At the end of my apprenticeship I was hired as the chef for Ron Martin’s Bistro in Cannon Beach, Oregon. I found a scruffy, low-rent shack a little ways up the coast in Gearhart. On my first day off (two weeks later) I was sitting on the lopsided front deck, smoking my pipe and staring at the surf, and my neighbor walked over to say hello.

James Beard.

Jim Beard was a neighbor and friend for a brief while before my great peregrination. We grilled monkfish together in a pit we dug in the sand, and drank rather too much red wine, and ate sherried figs. We rarely saw each other, with my work and his; it was just a vacation house for him, and he was not well. We ate jalapeños until we cried, one night; the last time I saw him. I had successfully forgotten that, mostly, and had forgotten missing his funeral whilst running away from my own badly banked fires, until reading what you just wrote.

He was my favorite chef.