Several years ago, on one of my stops in Paris, I befriended a chef named Maurice. For 40 straight nights, I ate in his restaurant and he sent me everything in this world that could possibly be eaten…some of it inedible. That’s where I got my true culinary education, from Chef Mo. For that stretch and then continuing in life, I became his greatest admirer and critic and sounding board. He worked with fierceness and owned this dedication that were both at the time, so unknown to me. We became friends and stayed remotely in touch. When he decided on opening up his own place back home in Seville, a place that would immediately fuck the map of world culinary excellence, I asked if I could study under him. He said yes. I moved to Seville.
I told him right away I wasn’t interested in getting paid and he said something like, are you crazy…I wasn’t going to fucking pay you John. We agreed on the word apprenticeship, because I liked the way it sounded, and I painted him with lines like, your presence and knowledge alone is richness to me. No one is immune to praise, least of all proud Spaniards. I spent my days following him around from morning to night, 6 days a week and sleeping 20 hours on Sundays, writing after I had finished a shift in the kitchen and a few cocktails, powering through exhaustion so heavy, I thought it possible I might die from it. At one point, Mo asked me if I was trying to be like Hemingway. I told him yes…or that I was at one point but not anymore. When we were together, cooking was the only art. I wanted to be an artist to Mo, to stretch and struggle and suffer for something that was new and beautiful to me. It moved him when I spoke of the one thing he truly loved in this manner. Now that my days were nearing their end, I began to cycle out sleep…sometimes awake until 4 in the morning before sleeping for an hour before running for two before meeting Mo at the markets at 7. I learned how to pick fruits and vegetables, to sift and be discriminate in finding the night’s perfect proteins. He taught me to revere our time at the markets, saying something like, what happens here paves the way for what happens there (pointing to his restaurant)…if you fuck up here, you’re fucked back there…even I can’t rescue a dickhead haul do you understand? The market was his church, his survival, his livelihood and he treated every vendor as his deity. I’d watch him move through the bouquets of goods like a dancer, all elegance and intensity, listening to the food because I swear it spoke to him. He was loved by some and loathed by others…respected by all, a knight of the court before us and I was his squire, content just to hold the horse.
