your way out, the freezer swung open and remained that way. We each had a bedroom, loosely defined, but no one had an actual door; the only thing separating me from my male roommate, a sweet guy who regularly ordered pot as you would pizza, was a curtain suspended from a wobbly rod. In the meager kitchen, the most prominent appliance was a hot dog toaster, one of those “how did this make it to market?” fad items in which you could toast two hot dogs and two buns concurrently. It, like the apartment, seemed perennially dirty, crusted with crumbs and grease, though I never actually saw it being used. For this domicile I spent half my monthly paycheck.

Life as I lived it that year was vastly different from anything I'd ever expected or experienced. In addition to New York's quick pace and insistence on independence, I found that thin was in, and meals became lonely tributes to the bevy of tasteless, fat-free fare that studded the inner aisles of my neighborhood Gristedes. Things were hard, wild, and exciting, and in the midst of this frenzy, I lost sight of the comfort and succor eating well provides. In many ways, this was a snub to my family and history; at its most basic, and most damaging, it was a repudiation of self.

You see, I grew up in southwest Louisiana, in a small, friendly town about forty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and on the outskirts of Cajun country. Food was central there: family, traditions, holidays, celebrations, mourning…they all, in some way, constellated around cooking and eating together. And the food was (and is) spectacular. South Louisiana cuisine is a richly flavored one that masterfully incorporates the local gifts of seafood, spice, rice and pork in drawing from a panoply of culinary traditions including those from Spain, France, Africa and Italy. Food doesn’t get much better than a steaming bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo, fresh Gulf shrimp or a hot link of boudin, and growing up with these ingredients, which seemed as common as water and as prized as mother's milk, you are spoiled; your taste buds' bar is set forever higher.

My sister and I used to crab off the wharf in our backyard and lay traps for red swamp crawfish alongside our house where a small gully retained enough rainwater to encourage them to move in. One sassafras tree, so tall I thought it'd certainly dwarf a Redwood, shaded the northwest part of our yard; filé for gumbo is made from ground sassafras leaves, and I enjoyed that bit of before-and-after right there in our lawn. Sunday lunches were spent at my maternal grandparents' house, just a couple miles from ours. The meal - always spaghetti and roast, green salad and garlic bread, a huge wedge of Parmesan, iced tea and some sort of perfect pie - was led by my Sicilian Papa at one end of the rectangular metal table and my French-Cajun Nanny at the other. He was a fiery soul, loving and loud and eternally demanding "more cheese!"  She was a beautiful, elegant woman, as kind and patient as Job.

I left my hometown for college in the Midwest, and although my undergraduate years were sublime, I was acutely aware of how ill-prepared I was for the academic rigor and how much I missed the eccentric personality of Louisiana. During that challenging transitional period, I found accomplishment soothing, and as senior year dawned, my grades had become nearly perfect as had my waist-size. The latter was not purposeful but the compliments I received in response were seductive, quietly suggesting that my physical self was something else I might "achieve." I aced graduate school on an appallingly restricted diet and started work with a heady yet conflicted sense of invincibility and concern. A year later, things ended with the man I thought I'd marry, and I was devastated. With no studies left to master, I suspect I looked more closely at myself, the one entity on which I could always count. In New York, this came to a head and even though I surely wouldn't have admitted to it, I believe I recognized that in some small way. And so, each time my parents –adventurous travelers and enthusiastic eaters- came to visit, I gave myself a reprieve and eagerly anticipated the restaurant experiences we were sure to have.

The Night of the Seafood Sausage, as I’ve since taken to calling our dinner at Chanterelle, the venerable, now-shuttered, Tribeca institution, provided me one of the culinary highlights of my life despite the fact that I remember only one dish: the Grilled Seafood Sausage in Beurre Blanc. That evening, a beautiful night that did justice to Chanterelle’s looming windows, I paid no heed to presumed calorie counts, welcomed the bread basket with open arms and banished any consideration of just how much butter might be in the sauces. I simply had to have that sausage and ordered it without hesitation.

Et voilà. One perfectly arced link: stuffed with generous chunks of lobster, shrimp, scallops and white fish to the point at which the casing began to shrug with exertion; grilled to a golden hue and slick with heat and moisture; nestled in a languid pool of beurre blanc so ethereal it must have defied laws of physics. I smiled and gingerly picked up my fork and knife. The blade found the slightest resistance in the hot collagen’s taut skin but soon sliced cleanly through. Eyes wide, absorbing the delicacy in front of me, I speared a perfect round with my fork, pulled it gently through the pale yellow sauce and placed the bite on my tongue.

I was rendered speechless. Reflexively, my eyes shut, my chewing slowed, my taste buds thrilled with the assault of flavors from which they’d been largely deprived. My first conscious thought might have been, “I will absolutely hate to share even the smallest morsel of this with my parents.” Yet when you taste something so truly remarkable, share it you must if only so that others will believe your proclamations of greatness.

Exceptional seafood is often best when left to shine on its own: boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce; steamed crabs served alongside nothing but a bib, shell crackers and maybe a lemon; oysters on the half shell with a mild mignonette waiting in the wings. And so in some ways, ordering that sausage went against my better judgment: what if the meat was overcooked? what if the flavors of each sea creature were muddled, the whole made less than its parts?

For reasons then mystical but understood to me now, I took a leap by ordering that link. The indulgence of that sausage wasn’t simply that it was stuffed with incredible seafood or that it was literally full of calories, fat and cholesterol. I don’t remember it so clearly more than a decade later just because it was perfectly prepared. No, the taste of that dish lingers on my lips because it was a moment of freedom in which I learned, relearned, much. I have since come to believe that enjoying food is as much about what you’re eating as it is when, how, and with whom; that if you're open to experience, life is ever so much richer; and that the joie de vivre inherent in many Louisiana families isn't something to let go of.

I have never regretted the three years I lived in New York. There, because in Manhattan you either sink or swim, I started to become my truest self. As I winnowed through the sorts of jobs, friends, men and identities I didn't want, I gained a confidence I'd long sought. That meal at Chanterelle demonstrated to me, retrospectively of course, that even the smallest steps can shift life's tectonic plates in grand ways.