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I dont have many regrets, but if I could have one do-over, Id cook for Tony Bourdain.
It was Bourdain who wrote, I think, that chefs love it when others cook for them.
But no one ever wants to because theyre, well,chefs.
Bourdain passed through New Orleans in the fall of 2010.
They were destined to be friends, he just knew it.
But how to connect?
I told him he should askNew Yorkereditor David Remnick to share Bourdains contact information.
David had no shortage of material to work with.
A day or two later, I came home to find David pacing worriedly.
Remnick had given him Bourdains phone number.
What could he do with that?
He had hoped for an email, which would allow him to dazzle Bourdain with his wit and wordplay.
I coached him as a helicopter mom might coach a teenage son asking for a first date.
Hes a chef, I said.
Youve got a chef character in this New Orleans show youve sold.
Call him and say you better pick his mind.
Oh, and theres one condition: Im going with you.
Three months later, David and I met Bourdain at a Midtown sushi restaurant in New York.
David was so nervous that he poured sake on his sushi.
Later, he was full of self-recrimination because he used soy sauce and Bourdain did not.
How could he be such a rube?
David needed Bourdain to get kitchens right.
He also needed Bourdain to recruit other chefs.
Heeding Bourdains advice, I should have cooked for all of them.
But I wish, in particular, that I had cooked for him.
My family is southern, with everything that entails from the worst to the best.
What would I have cooked for Bourdain?
His daughter was 3, he told us.
He missed the feel of a baby in his arms.
So I have that image: my daughter, sleeping peacefully in Bourdains lap.
Its a kind of communion, he said.
But I wrote the script that brought him into my husbands life and thats good enough for me.
