Yes, Chef: Fuck Me Blind(folded)
The first time I formed a connection between food and sex was when I watched Ali Larter sport her whipped cream bikini in Varsity Blues. Just about any pubescent boy who had any rebellious tendencies in the late 1990s, early 2000s, remembers that scene. As a seventh grader, my eighth-grade girlfriend used to obsess over strawberries, insisting that I put them on my neck so that she could eat them off of it.
Since then I’ve explored the intersection between food and sex in my personal life thanks to whipped cream, chocolate, various flavors of syrup, and the always reliable candy thong. Rarely does the act live up to the fantasy — which should not come as a surprise, since someone always ends up sticky and eating Smarties off a string, out of…you get the idea.
Basically, in my life at least, the relationship between sex and food is best kept as a philosophical, or psychological, one.
Looking at it from that perspective, I notice a few differences of personal preference between the two. Of late, I have become more and more dominant sexually. Also of late, I have become more and more submissive culinarily. While I’d like to be the one doing the tying in the bedroom, I’d also like to be strapped onto a bar stool and force fed foie gras until the chef has had their fun.
Like any sexual encounter, dining out at a restaurant establishes a certain power dynamic between the chef and the guest. This is especially true when taking part in a chef’s tasting menu. The tasting menu is a chef’s manifesto, his or her crowning achievement; it is the ultimate display of, not only their skill set in front of the range, but their ability to seduce a diner, leading them step by step towards an eventual climax. After all, it isn’t just a perfectly seared scallop, or blanched piece of asparagus, that can change our lives forever. The flavors and texture that precede and then follow that scallop are as important to the process as anything.
Recently, in an effort to feel like I have a life in a city of 8.5 million people, I took myself out to dinner, and found myself sitting at the bar top inside of the hottest — and, possibly, it’s most controversial — restaurant in Williamsburg, Traif.
As many know, Williamsburg has long been a hub for the Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish community, a community that has expressed varying opinions on the drastic changes that the neighborhood has experienced. So, it should come as no surprise that a restaurant with a name that roughly translates to “non-kosher”, and one that flaunts its devotion to pork, has ruffled a few feathers.
However, all these years later — Traif first made its splash on the New York City dining scene in 2010 — this seasonally focused passion project of (Jewish) chef Jason Marcus is still kicking, defiantly, against any dissuasive current thrown its way. It is doing so, I might add, in a spectacular way.
Now, to the sexy shit.
Like any carnal relationship, we established the ground rules first. I called in the early afternoon, explaining that while they don’t normally share their chef’s tasting menu with parties under three, I was particularly aroused by the menu, and recommendations, that I had seen. Being superiorly service minded, the hostess on the phone explained that if I were willing to arrive later than 9:30 p.m., the chef would be happy to accommodate my request. With that, I had officially set up my first booty call while living in New York.
Once I arrived 25 minutes early for my 10:00 p.m. reservation, I was promptly greeted by an enthusiastic host, who caught himself with a smile after saying, “So, you’re the party of one?” It was like I could feel my cheeks swell, flush with the finest blush any hooker had ever used. Yes, I thought, I’m the dirty little slut who’s about the endure whatever punishment you guys throw my way. I don’t tap out, I thought. I thought.
Two menus were placed at a lone bar stool in front of the salad station — Traif’s open air kitchen allows guests to have a full frontal experience with their food prep, while throwing 500 degree, Chinook winds towards their faces every few minutes — one menu describing the night’s dishes, and another displaying cocktail selections. The bartender arrived promptly with a glass of water, and confirmed that I was the twisted individual who requested the tasting menu, for one. We exchanged an off-beat laugh, mine slightly higher in pitch than his, as I told him that I’d like to enjoy wine with the meal, but the choices were up to him.
“I’m at your mercy tonight, sir,” I said towards the bartender as he poured a glass of Colombard. “You too, chef.”
Relationships require rhythm, this much I believe to be true. Each party must not only understand what buttons are available to be pushed, but when, and how, to push them. There must be an unspoken chemistry, one that functions like a Fall breeze shifting between nearly-dead tree leaves before Halloween. Trust. Compassion. Lust. Shame. All vitally important to a complex, loving, and sexual relationship.
The first time that I experimented with restraints in the bedroom, I was ill-prepared for the delicacy of BDSM. I didn’t understand the rhythm required for such an experiment with sexual deviance — though, the term sexual deviance is one that I despise, like the exploration of our sexuality and the power dynamics within that world, are somehow wrong, or inappropriate. I didn’t understand the trust, compassion, lust, and shame needed to properly enjoy the experience. Teenage Will thought that it was just about using a belt for whipping, and handcuffs, and ties, and knots. There was little, if any, nuance. I fumbled over my hands, over my feet, over my eyes.
Constructing, and executing, a tasting menu is no different. There must be complete synchronization between front and back of the house staff. When one plate is placed on the expo station, a syncopated chorus begins in the dining room, as another dish is prepped for blanching, all the while the guest is waiting, wishing, wanting another glass of wine to wash down their whipped zucchini soup; one couple is five minutes late for the start of service and their aperitif must be skipped to keep on schedule, but hospitality wins out; another party is allergic to almond and almost went to the restaurant down the street, all the while knowing they’d request an almond-free plate of all grass fed beef carpaccio to go with their Alsatian Pinot Gris; the night’s guests of honor are normally herbivores but were willing to expand their ever narrowing views on duck liver pâté, porcini mousse, and moules-frites.
When does one dish arrive, and another leave the table? How, when plating an entire dining room’s course, can one serving be held back for fifty-seconds because the gentleman at table six is still working on his polenta?
There must be an unspoken chemistry, like the tilt in her eyes when she looks back at you, throat pulled tight from your grip on her hair, and mouth taped shut; the way the edges of her mouth creep towards her ears each time you mutter, “Yes, Master”, as she ties another knot around your wrists.
Taking part in a chef’s tasting menu is the ultimate submission.
“Cooking is about control, about dominating your environment, about controlling the forces about nature,” said Anthony Bourdain, on his hit TV show, No Reservations, on the Travel Channel. “Eating, for me, is about submission.”
Admittedly, the first time I considered that idea was when I watched Bourdain eat his way through San Sebastian, all the while experiencing the kind of erection that one should normally only display in the moments leading up to your first blowjob.
But it is, in my experience anyway, true.
There are restaurants that allow ingredient substitutions for certain guests affixed with any number of food allergies — the number of which seems to grow by the day, either by chic copy-cat practice, or by the realization that the food we put in our bodies for most of our lives has been, unquestionably, unhealthy and unnatural. A recent stop at Frasca Food & Wine, the James Beard Awards darling located in Boulder, Colo., displayed a kitchen’s willingness to do so, as they substituted dishes that contained seafood, or mushrooms, for others, at the request of a dining companion of mine, my fitness consigliere, Ben, made famous in prior works on this blog. Other restaurants are not so lenient with their menus, and the ways that their guests enjoy their food.
Whichever approach a certain chef, or GM, decides on, I have no interest in leveling judgment. After all, in my eyes, what goes onto a plate coming out of the kitchen is their domain, their decision, and is under their control.
The chef is the Dom, and the guest is the Sub. Obey.
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In an effort to explore the relationships that we all engage in with our food and drink, a new series, “Yes, Chef”, will be a prominent feature of this blog moving forward. Send tips, pitches, and any other notes of interest to wmwhelanii@gmail.com, please.
