THE BLIND CHUKA SOBA MASTER

Although by now I am a pretty well rounded and well known food writer, there was once a time when I drifted aimlessly, like a single scallion aswirl in a steaming soup broth. And if you asked me how I had come to find my profession, you would find I stumbled upon it just as aimlessly; that it had taken more than one lesson for me to take it seriously.

You see, for a long time, when it came to food, my taste and tolerance for heat had always been near nil. There were certain cuisines that I just couldn't... stand up to. And, I'd gotten used to this. I had accepted the fact that I would forever sweat uncontrollably, as if melting, upon entering any Indian restaurant. I would never be able spoon wasabi into soy sauce. I would never be able to dip a tortilla chip into salsa. Nor would I ever eat any type of curry, no matter how mild the mixture was claimed to be. Never. I had accepted that. I'd come to terms with it. Some people were allergic to peanuts. Others, like myself, were allergic to flavor.

It was a strange year, when this acuity of mine kicked into overdrive, thrusting all food fare into the realm of sheer allergen while at the same time increasing my craving for them. I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I was forced to insulate a hypersensitive sense of taste from the newly amplified heat of ordinary herbs and spices. I had become ten times for reactive to food than any supertaster.

I was dealing with a tongue as reactive to spice as a snail to salt. Even the slightest pinch or dash of black pepper would boil the sweat out from under my skin as if every pore was a roiling hot pot. With any given meal, my preferred ratio of protein to spice would be 6 ounces to a few grains. I had to forget my normal eating habits. Any dish that had been on my regular rotation suddenly betrayed me with a blast of nuclear heat. It was as if I were cramming handfuls of habernero peppers and ghost chilis into my mouth. Simple, throwaway meals that I normally scarfed down and forgot about a few minutes later – like an ordinary can of beef and barley soup – would last me weeks. It took an additional gallon of water to dilute it's flavor to meet acceptable flavor levels, leaving me with a large red, soup pot of leftovers.

For a while, I no longer enjoyed food. Eating on the go required too much portioning, and much of what I purchased at Foodland and Times and the Kokua market began piling up in my refrigerator and going to seed. I had never thought of a cup of rice as pungent and acidic, but when a simple bowl of brown rice began yielding a few unexpectedly piquant notes of its own, I admit I began warming up to the novelty of my condition. After all, it was an economical and healthy way to live. I drastically cut back on my sodium intake and I even lost 20 pounds after the first month. I could stretch items out over a span of weeks. Half a teaspoon of apple juice concentrate in a liter of water was enough for me to taste an entire orchard. I became aware of certain ghostly echoes in everything I prepared as if I were a culinary psychic who could never tune down those voices. I became haunted. I ate with my eyes closed, and counted every speck of pepper and every grain of salt. I was a spirit medium channeling a single grain of salt floating in blackness. I'd let the steam waft up through my palms, and it was as if I could see the world it came from.

* * *

The otolaryngologists could make nothing of it. They told me that everything was in order. All test results were exemplary of a healthy 30 year old male. Aside from being a complete food wimp, I was in perfect physical condition. Although there were individuals in the world that were called supertasters – those with anatomical variations such as a higher number of fungiform papillae on their tongues – acute episodes were not known. My condition, therefore, may have been more of a psychological tenure, as if a certain sustained tension had manifested itself in my mouth. "It could be stress. It could be your diet. It could all just be relative, and it's a matter of perception." said Doctor Shin. He had just examined my tongue with a pair of pincers. He continued, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Has there been any psychological trauma? Or there may be something that you aren't even aware of, mentally. I could recommend a few specialists for you, if you'd like. Or you could just wait this out."

I decided to wait it out, to see where this anomaly would take me. Every kid feels they are special, as they are told, but at some point they realize a certain skill or talent that sets them apart from the others. Some people feel they are attuned to something larger, that there was something in store for them. For a lot of folks, as they grow older, this feeling disappears. For me, it had all but gone away. This new development, strange and inconvenient as it was, was a welcome one.

* * *

There are new flavors that I enjoy. I can taste everything. I can even taste the difference between different brands of bottled water simply for the industrial echoes of their entire packaging process. Dasani tastes a bit more metallic than Evian. Smart water tastes the closest to rain, if it weren’t for it’s own particular tannins, no matter how gentle, that it owes to the brand of plastic its encased in. In some obscure brands I can taste the sand, gravel and crushed granite that filtered it in stages, and in others I can savor the all natural methods of filtration through the slight smokiness of charcoal and wood, and yet in others, those that utilize more modern methods such as reverse osmosis, I can taste the mechanics behind it.

Some call it superhuman, others see it as a sign of frailty and weakness. Some find it annoying while others claim it endearing.

One night, over dinner at a quiet, tucked away Thai Restaurant, my girlfriend and I watched a man take on the challenge of eating a nuclear concoction of curry. He had been sweating, and he had the same sheen as the golden Buddha statue that greeted us at the door. The challenge was simple. Finish the 18 chili curry and your postmortem photograph is placed on an alter, burst capillaries an all, for all future patrons to admire. The man of course had a tongue made of wood - it may as well had been a clothes pin. Meanwhile, I myself had a share of the mildest of yellow curry, just a teaspoon of it, to mix into a bowl of my basmatti rice - the equivalent of stirring a dash of curry powder into it. Its flavor sent fire trucks coursing through my veins, sirens blaring. Sweat pooled in the wells below my eye sockets. I asked for water and drunk it down while the waiter was still there, tasting the bitter citrus-scented dish soap the pitcher had been washed in.

My girl, Nat, embarrased more for me than for herself asked me “Why did you choose this place?”

I dabbed at the little rivulets of sweat off of my eyelids and told her that I was craving it. A moth to flame.

“That was too much? That teaspoon?" she asked. Although we had been living with this disorder, or gift, for some time, she always found it new, and always asked me what if questions.

“You could have been happy with a slice of bread and pat of lightly salted butter. What happens if you eat chocolate. Or something without any spice whatsoever? Like candy or a fruit? Something super sweet.”

“I taste it threefold. It’s super concentrated."

"Do you enjoy anything like any other normal person would? Soda crackers?"

"It's all about portioning. Recently, though, if it’s really good to begin with I sob uncontrollably. This just happened last week. This Thai chef brought some perfectly proportioned curry for me, and it was so good I began crying."

She arched her eyebrow. "Are you sure it was the food?"

"Yes. It was that good." I toyed with the votive on our table.

"It's food. How can it make you cry?" She asked again, brows knit together in concern. She leaned forward and patted my chin with a napkin.

"It's a different kind of emotion. The emotional uplift that makes you cry. It’s brought about by what you would perceive as incredible kindness. It’s called elevation.”

“Elevation?”

I nodded. “I see it as a form of extreme empathy. From one human being to another, something prepared and shared with only the pleasure of the recipient in mind. It’s as if someone understands the meaning of life altogether and they can only articulate it in a specific way.”

"And so you cried? Were you feeling sorry for yourself? About your condition?"

"No. It was just. That. Good." I smiled.

She shrugged. "Why the elevation? Why note it as kindness? They're making money off of it."

"Even if they are making money off it now, it wasn't always like that. Not in terms of humanity. These are echoes of tradition and culture. I suppose I'm beginning an increasingly emotional relationship with the food I eat. It's all very personal to me now. I suppose, now, more than before, I respect every ingredient. I root for each one. I know this sounds strange but, even my dreams have flavors. I even have anxiety dreams where certain foods taste wrong. I pick up my favorite fruit, a platter of strawberries, and they taste like bananas. Anyway... I guess it's the fact that someone could be this good. That they would think to do this in a certain way to, you know, elevate it. It's inspiring. "

“What if you kiss someone,” she asked. “Do you start sobbing? It’s an act of kindness. A gesture of love. Doesn’t that elevate you when you kiss me? Or do you just taste my meal?”

“I suppose that’s a little different.”

“I see. I guess I don’t move you as much do I?”

“It’s not that. I’ve seen you go through tissue packets at weepy romance movies. But I don't expect you to swoon over every gesture I make. It’s the same thing. It’s the conversion of elements at a precise moment in time set against each other in a precise way. And it gets at you.”

I fell silent. Nat dipped her fork into her curry.

“You should take advantage of this new found talent. Don't waste it.” she said. “Maybe we can do a video blog series. We’ll see if there is any chef in oahu that can prepare a dish that’s pitch perfect on your own terms. I’m sure it’ll all taste like oatmeal to everyone else, but that will be the challenge. If he can do it, he is a Master of Flavor.”

“What’s entertaining about that?”

She lifted her head and examined the mustard yellow wall. “Well, the chef could speak for a little while, show the viewer how little that he’s using. Then he’ll bring it out to you, and you taste it. If it elicits the response I just witnessed, you know, the tell tale signs of watery eyes and sweaty forehead, then he loses the challenge. You get a laugh. Then, having set the tone and premise of a low tolerance for heat, the chef brings out his spiciest concoction and you gorge on it.”

“Pretty self flagellating.”

"And funny, too.”

* * *

Of course we really went ahead with it! It seemed playful and funny. We posted a few poorly lit shots of me leaning my elbows onto a checkered table cloth, shoving forks of spicy garlic shrimp or mongolian spicy beef and coming up with a red alert. And of course sometimes I gagged and poured cold water down my throat and over my head for good effect. Nat could be heard laughing off camera and then she would set the camera down on the table and the frame would stop shaking. She’d come over and help me catch my breath. The part that failed with any viewers was the fact that they couldn’t really taste how mild the food really was. I had even dipped the slices of beef into a glass of water to cool it. It just seemed fake. It just ended up being another poorly conceived and poorly executed video on youtube.

Eventually we stopped doing those videos. They got more negative comments than any positive ones. "Stupid" and "Fake" being two of them. But we enjoyed watching them ourselves. We decided to do one more, and it was at a small yatai, or noodle house. We had heard about a remarkable chef there. He was a blind ramen chef. We had heard about his modest establishment in Liliha, and were curious about this blind cook. He was considered a master in Ebisu, his old neighborhood in Tokyo, where he owned a few yatais. He was the blind swordsman of noodles, only rarely did he make a minor error. Unfortunately, that night would be one of those nights. During the preparation of our meal, he used spicy miso and sesame oil instead of watered down pork broth for my noodles and I ended up having a small seizure on the floor. Someone called the chef as I convulsed between the legs of the table, and he stumbled out of his kitchen like a mummy stumbling out of an exhumed coffin. He held his hands out a and walked slowly, eyes blind as water chestnuts. A waitress led him to us. He bowed his head. To Nat, he was very apologetic about the entire ordeal and asked us to come back to dinner, on the house.

"Please," he said. "Forgive me. I am usually so careful with allergic foods."

Nat explained the situation to him; my hypersensitivity to certain flavors. He nodded as she spoke and then said “Not hyper sensitivity." He pointed to his ear. “Hyper sensitive is like how I hear. I hear better than most other. But hyper aware, that is how I taste and cook. He has honed a palette. It is a skill on the cusp. But it is there.”

Nat answered, “It’s a very weak palette.”

The chef nodded, “I understand. It doesn’t take a much. Please come back. I show you what I can do.”

I got up and waved it off to the crowd gathering outside of the establishment's door, which in retrospect was ridiculous thing to do.

* * *

When we returned a week later, the waitress remembered us to the chef. He kindly greeted us and he told me that he had been preparing a pitch perfect broth for weeks, just in case I came back. The broth was perfectly balanced with just enough spice for me to appreciate it’s flavor, yet the only thing I could see in it was the rippling square of the ceiling light reflected on its surface. To enhace the appearance of it, it was served to me in an austere white bowl without the usual japanese-inspired ornamentation. There was a hint of salty pork broth, subtle earthiness of bamboo shoots, the sweetness of shiitake mushrooms, as well as roasted sesame oil, wakame, konyaku, all a swirl in a crystal clear broth. To Nat it simply tasted like water. To me, it tasted like a bowl that had been transported from household in Kumamoto, Japan. I closed my eyes and I could taste exactly two grains of pepper, and a single speck of salt. How did he dissolve it so evenly in the noodles? It was like spreading a pat of butter perfectly over a basketball court. I started sobbing. Despite myself, I started weeping like a child.

We returned there three times a week. And each time, there was a new broth for me to try. Each invention was crystal clear, and he assured me that there were no additives. “No collagen in this whatsoever?” I asked once. The broth sat like a clear lens in my bowl. When I tasted it, it was thick and rich. To Nat, it tasted like water. “None,” the chef laughed. “Do you like?”

I did.

“It’s amazing,” Nat said softly. She delicately dipped my wooden spoon into the broth and sipped lightly. “I can’t taste a thing. But you say it's rich and smoky?”

"It is," I said.

“Do you like a yours?” the chef asked.

Nat brought her face down to her own bowl and took in the aroma of her Tonkatsu broth. “It’s perfect,” she said, dreamily.

* * *

Nat and I had only been together for 10 months But I knew that over the course of those meals, she had become more interested in the soups than I had been. She began asking more technical questions about the preparation of each. The last time we were there together, the ramen chef sat with us and began a soliloquy on the flavors of ramen broth and how they are all a part of one big symphony. He expounded on the tradition of it that was carried through his family, how it began in China 4000 years ago, how it made its way to Japan and how it had become a mainstay in Japan throughout the food shortages during the war. It was a single long noodle spanning through each generation of his family.

He told us about going blind as a cook, how it started in his thirties as dark spot in the center of his vision, as if someone were holding a mirror in front of him that reflected nothing but darkness. Still, he worked in his kitchen, occasionally knocking things over. When the doctors told him there was nothing they could do, he cooked faster, racing against the curtains. When his peripheral vision started to wane, he walked in to his kitchen early one morning before any work had begun and called out to his staff. "Stop! Let me take on last look at this and from this day on, nothing is to be put out of place. Everything now is where it belongs and is never to be misplaced. Understood?"

"Yes chef!" they all said. And for years, he cooked with the aid to two helpers guiding him around the kitchen. Herbs and spices, pot handles and cutlery, refrigerators and freezers were all labeled with braille. There were bad burns and deep cuts, but he continued cooking. He worked slowly and with aides on both sides. No matter how impractical and even hazardous this seemed, it was his was his kitchen, and he would never leave it.

If he thought navigating his workplace was difficult, he would come to know the nightmare of not seeing what he was tasting. Vision, playing such a large role in the sense of taste, had taken with it an entire lexicon for flavors. He had difficulty discerning the difference between chicken and pork. He couldn't tell the difference between kale and cabbage. He had to retrain himself to identify flavors and textures that he had taken for granted. He worked tirelessly. Eventually, his handicap had become his strength. Flavors became more pure. Without the distraction of sight and a visual bias toward foods he was able to cut to the bone of the matter, so to speak, and master flavors no other chef would have ever considered. Soon, he took to strictly composing dishes. He traveled and tasted the flavors of different cultures. And what he learned, he applied to his own creations. Every dish was leaner. More concentrated. They were like symphonies – no note out of place.

The chef waxed poetic about it until Nat’s eyes gleamed like portals to some distant noodle house. I knew the path we were on would offer up a fork in the road soon. She grew quieter and quieter at each meal. And she only brightened up when he appeared. Eventually, she began eating at the ramen shop alone.

One night - and this is the evening I always return to - I got home from work and found Nat in the tub. She was up to her neck in white bubbles. It had been a week since we shared any quiet time together.

"Mind if I join you?" I asked.

"No, not at all," she scooted up and I undressed and climbed in behind her. I massaged her shoulders, and herded bubbles along her arms.

"Do you know that painting by Vincent Van Gogh?" she asked. Her voice, soft, echoed off the tiles.

"Starry night?" So did mine.

"No. Um. Sunflowers."

"Maybe."

"It's a bright, manic painting of sunflowers."

"Ok. No."

"It's the story behind them I'm interested in."

"Tell me."

She sat up a little, forming rounded foam balls in her hands. "They say Van Gogh cut off his ear because he couldn't paint his self portrait right. He was clinically depressed. Maybe bi-polar. He was passionate about his art and he went through manic highs and lows in trying to get at that certain something. And there was Paul Gaugin, another painter who was frustrated as an artist, who longed to leave his home in Paris because he felt it was too corrupt and decadent. Dominated by the wealthy. I guess he wanted to go somewhere pure, where some human truth could be discovered."

"So this is about these two artists who meet and start a commune?" I asked. I let my foot sit on the ledge of the tub. With my other foot I hit the hot water knob and more bubbles and steam wafted up around us..

"Basically yeah," she continued. "They had seen each other's paintings and respected and admired each other's works. They exchanged self portraits. Paintings of nature. And eventually agreed to form a studio."

"Homeboys for life. Brohemians."

She laughed and splashed a few droplets of water in my face. A droplet landed on my lower lip and I could taste enchanted orchid bubbles, dead seas salts, her perfume, Happy, and all of her chemistry swirling together.

"Well," she went on, "Van Gogh proved to be a needy, clingy type of guy. They argued continuously about how they should paint. One argued to paint from nature while the other said to paint from the imagination and sometimes they would compromise. Gaugin, however, was a bit more laid back. A bit more level headed. Yeah, he had his convictions but they never became obsessions."

"But with Van Gogh..." I chimed in.

"It meant everything. And because they were friends, Van Gogh basically would not stop arguing his point. Because they were friends, he needed Gaugin to agree, to be like minded. And this ate him up because Gaugun had his own opinions and wouldn't follow suit. He went off on his own explorations and had his own ideas and this devastated Van Gogh."

"So he chopped off his own ear."

"I suppose at around that time, yeah. This was too much. Gaugin left the studio, and although he remained a distant friend, he never went back to work with Van Gogh again."

"Who would?"

"Van Gogh was admitted into an asylum. He was considered mentally unwell. And until his endgame, he painted. He painted his most famous works while in an insane asylum."

"And then?"

"What remains among his works is the sunflowers. A gift to Gaugin. A symbol of a friendship they could never return to. In a language that is undecipherable by anyone except the two artists involved. I can imagine it. To any other art critic, it's a work of a great artist. To Gaugin, within those strokes, the color choices, the lines and composition, is obsessiveness, stubborness, regret, love, a final appeal for understanding. An entirely different message."

She fell silent. The water beneath the cloud of bubbles lolled back and forth. She lifted her leg out of the water and a series of rivers, tides and waterfalls cascaded along her leg. Through the bubbles it was like a peak protuding through grey storm clouds.

"What are you trying to tell me?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's just been on my mind. Let's say you have a father who is deaf, and you grow up to become a famous opera singer? How do you reach him?"

"Wait. Now why an opera singer?"

"Painting, singing – what's the difference? My question is what language do you use when your primary one isn't enough? Van Gogh wasn't good with people, but he could pour his heart out in his paintings."

"I don't get it," I said. "So.... There's creation and perception, right? Which side would I stand on in this analogy?" I asked.

"Neither! God. None of them are about you. It's just... I'm trying to get at something here. I just don't know, you know?" She sat up.

"What don't you know?" I asked.

"I don't know what I don't know." And with that, she climbed out of the tub.

* * *

I knew what was coming. I deserved it. I was dense and insensitive, and I didn't really pay too much attention to what she was going through. Inevitably, she ended up exiting stage east with him. She couldn’t help it, she told me later. “I guess all the elements converged for me when we met him. I’m going to travel to Tokyo with him. I've been learning under him for some time. I supposed at around that time I started eating here alone. I know you noticed but never said anything. It started off casually enough, but then something clicked. He’ll teach me a thing or two, and he says I have a natural knack for this. I guess I understand the kind of elevation you feel sometimes now when it comes to food. Only, I’d rather be the one on the other side of the restaurant. I want to be in the kitchen, making food people could weep over. I've always wanted to master a language. An art. And I want it to speak for me so that I wouldn't have to say a word. I just never knew what that was. You understand? I can't let this go.”

Before they left a year later, I visited them one last time at the noodle shop. She was working in the kitchen, assisting him with each dish. She had prepared the same broth for me and told me that she was glad that I had come. It turned out that the process of preparing it involved a wood block filtration system. It took an entire week and involved "pulling" and "kneading" the broth. And she had prepared it without knowing if she would ever see me again.

She brought the bowl out to me herself and sat with me as I savored it. It was beautifully done and I swallowed my pride with each spoonful. With each tasting, it's flavor grew weaker and weaker, until it became as bland as water. My sense of taste had readjusted itself, finally. All the noise over my tastebuds quieted. The bowl of soup which started out vibrant ended up flavorless. After that, more flavors were lost to me. And no matter how much I yearned for my senses to reconfigure themselves, to revive their hyper acute state, they never did. Such is a quirk in the face of heartbreak. I was now tasking a bowl of water.

Nat's newfound talent had become considerable, and I had read about her here and there in culinary magazines. She had become a famous figure in her own right, an apprentice of the famous blind chuka soba master. I don't know what I don't know, she had told me. And by that she meant she didn't know where her talents lay. At what depths. At what potential.

The soup bowl sat cold and empty on the table. I looked up at Nat and smiled. She smiled back. "Well, that takes care of that," she said, surely meaning my own tasteology.

"Nicely done," I said. "I'm cured."

"Thank you." she let her hand rest on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Take care of yourself," she said, but when she did, she leaned down and whispered it into my ear. I closed my eyes and let her pick up the empty bowl. She walked away with it and never returned. I would never have another bowl like it again.

Nat had figured things out for herself, and in doing so, she had turned my world upside down. When I left, I shut myself in for a week. I kept my phone off. I rarely ate. For the first time ever, I felt not just adrift, but truly lost. What if I lacked the wherewithal to reinvent myself. What would my path be?

Then I recalled once there was a television channel called BookTV, and there was a small awards program – not unlike the oscars – one that any industry lavishes on it's first and foremost talents. Only in this case, an A-list actor was the master of ceremonies. There was an old woman, about eighty years old, who had dreamed all her life of being a writer. At eighty, she was published for the first time. At eighty, she had won a book award. I don't remember her name or the book she had written. Maybe it was a book on sunflowers. It doesn't matter. What it was about, or even the fact that it was a book is beside the point. When she stood at the podium, she smiled triumphantly and said — as only a woman after a life of hard dreaming and searching could ever say — "I am a prime example that it's never too late to bloom." And if it's true for her, it's true for everyone.