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- [00:00]
Sponsor Voice
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- [02:51]
Meg Bowles
Visit themoth.org from PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles and in this hour we'll hear stories about food, the pleasure but also danger of food, the traditions surrounding food, the preparation of that special dish, and the sometimes awkward feeling of formality when sitting down to share a meal with someone you've only just met. Our first story comes from Chris Fisher. Chris is a farmer and a chef who grew up spending time on his grandfather's farm on Martha's Vineyard, the small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The island has always had a reputation for being a summer destination for America's rich and famous. But if you look beyond the celebrity, you'll find an island rich in history and a tight knit community of people who value their local traditions and hard work.
- [03:52]
Chris Fisher
I was born on this island. I got my first job in a kitchen when I was 13 years old, in the same building where my grandparents met. I started out making salads, but quickly switched to washing dishes because the dishwashers were much better fed. My culinary education up to this point was pretty unique. My father taught me how to gather mussels from the bottom of rocks and lure bluefish and set lobster pots at a very young age. He taught me how to skin a deer long before teaching me how to cook the tenderloin. I then went to preschool in a converted chicken coop. My classmates and I would hunt and peck our way around the playground like chickens that preceded us. And I graduated onto a two room schoolhouse in the center of Chilmark. Instead of class pictures, we took school pictures, usually nine or ten of us on the front steps. And I liked to watch the seasons go by through the windows. And when my dad would drive by with lobster pots piled in the back of his truck, I knew that it was spring and that summer would soon be there. And it wasn't until I moved to New York City that I realized how unique my childhood had been. I found myself in February on a Saturday night, a very cold Saturday night with my best friend in Greenwich Village at Babo Restaurant owned by Mario Batali. It had recently gotten three stars from the New York Times. I had never been. I'd never heard of it, he'd been before. And we slinked through the bar where people were just mobbed. And we got to the main dining room and we sat at a banquet and waiters danced around in vests and white shirts. It's an Italian restaurant and we had pasta. But what I Remember, most is the steak. It was a ribeye. I'd never had a ribeye before. And it was rich and juicy, and they finished it with rock salt and aged balsamic vinegar. And I drank Barolo for the first time. And I thought to myself, I really need to know how to cook this food. I don't just want to. There's something inside me that needs to learn how to do this. So I went back to Babo the next morning and asked them for a job. They must have been desperate, because they gave me one, and I started the next day. I showed up for work the first day without any knives. I didn't know you were supposed to bring your own knives, so I borrowed one from the chef. And I was also wearing Nike running pants that were a little bit too tight underneath my apron. So I got a nickname on my first day. Chrissy Pants. It wasn't very flattering, but I didn't care. I felt so lucky. I was working in a restaurant beyond my wildest dreams, a restaurant I didn't even know existed a week before. And I had my first kitchen nickname. The first night on the line was terrifying. I stood behind the line with these other chefs as they got ready for service, and they were duct taping their wounds. They were duct taping their burns. They were drinking copious amounts of coffee out of big plastic quart containers. They were dunking their headbands in buckets of ice water and wrapping their heads. It was like a scene from Braveheart. And all of these warriors were getting ready for battle, and they knew exactly what to do, and I did not. So I stood there and I tried not to get in anybody's way. And the chef, Frank, started calling out, orders, two branzino, three guinea hen. I need a squab skirt, medium well. And I just froze. I had no idea what he was saying. And the guy that was supposed to teach me that night started throwing different chunks of meat from different animals on the flame, and it started spitting fire back at him. And then he gently laid two fish on the grill, two whole fish, and it was so beautiful. And then he threw more meat on, and the flames spat back. It was total chaos to me. And I didn't speak the language, and it took me a long time to learn the language. And I worked really hard. And I worked my way through the stations from satay to pasta. And the pasta station felt like you were taking a bath in boiling water the first night. And I became the sous chef after 18 months. And then I burnt out a Year later, and I came back home. The day that I want to tell you about was a hot day in August. It was a Tuesday. I woke up on the farm. At this point, I was running my family's farm. I was the chef at a restaurant less than a mile away and I was trying to write a book. I was doing too much. And I woke up on the farm groggy, went to the fish market to see what was freshest, and then I went to work. At about 11am we had our menu meeting for the day with the kitchen team. At this point, our menu was really small. It was focused on the ingredients that we were growing and the ingredients we could get from other farmers. But it was also influenced by the fact that most of our kitchen equipment was broken and we were only capable of cooking a few things a night. So we kept it very small. Everything was unraveling. I had a big beard. My truck no longer had reverse, which made parking very difficult or a group effort. So we made our plan for the day and we began to prep, organize, get ready. By 2pm the menu was pretty much solidified. We all felt good. And at 3pm the general manager, Dennis, came in. He was out of breath. He was almost hyperventilating. And he said, he told me he had just seen a black SUV with tinted windows, a Virginia license plate, come through the driveway and leave. I turned the radio back up. We kept dancing and prepping and generally happy, and I didn't think very much of it. Half an hour later he came back and now he looked like he was going to have a heart attack and he was sweating through his shirt. And he said, there are three SUVs and they are parked in the parking lot and they're not leaving. I think tonight's the night. So I checked the reservation book for DC area codes, pseudonyms, any clue? We couldn't find any. At 4:30, we sat down for family meal and we went over the menu for the night with the wait staff. The kitchen crew. And I looked out the window and there was a swarm of Secret Servicemen inspecting our stone walls and our sheds in the grounds. And I thought, this is probably the night. So I went to the kitchen. People started to trickle in, filling in first outside and then our long communal table that stretched the length of the dining room. They filled up every seat. The restaurant had a lot of energy. It was very loud. We left a two top empty by the window. It was set as all of our tables were set with some flowers that we'd grown, napkins, silverware. Paper place mats, some crayons. And around 6:30, a mob of Secret Service come through the front. And they go to the bathroom, they go to the kitchen, they go to the dish room. They're everywhere. They were probably in the basement, although I didn't have time to check. And one of them walked straight up to me. He seemed to be the person in charge. And he had a cooler in his left hand and he extended his right hand and he introduced himself. And I thought, there must be something so cool in that thing. And he said, I understand it's a dry town. The President's brought a bottle of wine for the first lady and the fixings for his martini for himself. Where should I put them? We forgot an ice pack. So that broke the ice a little bit. And then he said to me, this is how it's going to go. Nobody can leave, come or go. When the President is eating, they're going to order off the menu like normal. You'll show me every ingredient before you cook it. If I tell you to throw something away, do so and start over. Any questions? No. So our team huddled up. Our kitchen team at this point, we had one line cook, two teenagers and a pastry chef who had come back, gotten through the Secret Service roadblock, was wearing sweatpants and was probably stoned. I told them not to do anything different and to ask me if they needed help. I went back to expediting and the orders kept coming in. And their order came in. They had two salads to start. Sadie Dix was working the salad station that night, and she's a chil mark kid like me. She was one of the teenagers. She'd never worked in a restaurant before that summer. So she proceeded to dress these beautiful little lettuces with a puree of their own, with a puree of the same greens, salt, a little lemon juice, olive oil. She tossed it and she finished it with sauteed shiitake mushrooms. They were all ingredients that her family had grown on their farm just down the road. And she plated them beautifully with nice architecture, nice and soft, just as I taught her. And she looked at me and I tasted them and they were perfect. And I told her, now you should bring them out to the President. So she had an oriole's cap cocked to the side, which the Secret Service had already given her a hard time about. And she walked past me. She walked past her parents who were eating at the bar. With a naive gracefulness that only a 16 year old can have, she delivered the food to the President, came back smiled. I smiled at her. And the secret serviceman with the cooler, who had been taking pictures all night, was snapping away pictures on his camera phone when the main course came up. The President had a lobster and the first lady had steamed mussels. He took pictures of that. The food went out and he continued to take pictures. And I said, do you have to document everything? And he said, no, this is fucking cool. He said, your food is beautiful. And he started showing me pictures of prawns from Africa, fish from the Caspian Sea, and the President's favorite pastas from Italy. They finished their meal with a blueberry coffee cake that Olivia made and at this point was quite envious of. And he had a cup of coffee. They paid the bill. He had a firm handshake. She complimented the mussels, which a friend of mine had grown off the coast of Manemsha, the same friend that had actually convinced me to leave the salad station at the feast at Shomark and join him in the dish pit. And I watched Sadie as she swept the floor that that night after service, happily. And I was reminded, I was reminded that we are the privileged ones to be born here, to be proud of where we're from. She and I both shared the same things growing up. We shared strength and sunburns and tan lines that don't come from afternoons spent on the beach. And Sadie put it best, she said, I wasn't just raised on a farm, but a farm raised me. Thank you.
- [16:44]
Meg Bowles
That was Chris Fisher. Like his father and aunts and uncles, Chris grew up on his grandfather's farm, learning how to tend the family cows and raise the vegetables and flowers that were sold at their farm farm stand. Chris is now running the farm. It's called Beetle Bung Farm. Along with his cousins and nieces and nephews, they're raising sheep, cows, pigs, and continuing the family tradition for another generation. You can see a picture of Chris and the kitchen staff at the Beach Plum the night the Obamas visited. And find out more about Chris's cookbook, appropriately named the Beetlebung Farm Cookbook, full of recipes and stories about growing up on Martha's Vineyard. That's on our website, themoth.org coming up, we'll hear just how dangerous a tomato can be when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Production Voice
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by prx.
- [18:05]
Meg Bowles
From prx, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg bowles. Back in 2011, we produced a story slam in Los Angeles and Evan Kleiman, who Hosts Good Food, a radio show that airs on kcrw, introduced the night for us. She got the evening started by sharing her own story.
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Evan Kleiman
First, I'm going to take you back to the Wayback Machine. We're going to go back to the 80s, a period of time when. The early 80s, when I was spending a couple of years asking anybody I had ever met for money for my unopened restaurant and going through the process of raising the money, doing the legal stuff, finding an architect, getting it designed, and going through the building process. It took 18 months or so. So during this period of time, I met and got to be very acquainted with the project architect, who we'll call Joe. And Joe and I kind of had this courtship that happened over blueprints and the building department. And our sort of fog of romance was so sweet that many people fell into it. Just to give you an idea, if you've ever gone down to the building department and tried to get plans passed, we managed to get plans for a restaurant passed over the counter. I don't know how we did that. I can tell nobody's here ever built anything in Los Angeles that was like akin to, you know, the resurrection. Seriously amazing. So he thought he had met this really cool Los Angelena chick from Silver Lake, kind of hippie who cooked all the time at home and had a great sense of humor, was really relaxed. And then that period of time of raising money and building came to an end. There was one day where actually it was done. It was all done. There was nothing else to do. And, you know, my partner and I looked at each other and we're like, well, I guess, you know, the only thing we can do is open the door. So then I became this other person. I became this insane person. But I understand how people become like that. I was working 100 plus hours a week in the kitchen. I was coming home every night progressively more pissed off the more weeks went by. I would come home really, really late, stinking a fish with a new constellation of burns. And it would get to the point where he would have to tell me to go park my truck. And he wasn't talking about my car out in the street. It was like, if you want me to talk to you, you really have to park your attitudinal truck. Which also became progressively harder to do. So time went on the same rhythm. You just fall into this rhythm where you wake up late, you go into work, you work really hard. It was really a very successful restaurant. It had tiny number of seats. It was a huge Amount of pressure. And, you know, after you finally finish working the line, then you have to clean up, you have to order all your goods, you have to massage everybody's ego, make sure all the equipment is working for the next day. You have to think about what you need to do for long range planning. Like, you need to train the staff. You need to teach them about wine varietals and pasta varieties. And, you know, you have to call the Red Cross and have them come and teach everybody how to do the Heimlich maneuver and cpr. And I realized that the romance was starting to slip away from me, that this other person that I had become was sort of not very nice to live with. And we were getting to be like ships passing in the night. He would get up early in the morning, he'd go to his really amazing architectural job, and I would come home really late at night. And then I would stay up even later because it took so long to come down from that sort of, you know, adrenaline high of working the line. So I knew we needed to have a date. So, you know, after refusing to be pinned down forever, I finally said, okay, okay, we'll go out, we'll go out. I promise, we'll go out. We'll go to an actual restaurant. We'll make a reservation, we'll go out. I mean, the thought of going to a restaurant, can I tell you, like, horrible. But, you know, I got ready. It was the 80s. I had big hair, bigger than this, big earrings, big shoulder pads. I was ready and we had a reservation at a lovely restaurant that we really liked in the neighborhood on 3rd street called Sophie S O F I, A Greek restaurant owned by a very lovely couple who seemed to host. A lot of chefs, would go there after work or on nights off. They were great. And it was an interesting restaurant because the way you approached it was very non Los Angeles. Like, you parked your car, you were on the sidewalk. But to get into the restaurant, you had to go through this concrete corridor that sort of dumped out into a beautiful little brick patio and then the door to the restaurant. So we go, we sit down, we're seated, we're drinking wine, we're having a really, really good time. And I order one of my favorite dishes, Greek salad called horiatiki. We're going to pause here for a recipe. Horiatiki is made of. What can I do? Koriatiki is made of really good fresh tomatoes, which in the 80s were in very short supply. Usually cut into like one and a half inch chunks or into Wedges. You have thinly sliced red onion. You have some sliced cucumber, bell peppers, of course, really good feta cheese, which then probably wasn't that good and covered with olive oil and maybe a little hint of red wine vinegar and a copious amount of dried oregano. Just like, perfect for me. So happy. And we're sitting making goo goo eyes at each other, laughing, talking, drinking, eating the recipe I have since learned for choking. So I felt it. I felt this piece of tomato go into my windpipe. Now, you know all the times that you thought you were choking, but you really just, like, coughed a little bit and moved from your windpipe to your esophagus, and then you chewed on it and you swallowed it, or you're, like, coughing a little bit, and somebody, you know, comes up to you, gives you a couple hard thwacks on the back, and you're like, thank you. Thank you. I needed that. That isn't really what choking is. Choking is when on the inside of your body, you hear a sound that's like a cork being put into a bottle. And you know that the minute that happens, that you are the walking dead. So this was before there was the international symbol for choking. And so what did I do? Did I turn to any of the lovely tables around me and gesticulate wildly? Did I turn to Joe and say, because I couldn't talk, because there was no breath. No. What I did was run out of the restaurant, run down that concrete corridor, out onto the sidewalk where I was completely alone. My heart was racing like it had never raced before. And I, you know, was much thinner, so I didn't have that reason. So my heart is racing. I'm sweating like a pig, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm actually going to die from a piece of tomato that was cut in a very unfortunate size, which has, I mean, to this day, becomes sort of an obsession with me now. But then Joe comes running down the corridor. I see him arrive. My savior, but he has no idea what to do. He is very quietly hysterical. He's trying to hold it together, but I could see his face. He knows I'm joking. He doesn't know what to do. But because we had taken that Red Cross class, I knew what to do. And this was like at the beginning of the Heimlich maneuver miracle. Now, oh, my God, we've saved hundreds of people at Angeli. But. So I positioned him behind me and I molded his hands to, like, do the abdominal thrusts, which compresses your diaphragm and causes the propulsive wind to expel the foreign object. And the first time he does it, nothing happens. And I think to myself, oh, this is just not good. And then he says to me, your lips are blue. And so I like my legs. I just remember, like, oh. But then he did it again. And this time, just as I heard that sound of it entering my windpipe, it sounded like Dom Perignon had just been caught. And the piece of tomato flew, I mean, flew in this beautiful arc, like 15 or 20ft and hit a parked car. And then I, you know, puked delicately. And I, and I, and I looked at Joe and he was trembling. I was trembling. We both had flop sweat all over us. And then we sort of held hands. We walked back down that concrete corridor, went into the restaurant, we sat down, and we finished our meal.
- [28:05]
Meg Bowles
Evan Kleiman has been the host of good food on KCRW in LA since 1997. She's been called the fairy godmother of the Los Angeles food scene because over the years her show has helped bring together chefs and farmers, in fact, food makers of all kinds, with eaters and home cooks to create a food community. You can find out more about Evan and her show and even a recipe for horiatiki by visiting themoth.org up next, we have another high stakes meal. Abhishek Shah told this story at one of our Boston story slams. The theme of the night was do overs. Here's Abhishek Shah live at the mosque.
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Abhishek Shah
So I graduated at a very good time, which was in 2008, the peak of recession, and I was on a student visa and I had one year to find a job or I would get outsourced or deported back to my country. So I had no option but to find a job. And I tried all the options. I went tried, like any place I can get an interview. And after a lot of hard work, I finally got a call for an interview. Now, it was really tough because I had to all get dressed up and wear formals instead of T shirt and pants instead of jeans. Like, I didn't even know how to iron my clothes. So I decided to buy a new suit for my interview, but it came with a 14 day written policy. So I had planned that I return it the next day after my interview. So I wanted to make sure that the interview goes perfectly because I didn't want it to screw up my interview. So I made sure that everything is perfect. Like my interview was here in Boston. So I learned everything about the football team or the hockey team and the women ice skating team. Like, everyone. I made sure I even Googled, like, how to shake hands like a man, because I didn't want to leave anything up to anyone. I just want to make sure that everything is perfect and I get the job. So I went for the interview, and there were, like, four interviews, and there were, like, three. First three interviews was by the colleagues, and the fourth interview was the most important interview, which was by my future manager. So I gave all the first three interviews. I talked about weather and football team and everything, and I made sure that I impress everyone. And then I went to the fourth interview, and by this time, I was very confident that I'll get the job. And he asked me all the questions. I answered it, and he looked very impressed, and I was very confident that I have this job. And then he said, let's go for a lunch. So I was like, okay, yeah, let's go for a lunch. Because I know how to use fork and knife. I know how to put handkerchief. You know, while sitting, I made sure that I knew everything. But as soon as we went there, it was a sushi restaurant, and I did not learn how to use a chopsticks. I was like, how do we use? Like, I didn't. I have never used chopsticks in my life. And he was like a pro. He was eating rice with chopsticks. So I was like, what do I do? I have no time. So I just decided that I'll just observe him. And he had also brought the HR people, and there were, like, other colleagues as well. So we were all there for the lunch, and I was just observing everyone on how they were using chopsticks. And anytime I get, like, really tensed up, I would always say 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, and 3 Mississippi, for some reason, because that always helps me to calm down. And I remember we all got our lunch. I had tofu, and I was only concentrating, like, from the ball to my mouth. That was. I just want to make sure that nothing falls off the chopsticks. Like, I was so concentrated on that that at one point, my manager was talking that we had lost $3 million last quarter. I was like, mm, nice. So I went into, like. I ate the first tofu. It went directly in my mouth, perfectly. Then second one, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, and one after another, I ate, and I started gaining confidence. And just when I was at the last tofu, it came here, and the chopsticks flipped, and the tofu went up in the air, and the wasabi sauce got detached. Like, the satellite Detaches from the rocket. And then the tofu did four somersaults in the air and it was going to land on the chicken soup where my manager was eating. So I thought, let me take it before it falls there. But by mistake I hit this chicken soup and the whole soup fell on its clothes. There was like a complete silence. And then I was like, sorry. And I know I had messed up everything because the next interview is like, oh, this chopsticks. And I realized that I have now messed up the whole interview. I knew that I had messed up because the rest of the conversation while we were going back to the interview room, anything I said, he was like, mm, that's all he said every time. So I knew I had messed up my interview. But I wanted to make sure that I don't lose this opportunity because I had got it after a lot of hard work. So I wanted to make sure that I don't miss the opportunity. So while I was waiting in my interview room for the last interview, he came in the interview room and before he could say anything, I was like, give me one more opportunity. I'll confirm two things. One, I'll never have sushi with you again. And second thing, I can bring lot to the table and I can offer a lot of things. And he was like, okay, what can you offer? I was like, well, I can bring diversity in your group and all your clients are from India, so I can talk to them in my local language and we can really work this out. So he said, we will think about it, but you have to give me $3.50. I was like, why? He was like, well, I have to laundry my shirt and my pants and also dry clean it. I was like, well, I don't have $3.50. He was like, well, don't worry. Bring it when you come here on your first day of your job. Thank.
- [36:47]
Meg Bowles
That was Abhishek Shah. Unlike our other storytellers in this hour, Abhishek is not a chef nor a food critic. But he's known amongst his friends as a food finisher because he doesn't like to see food wasted and believes he should always finish his meal completely. Coming up, a chef gets an education unlike anything he ever learned in culinary school. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [37:40]
Production Voice
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org.
- [37:52]
Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles and our last story comes from celebrated chef Roy Choi. Roy was Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Southern California. His parents owned a restaurant for a time. And he says one of his happiest memories is from being eight years old and helping to make dumplings in the kitchen. There a word of caution. This story includes a description of the way meat is butchered and prepared for the kitchen. Here's Roy Choi live at the mosque.
- [38:27]
Roy Choi
I was 28 years old and I was just about to graduate from the Culinary Institute of America. And I was on a crazy high, man. I just had worked at two of the best restaurants in New York, at Le Bernardin and Oriole at the time. And, you know, I was doing really well at culinary school. I had never done well in school before. And I was graduating towards the top of my class. I was cocky as shit, you know, I was like, I was full of, like, just complete confidence and, you know, even just ordering people around out of nowhere, you know, just like strangers, you know, telling you what to do, you know. And I got recruited for this job out in California, and I had these dreams of just going back to Cali. And then. So I took the job. I wasn't ready for this job. It was a job to run a resort and be the chef. But when I got offered the job, I just thought and I dreamed, because out of my cockiness, all I thought and dreamed about was the white chef coat and putting my name on my left chest and riding executive chef underneath and wearing the long, crisp apron. So I took the job. And it was in Borrego Springs, California, and it was a resort called La Casa del Zorro. It was a beautiful resort, cabanas, five star everything. And I was there running the kitchen. And it's funny, in my life, I have this weird thing in my life where I end up always becoming friends with people that maybe I don't speak the same language of, or I didn't grow up in the same way. And especially in the kitchen with a lot of Latino cooks and dishwashers and waiters and bussers. And there was this man, Salvador. He was our dishwasher at the time. And he had this body almost like Jack Black, you know, and this red, beautiful face. And always a grin on his face. I mean, no matter how hard his job was, every day, he always seemed to be looking at us like, yo, everything is good, you know, but we never really talked. We just always, like, we always just exchanged whistles. To be honest, you'd be like, let's go, you know, I got you, let's go. And then that Was like our whole relationship. But then he approached me one day, but he would always look at me. And then he approached me one day, and he asked me if I could help him out with something he needed. His family couldn't help him the next day, and he asked me if I could help him. And there was no one that I was with in the desert. I went there all by myself. So I said yes. And then I remember the next morning, he came to my doorstep. It was really early. It was 5:30am and I don't know if any of you have been to the desert or lived in the desert, but it gets bright really, really early in the desert. And where we lived in Borrego, it was in the middle of the Anza Borrego Desert, which is the northeast end of San Diego County. It's an amazing, amazing place. It's sand everywhere, beautiful ocotillo cactus. And he pulled up to my house that morning, and I still remember it. I looked out the window, and he rolled up and there was this cloud of dust. And he was standing there like the Tasmanian devil. And he was holding two cups of Nescafe coffee. And he was just there, and it was just like he had this red pickup truck. And I was like. And he looked at me, he's like, listo. And I said, all right, yeah, yeah, listo. Let's go. And then got in the truck and we headed east. And we headed east through the desert, through an area called Fonts Point, which is like a canyon that was. And a bunch of dry lakes. And we headed towards the Salton Sea, towards Coachella, and we went around and under the south bend of the Salton Sea and cut across to this town called Mecca, which is on the eastern end of the Salton Sea, where a lot of farms are, a lot of migrant workers, a lot of immigrants that come directly from Tijuana and Mexicali. And this is kind of their first stop for many of them. And we followed this road down, and there was this crooked sign that said Chivo. And a bunch of goats were just kind of prancing in the field. There's a bunch of dudes there. And Salvador got out. And the crazy thing about Latino culture sometimes that I see is, like, they. Even if you don't know each other, you seems like you know each other. And I don't know, you know, it's obviously the language, but I think there's a common and shared experience, especially in America, where a lot of almost everyone had to come through the country in the same way and in the same experience. So there's this silent understanding. And then the language itself lends itself to be. To move itself away from any type of foreplay and go right into it and just be like, yo, what's up? So he was talking to the guy, and then they made the exchange, and they put the goat in the back. And it was a beautiful little goat. I remember it was a white coat with little spots of brown and beautiful small head and small little horns. And I had no idea what the heck we were doing. I was just going along for the ride, drinking a free cup of coffee, you know, And I was. I mean, I was very naive. I didn't really think about what was going on. I thought we were picking up a pet, to be honest. And then. So then we put the goat back and we drove back to Borrego, back through the desert. And we went to his house, and he let the goat out. And again, I'm thinking everything's okay. But then there's that moment where you start to see clues. And then as we walked into his backyard, I looked to my left and I saw a table, a small little table with knives on it. And then I saw a rope hanging from a hangman's kind of noose. And then I saw him go over and start to fill a bottle. Corona bottle, empty Corona bottles with water and salt. And I didn't. Again, we didn't really talk. You know, we're just chilling. But it's still really early. It's by this time, it's only like 9, 30, 10 o'clock. The sun is really hot. And he looks at me again, and he asked me again, listo. And I said, yes, I'm ready. And then we started running after the goat. And it was like, rocky, you know, with the chicken. And then, like, we were running after. And I remember Salvador went from the left, I went from the right. We couldn't catch him. And then all of a sudden, I felt something. And Salvador came from, like, up in the clouds, like the lucha libre, and jumped right onto the goat and got him in a headlock. And then he started yelling at me. La potea de agua yisad, la potea. And then he told me to get the bottles. And then I gave him the bottles. And then he just took the goat and started feeding water, the solution to the goat. And it looked really, really beautiful for a moment. And then once the goat drank all the salted water, he pulled the goat over. And at that moment, I started to see things change very rapidly. I. I cooked at this point for a while, and I butchered a lot of meat, but I'd never killed an animal before. And he was just so natural about it. He wrapped the rope around the hind legs, pulled the goat up. The goat's horns were maybe a centimeter above the dirt. And I remember that goat. I remember it every day of my life now. You know, right at that moment, that goat was looking straight at me in the eye. And I don't know if it was really looking at me or if it was my imagination or. It's like that feeling when you have when, like, you think that every baby is looking at you, recognizes you. But I remember that moment, those eyes were staring straight at me and almost crying out to me to like, yo, man, what the fuck, dude? You know, like, fucking help me, man. And those eyes were huge, like the sun. And then right at that moment when the eyes, like, open, Salvador came up with a knife and slit that neck. And then the goat's neck snapped back and the blood fell from the neck. And then he went right to work on the. The belly and split the hide, opened it up, pulled out the guts. And he looked at me and he reminded me about the bottle. And he was teaching me. He was teaching me what was going on. And he explained to me that the solution didn't make the gut when you cut the belly open, that the guts wouldn't smell. And I realized that there was no smell. And so we went to work from there. You know, he showed me how to pull the hide off. We moved it over to the table, broke it down into primals and sub primals, packed it up and wrapped it. We had music going. We were playing, you know, at that time, this was the late 90s, so they were playing music from Juan Sebastian and Grupo Limite was. And all that music was going on. And, you know, the sun was creeping up, and we were packing and wrapping in Ziploc and plastic wrap, putting it in glues and ice. Took a moment, had a cigarette and a beer, and it was like 11 o'clock, you know. And then. Then we jumped in the car, put everything in, and then we went down to Mexicali. We drove about. It's about an hour south. You can find some of the best Chinese food in the world there, which you may not know, but you can. And we went through into town and went to his mom's restaurant, and we went through a screen door, and there were a bunch of ladies in there. And you know that feeling when, like, you're Made to feel like you're late when you weren't even late, you know, especially when mothers do that to you, you know, like, like where you been? But it's like there was no, they didn't, you know, there was no time you were supposed to arrive in the first place, you know, so, like, they were there and it was like, oh, all of a sudden when you arrived, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, my God, you wasted my whole day and now I can get to work, you know. But they were already cutting the, the cilantro and the onions and the garlic, and they brought the goat and she brought me over. And I have this weird connection also with, like, mothers and grandmothers where when I walk in, they pull me over always and they want me to cook with them. It's really weird. And so she showed me how to make birria, basically. And, you know, they were wearing flower aprons and all the knives were really worn and, you know, there was wrinkles on their faces and they were tasting with their thumbs and their fingers. And I sat down and then helped them and they fed me the most wonderful bowl of goat stew in my life, you know. And then we got back in the truck and we headed back over the border and, you know, across the border, a different man. You know, I felt like I knew everything about cooking. When I. When I went to that town, the small town, I kind of. I looked down on him in a way, like I was this like, crazy chef, you know, amazing young chef from New York City. I was going to show this desert town, like, how to cook. But I came back a different man. And, you know, we went back to work. And about a month later, Salvador called me again and asked me if I was ready. And I told him. I told him, vamonos.
- [50:59]
Meg Bowles
Roy Choi became known as the godfather of the food truck movement after he found success with his Korean taco truck, Koji, which is famous for mixing Mexican and Korean flavors and dishes. His book, La Sun, My life, My city, My Food has more stories and recipes that have influenced his life and his cooking style. One of the ways we find stories is through our pitch line. If you go to our website and click on tell a story, it takes you on a step by step how to so you can record your two minute pitch. We realize two minutes isn't a long time, so just give us the highlights of your story and don't forget to tell us where you're located because we might just be producing a show near you. You can find all the stories you heard in this hour at the itunes store or on our website, where you can also see pictures and find out more about our storytellers. That's it for this hour. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
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Production Voice
Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories and the show. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Whitney Jones and Mooj Zaidy. Our radio partners in Boston are WBUR and PRX and on Martha's Vineyard wcai. Our thanks also to Bliss Broyard. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Most Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Boris McCutcheon, Pinhead Trio and Catbirds. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth. Org.