Jim Leff, after bringing us ricotta pastries from Modern Pastry in the North End, taking a chowhound sniff at the pad thai provided for WGBH’s pledge-week volunteers and, yes, anchoring our show last night, taught us how to order Mexican food. It was Robin’s birthday on Sunday, and Friday is Julia the awesomely capable intern’s last day, and we generally all like each other anyway, so we found a restaurant with a tequila menu and so far Mary hasn’t asked us about the meal we put on her card.
The last round of tequila was on Jim.
But before any tequila showed up, Jim took a look around the restaurant. He poked behind the bar. He noticed that there was only liquor on most of the tables. He was like an advance man with the Secret Service, checking the exits; he calls it the perp walk. Jim, in the world of chowhounds, is known as a closer. If you find him the restaurant, he’ll tell you what to eat.
This is a kind of black magic. Based on design choices in the dining room, he decided that the place had no eye for detail — don’t order anything that relies on a good sauce — but probably had someone competent at the grill. Then he tasted the salsa and changed his mind. All I can say is that I ordered tuna and ribs last night, and they were certainly grilled by someone competent. Jim picked out Robin’s first-ever margarita, and from the look in her eyes after the first sip he got that right, too.
We rate potential radio guests from one to ten — to keep us honest there are no sevens — and Jim, holding down the table last night, earned himself an eleven. He spoke of playing trombone with a Portuguese nobleman who summons Jim with quill-penned letters. He told us about his obsession with the island of Tristan de Cunha, parked halfway between Africa and South America. There are potatoes on Tristan so good you eat them fresh like apples. There are five surnames. Every year and a half Jim receives a letter from Mr. Glass, the chief islander. Jim wants to retire there.
I have, in a little notebook, a list of things we were supposed to email Jim about for more details. In no particular order: Bulgarian brass, eating in New Haven, some kind of pre-samba Brazilian music, rare recordings curator Allan Evans and someone named John Thorne at Amherst.
I no longer remember why we’re supposed to get in touch with John Thorne, but I’ll bet he’d make good radio.
Sent Jim a link to this post and he responded only as follows:
you forgot the penguin guano
Jim Leff, email to Open Source, 3/30/06
I assume he’s talking about Tristan de Cunha.
John Thorne is an amazing food writer. He’s published a newsletter years ago and a couple of books(viking) back in the 80s. Last I heard he was living somewhere in Maine.
When I was in Brazil during Carnival in Bahia, I spent a couple of unforgettable days with a beautiful Brazilian woman who spoke broken English. She had dark black hair that followed her flowing – as she weaved me through the throng of happy people. We danced gloriously in the streets, ate and drank glutinously in the cafes, and kissed passionately, to an all-encompassing soundtrack of thundering drums.
I remember floating next to her in that stillness of ocean water; the tiny waves ran right up to the urban sprawl of the city, like hands stretching out to invite the city’s dwellers to wade in and cool off, to slow down and cleanse in mother natures bath.
It was around 9 am, or 7, or maybe 11, who knows, we had been reveling in the wonder and freedom of Carnival for many hours and she had brought me to this place to take a deep breath. Stripped to our underwear we floated in the warm water and stared at the turquoise sky above, and I tried to snap photographs with my mind.
At some point I thanked her for taking me to places I had never been, literally and figuratively. I’ll always remember how she replied:
“I know what is good.�
I was stuck at both the simplicity of the statement and the conviction she said it with. I was struck also because she was right. Everything she had introduced me to was a “good� I had not know existed. In the spirit of Emerson, there was the circumference of good I had known previously and now there was a new circle drawn around that good of old.
I relay this story because your guest Jim Leff and his insatiable quest for the good reminded me of the piercing words from this woman – words that rang so clear amidst the haze.
Jeff tells us to slow down the compromises we make all day, he wants us to try that different muffin. He wants us to challenge what we think is good.
I embarked on a perpetual search for the good since that morning in Bahia. My goal is to someday speak those words with the conviction of my Brazilian beauty – I know what is good!
Enjoyed this show and nother’s post above. To know what is good… What GOOD advice!
Thanks Peggysue, I always look forward to all your GOOD posts!
I just want to say quickly, my Brazilian friend above comes off a little one dimensional in my post, but her beauty was more than skin deep. Even with are broken languages (in fact induced by the broken languages), we got strait to the point in those cafes about the big issues of life, like what it means to be happy.
Here reasoned yet carefree outlook on life was part of what convinced me that she really did have a deep insight into what’s good.
Are you really *not* going to tell us what mexican restaurant you went to? C’mon now, don’t be evil ;->
Ole Mexican Grill. Inman Square in Cambridge.
Right on! Thanks!
BTW, Modern Pastry has an outpost in Medford Center; if you get off at the 16/60 exit off 93 it’s right past City Hall on the left.