I can’t think of a better way to unwind. I watch chefs breaking down dry-aged quail destined for a gentle smoking over applewood—leg, fat, lovage—and tuxedoed socialites vlogging each bite of a twenty-course tasting menu. With every quenelle and tweezered garnish, I feel the day’s mundane stressors melt away. I edge closer to sleep, and as I drift across the threshold between conscious and not, I swear I can almost taste the foams and the gels and the edible flowers.

My favorite of these YouTubers is Alexander the Guest—the alias of Sándor Varga, an amiable (if unrelenting) Hungarian restaurateur and owner of the Michelin-starred "42 restaurant." He trots around the globe in impeccably pressed suits and sits in the world's lushest dining rooms, where he dissects the dining experience course by course, as if you're right there beside him—sharing in his eye-rolls of sheer pleasure and frequent, reverent "Oh My Gods" and "Wows." He has my dream job. He's also a judge on the Hungarian version of Shark Tank, which is my other dream job.

Alexander has somewhere in the realm of a hundred YouTube videos, and I have watched all of them at least twice. Theoretically, if I save up my money and my PTO days, I could one day visit some of the restaurants Alexander visits, and luxuriate in a dinner that lasts six and a half hours. But as I work my way through his catalog, there remains a distinct understanding that some level of this luxury will always be out of my grasp. I can fathom an expensive dinner; it’s when I watch him gain entry to the invitation-only House of Krug—one of Champagne’s most exclusive estates, where he’s led down into the cellars and poured the prestige cuvées—that I have to remind myself I’m pursuing a career as a writer. I will likely never know the nutty, brioche notes that blossom in a bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil. Not unless I make some very wealthy friends.

All this voyeurism makes fine dining a very confusing hobby to have. The attraction is no mystery—I love food and wine and being made to feel special. But the luxury is exclusionary by definition, and so I’m left on the outside looking in. I know the signature dish at Girona’s three-starred El Celler de Can Roca is caramelized olives served dangling from a bonsai tree, but I’ve never been to the restaurant, and I’ve never been to Girona. The only thing this knowledge earns me is a growling stomach and a greatly improved ability to annoy people at parties.

I do believe these experiences are usually worth the money, and I bristle at the idea that fine dining is nothing more than bloated excess. I believe in the craft; this is more than fancy finger food designed to separate wealthy people from their money (most of the time). But occasionally, while on my fifth or sixth Alexander the Guest video of the night, I wonder whether those caramelized olives would lose their forbidden luster if I knew what they tasted like. Am I only entranced by this world because I have so little experience with it? Does Alexander the Guest actually love the taste of caviar, or is it the luxury association that draws him in? Maybe I’m only wistful about that Krug invite because I’ve never tasted prestige Champagne—never had the chance to learn that it’s remarkably similar to the Kirkland stuff they sell at Costco.

All of this was on my mind while I was watching Alexander’s video review of Bottiglieria 1881, Poland’s only two-Michelin-star restaurant ($620 for dinner). The meal is capped off with a teaspoon of dark amber liquid called “Tokaji,” the taste of which makes him convulse with pleasure. “It’s an immensely special treat,” he says, and philistine that I am, I’ve never heard of it. But I do love rewarding myself with immensely special treats. I start Googling.

The Tokaji that Alexander is drinking is a Hungarian dessert wine, and one of the original “noble rot“ wines. The rot in question is Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that, under the right conditions, settles on ripe grapes, shriveling them to raisins and concentrating their sugars. The grapes (now called aszú berries) are mashed into a paste, steeped in a base wine, and aged for years. The end product is the color of caramel: honey-sweet, aromatic like ginger, with a deep, earthy complexity. This was, for many centuries, the drink of royalty.

When France’s Louis XIV reportedly proclaimed Tokaji “the wine of kings, the king of wines,” one assumes that this was because it was very yummy. (Louis also believed kings were appointed by God, so the syllogism more or less completes itself.) And if Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, had her Tokaji shipments escorted to St. Petersburg by a detachment of armed cavalry, it was probably because she also thought it quite delicious. When the poet Ferenc Kölcsey wrote it into the Hungarian national anthem in 1823—listed among God’s blessings on the nation, right alongside the wheat fields—well, you get the idea.

This was the luxury good to end all luxury goods, the kind of syrupy elixir that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century commoners could only dream of tasting. What my friend Alexander enjoyed was Eszencia, a concentrate so dense it’s traditionally served by the spoonful—and for long stretches of history, it wasn’t for sale at any price: the Habsburgs kept private reserves in their imperial cellars, and bottles changed hands only as gifts between monarchs. And yet, in the modern world of Champagne disgorgement and caviar bumps, Tokaji seems to have suffered a precipitous fall from grace.

There’s no one reason for Tokaji’s downfall. Phylloxera insects tore through the vineyards in the late 1800s, and the Treaty of Trianon after World War I cut the region off from much of the market that had sustained it. Then a second war hollowed out what was left of the labor force and the trade routes that had carried the wine to its buyers for centuries. What remained of the Tokaji mystique was lost to state-run agriculture that favored volume over nuance, and the quality only returned after 1990, when vineyards were privatized and outside money poured in. But by this point, and continuing through today, Tokaji has a fraction of the clout it once had, reduced to a historical footnote, a niche interest for winos.

The real-deal Eszencia still carries a hefty price tag (like, $1,000-for-a-half-bottle kind of hefty), and I assume that stuff is for the most part reserved for modern-day Hungarian royalty. Like Alexander the Guest! But without the cultural cachet of a Burgundy or a Bordeaux, it’s possible to buy a very nice bottle of Tokaji 5-puttonyos aszú—a serious, well-made wine in its own right—for a decent price. The day after watching this video, I picked up a bottle for $40. I took my bottle, the kind once poured at 1700s Versailles, and went back to my cubicle.

It’s not every day that you can drink like a king, so I figured the Tokaji deserved a proper occasion. Fortunately, Esther was soon to graduate, and we shared the bottle to cap off her four years of college.

The wine was luscious and indulgent, tasting of dried apricot and honey. Knowing the history—that the wine I was sipping from a mug in a college dorm room was once the object of immense national desire—made it taste that much better. Luxury goods are revered for the stories behind them: the centuries of lore in a bottle of Champagne, the manufactured scarcity of caviar. And sometimes consuming a luxury product is less about the product than the consumption: I was celebrating with my girlfriend, and a bottle of nice wine is just a way of making it official. I don’t know if it’s delicious enough to warrant its own military escort, but it’s definitely worth forty bucks.

Another great thing about Tokaji: all that sugar means it keeps well. We didn’t finish the bottle in one go, so I popped the cork back in and took it home with me to Irvine. The celebration was on the continuum—I drank most of what was left with my friend Fish and saved the last bit for myself in the fridge. Then, one night, I poured myself a glass while lying in bed watching YouTube. Curled up with my wine, I felt a little less envious of Alexander. My Tokaji came from a mid-price bottle, and I’m no nobility; I’m still a long ways out from an invite to the Krug house. But I can drink liquid gold for no reason other than that I feel like it, and I don’t think it gets more luxurious than that.

As someone who very much lives to eat, this makes me sad. But it pains me to concede that not every meal of mine can be—or for that matter, should be—one of ultimate, indulgent, gluttonous pleasure, and that I shouldn’t carry around duck fat in a flask for mid-afternoon pick-me-ups. Simple, even unremarkable meals are what make my big blowouts so uniquely enjoyable (I’ve been known to extol the virtues of a can of tuna), and because Michelin-starred restaurants are very expensive, some of what I eat will inevitably be utilitarian: consumed for the primary purpose of sustenance and energy.

I was thinking about this recently while grabbing lunch at the office cafeteria. There are plenty of varied and interesting options: the concerningly ambiguous “Taste of Asia” buffet, the mysteriously singular salad of “cold green bean.” The variety is appreciated, but it’s hard to say whether any of it is particularly sustaining or energizing. I’ve never had the wherewithal to deny myself the double chocolate brownies piled high by the register, and as I sit down with my brimming to-go container of chunky, gloopy “deviled egg salad,” I start to wonder if I’ve been truly maximizing my potential—giving my body what it needs to succeed.

I imagine, between alternating bites of mayonnaise and fudge, a different version of myself: a business professional in New York City, a consultant or investment banker, making the big bucks and working the long hours from the 80th floor of a skyscraper. I’d wear crisp linen shirts and a tie and make liberal use of the complimentary cold brew tap. I’d circle back and touch base, then permit myself the brief reprieve of lunchtime, during which I would go to Sweetgreen.

This Sweetgreen salad (expensed by the company) would be a key part of my routine, the articulation of my long-desired lifestyle. This is not fast food for plebeians; it’s clean, healthy eating for true go-getters, who need the proper fuel to get through a day of high-octane business transactions. It only makes sense that I would eat at a place that, since its founding in 2007, has targeted affluent white-collar urbanites. I want to be affluent and an urbanite. I want in on this leafy green ouroboros.

I look down at my to-go container. Each cruel mouthful of rubbery egg white is a reminder that I am low on the wellness totem pole, and that my business transactions are decidedly low-octane. I’m deeply grateful for my creative job and the lifestyle that comes with it, but in this moment I am filled with white-hot envy. I know people working high-profile jobs at AI startups and hedge funds, and the salads they’re eating are probably way more virtuous than mine. You are what you eat; I need to eat something better.

The NYC-skyscraper-office element of my fantasy may still be out of reach, but a little Googling reveals that the demographics of Orange County are such that a Sweetgreen should thrive: the key to renewed efficiency and purpose is just a short drive south on the 405, in Costa Mesa. To improve matters even more, it’s the first Sweetgreen in the country to combine a drive-thru with an automated kitchen—a robotic food-prep system that slaps together 500 salads and bowls an hour, roughly 50% faster than human workers. I am over the moon. It’s a testament to this company’s commitment to efficiency and progress that they’re willing to engineer away those pesky, unionizable human employees. This salad could be my first domino in a cascade toward massive career success.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. It’s one thing to eat a Sweetgreen salad, but it’s another thing to incorporate it into your lifestyle. I need to make sure I’m doing this right. Sweetgreen is fortunately ready to help with this self-optimization; food-as-fuel is their whole thing. To make sure our doses are correctly calibrated, they recently launched an in-app Macro Tracker—but even this doesn’t go quite far enough for me. CEOs don’t get to the top using the tools meant for others. They make their own. That’s why, before going out to get my salad, I develop a tool of my own. There are plenty of unhealthy, unproductive choices on the Sweetgreen menu app. But with my Bowl Efficiency Quotient (BEQ), I can be sure I’m creating the ultimate fuel.

The BEQ is a 0–100 composite score across four weighted categories. Macros (30%) covers grams of protein per dollar, protein-to-calorie ratio (I aim for at least 10g per 100 calories), fiber, net carbs, and whether the fats are coming from real food. Glycemic behavior (20%) covers how full the bowl will keep me, how fast the carbs hit, and whether I’ll crash at 3:00 p.m. Micronutrients (25%) covers volume of leafy greens (measured before chopping) and number of different vegetable colors on the plate. Construction (25%) covers how much of the calories come from dressing and how evenly the bowl is chopped and mixed. Salt, dressings, and other flavor enhancers are generally to be avoided.

After rigorously applying my new BEQ standards to the Sweetgreen menu, I feel comfortable declaring that I have engineered the ultimate bowl, primed for maximum performance and able to carry you through even the most punishing all-hands. Venmo me $30 and I’ll send you the spreadsheet I used to calculate all of this.

The Bowl Efficiency Quotient (BEQ)

Macros (30%)

I spend most of my day sitting down, but the C-suite executive lifestyle is far from sedentary. When I finally reach that level, I’ll need plenty of protein and fiber and whatnot to fuel the sprinting I’ll be doing on my desk treadmill in between Teams meetings. That’s why my bowl has a hard-boiled egg and chickpeas—both synergistic with quinoa, the only Sweetgreen grain delivering complete protein and meaningful fiber.

Glycemic behavior (20%)

This bowl is also optimized for glycemic behavior, which is when your blood sugar does the correct thing instead of the wrong thing. The correct thing makes you feel good, and good is caused by the absence of sugar, so I have eliminated all of it. No sweet potatoes, no rice, no apples, no honey sauces. The untrained eater may think that apple kimchi sauce is too sweet for this kind of bowl, but it’s actually sodium-positive and sugar-negative—the sugar has been fermented off and can no longer hurt me. Pickled onions, same story. It’s true that quinoa is technically a carbohydrate, which is technically sugar, but the threat has been neutralized by the bowl’s fat-protein-fiber backbone, engineered to clear a five-hour satiety window with no afternoon supplementation whatsoever.

Micronutrients (25%)

The bowl contains at least five colors, and each color is a different vitamin: green (kale, broccoli, cucumber, cilantro), red (tomato), orange (carrot), white (cabbage), purple (pickled onions), plus some bonus pigments from the crushed red pepper and nori. Three of these are cruciferous, which is the strongest kind of vegetable.

Construction (25%)

Sweetgreen’s house dressings are nuclear warheads of calories and flavor—a little trap they lay for the simple-minded junior associates of the world who still eat for pleasure. I’m smarter than that, and my custom-made citronette—of extra virgin olive oil and a gentle squeeze of lemon—does a great job of lubricating my vegetables without introducing any real taste. I add a sprinkle of crushed red pepper for its capsaicin, which carries anti-inflammatory properties, according to someone on the “hot peppers” subreddit.

I spend the best part of a Monday evening deciding how I will assemble this bowl, and after calculating all the macros and micros, I decide that my salad—which I’ve nicknamed “The Executive Function”—is as close to perfection in performance as lunch gets, scoring approximately 97-98 on the BEQ (leaving a little margin of error in case the Sweetgreen robots fail to get the ratios correct). I climb into bed knowing that I’ve just planned my lunch for every day for the rest of my life, and fall asleep dreaming of kale.

I put the salad out of my mind as soon as I clock into work the next morning. I wouldn’t dare waste company time thinking about “lunch” when I could instead be thinking about work, but when it comes time for my mandatory 30-minute break, I spring into action. I order “The Executive Function” online so that it’s ready for pickup when I pull into the Costa Mesa Sweetgreen drive-thru, and I do not leave a tip. It is $25. When I pick up my salad from the window, it’s handed to me by a human worker, and I shoot them a look of vicious contempt. I eat the bowl in the parking lot and it is green and damp, each forkful a loose, skittering pile of lawn and sulfur. I feel important and hollow, which is exactly how I want to feel all the time, and I drive to the office and get back to work as quickly as possible.

At around 3:00 p.m., I take a one-minute pause from Microsoft Word to check in with my body. I’m not entirely sure if The Executive Function has made me feel more productive, but my stomach does feel a little tighter than usual. There’s a building pressure coming from deep within my abdomen, the occasional pinch, and a low, churning gurgle that decides to echo through my cubicle and out into the office. I didn’t factor it into my tightly packed schedule, but I feel the need to take a bit of a break.

I wobble up to the fourth floor, where all the executive offices are—the bathrooms here are less trafficked, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re cleaned more regularly. Plus, I like being close to the higher-ups. It makes me feel like I’m one of them, and when I catch brief snippets of their conversations at the urinals, I always write them down hoping for a pearl of wisdom. Today, though, there’s none of that. The Executive Function has come back to haunt me, the high fiber of the cruciferous vegetables fermenting in my colon.

Is this what it’s like to be a captain of industry? I assumed that all of the investment bankers on my TikTok page, talking about their 80-hour weeks, were out there closing deals. I now realize that there’s the distinct possibility that they spend most of the working day curled up on the porcelain throne.

As I reach hour two on the fourth floor, holding on for dear life, I vaguely recollect another one of Socrates’ teachings that I learned in my high school intro philosophy class. It was he who championed sophrosyne—the virtue of moderation, of keeping one’s appetites in proportion. And I think of my coworkers downstairs, none of whom had Sweetgreen for lunch, and all of whom are being more productive than me. Did I mess up somewhere along the way? The BEQ didn’t account for this.

Then it hits me: The Executive Function is so high-performance that it must be flushing out the impurities from my old life of eating for pleasure. My discomfort is a side effect of a necessary detox, and my misery is my purification. The solution is that I must stay the course, and eat this bowl every day until my gut biome adjusts. If they could see me now—Socrates, my consultant friends on LinkedIn, the higher-ups at work—I know that they’d be so proud. I am eating to live, and as I brace myself for another wave of contractions, I realize that I’ve never felt more alive.

There are two conclusions we can reasonably draw from this. Conclusion one: every single restaurant in the country plucks its fish straight from the ocean and serves it same-day to their sophisticated customers. Conclusion two: we have no idea what the hell we’re talking about.

I'll let you guess which conclusion I think is more reasonable.

“Fresh” has long been a lexical pet peeve of mine: a word that sounds descriptive but is hard to pin down, and can therefore be applied with broad, sweeping, thoughtless strokes. When applied to sushi, “fresh” is an empty signifier—if sushi is good, it is therefore “fresh.” Plenty of other words fall into this pet peeve category (don’t get me started on “savory”), though there’s something that sets “fresh” apart from the rest. It’s completely false.

Realistically, the fish you’re eating at any sushi restaurant, no matter the price range, has likely been flash-frozen. The FDA Food Code requires most fish intended for raw consumption to be frozen to at least −4°F for parasite destruction, so little worms don’t do backflips in your tummy. Some fish, like certain tuna species, are naturally at lower risk of parasites—but since these fish are probably caught off the coast of Indonesia, they’re usually frozen anyway, because boats and planes can’t get to Kansas that fast. In practice, fish is often super-frozen to -76°F or colder, not just to kill parasites but to prevent ice crystals from forming in the muscle cells, which would otherwise turn your meal to mush. Surprise! Nothing is fresh.

I recognize that this is pedantry, and that when people call a piece of AYCE-buffet salmon "fresh," they're probably not thinking about the transoceanic supply chain. "Fresh" gestures at a clean flavor, a lack of fishiness, a general sense of the ocean. Even in this colloquial sense, though, we're still getting it wrong. By chalking these qualities up to "freshness," we obscure the actual processes that make sushi delicious. Time to get even more pedantic.

The ironic truth is that many fish are at their tastiest when they aren’t fresh—which is to say, when they’ve been aged. Just as a dry-aged steak develops a deeper, more complex flavor over time, a piece of tuna held under the right conditions undergoes its own transformation: enzymes break down adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into inosine monophosphate (IMP), one of the main compounds responsible for umami. The wonder of a good piece of tuna at a high-end sushi bar comes, in large part, from the fact that it isn’t fresh at all.

Aging isn’t the only thing that makes sushi so tasty. Plenty of factors determine whether a piece of fish sings: whether it’s in season, where it was sourced, the fish’s fat content, the chef’s knife skills, what part of the fish is being used. Some nigiri nerds like myself would happily claim that the preparation of the sushi rice is just as important as the fish itself, if not more so. Yet if we’re eating a piece of sushi and trying to decipher how fresh it is, we’re never going to notice any of these other attributes.

Thinking about sushi in terms of freshness flattens it. This is why I’m happy to get hot and bothered over the wording in a Yelp review. I love food writing because I believe words and food are inextricably connected: the phrasing we use to talk about the things we eat shapes our perception of them. Our threadbare vocabulary is stripping some of the pleasure from eating. That, to me, is an unforgivable sin.

My theory is that this is more of a cultural failing than a linguistic one. Compared to Japan, American food culture is a lot more squeamish about raw protein. (See: my old essay on eating raw chicken.) We have other words available to describe our fish, but we lean on "fresh" as a safety signal—more reassurance than praise, a way of telling ourselves this won't hurt me. You've probably seen fish in the grocery store labeled "sushi-grade" or "sashimi-grade." These are marketing terms that mean exactly nothing.

Framing cuisine through an outsider’s anxiety poses issues in its own right. I’d go so far as to argue that every time we praise sushi as fresh, we’re tacitly framing it as a foreign cuisine that needs to be rendered safe for us, rather than a tradition with its own standards. We’re unwittingly keeping sushi at an arm’s length. The good news is that we can do better.

We're capable of developing the language to more critically assess what we consume. A seasoned sommelier and a wine novice have the same taste buds, but the somm knows what to look for. They may experience the same intensity in a nice Malbec, but the sommelier knows to call it blackberry, plum, a hint of pepper—and in naming these notes, gets something more from the experience.

You don’t need to be a connoisseur to know good sushi from bad, but when you have the language to describe the buttery richness you love in a piece of high-quality yellowtail, you can find it, remember it, prefer it, seek it out. And when you find yourself in front of a piece of aji nigiri or a briny oyster, you’ll know you’re eating something with a flavor that degrades quickly; you can relish the rare chance to enjoy something that is well and truly fresh.

I find myself in this position with unfortunate frequency. It’s an ironic consequence for someone so highly opinionated about the culinary arts: I’m especially prone to taking this kind of rejection personally, yet I can’t stop dragging people to dinner. Over the years, I’ve learned that I can’t cut someone out of my life just because they won’t share a spicy frog stir-fry with me.1 I’ve had to develop a thicker skin. If I’m going to be any kind of legitimate food writer, I need to be comfortable with people feeling underwhelmed by my recommendations.

That’s why I go out to eat with Ryan. Ryan is one of my closest friends, and he’s a wonderful, thoughtful person. He’s great company, always up for an adventure, and makes me laugh very much indeed. I am also completely incapable of giving him a good meal.

This is not for lack of trying. Over the past year, Ryan and I have dined at a good number of Los Angeles’s trendiest restaurants, and he’s felt “meh” about most of them. I’ve come to think of it as a curse of sorts: the more excited I am to visit a restaurant, the more things Ryan will find to criticize about it. This perverse correlation stings all the more because Ryan is neither picky nor difficult, and very much appreciates good food and wine. If anything, the problem is that Ryan has quite a discerning, intelligent palate. Whenever he has an issue with a place I’ve taken him to, he’s invariably right on the money.

I suffered my first major defeat at Destroyer—a sleek, minimalist Culver City “cafe atelier” (their words, not mine). As with any self-regarding cafe, it’s tucked away in what was once an industrial corridor, bringing neighborhood brunch-spot vibes to a neighborhood where nobody lives. Fortunately, the aspiring screenwriters of Los Angeles found it anyway, and you get to brush up against them while you wait for a table, breathing in the scent of Le Labo Santal 33 that seeps from their thrifted Comme des Garçons cardigans. The piercing-to-person ratio is off the charts, and the sweet potato waffle comes with a Gruyère cheese emulsion. On one visit to Destroyer, I saw a person wearing these shoes:

As you can probably guess, this is one of my favorite restaurants in the city. I would love to move in here if I could afford the rent.

I figured that Ryan and I would indulge in a nice bit of people-watching, and that I would look on with glee as he experienced, for the first time, brunch as conceptual art. But when Ryan tried to order the BLT sandwich—pardon me, the BLT tartine—he was told they’d sold out. He had to settle for the beet and hidden rose apple salad. Jesus. I wanted to lunge over the counter and throttle the cashier. Did they understand what they had just done? I had been humiliated in front of Ryan, who was quick to point out that the ingredients of a BLT are, arguably, among those a restaurant should never run out of. This was the ultimate indignity.

Still, I held on to the hope that the Destroyer incident would prove a mere blip in an otherwise unsullied friendship, one bound by a great number of shared sensibilities. But the hits kept coming. I cringe thinking back to the time I took Ryan to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where there was no sushi on the conveyor belt. I recoil when I recall the time I took Ryan to a fancy brunch spot, only for his bacon, egg, and cheese to arrive, inexplicably, without any bacon. They gave him an egg and cheese and charged eighteen dollars for it.

Matters came to a head at RVR, a Venice Beach izakaya with a moody, angular exterior, a menu of fastidiously sourced small plates, and—at brunch—mochi beignets. I think about this restaurant and am, frankly, aroused. But of course Ryan’s humble bowl of pork belly ramen took twice as long as everything else to arrive, and I watched my very polite friend sit in stoic silence as our septum-ringed waitress sailed past him over and over and over. There was nothing erotic about our meal. For Ryan’s sake and my own, something had to change.

I’ll admit that my impulse was to cut and run. My humiliation was inescapable, and each new meal tore the wound open anew. Ryan had shown me that I didn’t know as much about LA dining as I thought I did, so I was ready to take the nuclear option—to tell Ryan that, despite his years of devoted friendship, I couldn’t stop thinking about the time he didn’t finish his beet and hidden rose apple salad, and that I needed him out of my life immediately.2 If I was going to part ways with Ryan, it would be thematically appropriate to do so at a ramen restaurant, and so we went out for our final lunch together at Tonchin LA, a restaurant I had found on Google Maps five minutes earlier, with not a single customer inside. The place had no sceney ambience, which is, like, the whole reason you go out to eat in LA. But it was the perfect place for a breakup.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when Ryan seemed to quite enjoy his noodles. He expressed his pleasure freely and openly. My tsukemen was excellent, too; it seemed we were both having a very nice lunch indeed. I crumpled the lengthy breakup note in my pocket. I had been inexplicably spared, and my friendship with Ryan went on for another day. I allowed myself the brief freedom to dream—to imagine that we might share such a communal culinary bond again in the future, that our dog days were over. But I could not rest long. My new mission was to figure out what had happened. What distinguished this place from all the other battlegrounds where I had lain wounded?

I’ve spent long hours and sleepless nights poring over this question. But I finally think I have the answer, after lots of meditation and journaling and therapy. Our disconnect is simple: Ryan likes unfussy food, and I am, it turns out, an insufferable snob. I kept taking my dear friend to the kind of restaurants that serve bowls of edible flowers, or where lines of LA’s finest yuppies coil around the block like a very well-moisturized snake. All Ryan wanted was a simple, quality meal, without the pomp and circumstance. And I just so happen to love pomp and also circumstance.

With this in mind, I was able to start working on compromises. We shared a tasty meal at Takagi Coffee in Beverly Grove, a restaurant where I was able to order a plate of stupid jiggly soufflé pancakes—totally over the top and ridiculous—and Ryan was able to get a much more normal and substantial meal of omurice. The joy of seeing my recommendation vindicated was the first light of sun after a long, cold winter. The spell had finally broken. Ryan was my sunshine once more.

Reluctant as I may be to admit it, I suppose there is some good to come from a friend not liking your recommendation. Though I would greatly appreciate it if my friends thought and acted as I wished them to at all times—actually, if everyone did so—dining out with Ryan has taught me that I must relinquish control every now and then. Part of being a good critic is knowing your audience, and the fact that Ryan and I are often drawn to different things means that dining out with him is an exciting opportunity to put my critic chops to the test. I look forward to many more meals with Ryan, many of which I anticipate he will dislike greatly. I will not, however, be taking him back to Destroyer.

There is certainly an extent to which 2016 feels like a different world, and perhaps that’s why it’s easy to feel nostalgic for it. I look back on 2016 and hardly recognize myself. This could be because the gulf between thirteen and twenty-three is incomprehensibly large, and that in the past decade I’ve gone through puberty and moved out and graduated college and started a job. No—it’s probably because I stopped posting on Reddit.

It’s not uncommon for someone my age, raised alongside a burgeoning social media incursion, to have spent much of their adolescence on the internet. But my peers, generally speaking, were crafting Instagram photo dumps and keeping Snapchat streaks alive. By the time I turned thirteen, I was spending all my free time on Reddit. This was because I was smarter and better than everyone else.

I had no interest in taking selfies, and I looked down on those who did. Such frivolities were a waste of time for an intellectual such as myself—someone interested in the discussions that mattered. I wanted to talk about religion and world events and the artistic merits of Twenty One Pilots, and because I never showed my face, my ideas carried just as much weight as anyone else’s. I could mire myself in discourse and no one would realize I was thirteen years old. This was because everyone else on Reddit was also thirteen years old.

The peak of this fixation came in 2016—a uniquely deranging year to be involved in internet discourse. It’s true: I may not have understood what delegates were, but I was nonetheless ready to lay down my life on the digital frontlines in the name of Bernie Sanders. Fortunately, nobody I was arguing with knew what delegates were either, and my tenacity earned me a moderating position on a small subreddit dedicated to anti-Trump memes. “1 upvote = 1 year he spends in jail.”

I loved this position—the vast sense of responsibility. I was fighting the good fight, damn it. I was the last bastion against fascism. Any time an errant troll wandered into my territory and called one of my comrades a “soyboy cuck,” I’d bring down the ban hammer, purging them from our paradise, never to return. Who’s the soyboy cuck now?

But all good things must come to an end. Trump won the 2016 election, and I was shocked to find that there was no correlation between the number of upvotes on my posts and the number of years he would spend in prison. Then one day my mother peeked over my shoulder and saw me typing furiously in a Reddit comment section. “Who are you talking to?” she asked, concerned. The jig was up. Afraid I’d have to explain my internet double life, I took the proverbial cyanide pill and deleted my account.

I stayed on the internet, of course. I eventually caught the Instagram bug (which I still haven’t shaken) and took a brief dip in the cesspools of Tumblr. I still use Reddit, even—but my posting days are long behind me, a mere footnote of an awkward adolescence. As my prefrontal cortex develops, my penchant for political sparring wanes further. Today, the thought of arguing with a stranger online sounds about as appealing as a root canal.

That version of Jeremy is no more. But just as today’s political climate traces back the same fault lines and fractures that existed in 2016, my Reddit history offers brief glimpses of the man I would eventually become. As testimony, I reflect on the other subreddit I once moderated—the one I created from scratch. r/ShiaLeCreampuff.

The concept was genius: a community dedicated to images of Shia LaBeouf’s head pasted onto cream puffs. People would see these images and wet themselves with laughter, then feel compelled to make their own Shia LeCreampuffs, and as the movement’s progenitor, I’d be rewarded with internet stardom—maybe even a guest appearance on The Ellen Show. This was 2016, after all.

Such success felt assured, though my debut post, “The First of Many,” arrived to a middling reception: a mere seven upvotes. I chose not to be discouraged. As the philosopher Laozi once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And what a first step this was.

I figure the work speaks for itself—the thesis rendered with an economy of means rarely achieved by artists so early in their practice—but I’m nevertheless happy to dissect it. The composition is disarmingly simple, almost provisional, reflective of a budding artist introducing a new formal language to both himself and his audience. And yet a fascinating tension emerges: LaBeouf’s expression, subtle and carefully withheld, exists in dialectical opposition to the cream puff behind him, which oozes with creamy indulgence. What first presents as a visual gag reveals itself, upon sustained engagement, to be a rigorous study in contrast, a negotiation of excess and restraint which, arguably, says something very deep about society.

The following two posts capture the variety inherent in the medium. In Creamy x4, the repetition of LaBeouf’s face—multiplied and staggered across the pastry’s seam—signals an early preoccupation with fragmentation, wherein the self proliferates, destabilizes, refuses containment. True Love, by contrast, shifts the register from structure to expression: a tearful face set within a cream puff filled with piped whipped cream rather than custard. The ridged texture of the cream heightens the image’s emotional charge, lending the piece an almost unbearable intimacy.

It’s at this point that I should probably mention that, as a 13-year-old in mountain town Colorado, I don’t think I had ever eaten a cream puff. I also don’t think I had ever seen a movie with Shia LaBeouf in it. I didn’t let this stop me from breaking new ground; how nobody had ever thought to combine “Shia LaBeouf” with “cream puffs” was completely beyond me. They almost rhymed.

I soon became emboldened to make stronger statements with my art, letting my tortured artist’s mind roam free. I considered pastry as a site of existential introspection—a memento mori, the face a distorted, intrusive reminder of our mortality. In his late paintings, Goya renders the human figure trapped, degraded, and consumed by madness; in my cream puff images, I also did that, I think.

Finally, I reached my artistic apex, the true potential of the cream-puff collage wholly unlocked. My works were challenging and surreal and rife with political and social commentary, and—even so—I left room for play. Play has always been very important to me. I even found the time to celebrate Easter, which carried added significance because I, the artist, am Jewish.

This accelerating momentum of genius was impossible to contain. I was flying toward the future I deserved—gallery openings, red carpets, and even more appearances on The Ellen Show, as I would make such an impression the first time that I would be immediately invited back, and perhaps become a regular player on the daytime television circuit.

Then it was over. My mother caught me arguing with strangers online, I deleted my account, and r/ShiaLeCreampuff fell into ruin. With no one to moderate it, traffic dwindled, and the subreddit was soon locked. My posts were no longer attributed to me—they now belonged to [deleted].

Opaque, my final creation for r/ShiaLeCreampuff, shows two wistful Shias fading gently into their puffs, as if a memory. It received six upvotes.

Ten years go by. It turns out that Shia LaBeouf is actually kind of a horrible person. The Ellen Show is cancelled too, after it turns out that Ellen is actually kind of a horrible person. I try my first cream puff, and it turns out that I like them “fine.”

I had such optimism for the future in 2016. Now I realize that the r/ShiaLeCreampuff concept doesn’t make much sense, that it’s not particularly funny, and that his name is spelled “LaBeouf,” so I couldn’t even get that right. Is it any wonder I’m nostalgic for what once was?

But I believe my time has not yet passed. I still wait for my work to be recognized, for my art to find its audience. I think of van Gogh, who was not celebrated until decades after his death. I think of da Vinci, who, despite an indelible and lasting impact, left behind fewer than 20 paintings. I made only 10 Shia LeCreampuffs. Could history not remember me the same way?

Most of all, I think of my loyal fans. A decade after my retirement, the Reddit sidebar tells me that r/ShiaLeCreampuff retains seven weekly visitors. I choose to believe this is not just idle traffic or stray clicks, but that there are seven people who check their computers each week, waiting for the unnamed artist to return—to comment on society with biting wit, to deliver them from this modern hell of our own creation.

Who knows? I may not care much for cream puffs, and I certainly don’t care for Shia LaBeouf. But perhaps the version of me who made subreddits and argued online still resides within. Perhaps he’d be pleased to find out that I’m still interested in silly food media, cultural commentary, and amateur Photoshops. Sometimes, while sifting through hazy memories of 2016, of Pokémon GO, Hamilton fever, and Harambe, he needles at me, and I catch a glimpse of a feeling, a creative muscle memory lain dormant for ten years, waiting for the right moment to return.

Thank goodness for Claiborne: the father of American food journalism, who shaped the way we think about, write about, and eat about food. He was the first modern restaurant critic and a rare champion of international cuisine in an era when the only acceptable options were “French,” “Beige,” and “Jell-O”—or some combination of the three. Notably, he also introduced readers to the wonders of arugula, extolling its virtues in a 1960 piece that may contain my favorite headline of all time: “A Green by Any Name: Pungent Ingredient Is Cause of Confusion for City Shopper.”

The whole article runs fewer than 500 words, but it introduced New Yorkers to a brand-new vegetable. Claiborne showed them that if they ventured into Manhattan’s Italian markets, they could expand their culinary horizons—that they might discover the “secret ingredient of [the] salads-about-town.” How can you read a sentence like this and not want to rush to the shops immediately? Never mind that he caps the piece with a canapé recipe that is “almost insidiously beguiling to the palate.” Truly, I could cry.

Claiborne’s arugula advocacy is far from the only time a food journalist has shaped the way we dine. Ruth Reichl changed the restaurant experience, showing that atmosphere could matter just as much as cuisine. Fuchsia Dunlop helped reshape the Western understanding of Chinese cuisine, revealing its regional depth and complexity. Jonathan Gold put a spotlight on immigrant neighborhoods and strip-mall joints—I can feel his impact nearly every time I eat out in Los Angeles. These are writers and critics who have entertained and educated us in equal measure, encouraging us all to be more curious and culturally aware. Hooray for the critics, I say!

Unfortunately, my zest (ha-ha) for food media isn’t reflected in the current landscape. People aren’t reading magazines or newspapers the way they used to. The industry is plagued by layoffs, and food writers are being banished to the far corners of the internet, forced to share their work on Substack blogs for audiences composed mostly of other food writers. Those who do keep their jobs are confined to content that is digestible, inoffensive, and smilingly uncynical. Lord have mercy, the sharp-minded food journalists of yesterday are now being forced at gunpoint to make TikToks.

If there is any glimmer of hope amid all this, it might be found on Beli. It’s a restaurant-review app where you can log and rank every dining establishment you visit—every last bar, coffee shop, pierogi house, and stroopwafel stand. And if you’ve spent any time around me, you know I don’t play about my Beli account. (If you dig back through the archives, you’ll see that I’ve written about it before on this Substack.) As of press time, I’m 116 weeks and 1,279 dining establishments into this bad boy, and I have no intention of slowing down.

Whereas more established platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews focus primarily on the businesses themselves, Beli is very much a social media platform. It’s just as much about you as it is the places you’re reviewing. When I open the app, I’m not looking for anonymous reviews on a 1–5-star scale—I’m looking to tell everyone where I, Jeremy, had dinner. You can see a similar principle at work with Goodreads for books and Letterboxd for movies: here, you’re invited to step into the shoes of a critic and wax as poetic as you like. It’s clearly a model well suited to the digital age, as roughly 80 percent of Beli’s users are under 35. If nowhere else, on Beli, young people are excited about dining again.

So, to employ yet another gratuitous food metaphor, I eat this stuff right up. Though I’m not writing sprawling essays on Beli, I love having an archive of the places I’ve dined—a kind of digitized memory—and the process of ranking them against each other gives me a feeling of judicious civility. Like I’m a real restaurant critic, damn it.

This feeling is only intensified by the fact that my account has garnered a decent bit of attention. My culinary gallivants around Japan have perched me atop the Beli user leaderboard for the city of Kyoto two years running. As such, whenever a fellow user is looking for a Kyoto restaurant recommendation—perhaps while planning an epicurean vacation—the app naturally guides them to my profile. And every time someone follows me or bookmarks a spot from my list, I get a notification. It happens a couple of times a day, and each time the feeling it elicits in my brain is that of a hundred simultaneous orgasms.

I know these people aren’t following me because of my reviews. The one thing that matters on Beli is experience: I’ve eaten at nearly 200 restaurants in Kyoto, so I’ve tried more food there than most. I’d certainly like it if these people were poring over every word I write, but I’m nevertheless able to derive a great sense of self-importance from the whole thing. I’ve done the hard work of figuring out which spots are worth eating at, and now other people can reap the benefits. I am a steward of Kyoto, and I will do for this city what Craig Claiborne did for the humble arugula.

Hmm. Maybe this is all a bit much. It should be obvious to anyone with a functioning palate that there’s more to criticism than this—it’s not enough simply to have visited a lot of restaurants. My favorite food journalists are wordsmiths, and their articles and reviews often outlast the restaurants they’re written about. A real critic is discerning and thoughtful, culturally attuned, eloquent, and able to make a convincing argument. This app is a great bit of fun, but you could never confuse Beli users with actual critics. Right?

Recently, Beli rolled out a new subscription service. You can apply to “become a creator,” whereafter you can charge your most dedicated foodie followers a monthly fee to access your “custom guides.” You will notice that I am not yet eligible, as I haven’t referred enough people to the app. On a completely unrelated note, if you don’t currently have Beli and are thinking about downloading it, I would be happy to send you a referral link.

If I—a self-proclaimed Beli obsessive—am not qualified to monetize my platform, who is? To answer that question, I scoured the all-time Beli leaderboards, looking for diners even more devoted than I. That’s where I found Sue. She leaves me in the dust, having eaten at a whopping 5,000-plus restaurants and amassed an even more whopping 8,000-plus followers. And if you pay $3.99 a month ($29.99 for a year’s subscription), you can learn about what NYC restaurants have her “fav patio vibes.”

This presents me with a new question: why would anyone do that?

I’m sure Sue is a lovely person and has a very discerning palate, but her account is private, so I can’t read any of her reviews. As far as I can tell, her qualifications for giving advice are that she’s visited a lot of restaurants. Which is great—but are those qualifications worth paying for?

I don’t mean to single out this one user. There are plenty of other creators like her, most of whom seem to be regular people who happen to have a vast disposable income. And some of these creators write public reviews! I found one such user who has dined at the most luxurious fine-dining establishments in the world—places I would saw my own leg off for. You would think I’d at least trust his criticism, except that just about every review he writes is clearly the work of ChatGPT.

If Beli is our life raft out of the sinking ship of food journalism, this could be a sign that we’ve sprung yet another leak. I read a lot of food criticism, and I edit some food criticism, and I try to write a little food criticism. And while I appreciate that people are using Beli—thinking about restaurants and sharing their thoughts on them—I sometimes worry that these free-for-all, “everyone gets to have a take” platforms will come to be seen as a substitute for proper criticism, written by people with a different kind of experience. I think of this “proper criticism” as something far more considered, far more entertaining, and ultimately far more useful.

And if it seems like I’m bitter about these Beli creators and their paywalled parody of critique—perhaps even a little jealous—then let me reassure you that I am absolutely teeming with jealousy. I’ve been writing this nonsense for free! If I could convince people to pay me $4 a month to slap together a list of restaurants I’ve already been to, I would do so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, as much as I love my 117 Beli followers (not to brag), the vast majority of them are friends of mine, who would, upon seeing me beg for money in the guise of a “best Orange County bánh mì” list, promptly call in a wellness check.

With all this said, I’m sympathetic to Beli’s strategy—and not just because I’m addicted to the app, and not just because Beli co-founder Eliot Frost is a fellow alum of Pomona College (chirp chirp, go Sagehens). The app has been ad-free since I downloaded it in 2022, and its user base has grown exponentially since then; I figured it was only a matter of time before they started trying to monetize. This approach feels a little clunky, perhaps a little naïve, and I have a feeling that most of these Beli creators aren’t earning the big bucks. But if the idea is that citizen critics can fill the vacuum left by professional ones, then I suppose I can get over myself. The life raft has sprung a leak, but it beats having to doggy paddle.

I wonder what Craig Claiborne would think about all this. Though his work at The New York Times laid the foundation for the careful, intellectual food journalism I hold so close to my heart, many of his early dispatches were nothing of the sort. A Pete Wells retrospective describes how Claiborne’s early contributions consisted of “four or five capsules a week of less than 100 words each, most of which concerned prices, addresses, and other data.”

Sounds like the kind of reviews people write on Beli. Food for thought?

Today is Wednesday, which means I’m back on the freeway.

I’m heading up to Pasadena, just as I do every week, on my way to play drums in the California Institute of Technology jazz ensemble. The drive from Irvine is spine-numbing, but this band is my only musical outlet, so I see it as a necessary evil. In a perfect world, pursuing my hobbies wouldn’t call for a three-hour round trip, but for now, this is the price I pay to do what I love.

At least being stuck in traffic gives me plenty of time to think. Right now, I’m musing on the fact that Interstate 405 is one of the busiest and most congested freeways in the country, swallowing hundreds of thousands of vehicles each day, mine among them. Something on the order of three million people live in Orange County, and, apparently, every single one of them also has somewhere to be at this exact moment.

I’m sure I do other things throughout the week, and yet this glacial drift along the 405 (then the 605, then the 5, then the 110) has become a perverse kind of checkpoint. Every time I climb into bed after rehearsal, I close my eyes, open them, and I’m right there back behind the wheel.

So it goes. I glance over at Waze—purported to be the most time-efficient navigation app—and see that my ETA has jumped from 6:50 to 7:03. I need to be in Pasadena by 7:00.

Last week feels a lot like yesterday and last year was a decade ago.

I’m hungry.

Because the drive can take anywhere from an hour fifteen to two hours, depending on the day, it’s difficult to figure out when I should eat dinner. I have to go straight from work if I want any chance of getting there on time, and once I enter the Caltech music room, I can expect to be there until a little after 11:00 p.m.—at which point my only priority is getting home and under the covers as quickly as possible. Sometimes I plan ahead and bring a sandwich to scarf down on the way in, but my foresight is fickle. Today, I have nothing to eat.

There’s no time to dwell on poor planning, as I’m too busy figuring out how to merge across five lanes of traffic in pursuit of an overambitious Waze shortcut. I’m rewarded for my efforts with a ten-minute reprieve (cheers!), and—after a white-knuckle sprint through the Arroyo Seco Parkway—I’m spat out onto Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard at 6:53.

I need every spare minute to set up the drumset and warm up, but my stomach kicks on like a furnace. Although there’s nothing I hate more than being late, I decide I’d rather not pass out mid-rehearsal and face-plant into my rack toms, so I make a last-second swerve into a Burger King drive-thru, order a Bacon King combo with a medium Diet Coke, and fly over to Caltech.

I find a parking spot and stuff my face. The fries are soggy and the burger is limp, and it’s surprisingly dark in the suburbs, so the dome light makes a fishbowl of my car. In turn, I eat like a goldfish—quick, mechanical gulps, my eyes blank and bulging wide. Passing students take sidelong notice of my feeding hour, but I pay them no mind. I’m taking out the trash. I dispatch my two beef patties, wipe mayonnaise from the corners of my mouth, and kick the car door wide.

As I hasten across campus, I instinctively keep my head down. I suppose it’s a vestigial trait from my own undergraduate days—when in a hurry, never look straight ahead, lest you bump into someone you know. As such, I speed-walk with my gaze fixed on the ground, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, observing how the honeyed glow of the streetlights washes the Pasadena pavement in an amber hue.

The yellowish tint of the sidewalk is quite pretty, I decide. It’s a funny sort of optical illusion. The more I stare, the more the color seems to intensify, as if the surface were glowing from within. I’m so transfixed that I barely register the moment the pavement gives way, collapsing beneath my foot with a soft exhale, sending me pitching forward to the ground.

There’s no time to catch myself before I go down. I shut my eyes. Air rushes past my ears; my torso folds in a blunt rotation and my stomach lifts. My head makes contact first—but instead of the hard crack of concrete, it sinks into a cushion, warm and springy, slowing my descent until I feel I’ve made an imprint in the pavement, which cups me like fresh snow.

I lie there, dazed—but, as far as I can tell, unhurt. I breathe in and out: no cracked ribs. I flare my nostrils: no broken nose. I push myself upright against the still-spongy pavement and see the stamp my body has made: a man-shaped impression in a web of thin, pillowy strands. The pavement’s yellow color has deepened into a rich caramel sheen, its pale freckles of aggregate resembling thousands of scattered sesame seeds.

I look closer. They are, in fact, sesame seeds. The sidewalk, once concrete, is now a vast expanse of burger bun. I figure the only rational explanation is that, on impact with the pavement, I must have smacked my head and died instantly.

Whatever disappointment I might otherwise feel about such a sudden (and pathetic) death is eclipsed by a sense of incredible wonderment. I was never one to believe in any form of afterlife, and yet here I am. My consciousness continues, even after I’ve met my grisly end. Also, the afterlife appears to be hamburger-themed. I feel less bad about being late for jazz rehearsal.

Reflexively, I continue down the burger-bun sidewalk, girded by dense patches of grass whose curled frills are oddly reminiscent of iceberg lettuce. I’m led to a road of firm, ground beef asphalt, ribbed with grill-mark striations, dressed with lane markings of creamy mayonnaise white. The stout Spanish Colonial academic buildings that once dotted Caltech’s campus are no more, now replaced by blocky, straw-colored structures of French fries, stacked horizontally like timber beams and sealed with a melted cheese mortar. I’m starting to feel hungry again; apparently, you can feel hunger, even in death.

Unbound by earthly time, I press on for what could be hours—or years, or decades—looping through endless spirals of deep-fried city blocks. Eventually, I reach a road I faintly recognize as South Hill Avenue, the Pasadena side street where I usually park before jazz band. In place of my Subaru sits a long, low ceremonial carriage of a car. It’s paneled in deep, lacquered gold and riding on thick-cut pickle-ring wheels. The passenger-side door swings open. I climb inside.

I recognize the driver immediately. He never turns to greet me, but I still sense an eerie vacancy behind his eyes of exquisite blue. Staring straight ahead, he draws a seatbelt of bacon across his velvet-clad torso and gestures for me to do the same, a wide, synthetic smile plastered to his face. I oblige. Wordlessly, he spins the onion-ring steering wheel and we peel off together into the delicious unknown.

As we drive along what were once the manicured suburban streets of Pasadena, I study my driver’s side-profile. It feels slightly sacrilegious to admit it, but I’m unsettled by this corporate Saint Peter, whose jewel-studded crown rests impossibly still upon his head. He is, without a doubt, The King—just as I remember him from those mid-2000s TV commercials—only here, at close range, it’s unclear where the flesh ends and the molded resin begins. It occurs to me that I am entirely at his mercy, and I think back on all the times I ate at McDonald’s, suddenly fearful I might be punished for my repeated McNugget apostasy. I have no choice but to hope that his fixed, delirious grin is a sign that The King has already forgiven me.

It’s not until we pull into the drive-thru lane that I’m able to relax slightly. I’ve been here before—just a half hour earlier—and though I certainly don’t remember it being so palatial, the Burger King’s familiar façade steadies me. We glide past the order speaker without The King so much as tapping the brake, and when we stop at the service window, a disembodied arm is already extended through the opening, a brown paper bag clutched in its fist. When I try to peer inside, I’m blinded by an impossible glare—a wash of pure light that erases all interior detail. The King takes the bag, hands it to me, and we’re back on the road. I don’t remember seeing him pay, but I suppose they know him there.

There’s a hamburger in the bag, wrapped in waxy paper. There’s a medium fry, too. I’m not sure what I expected, but having recently awoken in a fast-food nirvana, this seems awfully banal.

I look to The King for guidance, and for the first time, he turns his plastic visage towards me.

“Have it your way.”

His voice booms, his words more edict than suggestion. I unwrap the burger and find bacon layered inside: yet another “Bacon King.” I graciously accept the flame-grilled sacrament. My second burger of the night—my first of eternity.

The burger is pretty good. It’s a lot like the first Bacon King, but I suppose I’m able to enjoy it a little more this time, now that I’m removed from all those trivial temporal distractions—places to be, things to do, traffic to outrun. The bun is still soggy, the patty dry, and the bacon stretchy like a salty taffy—but, when all put together, it makes for a filling and nostalgic sandwich. It reminds me of my childhood and, I suppose, of my life as a whole, which was ultimately cut too short.

God, my life really was short. How surreal to be dead. Dead and eating a hamburger.

I’m certainly starting to feel the gravity of my own passing, but it isn’t a somber feeling. As I take my final bites, I’m met with an immense sense of peace. It’s the same feeling I’d sometimes get after a good meal while I was alive—a distinct pleasure in having enjoyed something to its fullest. All things must end; it is only in their ending that they feel complete. While alive, I wouldn’t have been thrilled to learn of my fast-food final meal, but here in the afterward, I don’t mind. It wasn’t a perfect meal or a perfect life, but it was mine, and I enjoyed it. Indeed, I had it my way.

So caught up in the euphoria of my second dinner, I don’t realize that the car has returned to this gilded facsimile of Caltech, right where we began. The passenger door swings open on its own and my seatbelt releases with a soft click and The King leans toward me, ready to embrace his newest child. I open my arms to meet my Burger King—no, my Burger God—and still wearing that same frozen smile, he shoves me. Hard. I tumble from the car and land face down on cold, cruel concrete.

A group of gangly Caltech students awkwardly sidesteps around me, collectively deciding not to help me up. My face grows hot. This sidewalk is not made of burger bun. The ground didn’t collapse beneath me. I simply tripped over my own feet. I’m not in heaven. I’m alive, and I’m running late.

Jazz practice begins and ends as it usually does. My lateness isn’t a big deal, but I still don’t play very well—missing entrances and fumbling my sticks, too busy trying to make sense of the hallucination I’ve just experienced. Did I actually die, only for The King to grant me a merciful second chance at life? Did he eject me from his greasy paradise because my soul was corrupt, or because I’ve always had a secret soft spot for Wendy’s? Am I very, very concussed?

I’m still struggling to parse through my thoughts by the time I get back in my Subaru, which carries the faint scent of ketchup, the BK brown paper bag slumped on the driver’s seat, my half-finished Diet Coke sweating in the cupholder. I move the bag out of the way, and it’s heavier than I expect. I peer inside. There’s a full container of fries. I bite into one and find that it’s piping hot, like it just came from the fryer.

It’s nice to have a snack for the drive home, I think. With traffic easing up, it should only take about an hour to get back—not so bad. And I can relax now: once I start the drive, I know that my commute (to the 101, then the 5, then the 605, then the 405) will blur into itself, every turn, every lane change, and every exit ramp folding into the memory of every other time I’ve made this trip. Just like last week, just like next week. Past and present come together in the blissful right now.

Could this be heaven?

Prior to their arrival, I was enjoying a perfectly pleasant meal with my girlfriend, celebrating our second anniversary at Sant Ambroeus—a neo-Milanese ristorante of complaisant ski-town swank. I should have had my antennae up, but I naively assumed Esther and I could celebrate our shared accomplishment (and a bowl of $30 rigatoni) without being intruded upon by the stewards of America’s civic wasteland. Silly me: I was in Aspen.

I’m quite used to the silk-stocking banality that comes with life in Aspen, a town synonymous with celebrity and its attendant attractions. I had only been home for a few days and had already heard stories of RFK Jr. perusing the racks at the local sporting-goods store and Prince Harry gallivanting on horseback at the St. Regis World Snow Polo Championship. But it is another thing entirely to share a dining room with these people, even when they are tucked away in a corner, safely removed from the plebeians.

And so, when the royal couple walked by my table, I held my breath and waited. I figured it was only a matter of time before their sick gravity would turn the restaurant upside down, sending wide-rimmed plates crashing against the ceiling, spraying the room with pomodoro, pecorino, and eggshell porcelain. I waited for the well-heeled diners to transform into circus monkeys, crawling over the tables and fluttering their Louis Vuitton scarves for crumbs of amaretti.

The reckoning never came. We all stayed firmly planted in our green felt booths, and aside from a few careful rubbernecks and bristled whispers, everyone eventually turned their attention back to the waiter deboning the Dover sole tableside. After all, these right-wing princelings look quite normal at close range. She’s very tall, and her eyes are not unfriendly. He’s got a languid complexion and a baby face. There’s not much else to say.

I imagined a braver version of myself bringing a bottle of 2013 Giacomo Conterno “Monfortino” Barolo Riserva down over Kushner’s camouflage Mets hat. Then I paid the check, and we went home.

For years, my mother and I sent out an annual holiday newsletter to friends and family, documenting the celebutantes and boldface names who graced our humble mountain town with their holy presence. It was called The Celebrity Correspondent, and it was a fun excuse for the two of us to practice our cultural-critic posture. My gaze was unsparing: in one 2017 update, I—a fourteen-year-old boy—described Paris Hilton as a “vacuous has-been” and referred to Australian billionaire James Packer as “white Jabba the Hutt.” Indeed, I have always been this way.

As the years went on, The Celebrity Correspondent evolved to take on a more guerrilla approach. As much as the early newsletters were meant to ridicule the Kris Jenners and Kyle Richardses of the world, they were just as much an excuse to rag on the Daily Mail’s incessant, juvenile coverage of them. Parsing through the Mail’s conservative drivel eventually proved more tiresome than it was worth, but that was fine—we found it far more fun to cut out the middleman and hunt the celebrities down ourselves.

Not to brag, but I got good at finding the marquee names of Aspen (though they don’t exactly go out of their way to hide). Returning readers of this Substack may remember the how-to guide I wrote for SNOW Magazine this time last year, outlining my carefully curated celebrity-stalking secrets. It’s not Pulitzer material, but I was nevertheless surprised when the piece earned me my first-ever hate comment: a woman demanding it be taken down to “preserve the charm and tranquility that make Aspen a haven for everyone, including celebrities.”

I remember feeling quite indignant at the time. In my mind, these celebrities were precisely what was destroying Aspen’s “charm and tranquility,” gridlocking our airfield with their private jets and strip-mining our boutiques. Nevertheless, I suppose I see the commenter’s point. There is a fine line between being witty and being cruel, and it’s not one I particularly cared to toe; it is entirely possible that Paris Hilton is quite pleasant in real life, even if I still maintain that my description of James Packer was bang on the money. Either way, my passion for skewering celebrity culture probably doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to follow Kevin Costner home.

There are truthfully only so many ways to describe Mariah Carey’s fur coats before the material wears thin, and before you begin to suspect the exercise was never especially noble to begin with. We’d find occasional flickers of absurdity that mandated a Celebrity Correspondent article—like the time Jeff Bezos rode a small horse into a hat store—but for the most part, these celebrities went on pretty boring vacations. Last year, while searching for a snarky quip to ascribe to Kim Kardashian, it occurred to me that I was no better than the writers of the Daily Mail: I was being mean, and I’m not so sure if I was being funny.

Soon thereafter, The Celebrity Correspondent was laid to rest. We had a good run, and we went out on top; it will always amuse me that my first-ever magazine byline was a piece about tailing J.Lo.

I came home for the holidays a retired man, ready to enjoy the holidays without checking the Daily Mail or wondering whether Kate Hudson was still wearing those silly fur boots of hers. And when Ivanka Trump ate lunch maybe fifteen feet away from me, I ignored her and walked home with my tail between my legs.

The rest of the day passed with a stone in my stomach. I felt entirely bloodless. I’m not sure how much I could have done, but in the face of evil, I couldn’t even muster up the courage to flip a simple bird.

That night, while lying in bed, I wondered what the correspondent would have done. I was already having a hard time finding funny things to say about minor-league pop stars and Real Housewives, so cracking wise about Trump’s inner orbit felt more than a little tone-deaf. But if I resuscitated this correspondent—did compressions on his pallid chest—maybe he’d spit out one last withering barb.

The celebrity correspondent would never have shied away from the opportunity to be pejorative about a high-profile conservative. He would have relished the chance to snap an invasive photo. He would have given anything to comment on Ivanka Trump’s hideous beet-red snow pants or Jared Kushner’s ridiculous combover. And though he may not have whacked Jared Kushner with a wine bottle, maybe he would have felt a little less useless.

Now that I’ve returned to California, I’m no longer privy to the seasonal migration of Aspen’s celebrities. My writing has returned to innocuous food content, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever again share a dining room with a member of the Trump family. But when I go home for the holidays next year, I’ll carry a piece of the correspondent with me. He taught me it’s alright to be cynical, and that if you can’t do anything else, you can always be mean.

And if I ever see Jared Kushner again, the correspondent will have something to say.

I don’t know much about our freelancers, but I spend all day with their words. And in the six months I’ve done this job, I’ve begun picking up little clues about the people in my database. Some of what I’ve learned comes simply from what these writers choose to write about: I assume our two automobile correspondents, who have turned in more than 70 stories each on car reviews and car advice, probably like cars. But I’m more interested in what our contributors reveal about themselves through their sentence structure and their word choices—in their voice.

Though much of it is conjecture, I like to think I can infer a writer’s interests from the way they vary their sentences or where they choose to incorporate moments of humor. The more time you spend with a piece, the easier it becomes to tell which parts received the most attention—and which lines were slopped together as an afterthought. I can guess which writers obsess over a piece’s opening lines (they’re usually my favorites) and which ones spend a little too much time with the thesaurus tab open. I also know which writers have had a little help from a large-language model. At least, I hope I do.

Trying to conjure an understanding of a person through words alone makes for an interesting thought exercise, particularly when those words come from writers working within a pronounced house style and a thorough editorial process. Sometimes I catch stories on arrival, but I’m usually stationed at the end of the assembly line, checking for factual accuracy or combing through the finished product in search of misspellings and errant commas. By that point, the story has already passed through numerous hands, cropped and polished and made ready for publication.

A writer’s voice can certainly be obscured by this relay race of editors, by the nature of the content (often third-person listicles), and by the inherently prescriptive house style of a travel magazine produced by an insurance company. But I don’t want to sound cynical about this process: I think it’s fantastic. I love when writers manage to do something different or exciting, but I love it even more when I can see how editors helped pull their voices out of them. Just as I can take the words of the AAA freelancers—people I’ve never met—and use them to sketch a sense of a fully formed person, I can see the ways my coworkers represent themselves through the words they use, and how that aligns (or doesn’t) with the people they are in real life. Best of all is when I can see the writer’s voice and the editor’s voice come together in one story.

The irony of all this is that, though my fellow editors spend all day toying with words and sculpting paragraphs, a few of them don’t self-identify as writers. Perhaps I have a slightly sappy view of the process, but I don’t think you can be a writer without being an editor—and you can’t be an editor without being a writer, either. Whenever my coworkers put words on the page, they’re making choices about what to include and what to leave out in service of a better end result. Words only take on meaning through the way we choose to arrange them alongside other words. I probably should’ve taken a close reading class in college.

I try to apply this same sort of scrupulosity to the texts I consume outside of work, in the books and poems and news articles I read. I especially like to do it with the writings of my friends. The ones with Substack blogs are the easiest targets. I have one friend who writes prose exactly the way he talks: immediate and hasty and breezy and full of personal references and asides and color. Another friend writes poetry that is darkly funny, sharp and incisive; it often makes me uncomfortable, and I find I’m grateful for the discomfort. I enjoy how different they are from each other and how different they are from the writers I spend all day reading. I enjoy how different they are from me.

Not all of my writer friends post their stuff on Substack. Once again, many of them don’t think of themselves as writers. I know a mathematician who would make a magnificent cultural critic, and a computer programmer who can produce the most remarkable short stories. I have friends who send lyrical text messages and friends whose overly verbose Instagram stories stick with me long after they’ve vanished into the digital ether. I look for writers in YouTube comments and Yelp reviews, in people who publish their work in academic journals or on the doors of public bathroom stalls.

Whether or not we realize it, we impart something about ourselves in the way we write and edit, in every word we choose and every one we leave out. And whether or not we realize it, we search for the traces of other people when we read what they’ve written. We do it literally all the time; I think we need to do it more often. I can’t think of anything more romantic.

The restaurant arrived in the historically Latino, working- to middle-class neighborhood of Glassell Park, promising Southern heritage cooking prepared entirely over live fire—the kind of place where the dining room is wrapped in warm wood, the wine program is “terroir-driven,” and the pork chop pushes $70. On opening day, community activists marched outside the building, which had been tagged with graffiti the night before: “GENTRIFICATION IS GENOCIDE,” scrawled in red across its windows.

Three years later, Dunsmoor has become a feather in the cap of Los Angeles’s dining scene. The articles that once chronicled the restaurant’s protests have all but vanished from search results, replaced by giddy food media endorsements: The New York Times ranks it among the city’s 25 best restaurants, while The Infatuation and the Los Angeles Times both list it in their top 10. In a recent feature on Dunsmoor’s $150 ribeye, Esquire ran the headline, “Is This the Best Steak in America?“ None of these articles mention gentrification—the restaurant’s turbulent debut is now little more than a hazy, awkward memory.

It’s possible that some of the Glassell Park residents who so vehemently opposed Dunsmoor’s opening simply changed their minds—that after tasting the Carolina gold rice with shrimp butter, they realized this was intentional cooking executed at the highest level, well worth the price tag. More likely, though, they didn’t get their wish. What they feared has come to pass: yuppies who would otherwise have no business in this quiet residential neighborhood now jam up Eagle Rock Boulevard for the sake of sour milk cornbread. Myself included.

It was inevitable that I’d end up at Dunsmoor. Any food nerd of my predictably loserish caliber would be so lucky to visit such a culinary landmark, even if it means an hour-and-a-half drive from Orange County. The day of my reservation, I spent downtime at work doom-scrolling through breathless Eater features and Bon Appétit odes, salivating at the thought of mushroom-crusted pork chops and wood-roasted oysters. Only then did I learn of the Dunsmoor protests; I mulled over canceling the reservation, then I got in the car and made my way to Glassell Park.

It was an uncharacteristically blustery evening when my brother Alex and I sat down for dinner, but the chef’s counter at Dunsmoor may well be the coziest seat at any restaurant in the city. Before we even placed our orders, we reveled in the gentle heat radiating from the hearth, transfixed by plates of cider-glazed quail sliding across the pass. The spacious Art Deco building brims pleasantly with people, yet you’re never shouting to be heard. It’s a restaurant born of clear care and passion—and of course, the food really is that good.

The cornbread is based on a recipe by Edna Lewis—the legendary Southern chef and writer who helped define American heritage cooking—and it puts any other version to shame. It arrives in a hot skillet, drizzled with honey and served with a lump of butter coiffed like a toupee. When you cut it open, you find it studded with little gems of Hatch chile. It’s sweet, savory, spicy, and impossibly decadent—perhaps one of the best things I’ve eaten all year, save for the Dunsmoor steak.

I realize the Esquire article on this ribeye may not have been hyperbolic. I’m practically frothing as I watch my steak sizzle over almond wood, the smoke imparting an almost barbecue-like flavor. We scrape bone marrow and squeeze a blistered lemon over the meat, then attack it like dogs—blissfully unaware of the outside world. At one point, I turn to Alex and say, “I just love how unapologetic they are with acid,” and his vacant stare is a sobering reminder that I’ve become the type of person who says stupid shit like that at dinner. I am the exact genre of person that community activists feared would come to their neighborhood. So is everyone else in this restaurant. Dunsmoor has won. What now?

Javier Cabral might have an answer. He’s the editor-in-chief of L.A. Taco, a food-and-culture publication that began in 2006 as a taco blog and has since evolved into an essential source of street journalism and ICE raid coverage—spotlighting a side of L.A. that other food outlets rarely touch. And he thinks you should go to Dunsmoor, too: his coverage of the restaurant centers on its hatch chile taco, which he calls “unforgettable” and “remarkable.” Unlike most other media praises, he is also one of the few writers to acknowledge the tension inherent to a meal there—and he still lands on an optimistic note. Just as I continue to fantasize about their cornbread, Cabral hopes that “Glassell Park can hold onto its roots while making space for moments like this.”

This kind of takeaway could be read as rationalization, but perhaps this uneasy coexistence is simply where we land for now. In the years since the original protests, L.A. restaurants have been locked in a relentless fight for survival—battered by a struggling media industry, the lingering fallout from this year’s fires, and the devastating cruelty of ICE raids. Helpless in the face of it all, Los Angeles food media has clung to a comforting mantra: “Go out and support restaurants.” It’s nice to believe we’re doing good by eating well—and that places like Dunsmoor prove the resilience of L.A.’s dining scene, especially when they’ve earned goodwill beyond the food. Cabral notes he was compelled to visit Dunsmoor after an investor offered legal aid to a local taqueria following ICE raids.

If we are to eat at Dunsmoor, then at the very least we should be aware. With lines around the block at Hollywood’s Tesla Diner and recent accusations of racism at cafe chain Great White, it’s clear that now more than ever L.A. diners need to be conscious of where their money is going and what kind of businesses they’re supporting. Diners at Dunsmoor must, as Cabral asks, “appreciate the complexity—of both the [food] and the neighborhood.” Dunsmoor’s gentrification of Glassell Park happens in subtle ways—in the visitors parking on residential streets, in the linguistic encroachment of TikTok influencers who refer to the neighborhood as “Echo Park.” It’s been two years since the original protests, but their sentiment is likely truer than ever.

When I waddled back to my car, beaming from one of the best meals of my life, it struck me that the scent of the fire—smoky and rich—spills out onto the street. The whole block smells like Dunsmoor. I wonder how the people who live next door feel about it.

It’s possible for diners at Dunsmoor to ignore the neighborhood of Glassell Park—I wonder if Glassell Park can ignore Dunsmoor.

No matter. I’m on a very important date with a beautiful cephalopod, and I plan to make the most of it. After all, there won’t be a second: I’m one of the last to dine at DTLA’s Shibumi before it closes for good. I’d reserved this seat weeks ago, and it was going to take more than a locked garage to keep me from sharing one final rendezvous with my tentacled companion.

This is one of the many perks of dining alone: there’s nobody to make you grapple with the outside world. At the counter in Shibumi, whatever car-related disaster awaits me is a problem for later. Right now, it’s just me and my dinner—my plate of thick-cut bigeye tuna sashimi, draped in ripe heirloom tomato and funky fermented pepper. I don’t have to make small talk with the tuna. The tuna doesn’t remind me that I left my work laptop in the backseat of the Subaru. For the moment, we’re entirely present. It feels like romance.

I might ask for a little privacy with my special tuna friend, but luckily, I’m already alone. That’s another perk of solo dining—you can fade into the wallpaper, a very hungry fly on the wall. No one’s around to arch an eyebrow when I lick the plate clean because no one’s watching me at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not watching them.

You notice all kinds of things when you’re alone at a restaurant. At the end of the bar, a couple keeps begging the chef to take a shot with them, and I watch him flash pleading glances at the sous chef when they won’t let up. Beside me, a woman takes exactly one bite of each dish before setting her chopsticks down; the servers exchange bemused looks every time they ferry away another barely-touched plate. To my left, a man is explaining to his unimpressed date that he once lived in Japan for a few months and that “the food over there is craaaaazy.” I gulp, shuffle my feet, and turn back to my own plate—a beautiful filet of sea eel tempura.

The unagi is exceptional—the skin has a potato-chip-like crunch that gives way to a soft, flaky interior. It’s simple, but it’s perfectly executed. I wish I had someone to talk about this experience with.

There’s the catch. I really do love dining alone—I love being able to lose myself in the food and the ambience of a place, I love not worrying whether a companion is enjoying themselves, and I love being able to snag a last-minute reservation. But I love sharing food more. And there’s always that little flutter in my stomach when I’m the only solo diner in the restaurant.

Also, for what it’s worth, I am actually a little worried about my car.

Thank goodness for dessert.

In the nine years Shibumi was open, their koji (r)ice cream was the one dish that never left the menu. As the name implies, it’s a cold, sweet dessert made of rice, with a lighter texture than regular ice cream, served with poached apricots and a sweet castella cake.

It is transcendent. Had I hesitated on booking the reservation—waited until I found a friend willing to drop stupid money on a single meal—I would’ve missed my one chance to taste it.

I keep this in mind as I sprint back to the parking garage. I’ve never run faster, even with eight courses of Japanese food sloshing around in my stomach. If I had gone with a dining partner, they almost certainly would’ve slowed me down—and had I been two minutes later, my Subaru would’ve been lost to time.

Thank goodness I went by myself.

I’m getting really into mindfulness these days.

I graduated college only a few weeks ago, and in the time since then, I’ve been working to build a consistent routine—one that maximizes productivity and grounds me in my surroundings. I loved every moment of my undergraduate days, so it’s absolutely essential that I stay positive and motivated while navigating the next chapter of my life, lest I languish in the weeds of quarter-life malaise. Fortunately, I’ve developed a schedule that allows me to stay as present as possible: mind clear, faculties intact.

The first step towards mindful living is giving your body the right amount of sleep. Since coming back home to Colorado, I’ve been careful not to interfere with my internal rhythms, avoiding alarm clocks or anything else that could disrupt the tranquility of my slumber. This usually means I wake up well past noon, a cool fourteen hours of rest under my belt. The notion that humans need to get up early to be productive is antiquated at best and destructive at worst—I can get so much more done when I wake up at 2:00 P.M.!

Even after waking up, I’ll usually stay in bed for a good hour or two. This is my “brain nourishment time,” where I connect with my community and catch up on global happenings. Most days, this involves alternating between Instagram and TikTok until I feel my legs go numb: that’s a sign from my body that it’s time to become vertical. I find this time to be particularly healing, as it allows me to take part in the digital exchange of information, keeping me cultured and informed. I also get to practice radical acceptance when I see just how many of my peers are spending their summers away on lavish European vacations. Good for them, I say. Good for them.

Once I’m up and on my feet, I take a long, hot shower. It’s a period of sacred pause, where I sit with my thoughts and just let myself be. If, while reflecting on the relentless passage of time, a tear rolls down my cheek? I let it roll. I hold space for that. Some days I turn the lights off and assume the fetal position on the bathtub floor, where I deep breathe until my stomach grumbles, alerting me that it’s time for my mid-day nourishment. I hold space for that, too. I towel off on the toilet, using the time it takes to dry to look at Instagram again. And as I dress myself, I feel grateful for what a high-vibrational life I get to live.

Lunch is where everything comes together: the foundation of my routine, of my well-being. I’ve adopted a new diet where I center nutrients and vitamins and decenter seed oils, preservatives, microplastics, and fluoride. This change has come as a surprise to those who are close to me, who knew me as something of a glutton. Some have even expressed concern at my modified diet. I have nothing to say to them anymore. Their version of Jeremy has died; the new version of Jeremy eats nothing but “sludge.”

Sludge

Prep time: 5 minutes

Total time: 5 minutes

Serves one

Ingredients

• 1–2 packets or cans of tuna

• 3–4 healthy dollops of mayonnaise

• Sriracha, to taste

• Lemon juice, to taste

Instructions

1. Assemble ingredients on the kitchen counter. On the Food Network, they call this “mise en place.”

2. Get distracted by your cell phone. Lie down on the couch. Maybe take a nap?

3. Return to the kitchen. Realize that you’ve left the mayo jar open on the counter.

4. Google “how long can i leave jar of mayo not in fridge.” Wince at the results.

5. Return the mayo to the refrigerator. That’s a problem for another day.

6. Deposit the tuna in a bowl. Make sure you get all the tuna juice (oil?) in there too.

7. Squirt sriracha into the bowl. Realize you’re all out of lemon juice. Substitute lime juice.

8. Mash.

9. Serve.

I’m at my best when I eat my sludge. The tuna—an excellent source of complete protein—supplies my body with omega-3 fatty acids, reducing my triglyceride levels and improving my cognitive function. The lime juice contains flavonoids that fight oxidative stress. The capsaicin in the sriracha has thermogenic properties, boosting my metabolism and supporting fat oxidation. The mayonnaise probably also does something good for me, I think.

I’ve been making this recipe since the COVID days—and was known to conjure up the occasional bowl in Frank Dining Hall—but today, as I lick the bowl clean, it takes on new meaning. It occurs to me that a happy and intentional life has nothing to do with your job title, your social circle, or your five-year plan: true wellbeing is achieved through ingesting a dangerous amount of mercury on a daily basis. A deep shiver takes hold of my body, and I think it’s one of relief. The world has opened up before me. If this isn’t wellness, I don’t know what is.

The rest of the day is dedicated to Youtube video essays, with the occasional break for a half-hearted Instagram scroll. Dinner will probably be a bowl of sludge, which I’ll eat over the sink a little past midnight. When I climb back into bed, tummy full of tuna, it will briefly occur to me that I won’t be able to live like this forever, as the mindful lifestyle isn’t compatible with the 9-5 work schedule. These moments of worry are fleeting: if nothing else, I can always keep my sludge in the communal fridge. My coworkers are going to love it.

There’s something in the air in Aspen, Colorado. It’s not the twinkle of snowflakes fluttering from above, and it’s not the earthy aroma of pine needles crushed underfoot: it’s the sweet, unmistakable scent of success. Every holiday season, our little mountain thoroughfares become snow-trodden red carpets for the rich and famous — Hollywood heavyweights, titans of industry, and, like, five or six Real Housewives. If you’re anything like me, you want a piece of the action.

See, I was born and raised in Aspen, and I’ve spent much of my life carefully observing celebrity migration patterns, eager to climb the social ladder one random encounter at a time. As a self-proclaimed “normal person,” I want nothing more than to rub elbows with the Kim Kardashians of the world; maybe they’ll impart some of their beauty and prosperity, and maybe then I’ll be able to afford something from the Louis Vuitton store on South Mill Street. A boy can dream!

The good news is that, after years of devoted study, I’ve finally been able to crack the code. I know how these VIPs think — how they move, how they shop, how they dress — and I’m finally ready to share my secrets. I’ve built up an impressive resume of celeb sightings, and though Mariah Carey has yet to accept me as a protégé (I’ve got a decent singing voice, so it’s only a matter of time), I can at least help you return from your next ski trip with a good story to tell. Here are some local tips and tricks for finding celebrities on the wintry streets of Aspen.

Happy hunting.

Step One: Do Your Homework

If you’re really dedicated to following the stars, it’s imperative that you do a little research before you slip on your gumshoes. Like any good journalist/private detective, you have to know your subject inside and out. Familiarize yourself with the mainstays — figure out who’s been known to winter in Aspen, what sort of security entourage they bring along, and whether or not they’ve had any plastic surgery in the past few months. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell love to traipse through town on Christmastime shopping trips, Heidi Klum has been known to wander aimlessly in perplexingly large winter jackets, and Kevin Costner will occasionally come down from his “KevyWorld” mountain estate, located just outside city limits, to grace us with a special appearance. Oh, how lucky we are!

When you’re out in the field, you’ll usually be able to tell if someone’s a celebrity from a glance: anyone with an “entourage” of shopping-bag-burdened assistants is a person of interest. Even so, you should understand that there’s no room for uncertainty in this line of work. Nobody back home wants to hear about how you saw someone who “looked a lot like Orlando Bloom.” Remember that not every middle-aged man with a 20-year-old girlfriend is Leonardo DiCaprio — we actually have those in spades.

Step Two: Know the Hotspots

Aspen’s downtown core is relatively small, and when you’re on the prowl for the power players, its snow-globe size comes in handy. There are only so many places to hide, and a dedicated celebrity-hunter will be able to identify and stake out all of the high-traffic hangouts. You’ll start the hunt at the Gondola Plaza, located at the base of Aspen Mountain, to catch any Paris Hiltons or Rebel Wilsons coming off the slopes. If the plaza is dry, fret not. Most sightings happen between 3:30 and 5:00 PM: this is prime shopping time — before dinner, but after the ski mountains have closed.

After you’ve appropriately surveilled the Gondola Plaza, stroll through the pedestrian mall and peek in the windows of Aspen’s many luxury stores. It’s worth stopping by Chrome Hearts and Moncler, but I pay special attention to the Kemo Sabe store, which sells luxury cowboy hats for the price of a used car. It’s local legend that Jeff Bezos once rode a horse into this store; I make sure to stop by at least a few times a day just in case he ever decides to do it again.

The Kemo Sabe hats are a little out of my price range, so when I’ve had my fair share of window shopping, I set up camp on the corner of South Galena and East Cooper, across the street from Paradise Bakery. Not only is Paradise a natural gathering place for celebrities, it’s right next to the Ralph Lauren store — and they have benches you can sit on! I recommend you pick up a muffin from the bakery and make yourself comfortable: patience is a virtue, and you need a lot of it in this business. Fortunately, the people-watching scene is pretty spectacular — even when the A-Listers aren’t biting.

Step Three: Befriend the Experts

As you sleuth your way through Aspen’s winter wonderland, you’ll pass by people dressed in floor-length fur coats, neon-pink onesie ski suits, and beefy poodle-like ushankas. As fun as it is to gawk, these peacocking tourists aren’t going to aid in your search for the Real Deal. Instead, the key to your celebrity search may be a bit more inconspicuous: keep your eyes peeled for the plain-clothes paparazzi.

It only makes sense that if you can find paparazzi, you can find celebrities — so you’ll want to consciously scan the streets for any potential shutterbugs. You’ll do well to become suspicious of anyone with a camera bag, especially if they don’t take any interest in the mountain scenery that surrounds them. You’ll find paparazzi lingering impatiently at the aforementioned hotspots, and though they have a tendency to be a bit surly, try to strike up a conversation. Maybe they’ll tip you off as to who they’re waiting for, and maybe they’ll let you tag along for a photo-op. Either way, keep an eye out for any sudden movements: if they exhibit any sort of urgency, you may have found your golden ticket.

Step Four: Tell the World

You’re on your 20th lap through the Aspen pedestrian mall. You’ve been shooed out of Kemo Sabe, your would-be paparazzo turned out to be a nature photographer, and just as the frostbite is starting to set in… BINGO! You’ve stumbled upon Kate Hudson or Cameron Diaz or Kyle Richards or Kendall Jenner. You’ve done it — you walked by a real live celebrity, and you feel way more important and successful as a result. Rejoice!

Still, your job isn’t done. What’s the point of seeing a celebrity if you don’t tell everyone you’ve ever met? Make sure to dramatize the story as much as possible, especially to anyone who accompanied you to Aspen but chose an afternoon nap in favor of a walk into town. You may even be compelled to write a magazine article about celebrity spotting in Aspen, just so you can let people know that you saw Jennifer Lopez and Anderson .Paak on the same day. Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.

When you finally turn in after a long day of stalking Justin and Hailey Bieber through Aspen’s alpine avenues, you should celebrate your victories, but don’t become complacent: tomorrow’s going to be another beautiful day in the Rocky Mountains, and as long as there is snow on the ground, there are always more celebrities to be found. And you might just be the one to find them.

When I tell my friends that I miss the food in Kyoto, they nod sympathetically. They know how much I love to eat, and they understand that for any foodie worth their salt, Japan is something of a culinary promised land—a place where streets are paved with freshly caught sashimi, and rivers flow rich with savory dashi broth. What they don’t realize, however, is that I’m not just reminiscing about Kyoto’s hearty bowls of ramen, robust cups of matcha, or delicate pieces of tempura.

I really miss the pizza.

This isn’t to say I don’t think fondly of my late-night visits to neighborhood takoyaki stands, where thick wedges of octopus are battered and served, piping hot, under a mountain of green onions. Nor does it mean I don’t fantasize about the mom-and-pop sushi restaurant down the street, where a sumptuous chirashi bowl — overflowing with eel, salmon, and squid — costs less than a bus ticket. It’s just that I go to school in L.A. County, where good Japanese food is always within driving distance. But there’s only one place in the world where you can order a Domino's “Sakura Pizza.”

For reasons that continue to elude me, it’s incredibly difficult to find a pizza that captures the sweet ephemerality of the sakura cherry blossom, whose brilliant pink flowers bloom for just one or two weeks before fluttering away with the wind. I didn’t study abroad in Italy, but I have to assume that pizza in Naples doesn’t come topped with strawberry-flavored tapioca balls — just as I imagine their mozzarella isn’t mixed with sweetened condensed milk, and their crust isn’t stuffed with a blend of cheese and cherry-blossom-infused chocolate. Indeed, Sakura Pizza is exclusive to Japan. How could I not take advantage of such an opportunity?

And well, the Sakura Pizza is, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty gross. Maybe there’s a reason they don’t put tapioca on pizza in Naples: the combination makes for a perplexing, rubbery, eraser-like gumminess. The cherry blossom gives the mozzarella-filled crust a floral cheesiness, so that each bite feels like you’re gnawing a hunk off a used bar of deodorant. Did I mention that there’s chocolate in there too? It’s a total sensory overload — eight slices of sweet-and-savory sacrilege — and oh, how I miss it so.

It’s not the taste of the Sakura Pizza that I miss (though I am fond of it in a Fear Factor, adrenaline-spiking sort of way). I miss eating Domino’s with my Associated Kyoto Program friends at our monthly “parties,” where we’d rent out an event space and invite some friends from the local Doshisha University. I, of course, would take care of the catering, and I miss letting go of all inhibitions on the Domino’s website. I miss ordering the “Cheese Volcano Giga Meat” pizza, complete with a bubbling cheddar caldera. I miss bonding with new friends over slices of “Izakaya-style Asparagus and Bacon,” “Cheeseburger Quattro Happy,” and — of course — the Sakura Pizza.

I had plenty of “authentic” cultural experiences in Japan. I visited ornate Shinto shrines, soaked in natural onsen hot springs, and discovered that I look pretty darn good in a traditional yukata. I have fond memories of all of it, but now that I’m back in the States, I find that I really miss the funny little things — the pieces of Japanese culture that aren’t advertised in travel brochures or included in the program’s pre-departure handbook. I think the real joy of living in Kyoto was embracing these fragments of daily life: noticing the different jingles that play depending on which train line you’re riding, discovering a grape sour candy that fizzes in your mouth, and realizing that, in Japan, you can put just about anything on a pizza.

A few weeks after trying a Sakura Pizza for the first time, I was able to score a reservation at Kyoto restaurant Monk, a restaurant made famous after appearing on an episode of Netflix's original series, Chef’s Table: Pizza, a restaurant renowned for its creative and considered approach to Italian-inspired cuisine. Every ingredient at Monk is locally sourced, and every ingredient passes through Chef Yoshihiro Imai’s wood-fired oven; the night I went, the tasting menu’s pizza de resistance was half venison ragu, half shirasu — baby whitefish, the size of your fingernail, eaten whole. Unlike the Sakura Pizza, the venison/shirasu pie was complex yet delicate, familiar yet completely original. I don’t think they put shirasu on pizza in Naples, but maybe they should consider it.

As I waited for the check to come, I struck up a conversation with the American couple sitting next to me: a pair of foodies visiting Kyoto on their honeymoon, capping off the trip with dinner at Monk. They marveled at the quality and the creativity of the meal, the likes of which they had never really seen: “Can you imagine a pizza with more creative toppings than this?”

Boy, could I.

“You know, Jeremy, I don’t care much for Starbucks.” 

And, well, I suppose I have to agree.

Even here, in the suburban sprawl of eastern Tokyo, good coffee is never hard to find. Only one city block separates Mr. Sakai’s unagi-ya (eel restaurant) from the nearby Alpha Beta Coffee Roasters, with all the avocado toast trappings of the best Brooklyn coffeehouses. If you head in the other direction, you’ll walk by SALT/Coffee, a takeaway-only stand that shares a building with a hair salon and serves a perfectly pleasant (though decidedly unsalty) flat white. If, for whatever reason, you end up next door in the sleepy Kuhonbutsu neighborhood, where rapid trains speed through the station without stopping, you can drop by Compass Coffee and pick up a bag of fine Costa Rican beans — roasted in house earlier that morning. Still, Tokyoites flock to Starbucks like bees to a honeypot. Mr. Sakai sees it as a generational problem.

“It’s not good coffee. Everyone knows that, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference.” Mr. Sakai muses as he filets, dragging the knife down the eel’s backbone like he’s pulling open a particularly stubborn zipper. “Nobody wants to wait for anything anymore,” he sighs, plucking out sinewy eel guts with his bare fingers. “Quality is secondary — people just want whatever is trendy and convenient. Craftsmanship and tradition mean nothing to this generation.” He pulls out a tray of long wooden skewers and twists them through the eel’s underbelly. “That’s why I’m happy to know a young person as mature as Shin.”

Shin blushes. He’s a baby-faced 23, but it’s true that there is something intriguingly sophisticated about him: he likes record shopping and expensive whiskey, and he often takes long pauses before he speaks, careful to make sure that every word comes out just right. We became fast friends a few weeks prior over a shared appreciation for Parliament-Funkadelic and Jamiroquai; today, when we meet at the restaurant, he gifts me a copy of Tatsuro Yamashita’s For You — a glittery album of summertime J-funk — and Mr. Sakai claps his hands together at the sight of two young people still interested in 80s music and the exchange of physical media. Shin also has strong feelings about coffee, and though he’s a bit more sympathetic to Starbucks (“I don’t mind their pastries every now and then”), he acknowledges that he doesn’t totally get what all the hype’s about. “Besides,” he tells me, “nobody makes coffee better than Mr. Sakai.” 

Mr. Sakai, now hacking off chunks off eel number two, uses his free hand to swat playfully at Shin. He insists that Shin is full of hot air, but is clearly flattered: “I’ve only had the espresso machine for about two weeks,” he explains, “So I don’t really know anything about making coffee.” Even so, the shiny new De’Longhi espresso machine is quite a statement piece, especially in a restaurant where the walls are decorated with sticky note reminders and an old CRT TV hangs above the front door. I haven’t been to many eel restaurants that serve good espresso, and I say as much to Mr. Sakai, who laughs dryly; the coffee is not necessarily for customers, but for friends and regulars — people like Shin, who often stop by when the restaurant’s closed. Today, things are a little different. The Sakai unagi-ya is still very much closed for customers right now, but Shin and I aren’t coming over for coffee and a chat. We’re here to celebrate my final night in Japan. We’re here to try Mr. Sakai’s “special eel course.”

Despite the age gap of probably 50 years, Shin and Mr. Sakai make for a truly compelling pair. Whereas Shin is an old soul, the silver-haired Mr. Sakai has a certain youthful mischievousness that often shines through: when Shin speaks to Mr. Sakai in the polite Japanese tense usually reserved for one’s seniors, Mr. Sakai rolls his eyes and chastises Shin for making him feel like an old man. It’s never made quite clear to me how a college student would become friends with an eel shop proprietor, and though I think I hear something about their joint participation in a local birdwatching group, I almost prefer not to have all the answers. These two men both like coffee and 80s music and eels. Clearly, that’s more than enough commonalities for a friendship to thrive.

Nobody takes greater pleasure in observing this duo than the restaurant’s co-owner, Ms. Sakai, who is, as a result, constantly getting distracted from her prep work. She gets a kick out of their banter, made all the more amusing by the inclusion of a perplexed American — equal parts astonished and ecstatic to be partaking in his first ever eel butchery. While Mr. Sakai carries eel carcasses into the kitchen, Ms. Sakai informs me and Shin that most of the time, customers don’t get to witness the slicing and dicing in all of its gory glory. “We feel it’s very important that you have a special meal for your final night. It’s not everyday you get to try eel like this,” she states, proudly. I try to ask her what makes tonight’s eel “special”, but she just glances at her husband knowingly and giggles. “Just wait and see.” 

I wonder, for a second, if I’ll really find this meal all that special. After all, you don’t live in Japan for nine months without eating a lot of freshwater eel, or unagi, most frequently served in the form of unadon. In unadon, the eel is prepared kabayaki style — fileted and coated with a soy-based teriyaki-like glaze (tare) — then served over a bowl of rice. It’s rich, fatty, sweet, and salty, and makes for a dish that is as comforting as it is simple… a dish that, admittedly, I don’t particularly care for. It’s fine, I guess, but I sometimes feel like my American impression of unagi is that it’s something of a “beginner sushi,” the kind of thing you order for a picky friend on the premise that it tastes kind of like chicken. At U.S. sushi spots, I often find the tare to be overpoweringly sweet, a fruitless attempt to distract from an otherwise uninspiring protein. When Mr. Sakai emerges from the kitchen with our first plate, I realize that I’m operating with the wrong frame of reference.

I consider myself the furthest thing from a picky eater, but even I have my moments of squeamishness. I don’t love black olives, I still peel the tomato off my burger, and sure, I may have to take a deep breath or two before popping a head-on shrimp into my mouth. The prospect of eating an eel head, however, is one so far removed from any conception of culinary possibility that it almost doesn’t register on the squeamish scale. In fairness, having been severed, skewered, and grilled, kabuto-yaki eel heads don’t really resemble much of anything — but it doesn’t take an eel anatomist to know a skull from a filet. If the sight of grilled eel heads wasn’t enough to make my heart rate jump (and it was more than enough), Ms. Sakai had delicately structured a pile of hone senbei (deep fried eel spines) off to the side, like the world’s most perverted Jenga game. Naturally, there’s no tare in sight. I look at Shin for reassurance and find that he’s looking at me the same way. Pickiness be damned. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and I take a bite. 

It is, of course, delicious. The pairing of the head and spine makes immediate sense, as the hone senbei and kabuto-yaki are both savory and light, coming together on one plate to form a delightful appetizer. The spine is brittle and crunchy in a way that feels not totally unlike a potato chip, and the meat on the head is tender and juicy, no sauce necessary. Shin and I express our pleasure vocally, and Mr. and Ms. Sakai express equal pleasure that we’re enjoying their food; as I’m polishing off my final crunchy spine segment, Mr. Sakai comments that, much like Shin, I’m mature for my age, and that he appreciates our more grown-up palates. “It’s not every day that I get to serve two college students,” he observes while taking our plates to the kitchen. “Even though the university is so close, students rarely stop by. It’s so good to see young people enjoying my food.” 

As he toils over the grill, fiddling with the next round of skewers, I start to understand why Mr. Sakai takes such an issue with Starbucks and their inferior blends. He and his wife are artisans, and their store is a shrine to careful craftsmanship — a portal to a different side of Japan where the eel is eaten for its natural flavor, the shōji screen door stays fashionable into the 21st century, and a good cup of coffee is always worth the extra effort. It only makes sense that they’d run a restaurant dedicated to one of Japan’s most storied ingredients, enjoyed and celebrated for thousands of years. As Ms. Sakai works on our next dish, she shares with me the history of Edo-era unagi shops, who, in the late 1700s, turned the consumption of eel into a long-lasting summertime tradition. I learn about the popular practice of eating eel in late July/early August on the day of the ox (doyō no ushi no hi), and since I’m leaving the country a week too early, we all agree to celebrate in advance. I’m so enthralled with my mini history lesson that I don’t really notice when Mr. Sakai slides a plate of skewered innards in front of me. Time for the second course.

Eel guts are not pretty. The various intestines coil haphazardly around one another, each having taken on a crushed-cockroach sort of brown metallic sheen in the grilling process. Once again, the dish is presented without any sauce — just a little bit of salt on the side of the plate — and Mr. Sakai, from behind the kitchen counter, can barely conceal his excitement. The eel guts, he tells us, are known for their piercing natural bitterness, and he insists that we go in with an open mind. “Really enjoy the sensation. There’s nothing else quite like it.” 

We quickly discover that Mr. Sakai is not kidding: there really is nothing else quite like it. As soon as I take one bite of the eel guts, my brain sends an immediate signal to the rest of my body to communicate that I’ve definitely just been poisoned. The guts are pungent and unforgiving, and while I’m becoming increasingly convinced that Mr. Sakai must’ve slipped a cyanide pill onto the skewer without me noticing, Shin seems to be loving every second of it. “I’ve never tried anything like this,” he exclaims, “Isn’t it wonderful?” I decide not to say anything. He’s not wrong in that it’s certainly a new sensation, but I don’t know if “wonderful” is the word I’d go for. Still, the more time the eel heart spends on my tongue, the more I find the whole thing kind of… exciting? I guess I am having fun eating these guts, maybe in the same way I would have fun in a haunted house or on a rollercoaster (i.e., fearing for my life). At the same time, I decide that if Mr. Sakai is a fan of this kind of bitterness, maybe I no longer want to try his coffee.

Mr. and Ms. Sakai ask us what we think, and naturally, I insist that I’ve never had a more scrumptious bite of food in my life. If they saw me fighting for my life to choke down every last entrail, they’re kind enough not to acknowledge it. Once more, the couple express sincere gratitude that Shin and I like the food, and we go back and forth thanking one another in a classic Japanese politeness contest. There’s something quite funny about going to a restaurant and having the chefs fawn over you, but it does seem fairly apparent that I’m not Sakai’s typical clientele. It could be that I’m a young person, it could be that you have to call their landline to make a reservation, or it could be that the front is impossibly hard to find — even though the restaurant is located on the busiest shopping street in the Oyamadai neighborhood. Or, perhaps most obviously, it could be because I’m an American.

While Mr. and Ms. Sakai work on the third course, they pepper me with questions about life in America and how it's different from Japan. Some of the questions are pretty standard fare (“How did you learn Japanese? What do you like about Japan?”), but they seem particularly interested in learning more about American tastebuds, asking me things like, “Do you think Americans could enjoy eel?” or, “Would an American enjoy eating at our restaurant?” As an American who enjoys both eel and eating at the Sakai unagi-ya,  I feel uniquely qualified to answer, so I explain that in the U.S., Japanese eel is synonymous with that sticky sweet tare glaze — and that you wouldn’t dream of going near the organs. Ms. Sakai laughs heartily when she hears this, and tells Mr. Sakai that, “It’s just like the issue with Starbucks. People like the sweet stuff too much!” As if on cue, Mr. Sakai emerges from the kitchen with two dishes of what are clearly eel filets, but these filets don’t have the caramel sheen that I usually associate with unagi. Instead, they’re a pale, shimmery white, served with nothing more than a dollop of wasabi.

This, Ms. Sakai explains, is shirayaki: eel seasoned only with salt before it is grilled. “All that matters here is the quality of the fish,” he says — and this fish is certainly high quality, with a flavor that is smoky and buttery and surprisingly complex. If a chain store unadon is the equivalent of a Starbucks latte, this shirayaki is an espresso tonic, sophisticated and subtle. I want to communicate this analogy to Mr. and Ms. Sakai, but I’m too busy shoveling big hunks of eel into my mouth to think about anything other than enjoying myself. I am able to convey that I prefer this shirayaki to the sauce-laden kabayaki style I’ve tried elsewhere, and Shin agrees with me wholeheartedly. Mr. Sakai comes over to us and bows. “And I thought that the young person’s palate wouldn’t be interested in such things,” he exclaims. “Especially not the American palate. You two truly understand my hard work.”

Ms. Sakai clears our plates and returns with one final dish: an unaju, which is the more refined version of an unadon, served alongside a bowl of kimosui: a clear soup with eel liver. The unaju follows the same concept as a classic unadon (grilled eel over rice), only it’s served in a lacquer box instead of a bowl. Unsurprisingly, it’s phenomenal. It’s the first dish to have tare, but it’s worlds away from the cloying sweet stuff that gets under my skin at American restaurants. It’s a meal of real simplicity, of letting the ingredients shine, and it’s still remarkably hearty and nourishing. The kimosui is light (and, fortunately, not too bitter), and it cleanses the palate in a comforting conclusion to the “special course.” I think back on my old friend, the eel, who went from an ice bath to my stomach in less than an hour, and I feel grateful for him: as gruesome as his death may have been, it certainly was not in vain. 

While Shin and I tuck into our unaju, Mr. Sakai and Ms. Sakai sit down at the table next to us, turn on the old CRT TV, and start eating their own dinner, of grilled saba mackerel and homemade nukazuke pickles. We’re watching sumo tonight, and when he finds out that I’m not super familiar with the intricacies of the sport, Mr. Sakai is more than happy to explain them to me. “We’ve been doing this sport for over a thousand years,” he tells me. “Japanese culture is all about tradition, whether you’re talking about food or sport or something else entirely.” One sumo wrestler loses his footing and goes flying out of the ring. Ms. Sakai claps excitedly, while Mr. Sakai turns his gaze away from the screen and focuses on me and Shin with a deep concentration. “You probably don’t want to hear this from an old man, but I hope you recognize the importance of tradition. I sometimes worry that the new generation will forget all the practices of their elders…” He hesitates for a second. “But maybe they’ll just evolve.” A smirk crawls across his face.  “After all,” he admits, “Modern day coffee technology is way better than what it used to be.”

Now that the meal has come to a close, I can finally try a cup of Mr. Sakai’s fabled espresso. It’s a little later in the night than I would normally feel comfortable drinking coffee, but I do have a lot of packing to do for my flight, and who knows when I’ll be back here, sharing a special moment with these three people. Mr. Sakai fiddles with the machine and a number of assorted coffee-related gizmos, and in a matter of minutes produces a lovely Americano, of fine Brazilian beans cut with hot water. I’m normally more of a latte guy, but when at the Sakai unagi-ya, you do as Mr. Sakai does, and he certainly likes his strong flavors. The coffee is robust and intense, and though I’m tempted to say that it’s too bitter, I’m in a place that celebrates the astringent. Here, in this little time capsule, the old-school is celebrated. Tradition becomes fun and exciting, and whether you’re watching an eel get slaughtered or drinking a cup of super-strong coffee, there’s something to be learned from challenging yourself. I thank Mr. and Ms. Sakai for their hospitality, give Shin a big hug, and then make my way back to America with visions of eels swimming through my head. 

As I walk through the departure terminal of Narita International Airport, I wonder what the future looks like for Sakai. Even though Shin and I were converted to devout eel fanatics, a lack of online reviews reflects Sakai’s predictable reluctance to catch up with the digital age. As I’m wondering if there’s anything to be done about their lack of young clients, I walk by an airport Starbucks, boasting a line of 30 or so addled, jet-lagged customers. There’s a sign outside advertising a new beverage: the “Sweet Milk Coffee,” flavored with pumps of both white chocolate and vanilla syrups, and I can’t lie… it looks pretty good. I shake my head: if Mr. Sakai taught me anything, it’s that trendiness should never come before quality. Maybe I’ll be back when Starbucks releases a Frappuccino made from eel organs, highlighting the natural bitterness of the freshly-slaughtered animal.

For now, I’ll keep on walking.

I have about five minutes to write a speech. A goodbye speech, at that; one that summarizes everything I’ve learned while in Japan, and one that articulates my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to have taught at Tokyo City University - a speech that is lighthearted but not flippant, concise but not hasty, genuine but not sappy. A speech that also needs to be written in incredibly formal Japanese.

I wouldn’t normally leave a task of this importance until the very last minute, but when you only have two nights left in Tokyo, your priorities shift a little bit. Instead of conjugating my verbs into the polite tense, I hit the town in a Roman Holiday-inspired act of reckless abandon, skipping the speech-writing in favor of going shot for shot with a woman in her 80s. I’m here for a good time, not a long time! Even so, in the interest of not making a complete fool of myself in front of my students, I make sure to set an alarm for 7:30 the next day. I figure that will leave me plenty of time before my 9:15 class to drink some water, pop a Tylenol or two, and make up some Japanese platitudes while in the shower.

I instead wake up at 9:00, drenched in sweat and full of a deep, primal fear. It seems that in my shochu-induced stupor I had accidentally set my alarm for 7:30 PM, so a shower is no longer in the cards - though I do stop on my way out the door to shove a few loose Tylenol in my pocket. I’m already in a fairly sour mood, and as I sprint towards campus, clutching my head, it occurs to me that, perhaps unsurprisingly, I am experiencing more than a fair bit of abdominal discomfort. 

When I call or text friends and family back in the States, they seem to be under the impression that my time in Japan has been a foodie’s fairy-tale - that I’ve had six straight months of gluttonous, carefree pleasure, reveling in the perks of a weak Yen and a large appetite. They’re absolutely correct, of course, but this perspective fails to acknowledge the downsides of such voracious eating: though my stomach may be capacious, it is regrettably sensitive. Given that my everyday diet often consists of rich bowls of ramen, deep fried tonkatsu cutlets, and at least one or two espresso-based beverages, it’s no surprise that I am making frequent trips to the high-tech toilets of Tokyo. Add in some raw chicken and a healthy splash of alcohol, and you have a recipe for gastrointestinal disaster.

I’m normally able to calm the roiling seas of my stomach with a lunch of something plain - like a convenience store onigiri rice ball - but today, I’m supposed to meet up for one last ramen lunch with my dear friend Oie-kun. After the previous night’s unexpected ramen excursion, the thought of another bowl makes me want to curl up in the fetal position, so I make a mental note to cancel our plans when I see him in class. Sadly, my final day of eating has been derailed by a lethal bout of self-induced indigestion, and there is little to be done about it.

In between my stomach gurgles, I think once more of Roman Holiday. More specifically, I think of the scene in which sleeping meds cause an addled Princess Ann to pass out on the side of the road, and Joe Bradley brings her home to sleep on his couch. Upon waking, she finds herself reeling from the previous night, feeling the full weight of her obligations - and in the brief moments when I am able to parse through my anxious, hangover-induced fog, our shared disorientation brings me some solace.

I get to the classroom with a few minutes to spare, have a quick consultation with “Google Translate Sensei,” and deliver a middle-of-the-road speech to a room full of generally uninterested students. Oie-kun is in attendance and applauds eagerly, but his support isn’t enough to distract me from the fact that I am about to be the bearer of some very sad ramen-related news. I get a certificate for completing my internship, shake hands with the head of the English department, then am promptly yanked into the hallway by a very excited and very hungry Oie-kun.

Oie-kun starts marching toward the train station with incredible purpose, and tells me that he skipped breakfast in anticipation of our glorious ramen lunch. When I let him know that I’m no longer up for it, he stares at me blankly: “But you need to try jiro-style ramen!” I try to communicate that, though I’m sure this ‘jiro-style’ is tasty, I’m not in a position to be eating any style of ramen - but Oie-kun just cocks his head, confused. I’m clearly not getting through to him. “You can’t leave Japan without trying jiro ramen,” he insists. I try once more to protest, but Oie-kun pats me on the back and gives me a big grin. “You will be strong.”

And that was that.

While we’re standing in line at ramen restaurant Butayama (literally, pork mountain), I decided to do a little Google searching about what “jiro ramen” entails, and am slightly horrified by what I find. This is no ordinary ramen bowl: this is a verifiable freak of nature - an unceremonious heap of pork fat, garlic, and bean sprouts. Presumably, noodles are also in there somewhere, but the toppings are piled so high that it’s impossible to tell. Oie-kun cheerfully informs me that one medium bowl averages around 2500 calories, and that it’s enough food to “fill him up for weeks.” My face goes pale. I am about to die in this restaurant.

The Butayama line continues inside, snaking around the 15 or so counter seats, all of which are occupied by people tucking into massive bowls with incredible speed. Cramped mere inches behind the people eating, I might as well have front-row seats to an eating competition - if the competitors were Japanese salarymen, quietly making the most of their lunch breaks. As soon as one salaryman finishes his bowl, he stands up and his seat is taken by another, relay race style. There’s something beautiful about the way that they’re able to avoid staining their crisp white work shirts with fatty pork broth, but I’m too busy writing my will in the Notes app to really pay much attention.

Eventually, two seats open up. We sit down with haste and Oie-kun places our order: two medium bowls, double vegetables, double garlic. As he does so, I notice a box of disposable paper bibs, designed to keep your shirt clean. I tie one around my neck: I am no salaryman, and I would rather not have to do a load of laundry tonight. I wonder for a second if this is an amateur move, revealing to those around me that I don’t have confidence in my noodle slurping abilities, but when I turn back to Oie-kun, I notice that he’s now wearing two t-shirts. “This is my ramen shirt,” he explains, “so I don’t get stains.” In hindsight, I should’ve asked Oie-kun if he carries this shirt around at all times, and why he felt the need to put on a ramen bib if he was already wearing a ramen shirt - but perhaps some questions are better left to the imagination.

Our bowls are plopped in front of us, and there is barely the time for a quick photo-shoot before the metaphorical clock starts ticking. I close my eyes and breathe deeply - not only am I fighting indigestion, but I have a row of hungry salarymen standing right behind me, breathing right down my neck. I am on my very own episode of Man vs. Food. I am David fighting a very garlicky Goliath. I am probably going to need to be taken away in an ambulance. Let the race begin.

There’s a scene in Roman Holiday in which, after he convinces her to spend the day with him, Joe Bradley gives Princess Ann her first cigarette. It’s not every day that a Princess gets to have a cheeky cig, and even though she knows full well that she should head back to the palace, she’s making the most of her final day of freedom - why not go all out? Knee-deep in bean sprouts, it dawns on me that I’m experiencing something similar: despite my better judgment,  I (Audrey Hepburn) let the dashing Oie-kun (Joe Bradley) convince me to eat a massive bowl of ramen (smoke a cigarette), because who knows when I’ll get the chance to do so again? Maybe my Tokyo Holiday lives on after all.

Either way, it’s a good thing I listened to Oie-Kun, because this ramen is pretty phenomenal. It’s rich, greasy, and oh-so filling - the perfect comfort food. The broth is savory, the pork is juicy, and though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend asking for double garlic (which I think means that they put a whole clove or two in there), each bite of the veggie skyscraper was one that I enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong, though. It wasn’t all fun and games. I’m barely halfway through my meal when Oie-kun pats me on the back; he’s just demolished his bowl and, in the name of proper jiro etiquette, will now wait for me outside. I take this as a not-so-subtle sign that I am not moving quickly enough, and convince myself that if I do not finish this bowl within the next thirty seconds then the salaryman behind me will pick up my bowl and smash it over my head.

I finish the job. Mostly. I don’t drink all of the broth, because I’m not an insane person. Even so, the bowl has been dispatched, and I am still standing. I rip my apron off and wobble my way out the front door, where Oie-kun is waiting for me with a novel idea: instead of a peaceful and quiet train ride home, he suggests that we rent e-bikes - because he “could use the exercise.” I’ve found by this point in our friendship that there’s no use in fighting Oie-kun’s suggestions, and any excuse of “I haven’t ridden a bike in five years” or “I feel so queasy right now” will inevitably be brushed off with a bright smile, a thumbs up, and an earnest “Ganbatte, Jeremy-kun.” Good luck, Jeremy.

I learned a few things very quickly on my bike ride with Oie-kun. The first is that seat height matters: mine won’t raise, so I’m forced to pedal on a bicycle that has me about a foot off the ground, low-rider style. The second is that Japanese notions of politeness don’t exist when you’re on two wheels: the first part of our journey takes place on the sidewalk, and Oie-kun silently bobs and weaves through crowds, no bell rings or calls “on your left.” Though I’m able to keep up for the most part, I certainly lack his poise - and I get more than my fair share of dirty looks.

At one point, Oie-kun notices that I am panting and out of breath, and pauses for a moment to pat me on the back. I’m hoping this means that our journey is over, but he then takes a sharp left down a narrow alleyway, and immediately merges onto the highway. As much as I don’t want to meet my grisly end at the hands of a boxy Japanese kei-car - whizzing down the road at 50 kilometers an hour - it seems that, as is true with all things Oie-kun, I don’t have much of a choice in the matter. I grit my teeth and pedal like my life depends on it, probably because it does.

Of course, Oie-kun makes sure to check up on me, turning around every now and then to make sure that I haven’t been sucked under a 2004 Suzuki Alto - and when he sees that I am indeed still alive, he smiles at me so warmly that I am able to temporarily forget that I am terrified for my very life. The whole affair reminds me once more of Roman Holiday, when Princess Ann drives a motorbike for the first time, and her inexperience with the vehicle results in quite the commotion… and results in her being pulled over. Yet again, the Princess and I seem to have quite a lot in common: two people who couldn’t be further from their comfort zones, making the most of their holidays. Fortunately, I didn’t get pulled over, and I didn’t turn into a pork broth water balloon at the hands of a 2014 Mazda Carol - though that would’ve probably made for a good story, too.

Just as I’m finally starting to have fun on my e-bike, I look up and am horrified by what I see: we’ve returned to the Tokyo City University campus - and that means it’s time for Oie-kun to go back to class. I’d been so focused on myself that I hadn’t really considered that I would have to say goodbye, much less so soon. I’m trying to remember how to translate “I am so grateful for all of the adventures you’ve taken me on, and I will miss you a lot,” but the right words aren’t coming to mind, so Oie-kun and I hug it out instead. He flashes one more winning smile, gives one more affirmational back pat, and just like that, he’s gone.

And just like that, I’m gone too. It’s only a few hours later that I’m on the plane back home, still reeling, my stomach still incomprehensibly full of ramen. Naturally, I’m watching Roman Holiday, and not just because I love when things come full circle; this time round, the ending hits that much harder. When a solemn Joe Bradley leaves his Princess forever, the tears flow that much more freely, as, in a way, I feel like I’ve just left a princess of my own: the gorgeous city of Tokyo. Also, my friend Oie-kun - a princess in his own right. 

I wonder if I would’ve ever become sick of Tokyo, or if such a thing is even possible. I have a hard time conceptualizing the idea - the idea that I could one day roll out of bed to find myself bored of the city’s effortless convenience and limitless supply of deliciousness. In Tokyo, I can have more exciting culinary adventures in 24 hours than I would otherwise have in a month, and this is coming from a person who dedicates a solid 90% of passive thought to finding exciting culinary adventures. You’re telling me I have to leave? How can this be?

But such is the ending of my Tokyo Holiday - bittersweet, yet inevitable. Just as Princess Ann has her royal duties to attend to, I have to go to “ back to college” so I can “graduate,” or something like that. It’s not the picture-perfect ending I feel I deserve, but when I tuck into my mid-flight meal of microwaved short rib in a mystery brown sauce, I realize just how lucky I’ve been to have fallen in love with Tokyo at all. If every day was spent eating raw chicken and riding e-bikes on the highway, then these moments wouldn’t be nearly as special. Plus, I would almost certainly end up hospitalized by day three. Perhaps a simpler diet isn’t the worst thing in the world.

I realize, by the time the in-flight dessert is served (one scoop of vanilla ice cream), that as much as I’ve been trying to force the parallels, my time in Japan isn’t entirely comparable to a 1950s Audrey Hepburn romantic comedy. When Roman Holiday comes to an end, Joe Bradley and Princess Ann look back fondly on their shared memories, with the understanding that they may never see one another again.

That’s where my story differs. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I will be back to Japan.

And next time, I’ll be even hungrier.

Is there anything as beautiful as that which can not last? Though bittersweet, is not beauty defined by impermanence? Also, what does raw chicken taste like?

It’s mid-July, I only have a few days left in Tokyo, and I clearly have quite a lot on my mind. It’s true that I’ve never been much good at saying goodbye, and with my return to America so imminent, I find that my upper lip has started to tremble whenever I pass by a freshly stocked onigiri shelf at 7-Eleven. Each walk to my local patisserie becomes a tragic reminder that there are only so many places in the world where you can buy a box of ten Italian “cream horn” pastries, of velvety custard piped into flaky choux pastry, for less than the price of a bus ticket. Notably, there are zero of these places in the United States. How on Earth am I supposed to go back?

If romance movies have taught me anything, it’s that sometimes, you have to learn to walk away. Not all dreams are meant to come true; though I occasionally fantasize about dropping everything in the name of becoming an itamae - a master chef of sushi - I have to acknowledge that my wobbly hands would inevitably result in a hackneyed sashimi slice, and that I would never get up early enough to make it to the fish markets on time. Just as my sushi dreams aren’t meant to be, my Tokyo honeymoon can’t last forever… but perhaps that’s a beautiful thing in and of itself.

On the plane ride from Denver to Tokyo, I watched the film Roman Holiday (1953), in which Audrey Hepburn plays the stately Princess Ann, who spends one blissful day in Rome, serenaded by American reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). I consider myself something of an in-flight entertainment connoisseur, and I can confidently say that it’s hard to do better than Roman Holiday. When I’m 40,000 feet in the air, I want a movie that is cute, low-stakes, and appropriately heart-wrenching - I want to be reminded that love is fleeting but that love is all we have, and then I want to put on my eye mask so the flight attendants can’t tell how hard I’ve been crying. 

The key to Roman Holiday is that Ann and Joe don’t end up together. And how could they? She’s a princess, and he’s an American - it was never meant to be! Even so, the unlikely couple get to spend one beautiful day together, frolicking through the streets of Rome. Princess Ann shirks her royal duties, gets a funky haircut, and smokes a cigarette. Joe stops being a jerk. It’s phenomenal. 

When the day comes to a close, Joe and Ann are forced to part ways, unsure if or when they’ll ever meet again. They are briefly reunited in the movie’s final sequence, at one of Ann’s royal press conferences; after Ann and her royal cavalcade depart, Gregory lingers behind, knowing that the princess can never be his, knowing that the experience has left him forever changed. It’s not a sad ending per se, but it does make me want to put my whole fist in my mouth and scream. Alas, all good things must come to an end.

I may not be a member of European royalty, but when I lie down on the stiff mattress of my Tokyo City University dormitory, I can’t help but feel that there’s a lesson to be learned from Audrey Hepburn and her funky haircut: just like Ann and Joe, my romance with Tokyo is regrettably short lived, but beautiful nonetheless. If I take a page from their playbook, shirk all of my work-related responsibilities, and give myself one perfect day with the city that I love, maybe that’ll be all I need. ATokyo Holiday, if you will.

With this in mind, in order to enjoy one final, perfect day in Tokyo, then I better follow in Princess Ann’s footsteps and go out the night before a big commitment. In Roman Holiday, Princess Ann sneaks out of bed to wander around Rome, even though she has a big press conference the following day. Got it. Instead of preparing a speech for my “end-of-internship” closing ceremony, I start my Tokyo holiday by hopping on the train to the lively Takadanobaba neighborhood, where I meet up with family friend Kazumi at the Matsuyoshi yakitori restaurant.

Tonight, going out is a family affair. Back in the 1960s, family friend Kazumi was a student at Corning Community College, where my grandfather was a professor of Japanese civilization. She’s known me since I was a baby, and now that I am no longer a baby, she is finally able to drink me under the table. Kazumi’s not the only heavyweight, either: we’re joined at the restaurant by her adult son Nao, who is particularly excited to find out that I like alcohol. He laments that the Japanese youth of today are no longer down to get wasted on a weeknight, then orders a full bottle of vodka-like barley shochu for the three of us to share. I consider, for a brief moment, the speech I have to give at 8:00 AM the following day, then choose not to say anything.

We put in an order for a couple of chicken skewers, and as Nao mixes me my second cocktail of shochu and Hoppy (a non-alcoholic beer), Kazumi asks if there are any foods I won’t eat. Finally - my favorite question. I puff out my chest and brag to her that I will try and enjoy anything, then quickly realize that this might have been the wrong thing to say: Kazumi raises an eyebrow and whispers something to the waiter, who promptly brings out a plate of raw chicken. I throw back my shochu cocktail and ask Nao for a third.

When it comes to proper food safety measures, I’m far from fastidious, but if there’s a time to get salmonella, it’s probably not two days before a twelve hour international flight. In my kitchen, raw chicken gets its own cutting board - so I’m not totally wild about the prospect of chowing down on some torisashi at a restaurant with sticky menus and a 3.5 star rating on Google Maps. Kazumi notices the fear in my eyes and insists that it’s safe, but despite Nao’s continued attempts to ply me with alcohol, the liquid courage has not done its job. I politely decline.

Then Kazumi’s grandchildren show up. 18-year-old Haruto is a first-year student at university, and has similar apprehensions about raw chicken - apprehensions that are not shared by his cousin, the 7-year-old Yusei. Kazumi and Nao tell Yusei that I’m too scared to try the raw chicken, so I immediately shovel as many pieces into my mouth as fast as I can. I’ll risk a bout of painful diarrhea, but under no circumstances will I have a first grader think I’m lame. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, chicken sashimi tastes quite similar to regular “fish” sashimi. It’s a little chewy, not dissimilar to ika (raw squid), but the flavor is much milder - more like salmon than anything else. I’m pleasantly surprised by how inoffensive the taste is, and once I’m able to get over the fact that I am eating raw chicken, I'm able to dispatch more than my fair share of the plate. Yusei is suitably impressed, and having maintained my reputation as a supposed gourmand and “guy that 7-year-olds find cool,” my stomach only turns a little bit when Kazumi orders seconds.

Before our next round of raw chicken arrives, we receive a few serving dishes of otsumami, which are small plates of food designed to be paired with alcohol - not totally unlike the Spanish tapas concept. Our first otsumami is a shallow bowl of little orange needles, and Nao becomes very excited at their arrival: this dish is called umesuishō, and it’s a personal favorite of his. At this point, I’m well past tipsy, but I can still access enough limited Japanese to know that ume refers to “plum” and suishō refers to “crystals.” I have no clue what a “plum crystal” is, but I’m sure it’s substantially less freaky than raw chicken. Right?

Perhaps not. I find that I can definitely taste the tartness and saltiness that I associate with umeboshi pickled plum, which is quite a common ingredient in Japan, but the “crystals” have a distinct and intense crunch, and the effect is akin to a mouthful of little pin bones. I’m about to ask what type of stalactite I’m chewing on when Kazumi gleefully informs me that the sharp pokey things I’ve just inhaled aren’t “crystals,” but are actually fragmented pieces of shark cartilage.

I ask Kazumi for clarification as to what she means by “shark cartilage,” as I was under the impression that sharks were made entirely of cartilage. She laughs, and I don’t have the heart to tell her that I wasn’t kidding. No matter - Nao is still pouring drinks, and they are certainly beginning to work on me. Though my Japanese ability is worsening by the second, grandson Haruto and I realize that we’re both fans of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team and have strong opinions about Ippei Mizuhara, the scandalized former translator for Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani. We’re making such great conversation that I don’t really process that Kazumi has now ordered eihire - grilled stingray fin.

The torisashi and umesuishō eating experience is enjoyable in the same way that one might enjoy going to a haunted house, but eihire, with some spicy mayo on the side, makes for a truly scrumptious end to the otsumami journey. It’s a bit like jerky - smoky and savory, but without an overpowering fishiness, and I can easily clear a few plates without thinking twice. The rest of the meal flew by in a blur of leek-and-thigh skewers, crispy chicken rice balls, and a lot more beer.By the time the check comes, I’m seeing double, using my last bit of logical reasoning to politely decline any dessert.

By this point in Roman Holiday, the sleeping drugs administered by Princess Ann’s royal doctor start to kick in, and she passes out on the side of the road until Joe finds her and puts her in a taxi. I myself am ready to take a nap on the Takadanobaba train station platform, but Nao and Haruto have other plans; together, they drag my limp and bloated body to a nearby late-night ramen spot, full of smoke and smelling of pungent boiling pork bones. I try to tell them that if I eat anymore then I might explode, but they slide a bowl of tonkotsu ramen my way… and, oh man. It sure looks good.

We slurp up our noodles, chat a bit more baseball, and before I faceplant into my empty bowl, Nao and Haruto drop me off at the train station - an hour long commute still stretching out before me. I have to navigate three station transfers and I am in no state to work on my goodbye speech, but just like Princess Ann, I’m on one last great adventure, wandering around a gorgeous city in a fog of delirious joy. I am full, I am drunk, and I am free.

Plus, I now know what raw chicken tastes like.*

*Salmon, mostly.

Though I've always been a big morning person, I greet the Tokyo nightfall with a thankful, sticky embrace. Nighttime precipitates a not-insignificant drop in temperature, which means that I no longer create bizarre sweat stains every time I step outdoors. Nighttime means I can wear a backpack without fear; if you don’t know why I would otherwise fear wearing a backpack, you’ve never experienced a Tokyo summer.

Nighttime also means that I can go for a run. Running is a new hobby of mine and one that is best performed in the cover of darkness, where I’m not at risk of heatstroke and I’m not at risk of being seen by any of my English students. I relish these night runs, taking full advantage of the temperature (and of the fact that I am a tall man in a safe, suburban neighborhood) to flail my limbs for a mile or so before I give up and limp home, gasping for air. Most of all, however, I relish the opportunity to run along the Tama River: the home of my dear friend, Tama-chan.

During my semester abroad in Kyoto, I walked to school every single day along the Kamo River, which runs cool and clear, lined with cherry blossom trees and happy couples on picnic dates. Conversely, the Tama River, which divides Tokyo prefecture and Kanagawa prefecture, is sludgy, sewage-y, and decidedly difficult to romanticize. When you walk along the Kamo River, you get a feeling of profound, blissful serenity. When you walk along the Tama River, you get a lot of mosquito bites.

Look, it’s not all bad. The Tama River has a decent view of the Kawasaki skyline, and (on clear days) you can supposedly catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. But it also has piranhas. So there’s that.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised - few places compare to the beauty of Kyoto’s Kamo River - but when I touched down in Tokyo exactly one month ago, walked two blocks from my dorm room, and looked out over the Tama River, I couldn’t help but feel like I had made a big, big mistake.

Studying abroad in Kyoto was nothing short of four perfect months. I made the friends of a lifetime, ate like a king, and gallivanted around a city that felt like it was built with my interests in mind. When I returned to America for a few weeks, I worried that I had caught lightning in a bottle - that my time in Kyoto couldn’t be replicated, and that going to back to Japan so soon would tarnish an otherwise spotless memory.

My concern was regrettably well founded. The first night back, I stood on the nearby Maruko Bridge, queasy with jetlag, and stared despondently at the Tama River. This was a far cry from the Tokyo I had imagined: this was… suburbia. And this river was ugly and brown. I felt myself starting to cry. I knew I should’ve just stayed home.

But then I thought of Tama-chan.

Bearded seal Tama-chan was first identified on August 7th, 2002, by passerby on the Maruko Bridge. The murky water of the Tama River doesn’t have much in common with the natural habitat of bearded seals (the Arctic Ocean) - but Tama-chan didn’t particularly seem to care. As sightings of Tama-chan became more common, he turned into something of a national celebrity.

Thousands and thousands of people flocked to the Tama River, desperate to catch a glimpse of its adorable new resident. Clearly, the piranhas weren’t much of a nuisance, because Tama-chan hung around the area for months on end. Merch was sold en masse, and daily Tama-chan updates were broadcast on a number of Japanese TV channels. To quote Wikipedia: “seeing the seal was said to have a ‘healing’ effect on people.”

I get it, though. Tama-chan has a healing effect on me too. I had previously read a little about him while doing research on the area, and as I cried on the Maruko Bridge - the same place where he was first sighted - I realized how much we had in common: both of us outsiders, trying to make our way in a place that couldn’t be more different from home. I felt there was something beautiful about the whole thing, rubbed the tears from my eyes, walked home, and went to bed. When I woke up, I felt way better. Thank you, Tama-chan!

Just as I struggled on my first day in Tokyo, things weren’t always easy for Tama-chan; sometimes you go somewhere new and you get a little more than you bargained for. In my case, that meant getting emotional over an ugly river, and in Tama-chan’s case, that meant getting caught up in Japanese political protest. In 2003, the city of Yokohama granted Tama-chan an honorary jūminhyō (residency registration), but at the time, jūminhyō weren’t available to foreign nationals. You can imagine how this made people feel.

Oops.

This wasn’t the end of Tama-chan’s troubles. Later in the year, a doomsday cult tried to capture him and return him to the Arctic Ocean. I tried long and hard to summarize this event, but nothing I came up with was nearly as funny as the description given by Tama-chan’s Wikipedia page.

At the end of the day, none of that matters to me. Even when the crowds faded, the media lost interest, and the Pana-Wave Laboratory took their tinfoil hats elsewhere, Tama-chan stuck around, swimming in local rivers until his final sighting in 2004. I like to think that he really learned to love it here - that, like me, Tama-chan got into a good routine, stopped overthinking things, and learned to live in the present. At some point, I’m sure Tama-chan knew he made the right choice. I certainly did - and I didn’t have to get almost-kidnapped by a cult to find out.

A few nights ago, I went for another run along the Tama River. It was a delightfully cool evening, and as I ran, I passed by strolling families, people walking dogs, and little league baseball games - all under the backdrop of a gorgeous purple sunset. For the first time since my arrival, the clouds over Mt. Fuji dissipated enough for me to see the mountain, and as I took in the view, I could’ve sworn I saw some whiskers peeking out of the river.

I would’ve looked a little closer, but I had to keep running; I was making great time in the mile. I think Tama-chan probably gets it.

—J-Sauce

During the six months I’ve spent in Japan, I’ve become increasingly skilled at convincing Japanese people that I am capable of speaking their very complicated language. This has little to do with the grammar and vocab I’ve memorized and has much more to do with a sort of blissfully unfounded confidence I’ve picked up: I no longer ask for clarification when I don’t understand a question, I smile politely, then make a wild guess as to what was just asked of me. This method works surprisingly well and is totally indispensable in my day to day work as an English teacher. When my students at Tokyo City University say something to me using vocabulary I don’t understand, I laugh, shake my head good-naturedly, then excuse myself to the restroom so I can ask Google Translate whether or not a bunch of 18-year-olds are making fun of me to my face.

The adjective “shibui” throws a real wrench into things - one of many Japanese words that has a number of different contradictory meanings, and one that these students absolutely love to use in my presence. When I announce that my favorite Japanese film is Juzo Itami’s 1985 Tampopo, I am met with an inevitable chorus of “eh, shibui!” Does this mean that my students are calling me “astringent and puckery, like an unripe persimmon?” My dictionary app certainly seems to think so. Alternatively, when they insist that my affinity for 70s city pop artists like Taeko Ohnuki and Miki Matsubara is “shibui,” are my students implying that I am, as Google suggests, “stingy and tightfisted?” I’m often asked what my favorite sushi topping is, and it turns out that the greater amberjack, kanpachi, is a very shibui answer. As some Japanese websites would have you believe, this implies that I am “sullen and sulky.” I can assure you that I am no such thing. 

Having done some thorough internet scouring, I decided once and for all that my students must be comparing me to the Japanese aesthetic of simple, unobtrusive beauty: shibusa - the noun form of shibui - which can be found in the cracks of a clay pot, or perhaps the eroding grain of a well-worn tatami mat. See, if there’s one thing I’ve learned through my studies of Japanese literature and culture, it’s that this is a country where simplicity reigns supreme. Shibusa has many philosophical counterparts that have cemented themselves as essential parts of everyday life here - take, for example, the term “wabi sabi,” which you may have heard at a zen garden or on the hipster interior design part of Pinterest. Wikipedia describes wabi sabi as beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature. If you have a hard time distinguishing this from the definition of shibusa, that’s okay! Not all of us can have a nuanced cultural worldview.

Either way, I’m honored that my students would bestow the shibui descriptor unto me, especially since these concepts of beauty are ones that I feel are slightly incompatible with my obtuse American worldview. I like a bonsai tree as much as the next guy, but one look at @jeremyeatsjapan reveals that minimalism isn’t really my style. I read and enjoyed In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, but I also walked away from it with the pretty undeniable conviction that Tanizaki-Sensei would haaaate me. My idea of perfect beauty is when a taco shell is crunchy and tastes like a Dorito®, so clearly my students know something about my shibusa that eludes me. This notion started to keep me up at night. What on Earth do I have in common with modestly glazed pottery? And how did every single one of my students identify this trait within me? I had to get to the bottom of it.

I thought long and hard about ways in which  I could be expressing shibusa in my regular life, but kept coming up short, unable to think of anything particularly remarkable about my beauty. That was when it hit me: the key to my own shibusa was to be found in my own mundanity. Though I may not appear complex at first glance, I am a deeply multifaceted creature: my beauty is found in the mosaic of my lived experiences, a mosaic that will only become richer with detail as I age. Within me is the balance between elegance and roughness, between spontaneity and restraint, between a combo of Nacho Cheese Doritos® Locos Tacos and an unripe persimmon. I am the cracks in the pottery and the tatami-mat grain. I am the wabi and I am also the sabi. I am, in the words of one of my students, “Shibui-San.” Mr. Unobtrusive Beauty. In the words of philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu, “Taking the path to understand and experience shibui, is a step toward understanding and consciously registering the life underlying all.” I’m on that path, baby. I’m on that path.

There’s also the extremely miniscule chance that my students are using shibui as a slangy synonym for “grown-up” or “old-school.” Turns out kanpachi is kind of a fish that only old people like, and none of these teens have seen the film Tampopo… but all of their parents love it. And sure, I guess my Japanese musical references are half a century out of date - and me talking about Taeko Ohnuki would be as if a Japanese exchange student’s only perception of American culture was Kenny Loggins. But that doesn’t make me old-school! They’ve gotta be referring to the beauty of my everyday simplicity. Right? 

…Right?

The worst part about this, though, is that I can’t even get all moody and introspective about it, as “going back to your hometown and feeling strange” is perhaps the least unique experience in the world. Try as I might to channel my Very Complicated Feelings About Home into some emotionally overwrought poetry (and trust me, I have tried), it turns out that feeling like an outsider in the place you grew up is something that happens to a lot of people - and any poetry you write about it will be trite at best and a little pathetic at worst. Instead, when these moments of hometown-induced self-pity make me want to open up the Notes app, I look to the wisdom of Fran Lebowitz: “If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.” I offer only one amendment, which is that if you’re in Aspen, Colorado, it may be easier to substitute “eat something sweet” for “drink an $18 dollar latte.” 

I often think that any malaise I may feel in Aspen is probably the product of this town’s absolutely dismal food scene. It’s great that we have all those mountains and whatnot, but I don’t want to live in a place where you can expect to drop $70 on a single order of carne asada at Las Montañas or $24 on three soup dumplings at Jing. There remain a couple bright spots in what would otherwise be the world’s most expensive food desert - New York Pizza can always serve a reliable slice, for example, and my mother is an absolutely superb chef bar none - but if you get sick of pizza and can’t secure an invite to the Sand-Martin household for dinner, you might be better off driving to Basalt or rifling through the town dumpsters like a bear. I wouldn’t say that I’m bitter, though; if you’re the kind of big baller that can go to sushi restaurant/nightclub Madame Ushi and order the Chrome Hearts “She’s Expensive” collab roll with bluefin tuna, A5 Wagyu, Osetra caviar, 24k gold leaf, and white truffle, more power to you! I just think you should be guillotined immediately.

I find this “luxury over everything” attitude particularly insulting now that I’ve been imbued with the Japanese sensibility about a proper cost/performance ratio. If your bowl of ramen costs me more than the equivalent of 15 US dollars, you better have a damn good reason for it. There is a part of my subconscious, however, that still finds these uber-expensive menu options alluring. Perhaps it’s that, having been raised in Aspen, there exists within me a secret craving for extravagance - the dark, scaly manifestation of my basest impulses, always waiting for the right opportunity to launch a truffle-motivated attack on my bank account. As much as I may resent it, this town and its penchant for the pricey are part of my chemical makeup. Though I have little desire to try the “She’s Expensive” sushi roll (but can’t deny that it would make for a great Instagram post), I have a much harder time containing these luxury cravings when coffee is involved. Maybe it’s that coffee is low-commitment or maybe it’s just that I have a crippling caffeine addiction, but if you’re a cafe and you give me the chance to spend too much money on a fun beverage, I’m falling for it every time. Aspen has these cafes in spades, and I often find myself wandering around town a few-too-many espresso shots deep, bug-eyed and strung out and deeply afraid that I’m about to bump into someone I know but whose name I don’t remember. If that doesn’t sound like $10 well spent, I don’t know what does.

Of Aspen’s many bougie coffee shops, Felix Roasting Co. at the Hotel Jerome holds a special place in my heart, perhaps because it’s the most obnoxious of them all. This isn’t your ordinary cafe: this place has lounge chairs of pastel pink, forces all the baristas to wear stupid cowboy hats, and, as their website proudly claims, “puts the spotlight on each coffee’s terroir.”  Indeed, Felix Roasting Co. is everything wrong with the modern world, and I am perhaps their most dedicated customer. I take the bait every time - sue me for wanting to taste my coffee’s terror or whatever the website says! Like every other shop in Aspen, Felix knows exactly how to remind you just how much of a peasant you are, and each time I visit I find myself taunted by a single specific menu item: the $18 Hickory Smoked S'mores Latte, a symbol of indulgence so unabashed that I expect the store will be destroyed any day now in a well-deserved act of divine punishment. A more reasoned and less gullible customer would simply laugh at this menu item and at whatever poor sucker would be willing to spend all that money on a coffee - but Felix has my number. I am that poor sucker.

I decided that I had to try this stupid latte before I left the country, but if I was going to take on the “specialty drinks” section of the Felix menu, I was going to need some moral support (i.e., someone willing to split the cost of the drink with me). Fortunately, I had the company of the lovely and patient Esther Goldberg of Denver, Colorado, who not only accepted the challenge, but didn’t mind when I refused to substitute in oat milk - sensitive Jewish tummies be damned. On Esther’s final day in Aspen, we made the pilgrimage down Main Street, arrived at Felix, then pretended to hem and haw at the menu as if we hadn’t come for a very specific purpose: “You know what, maybe we’ll get the s’mores latte! Let’s be bad. Why not!” 

Upon ordering, I was half-expecting the barista to doff her massive cowboy hat at me and bow - an appropriate gesture to show respect for the brave customer who finally had the moxie to buy the s’mores latte. She actually seemed entirely unimpressed, which to me implies that people order this monstrosity of a beverage not infrequently. Damn it - I haven’t even put my credit card down (by which I of course mean Esther’s credit card) and I already feel like less of a V.I.P. than I had hoped. Really though, I had no reason to worry. Here are a list of things that set the s’mores specialty apart from a regular latte:

• It’s served in a coupe glass, more like a cocktail than a latte. I wondered briefly if the barista had misheard me and was about to serve me an alcoholic beverage. I was kind of excited about this prospect, as alcohol would have justified the cost and would’ve probably helped me relax a little bit. No dice.

• The coupe glass comes crusted with a chocolate hazelnut rim, which I suppose is to satisfy the chocolate part of the s’mores equation. Esther blanched at this because she’s allergic to hazelnuts. I said nothing. More for me!

• The latte itself is sweetened with Felix’s homemade “graham cracker” syrup, which sounds exciting and gourmet until you think about the fact that the predominant flavor in a graham cracker is honey and cinnamon; flavorings that, actually, you can find in every single coffee shop in the world.

• The beverage comes adorned with an organic(?) vanilla marshmallow, toasted until golden-brown with a comically large blowtorch. This was actually the highlight of the drink, as the heat from the blowtorch melted the marshmallow, and I was able to mix the ensuing soft vanilla dripping into the coffee to add a fun creaminess to the experience. Coincidentally, “soft vanilla dripping” is a good way to describe my clothing style. 

More than anything else, though, what really sets this beverage apart is the “hickory smoked” element. Before serving, the barista places my drink in a large glass cocktail smoker and then infuses it with real hickory essence. This smoker produces a sound a bit like an airplane taking off, and it’s a great way to let everyone in the vicinity know that, “hey, some jerk just ordered the $18 coffee drink!” Though I could do without the public humiliation, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t quite entranced by the sheer flamboyance of it all. In fairness, if you’re going to charge me this much for a drink, I better be getting a show as well.

The burning question now is that, after all this, how does the latte actually taste? Honestly, it was fine. I didn’t like having to lick the hazelnut chocolate crust off the side of the glass; I would prefer for my beverage to stay within the confines of its receptacle, thanks very much. Even so, the flavors go pretty well together - and the marshmallow was an undeniably whimsical touch. Esther tried some of the non-hazelnut part and we agreed that it was “pretty good,” or, if nothing else, not a total waste of time and money. I don’t know if I would get it again, but I enjoyed the experience, and it gives me a fun story to tell. I’ve taken great pleasure in telling my Japanese friends that one coffee in Aspen costs almost ¥3000 and watching them react with absolute horror and disgust. 

When all is said and done, the Felix Roasting Co. Hickory Smoked S’mores Latte is one of the stupidest purchases I’ve ever made, but I don’t have any regrets - and maybe there’s a lesson about home somewhere amidst the hickory smoke. If I can acknowledge that this beverage is obnoxious but still enjoy it, maybe I should afford Aspen the same kind of grace. Sure, I may never really feel like I fit in here, but the great thing about life is that I don’t have to: I can feel thankful to have grown up in town with such an abundance of resources, while also acknowledging for the future that the proper maintenance of my mental health necessitates I live within 30 minutes of a good banh mi. What’s the point in being resentful of my hometown when I can make like Fran, drink something sweet, and wait for the feeling to pass? She’d probably be disappointed that my desire to write still persists - but after a coffee, it’s worth noting that the writing is no longer in the form of sappy, hackneyed poetry. That stuff’s staying in the Notes app. For now.