It wasn’t a curse, but a blessing she was offering;

Welcome! F*ck you! Sit down! Four hours! she yelled, waving all but her thumb in the air with one hand, and beckoning us to sit down with the other. Half in exhilaration and half in fear, we snagged two chairs under the bamboo-thatched roof of the small home-cum-restaurant in Koh Phangan, Thailand, that some svelte German bloke staying in the sandy hut next to ours implored us surely not to miss. Sie ist sehr verrückt he seemed to warn, although it oddly seemed more of an invitation we dare not decline. Ver-what? we asked. Verrückt, he repeated. Like, achtung. Crazy.

The unmistakable aromas of lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves were intoxicating. Beers were on the honor system—help yourself from the fridge; the men’s bathroom perfunctorily marked by a remarkably two-dimensional sharpied sketch of Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg.

It wasn’t a curse, but a blessing she was offering; the kind of welcome that beautifully embodied everything that the food of Thailand had come to represent for us: a wild melange of spice and comfort, sour and sweet, and that special zjuhn-say-kwah quality—that intangible and attractive funk—that food writers like to duffle pack under the term umami. 

Buzzed with excitement and a few Chang beers, I risked joining the statistics of missing tourists in Thailand—or worse, being denied this crazy lady’s legendary panang neua—and jumped back into the kitchen to help. First I tackled the towers of dirty dishes, cleaned and peeled about a million prawns, all while she was slugging vodka from the bottle. And then—hours(?) later—something incredible happened. She grabbed my hand and placed it on the handle of her wok. Now taste! she instructed. Now you stir! Now you taste!

I don’t really know where I’m going with this but, like traveling, or the best dining experiences, that’s where the invaluable moment of discovery lies—in chasing the unknown with wide eyes and a hungry heart; to live (and eat) like Tennyson’s Ulysses: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

To this day, that beef short rib curry remains unmatched by a far stretch. Whether it was the perfect balance of fish sauce and tamarind or just the enchanting spell that crazy lady seemed to cast over us is hard to say. Regardless, it was an unforgettable and life-altering experience, one that will remain with me forever. 

What I seek to do here is to curate and facilitate similar ineffable experiences. To take what I’ve seen and experienced (and tasted), and breathe new life into them for you to enjoy. The poet’s job, I’ve always believed, is one of translation. 

I hope and believe in the transcendental magic of language to bring the pungent curries of Thailand or the warm, buttery wafts of Paris’ ubiquitous boulangeries across the screen and smack you right in the  middle of the face, tantalizing you with an irresistible want for more.

So hold on to your skivvies, as my dad would always say, hugging a hairpin turn in our 1989 Ford Aerostar minivan—that would eventually be the only car I had until after college—because we’re going for a ride. 

—dsp