Nomad Chef Secret Restaurant

The day before yesterday I received a strange email from someone. I had no idea who she was but I’m used to getting emails from strangers. She said the night before she had helped out at another secret restaurant in London and had had so much fun that she wanted to do it again in another venue. She asked me: “Could I be of any help waitressing/washing up?”

I couldn’t believe my incredible fortune! We were completely sold out and had at least 24 people coming for dinner. I’d already posted on my personal FB page asking if any of my friends wanted to come help out. No luck. And then less than 24 hours before the dinner I get this angel from somewhere out there in the ether saying that she wanted to do exactly what I needed help with. And then when I gave her the address it turned out she lived a mere 4 or 5 houses away from us, on the same street!

Was this divine luck the nature of prayer? Or the power of food? There is something so special about the people who choose to attend a dinner in a secret location with, at least in our case, an unspecified menu, filled with complete strangers. Someone asked me last night, as happens often enough, “Don’t you worry about letting strangers into your house?” No, uh, I guess I never thought to worry. From the first time we opened the doors to the Nomad Chef about 2 ½ years ago, we have had only the nicest people come to dinner. I think it is somehow self-selecting. Only those passionate about meeting new people and trying great food in secret locations would turn up. And who are these people? They are often in the 30s, but we have younger and older too. They are usually professionals and often in the creative fields. And they love food. But it is even more special when a 20 year old university student chooses to come and help! So there is really nothing to worry about!

The angel came to my door last night, 15 minutes before the guests, 24 of them who were mostly strangers. She is passionate about food. And curious. I guess she did some research about secret restaurants and our name came up. Was her courage to go a strange place and offer to help nurture or nature? I think she is the youngest stranger to come to the Nomad Chef. She rocked up and pitched right in – hostessed, served cocktails, washed dishes, plated food and helped serve. How did she know how to do any of this? I later learned that she’d never even been a waitress and this was only her second visit to a secret restaurant as a visiting helper. It must be nurture, I figured. But no! She said she grew up in a family where food was only fuel, not an obsession or passion like it is for her, or for me, or for most of our guests. Wow, so then it must be nature!

Today I woke up to a thank you note from this lovely angel! She’d beat me to it. I (and Bruno my boxer boyfriend and sous-chef) was the one who was supposed to be thanking her! I think this heavenly visitation came from the power of food rather than prayer. Those of us with this passion know how to find each other. And for that I am grateful.

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It’s amazing how a little sunshine can make everyone feel so much better. I just spent a few days in my old neighborhood, the Cote d’Azur in the south of France. It was mostly warm and sunny and the beautiful blue sea was mirrored by a clear blue sky. Before I left London we’d had what seemed like weeks of what seemed like early summer so now I feel really spoiled. And talking about spoiled, while I was in Antibes I stayed with an old friend who is a chef and former restauranteur. She is from Corsica and some of her family are Berbers from North Africa. She cooked for me most nights for a week and the flavors were amazing, infused with sunshine. Being cooked for was such a treat. And our mutual love of food led to many plans for adventures in the South of France (a 2 day cooking workshop during the Cannes Film Festival just a few miles away in a lovely villa – let me know if you would like to join us), a dinner in London that she will co-chef with me (10th of May; will be posted here soon) and a Nomad Chef road show to include Napa and San Francisco! So excited!

On the subject of sunshine, we decided to celebrate by having a little early summer dinner here at the Nomad Chef. Please join us for our Nomad Chef: Holland Park Beach Party! on the 21st of April. We’re going to cook food inspired by tropical paradises! And you can practice for summer by wearing a beautiful sarong or wild Hawaiian shorts and shirts.

We have lots of sunny plans for the next few months, and all of them include food. Join our mailing list if you want to be sure of being invited.

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Never in the long, long history (we were 2 years on our last birthday, February 14th!) have we forgotten to post an upcoming dinner on the site! This is reason to break all of the rules! What has been happening here at the Nomad Chef that we can be guilty of such a huge oversight? Well, it is a long story… It started one year ago, almost to the day. A road trip that became a year long journey. We took the Nomad Chef on the road… well, I guess I have to say, I took the Nomad Chef on the road. My faithful sous chef (and boyfriend) had no interest in going on the road with our restaurant. And even less interest in participating in the making of a documentary. So, armed with a trusty companion, I made the journey alone. And it was the beginning of Nomad Chef as a pop up restaurant. So much fun to cook in strange places, strange kitchens, for complete strangers. And you can read about the documentary here if you like. It is a separate, but very related project. And the film was finished today! So, it is all the more reason for us to celebrate!

So, if you are stumbling across this page, and wondering when to pop by the Nomad Chef in London, the time is now! Or rather, the 28th of March.

Here is the scoop:

Come help us celebrate everything pink, including cherry blossoms! This will be the Nomad Chef’s 3rd Cherry Blossom Festival dinner, so we are going to really boogie! Sadly our cherry blossom tree has white flowers. That means we decided that we all should dress up in pink! We’ll cook some lovely pink dishes… and maybe we’ll even have pink cocktails!

The dinner, a multi-course meal, will be inspired by Japan, and sprinkled with the fusion of many other flavors. And of course we’ll have a fabulous pudding (or two!). We look forward to welcoming you back if you have dined with us before, and hope that if you haven’t come to the Nomad Chef before that you make this evening your first experience.

A vegetarian option is always available.

£35 per adult as contribution for food – you bring your own wine or alcoholic beverage. Purchase your tickets here.

Having just had our two year old birthday, please forgive us for our terrible twos and tantrums. We really wanted to tell you about this dinner. It has been planned for a couple of weeks. But our inner rebel came out and kind of got control. We are trying to let our inner adult regain the reins. We so appreciate your patronage! And we love having you beautiful strangers, those who are about to become our friends, in our home to share a meal!

See www.nomadchef.com or the Nomad Chef Facebook Page for more info.

Note: The address to the restaurant will be sent out two days before the dinner.

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I can’t believe exactly a month has gone by since my last post! I think I have been having too much fun, or else I’ve been very busy cooking – same thing really. Today is Thanksgiving, a special day for foodies and a particularly special day for me. My son and I spent some of our happiest days together on Thanksgivings as it was one of the only holidays that came without any baggage. It is a day all about food, our favorite shared passion. This it the 3rd Thanksgiving I will have had without him in this world. And that makes me sad. But I had a funny experience today where I thought I’d lost something in the kitchen and it turned up unexpectedly – I kind of figure he invisibly put it in my path. I’m not really sure what I believe in, but I like to think that if ever something would call him back to this earth from wherever he is it would be food. So I’m imagining him hovering and breathing in the wonderful aromas in my house, the house he never visited. He would be here now if he could be. So he must be, somewhere.

It is traditional to think of things that make us feel grateful on Thanksgiving. While growing up we used to each say something we were grateful for as we were sitting at the dinner table. I did the same thing with my son at our Thanksgiving dinners. So, I might try it tonight with the Nomad Chef dinner guests. I think there are only a couple of Americans coming tonight, it will mostly be Brits including some of my son’s friends and some of my new friends, people I’ve met since starting the Nomad Chef. I’m serving my family’s traditional oyster pie as the starter. I love serving it to people and seeing their surprised, wary regard for it. Not sure why so many people don’t like oysters. Everyone eventually tries it though, and then it is a rush to get seconds of which there aren’t any! I’m happy to have these things from my childhood that I can share with my new friends. It’s especially important to me since I don’t have my son to carry these things forward. Others will do it in his place.

I was hard pressed to think of anything to be thankful for in the other Thanksgivings I had as a newly childless mother. But this time it is different. Maybe it’s the reason I haven’t been writing here as often. I’ve been very busy with my new life. My trip to New York a couple of weeks ago, for example (my post of a month ago was in anticipation of that trip). It was the Nomad Chef’s first pop-up in Manhattan. It was truly fab.  A lot of work shopping in a city Ive never cooked in before, and doing two dinners back to back while jet lagged, 1 1/2 hours apart, one day after another. And cooking all of it in a lovely little apartment in Tribeca with a counter of about 1 1/2 feet square! Thankful for the little coffee table that we used to prep (a lovely young woman I met at one of my dinners in London accompanied me and helped me cook). Thankful that the kitchen was super clean as it had never been used before! Thankful that we did the Chelsea dinner in an amazing space. Our hosts were lovely and shared their kitchen with complete strangers. The only challenge was that it was 7 floors up in this elegant apartment building, so serving was a little more interesting than usual. And then the exact opposite, as we cooked for 35 or so in New Jersey, in an American mega kitchen that only people in the suburbs (or mega rich) possess. Thankful for the strangers who made all this possible. And this is what I am most thankful for today – since doing my secret restaurant I have met a whole new set of friends, including many of the musicians who have come to play at our dinners. Two of my favorites were both in New York and New Jersey and came to sing at those two dinners. I am truly grateful to have them in my life. You will see why if you listen to them sing here at the dinner in Manhattan. Three years into this journey of loss, I’m finally at the point where I can start seeing some of the gains. I am thankful for that. And I wish you all, Americans anyway, a happy day with those you love. I hope you can find something to be thankful for today, and everyday.

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My temporary mission in life is to travel as much as I can. But because I don’t love traveling, or at least I don’t love being a tourist or taking vacations, I must have objectives, things to accomplish in different places. Moving makes the time pass, and going to new places allows me to grow my family of strangers – my next new friends.

A couple of weeks ago a nomad from New York passing through London on a European vacation came to dinner here. She rented a room for a few nights in what she thought was London, but was really about an hour and a half from here. So when it was time to leave our dinner, “Road Trip Diaries,” it was too late to go home. What a lucky encounter! Christina slept in our guest room so we got to spend the next morning talking. The outcome was strange but wonderful.

I did a couple of Nomad Chef dinners in Beverly Hills a few weeks ago while we were on the run from our house that was overtaken by construction. Beverly Hills because there is a lovely little apartment for rent behind the glamorous house I rented last spring to do a couple of Nomad Chef dinners AND because the owner, once a stranger, has become my friend. So I told Christina, my new friend and fellow nomad, that I’d love to do some dinners in New York (the construction here is nearly finished, but not quite, so more moving) she promptly offered up her parents’ home (well, with their permission, of course).  They live in New Jersey and have a bunch of friends who would be up for a Nomad Chef food and musical evening. Part 1 of new road tour organized!

I needed to do at least one more dinner, one in New York City, in order to feel like I’d really accomplished something. This was the hard part. I don’t really know many people in New York, least of all people in this expensive city with dining rooms that would fit 25 to 30 people. Hmm… well, that is what social networks are for. I went to one of the more exclusive social networks that I belong to and sent 10 emails to 10 complete strangers, the only criteria being that they had offered their couches up to members from other places coming through town. Aha, open friendly people. I offered to cook, hostess, clean up and have amazing music and all they had to do is be the king or queen of their roost. Not bad, eh? I got 4 responses and one of them was stunning!

My new friend, still only a virtual one, wrote back that his mom always did big dinner parties so he has grown up with them and loves them too. He loved the idea of the roving Nomad Chef and took it upon himself to find a friend with enough room for our magical evening this Thursday, October 27th. He found an amazing venue in Chelsea, perfect for Alex Berger and Chrissie Poland to perform, and plenty of room for the perfect mix of strangers. And now I have yet another new, generous friend – his friend who has opened her home for our pop-up to me, a complete stranger! But it didn’t stop there. The new friend invited his parents who have also become my new friends, by virtue of some lovely email exchanges. We seem to have a strange connection with jazz and Alaska. Part 2 of new road trip organized!

Tomorrow I am off to New York, never having had so much stranger love and looking forward to meeting my new friends. In this new strange world in which I have been living the last few years, strangers have been my best friends. So very pleased to meet you! Part 3… stay tuned…

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When things are hard and life seems so unstable and I have run as fast as I can and have still not outrun my problems or my life, I go back to what works. I cook. I felt flat today, totally exhausted. I came back from a 10 day holiday in Amsterdam, Florence and then several days on Lake Como (yes, that is where the handsome George Clooney owns a home – I think he was elsewhere when I was there, maybe Venice?). The lake was incredible but the mountains that surrounded it are what called attention to it, are what made it special.

But I came home to chaos. I’m not good at traveling though I should be an expert having done it for business (and sometimes pleasure) for most of my life. It is still hard for me. I am a Taurus and like my home and what is familiar. This trip was not planned… it was a way to get away from the construction going on in my home. While I was gone the builders tore out the walls in my bedroom and the bathroom that used to hold the bathtub. These two rooms, for now, no longer exist. I came home from the airport at 10 last night to an inch of dust on the floor and walls of the entry and main hallway. Worse was the loss of my comfort, my bedroom and bathroom. My living room, kitchen and dining room are all as they were when I left them, sealed off as they were by layers of plastic sheeting and tape. But what good is a kitchen when there is no bedroom (for now)?

After spending the day cleaning up the dust so I can welcome a hen party here at the Nomad Chef for dinner tomorrow (hoping they will understand the wall of brick that was only a week ago covered with plaster and paint) and after traveling when I didn’t really feel like leaving my home in the month of the 3 year anniversary of the death of my son, the original Nomad Chef, I was running on empty.

And then I started planning the menu for the dinner. What can I cook for the starter? And what combination of cuisines do I feel like for tomorrow night’s mashup? Hmmm…. Mexican, Japanese, Singaporian and American (from the comfort food center of the southern states) feel right. I surfed cookbooks, my notes, and websites for the perfect recipes that would give me back my center. And within minutes I’d filled my tank. I was no longer running on fumes, deplete of energy by my struggle to juggle and handle and get through things – just the thought of food and the preparation of it had filled me right up. Thinking of food is almost as good as cooking it and eating it. I was off and running. Tonight I will sleep easier on my temporary bed, the couch, and tomorrow I’ll fill my tank by cooking and serving food that I love. I’ll offer that love up to a group of complete strangers. The challenges I have and the mountains I have to climb have somehow turned my half empty building site of a home into a calm clear lake next to which I can repose myself – the comfort of food.

I’m traveling again soon. There are only so many days one can go without a shower. But I’ll be home again soon and the Nomad Chef will be open for business (and for comfort). Come fill your tank on the 8^th of October when our dinner menu will be inspired by my road trip diaries.

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Last night was my last night in a week of travel in France – 3 days in Paris and 5 in La Rochelle. La Rochelle smells and feels a bit like home, Palo Alto. The air is always fresh; the wind comes straight from the Atlantic, and the temperatures are mild even in the summer. The sun seems to shine a little even on the cloudiest days. And there are little ports weaving in and out of the old town. It is a beautiful place to spend a week in a conference, even though I didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors.

But on my last night I needed dark chocolate, dark chocolate hot cocoa. Traveling alone is not easy. I don’t like walking into restaurants with only a big fat novel as my travel companion. My hotel was not in town as I was led to believe by the hotel website. It was 15 minutes away by taxi. So I was even less tempted to take the long ride into town only to talk to myself. Each night I ordered room service and ate in my room. The large windows of this renovated castle were open and the gentle breeze rustled the leaves in the trees outside. Last night, the second time in a week, I was told by the receptionist that room service wasn’t available. Come on, I said, there is a card sitting next to the bed which reads “room service menu!” I ordered in the room last night! Why offer room service if it isn’t really available? Oui, madame… but tonight the restaurant is fully booked. I wasn’t asking to eat in the restaurant. But madame, the chef is too busy. It took arguments with three different people to get something sent up to my room, and in the end it was a simple omelette with no seasoning and no accompaniments. What a pitiful dinner in country known for its cuisine. This what triggered my little depression. And my need for chocolate.

I was doing something very hard for me to do this week, challenging myself. So I needed comfort. And food is what I look for whenever things are hard. Yet, in a week here I didn’t have one amazing meal. And I really tried. Even in Paris! Well, there was one exception – my favorite Italian restaurant in the Marais, l’Enoteca. Italian food is pure comfort. France is kind of my second home after London. I spent years living here so I shouldn’t be so surprised. My feelings are just hurt. I feel like a jilted lover. I’ve been down this road before, and should have known better, but I’d been so hopeful.

If I’m honest, the food on this trip wasn’t all bad. I loved my bread, butter and jam each morning. And, of course, the hot chocolate, something I’d never have ordered unless I’d been truly desperate. But the next time I come to France I think I’ll rent an apartment and bring a separate little suitcase filled my spices and things I can’t live without. Life is hard enough without being challenged by unexceptional food, especially when you’re trying to earn your bread and butter. Next time I take the Nomad Chef on the road again with me.

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I’ve been home a few weeks now, but somehow it took until now to really feel like I’m home. Last night we hosted our first dinner concert at the Nomad Chef. We often have live music and have even done a house concert where we served canapés. But this one was special. It was a magical evening, one that inspired me in so many ways. We were packed, 24 guests, sold out days before the evening.  There were three musicians. Two of the artists came from the US to do a 10 day tour with the friend who organized it, a friend they knew from New York. It was day 2 of their tour.

HERE IS A CLIP OF THE CONCERT!

A Gig with Alex Berger, Chrissi Poland and Caleb Hawley @ Nomad Chef Music from kozue nagano on Vimeo.

The menu worked well, or so say the guests, a typical fusion of multiple cultures. We started with guacamole and chips served with Dirty Soho Mojitos, what I may start thinking of as our signature cocktail (Soho Lychee liqueur, Zacapa dark rum, lime juice, mint, sugar and sparkling water). And then we started the meal with clams with spicy black bean sauce (Chinese). I tried to get razor clams, and in fact called all over London for them. Sadly there were none. I think that those nameless people who normally dig for clams were too busy enjoying the sun on the weekend to bother with the digging. My loss… their gain. Anyway, even though the little clams weren’t exactly what I wanted, I’m sure my guests didn’t notice they were missing those elegant, long tubes that look so lovely on the plate. Next was another Mexican component, a vegetarian enchilada casserole with our signature salad dressing (grated garlic and ginger, fig balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, lemon juice and olive oil). And then a lamb Mrouzi that simmered for hours with no less than 15 freshly ground spices and tons of onions and raisins, among other typical Moroccan ingredients. And last, but not least, the pudding – crepes made with some of the lovely (and very expensive) Zacapa rum, with a hot toffee sauce and chantilly (otherwise known as whipped cream) served with the same rum, but this time served as it should be, neat.  Yummm…. You heard it here first!

Tonight was day 3 for the “US and Brit” tour, which included the same incredible musicians that graced the Nomad Chef dinner: Alex Berger, Chrissi Poland and Caleb Hawley. I’m not sure if the “US” is meant to mean the United States or just simply “us” as in “us or them” but it kind of sums up my own identity. I’m an American girl living here in the UK, a kind of honorary Brit – US and Brit. Tonight was a kind of reunion for me with them, a 24 hours later reunion where this time I got to sit and listen and watch without thinking about the food I was either cooking, plating or serving. And musically their gig tonight was a fusion of culture and genres. The little red headed wonder white girl, Chrissi Poland, sings soul music as if she has lived the pain of all of my African American ancestors. Alex Berger sings something that is pretty cross-genre but in some way reminds me of the kind of music that only legends like Barbra Streisand can pull off, and he does just that but with his own original sound and style. Then Caleb Hawley plays the frets off his guitar with one hand that seems like 2 (or more) and a voice that matches the wizardry of his instrument (the wooden one). The music tonight was a lovely dessert for me. I took a few friends and some others met me there. Though English, Alex Berger somehow feels like an American to me. He gives the best hugs of anyone I know in this country, something I imagine him learning during his 6 years in New York. So when his two friends, Chrissi and Caleb arrived and gave me a hug I felt transported into the arms of my birth country, California, where hugging is as instinctual as breathing… not so in my adopted country.

And this is where it gets a little emotional for me. There are advantages to being the busy chef and hostess when this kind of music is being sung in my beautiful conservatory, when I can hear it but don’t have the time to react. Tonight I was fully present to the words and the music. I cried a lot. Chrissi sang, “Trying to hold your heart in your hands and all it does is bleed,” and I felt she was speaking the words I feel so much of the time, “Angel Weep For Me.” My own heart is bleeding from the surgical removal of my son from this life, from my life, and there is no one who can hold the blood that pours out of my wounded heart, least of all me.  “So you call on the angels….. And you say, ‘angels wait for me,’” and that is me… asking my son the angel that he is now to wait for me. I heard this song last night, but saved the feeling and crying for tonight when I heard it for the second time.

And then, Caleb sang these words in Other Side of It, “Ever since the world began, when people go down they get right back up again.” I’m not sure that it’s true for me. I always used to get back up but I haven’t gotten right back up again from my latest and biggest blow ever, but I am sincerely trying. Maybe ‘right back up’ isn’t meant to be taken literally… maybe a space of a few years still counts as getting back up again, or maybe going out and being in the world counts too, even if it is not always completely standing. And, “I know that it’s hard to imagine, But it’s gonna happen – and I’ll see on the other side of the all.” It is hard for me to imagine getting beyond my loss, but I’m going to trust this lovely young man’s faith because I’ve lost my own.

I grew up around a lot of musicians and there were often jam sessions in my house. So it is kind of a full circle kind of thing that I now have a house where there are lots of musicians coming to play and eat; like mother, like daughter. While I was listening to the music tonight I realized that I once had a family of two, that was zeroed out when my son died. 2-1 does not equal 1. He was the whole that was greater than the sum of the parts and I was left with zero. Yet I feel the tiny little green shoots of a new family. I saw them tonight. I’ve adopted Alex into my new family and through him some of his friends. I saw many of them tonight at the North London Tavern. I need this new family. It’s one of the reasons I opened the Nomad Chef – to meet the strangers who have yet to become my friends. There will never be a replacement for my irreplaceable, beautiful, bright, creative son. But I felt his arms around me tonight, a big, tight, California hug.  The music embraced me. I cried but felt something or someone holding me.

Caleb sang another song, a Randy Newman cover, with what I could almost imagine singing myself:

A window breaks down a long dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But I’m alright cause I have you here with me
And I can almost see through the dark there is light…

Feels like I’m all the way back home where I come from

And the evening ended with the three beautiful musicians singing James Taylor’s, You Got a Friend…“You just call out my name and I’ll be there.”  I wondered who was really singing to me tonight? Was it my very own little angel, my son, who wanted me to know that he’s always here with me even when I can’t feel him? Sometimes I have to listen to the music to hear him between the notes. For a little while tonight it felt like I was all the way back home where I came from and that he was here with me.

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I’m home from about a month away – back from the Nomad Chef road trip. I guess I’m no good at doing more than one thing at once. Can’t walk and chew gum. Can’t travel and write. Well, I’m a bit of a disappointment to myself in that regard. I should have been writing and posting little vignettes the whole time. But I was too busy traveling, cooking and eating….er, umm… and drinking too. But I’m back! And I’ve got a whole new perspective.

The Nomad Chef: Mouths Wide Shut (dinner) was a revelation. Two days before the dinner only 7 people had reserved seats, probably 6 of them my son’s friends and the 7^th perhaps a friend of one of my co-chefs. But by the end of the flight (yes, Virgin America has internet and powerpoints!), a 5 hour flight, the number climbed to 22! I rushed to turn off the ticket registration function. Sold out! Wow, what a difference a few hours and the anticipation of failure can make! As I was driving from the airport to the beautiful house I rented for our week in Beverly Hills, I made a few calls (of course, on my hands free!) and somehow managed to organize the rental of more tables and chairs. I love how things work in California (or at least in LaLa land) – last minute incredible service. And I reopened the ticketing function on our website. In hours we were up to 35 people. Who were all of these people? No doubt, friends… of friends, and strangers who had yet to become my friends. In the end we had about 40 people! And I personally knew less than 10 of them! Now I know them all!

The house was truly amazing. An old school Beverly Hills home set on tree lined Rodeo Drive. It was purchased by the current owner’s father in 1941, from Joseph Kennedy (yep, JFK’s dad!). And I doubt anything has changed since then. Beautiful paintings on the wall are the only ones who can still remember the titillating conversations that must have been had there in the 30s and 40s among icons that included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra and John Kennedy. We felt like film stars and famous producers ourselves in this magical home. And the owners were on hand to lend their hands for every step of our new, if temporary, life in LA.

Lovely appetizers were prepared by a beautiful actress and co-chef; European influences to complement the mostly Asian fusion repas. Then raw oysters and oyster pie were the first course of this erotic dinner. (Side note: Earlier in the week I was forced to wonder at some of the reactions of would-be dinner guests. Apparently a few had asked the friend’s of friends who’d invited them about what to expect with a theme that was clearly a nod to Kubrick. “It’s just a dinner party where girls get to wear high heels,” I responded a little too forcefully (due to shock). Were they really expecting me to invite my son’s friends to some kind of fettish party? Hmmm… There are certainly some differences between Beverly Hills and London.) I’d carefully prepared and frozen the Nomad Chef special green curry paste which I used for the 2^nd course (Thai green curry with shitake mushrooms); not exactly erotic but one of our standards that I wanted to share with my new friends. Next was either steak au poivre or tofu with a peanut mole sauce and assorted side dishes. But the crowning glory was prepared by one of my co-chefs: a chocolate trio of dark truffles with sea salt, home made chocolate ice cream with chipotle peppers and a chocolate cookie. These provided a truly orgasmic end to a dinner that lasted into the wee hours of the night.

So, I’m home again, jiggity jig. And happy to be here. It is only by leaving that we often appreciate even more what we’ve left behind. In true Nomad fashion I will look forward to future road trips. The next one will include Napa Valley. Although I came home to a house that is still empty of my son’s physical presence, I felt him in all of his old haunts. While struggling in LA as an actor he had even cooked for someone who lived right around the corner from the house I rented in Beverly Hills. I felt his presence everywhere. Now that I’m home again I will be conjuring his spirit in all of the Nomad Chef dinners here. I’m sure his spirit is as nomadic as he was, just as I am. We were both happy on the road and happy at home.

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