The fifth-best meal I have ever sat down to was at a sort of farmhouse-inn that is neither farm nor inn, in the region of New York City.
The fourth-best was at the same placeβon a winter evening when the Eiswein afterward was good by the fire and the snow had not stopped falling for the day.
The list of occasions could go deeper, and if it were complete enough it might number twenty or thirty before the scene would shiftβperhaps to the fields of Les Baux or the streets of Lyons.
The cook who has been responsible for such pleasure on this side of the Atlantic was trained on the other side, in kitchens in various places on the Continent, notably in Switzerland, and including Spain, where he grew up in a lavish and celebrated Andalusian hotel that was managed by his father.
His father was Austrian, but his mother was English, and so, from the age of eight, he was sent to be educated in Great Britain. As a result, he is in manner, speech, and appearance irremediably English. He has an Oxbridge accent and a Debrettian flourish of namesβnot one of which he will allow me to divulge. His customers tend to become his friends, and I had been a friend of his for something like five years before I thought to ask him if I could sit in his kitchen and take notes.
