Small man with a big laugh, enormous 
presence, he declares, “I’d rather be 
the head of a chicken than the tail of a bull.”
That’s why he chose to be a street cook 
in Osaka, renting a makeshift stall, rather than 
a chef presiding in starched whites 
over someone else’s stove, a dozen 
sous chefs at his command. 
He’d rather insult customers, order them 
to bus their orders, wash their plates, 
eliciting delight with every takedown. 
For this, they stand hours in the heat or rain. 
They’ve come to watch him hold 
a blowtorch in one hand, stirring 
tuna with the other under an open flame.

After an episode of Netflix series, The Chef’s Table

You grew up in the green Virginia hills, 
sliding on slag heaps overgrown with 
Jimson weed and kudzu, a childhood
out of a dream, before your father 
died at 39 and you became apprentice 
in your grandmother’s garden 
and kitchen, hoeing and peeling, 
feeding the murky jug of vinegar
its regular cup of wine, watering 
and weeding, putting by the family’s 
food for winter. In those hills, 
everyone had a garden where they 
teased out novel strains, varieties 
to bear the family name at county fairs 
and farmer’s markets, a richness 
disappearing even then—streaked 
and spotted beans, sweet melons, 
tomatoes, lumpy and fragrant, 
far from the corporate consistency 
we’ve grown to prize. Later, 
you searched for those lost seeds, 
tracing foods brought over on the slave ships, 
mixed new methods with the old, 
cooking the same few dishes obsessively 
for months to get them perfect—brewing, 
planting, till your body just gave out. 
At 39, the age your father died, you finally 
learned to live, standing in a field 
enjoying what you’d made, as God 
must have rested under the broad 
branches of the Live Oak, before 
leaving the world to its own wild ways.