Fortune-Telling Picture

There's a picture I look at everyday.

For years I have been studying this picture giving it the time you'd give a masterpiece. Its truly a mesmerising picture: vivid, haunting, packed with detail and movement. There are days when its lifted me, inspired me, and driven me to move forward. If it had a title, perhaps it would be called life. It has the power to change a life. I can't measure its value to me and I didn't pay a penny for it. I can't imagine anyone else would want to own it. Its a picture that is on display but only has had an audience of one. It is a picture in my mind: one single, soulful memory of when I last shared a time in the kitchen with someone very special to me. A lingering memory that has been there with me from event to event, and kitchens to kitchens all over the place. Its a recurring image flashing in and out of my head as I have worked my way from one dimensional chef to author, speaker, and restaurateur. The image is invisible to the press, media, and critics. It feeds the child within me and is the foundation for the person I am today. It's a snapshot of a time of innocence, reverie, and fairytale hopes. A flash, as if it were lightning, where fate and prophecy collide.

It's that special person sitting around the counter, and I, not even old enough to do many things (I recall I still had braces) , making them a meal. At that point in time, I had not decided to become a chef yet. This was surely the first meal I had ever made for someone and it rendered that feeling of satisfaction chefs attain when they know they've made a wonderful dish. Ironically, it was purely unintentional and one of those moments where someone says, "I'm hungry, make me something to eat." So I put my game face on, and took a shot at it, afterall, doubt would not feed an empty stomach. I looked in the pantry, the refrigerator, and gathered my ingredients and equipment. Two hours later and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I had created a semi-delicious meal for someone and it was by accident - or not.

That day, that person told me, "I hope you cook for me like this for the rest of my life. You should think about becoming a chef. But if you don't want to become a chef, whatever you do, do it with as much love, detail, and passion as you did this dish, today."

As one of my mentors once said (Thomas Keller), "We take one fundamental lesson we learn from our youth and apply it to everything we do later in life and this will translate into our cooking. A vision or memory will move us toward the pursuit of our dreams."

As fate would have it, I became a chef. Back then, even though I didn't know it, my life was being shown to me in one moment. It was beautiful. Cooking without rules, recipes, or guidelines. I was doing it to merely feed someone - a gesture of kindness, nuture, and nothing else. However, in its innocence and virtue lay a fortune-telling greatness.

Now, I still see that picture and it drives me. " I hope you cook for me like this for the rest of my life........whatever you do, do it with as much love, detail, and passion as you did this dish, today."

It's that picture that has taken me everywhere.