We arrive relieved and a little breathless from the din. We almost didn’t find it; I had considered giving up.

But there it is on 6th Street, just past the tortilla place. Here is something different from the rest of Las Vegas: low ceiling, warm light, a host who enjoys the word “patio.”

He invites us to sit inside, in that low, warm room, or upstairs on the rooftop patio. But it’s “patioooo,” he says, drawing out the “o” because he likes patios or the “o” sound, or because he thinks the patio is where we should sit. And we do.
On that rooftop, the ceiling is all string-lights. Somewhere above them hangs the neon haze of Las Vegas. And above that, presumably, are stars, night sky, ascendant heavens, even (rumored) planets. A satellite blinking along.

But we are grounded at a table for two. And near us, a merry crowd is moored around three tables pressed together.

Theirs is a meal at its close: plates scraped clean, napkins wrung out and exhausted on table-top or under chairs. Wine bottles empty and glasses going that way. Six adults in Las Vegas, but without that glaze-eyed-look. They are laughing, leaning in, bright like string-lights.

And we are talking to our host about the menu, about the restaurant, about nearby Fremont Street and this refuge of warm wood and a menu drawn up by hand.

Then the host calls him over: the young man seated on the corner of the pressed-together tables. He stands, and I see the apron at his waist. He is one of their chefs.

He might be twenty-two. Maybe twenty-four, at the most.

We talk with him for a few minutes. Where he is from, how he came to be here. How he likes living in Vegas, how he likes working here. And they, he tells us, turning his chin toward his shoulder, are his family. Some of them live in town, but that one is his mother, just come to visit, he says, to see him at his new job. She’s going home tomorrow morning, early. It’s been a good visit.

He leaves us, rejoins his family, and Bill and I are happy to retreat to ourselves, anticipating the menu’s implications. I have ordered the salmon; Bill is getting the steak. Our host has insisted on the macaroni and cheese: it’s a family recipe and he is from Wisconsin. But first we enjoy the tempura green beans served with the brilliant miracle they call pepper jelly cream cheese.

From where I sit, dipping beans in cream cheese, Fremont Street’s panic seems almost impossible. The strobe lights, the neon; the girl in glittering bikini turning twenty hula hoops on her waist; the ring and clatter of the slot machines–all of it has dissolved under these lights. Here we have a friendly chef, a kind server, a host who likes words, green beans.

The chef’s family has left their table. They are disbanding, each taking a turn with the young chef in an embrace, a handshake. They move toward the stairs, but I’m not watching them: my salmon has arrived and I am taken with it, with its puree of spinach, with the way salmon breaks and folds so easily in the mouth. And Bill and I are having our Las-Vegas conversation, our wheat-and-chaff conversation, our practice of looking for beauty where much is not beautiful.

That’s when I see her: the chef’s mother, descending the stairs. She is with someone–her sister, perhaps–and that someone is turned toward her, talking. But I watch this mother, who can’t be that much older than I. She is listening to the one speaking to her, but watching her son as she descends the stairs, hoping, I would think, to catch his eye.

She leaves tomorrow early. She won’t see him again this visit. He is talking with a server, his apron hanging at his waist, hands on his hips. He has already said goodbye.

But still I think of her descending, watching her boy, holding–as she can’t help it–those things she knows of his childhood: his love for food, perhaps; the way he learned to make pancakes; the mobile above his crib of the solar system, planets suspended like string lights; the ceiling spangled in glow-in-the-dark stars.

The post Observed at a Restaurant off Fremont Street appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

What’s Winterim? Well, at Trinity School, it’s the two-week period after Christmas break (and also, incidentally, after semester exams) and before the second semester begins. Rather than beginning with new material in these hazy, post-holiday days, we offer Different kinds of classes, classes that meet for two and half hours a day, classes that allow students to explore something New, something Other, something mind-expanding in a way that is Not the Usual Way.

My first year at Trinity I taught a Winterim course called “the art of film.” It was fun and pretty much what it sounds like. Last year, with the assistance of my dear friend Brenda, I taught a drama course. And this year I’m teaching a class on– you guessed it– food.

We began the session with a look at that harrowing film Supersize Me, and went on from there to discuss epidemic obesity in America, recognizable vs. unrecognizable contents in many food products we eat, and how economically efficient methods of corn production in the US have given rise to the superabundance of corn products in our foods. High Fructose Corn Syrup, anyone? See Michael Pollan’s excellent The Omnivore’s Dilemma, if you haven’t already.

Today we had a (colleague and) guest speaker who shared with us his rationale for his vegan diet and then taught us to make a few things (like a Stellar Kale Salad. I am not kidding. It Was Delicious). Tomorrow the students will cook up a couple of recipes from the (much older and therefore Way Ahead of its Time) More With Less Cookbook that I bought way back in 1989.

There’s more to come. We’ll be making seasonal vegetarian dishes on Friday, and next week will spend some time on the topics of fasting and feasting, looking to the Bible for both of these and to the film Babette’s Feast for the latter.

But I’m writing this post for two reasons, really, and the first is this. Yesterday my seventeen (17— that’s a lot for Any Kitchen) students made homemade macaroni and cheese together (which we compared to the Kraft box variety, which we (well, one of us) also prepared. I think it’s pretty impressive that seventeen high school students worked together to prepare one 2 qt. casserole dish of homemade mac and cheese. *pats self and students on back*

And the second is– did you see it coming?– I have a Really Wonderful Poem that I want to share with you, and it’s about food. Sort of. My students and I read and discussed it together at our first class meeting. It was written by a friend of my sister and her husband, and I discovered it thumbtacked to a wall in their study when we were at their house this summer. Among other things, it exposes in a beautiful and compelling way what we manage to do without thinking and to our (and our environment’s) disservice in this country: conflate food and fossil fuels.

But there are Lots of ways of looking at this poem, so don’t limit your interpretation. There’s the language, first of all, and the way the words feel on your tongue. If nothing else, enjoy it for that. And that, come to think of it, is also a way to enjoy food….

Errands

We will call a mango “the delicious heart.”
We will call the fuel pump, “not combustion,
but courier.” In this way, our errands
are enriched with possibility. Even now,
stacked in the produce aisle, we can find
“orbs of rawblush” at three dollars a basket.
And when the garage calls, the mechanic
will say, “you need a new messenger of fire.”
As we thumb through our wallets and make
calculations in our heads, we consider the genus
and species of our words, the inner workings
of their connection. With each mundane
transaction, we stare, unknowingly, across
a divide. And then, we stare back.
It’s then we whisper, “nutrition or torque?”
But listen to this: “sugar and gasoline.”<

–Andrew Varnon

The post Food, Glorious Food appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

We joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) program this year, and have been happy recipients, every Thursday, of a box of organically grown, gorgeous fresh vegetables since about the end of May. This little commitment has found me learning to cook all kinds of things– things like beets and kale and eggplant. Yesterday we received two varities of peppers, two soft and slender eggplant, a small watermelon, a honeydew, and a heavy and good-sized bag of tomatoes. We also received a pint of cherry-tomatoes, to which my children and I put a rapid end this afternoon at lunch.

I just left my dinner preparations to write this, because I find it so hard to believe that– for centuries?– the tomato was left to wither on the vine. I’m in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes into smallish pieces, after which they will be combined with some olive oil, some garlic, some capers, some parmesan, some basil, and poured over freshly cooked pasta. No cooking for the tomatoes; none is required. Just that fresh, juicy redness, all by itself, and a little pasta, and some bread.

I’m not even going to make a salad.

The post Not Anymore appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.