This is Asia’s secret, I thought; a vast medieval world of nomads, slumbering in the heart of the continent, criss-crossed by winds and clouds and caravans of camels, its air scented with smoke and milk and meat.
Some years later I came back to Mongolia. I wanted to cross the country by horse, to ride through those unhindered landscapes. I discovered it is possible to ride a thousand miles in Mongolia without finding or needing a restaurant. From Bayan Ölgii in the lap of the Altay to the Sacred Mountain of Burkhan Khaldun, I was warmed, welcomed and fed in countless gers. All were marinated in that special Mongolian fragrance, that bittersweet aroma. Filtered by limpid air, carried on freshening winds, it was a smell that emanated from the extraordinary Mongolian diet, a diet central to Mongolian life.
In the rich grasslands of Arhangay, the world was unfolding long languorous limbs. I rode through a succession of valleys, their grassy curves open to acres of sky. Each was an echo of the one that had gone before, vast, treeless, uncomplicated. They might have been sculpted by winds, smoothed to elemental simplicities. Detail and elaboration had been blown away, leaving only the essentials of shape and colour: the sensuous slopes, the yellow of the grasses, the hot troubled blue of the sky.
All morning pillars of rain menaced the horizons. At midday a storm engulfed me. The sky darkened suddenly, the winds rose to gale force and a moment later freezing sleet lashed across the slopes. I dismounted and turned my horse, so its rump faced this sudden violence.
The temperature plummeted, and for half an hour the world was reduced to a maelstrom of hailstones. It was like a Biblical visitation, a moment of God’s wrath. Then the storm vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, leaving only curling snakes of mist on the baking grasslands. The valleys stretched out again as the sun spread across their flanks. It was as if nothing had happened. I mounted and rode on through the innocent afternoon.
At day’s end I arrived in a wide valley where tents and flocks were spread across the spring grass. It could have been a tableau of the American plains before the arrival of Europeans: white tents, tethered horses, pillars of camp smoke.
I pitched my own tent close to a quick stream, and within an hour a dinner invitation arrived. A gangly youth on a gangly horse bore a brusque message from his father – come and eat. He motioned to a ger in the middle distance where flocks of sheep were converging in the twilight.
I had long since given up trying to issue invitations myself. Mongolians were wary of foreigners’ strange foods. Besides, the nomads were clear about our relationship. This was Mongolia. They were the hosts; I was the guest.
When I arrived at the ger I found two young girls milking a herd of shaggy ginger-haired yaks. Yak milking is a tough job requiring nerves of steel, a domineering manner and a weight-lifter’s build. The consensus in Mongolia is that it is best left to the womenfolk. The girls were bullying the big beasts with resounding slaps on their hindquarters while their three older brothers, weedy boys conspiring in adolescent silence, were inside the ger, where their mother was serving them bowls of warm yak milk.
My host was something of a yak himself – a huge grizzly fellow with a long obstinate face and mournful eyes beneath a shaggy wool cap. When Tuvud came through the door of the ger bearing a saddle and a horsewhip, his sons scattered to the refuge of their grandmother’s ger next door. Taking his place without speaking, he accepted a bowl of tea from his silent wife.
Then we settled down to dinner. A young ram had just been slaughtered and as a special treat a large plastic bowl of sheep parts was laid before us. I was handed a twelve-inch hunting knife and told to dig in.
Mongolians don’t believe in wasting any of their beloved sheep. Everything was in the bowl, floating in a sort of primeval ooze: lungs, stomach, bladder, brain, intestines, eyeballs, teeth, genitals. It was a lucky sheep dip; you were never sure what you were going to pull out. I fished carefully, not too keen on finding myself with the testicles. My first go produced an object that resembled an old purse dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant canal. I think it might have been an ear. I had better luck with the intestines, which were delicious, and once brought to the surface, went on for quite a while.
Sated with sheep guts, our lips glistening with fat, Tuvud and I settled back for an after-dinner chat. Farting thunderously, my host asked what we ate in my country.
‘Less meat, more fruit and vegetables.’
‘What kind?’ he asked.
‘Oranges, lemons, melons, zucchini, eggplant, salads, lots of things.’
Unimpressed with this litany of unknown foods, he asked for a description. Unwisely perhaps, I began with the salad. He recoiled in horror when I explained the attraction of raw leaves.
‘Like an animal,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘You will be eating grass next. Raw leaves are food for animals, not for men. It is no wonder you are such feeble people.’
In a very literal sense Mongolians are what they eat. They are nomads; their lives are intimately connected to their herds and flocks, and they eat what their animals provide – meat, milk, cheese, curds. Even their alcoholic drinks are made from milk – fermented mare’s milk, which becomes a sour frothy beer known as airag, and a distilled spirit, a kind of milk vodka called arkhi, an unpredictable tipple like a liquid landmine.
Far from being anxious about its limitations, Mongolians view endless meals of mutton with great pride. Parents in Ulaanbaatar, where fruit and vegetables are now freely available, send their children to their grandparents in the countryside for a couple of months, as a farmer puts calves out to pasture. They believe a summer of curds and lamb and fresh yak’s milk will fatten them up, will make them strong, will make them Mongolian. If you ask a Mongolian about the nomad’s ability to survive hardship, they will talk about the food, the meat, the fermented mare’s milk. It is who they are, and it is what allows them to live the life they do.
It is the food that scents the air of Mongolia so pervasively, a subtle mixture of mutton fat, milk and curds, and of the animal dung fires on which it is all cooked. It seems inescapable. It is the aroma of every ger, but I have smelled it too in distant valleys apparently empty of habitation, in the stairwell of apartment blocks in Ulaanbaatar, even at the airport amidst the tang of jet fuel.
I stayed four days in Tuvud’s valley while I looked for fresh horses and a guide to accompany me on the next stage of my journey. My immediate neighbours, whose ger lay a quarter of a mile away, were a very poor couple with four children. Though their resources were limited, their hospitality was boundless. The women came to call every morning, bearing pails of yak’s milk and yoghurt, chatting incessantly, delighted to have someone new to talk to.
One evening, when I was ensconced in their ger, happily trading bowls of fermented mare’s milk, conversation turned to the strange habits of the capital, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s only city, where people lived suspect lives of houses and salaries. My neighbour had met a man recently who had been there. Much about the place was extraordinary – the streets, the cars, the buildings – but what stuck in his mind was a stall in the main square where a man sold cups of tea.
Silence fell over my fellow diners. They had never heard of such a thing. Tea is the opening gambit in the ritual of hospitality that is central to the world of the nomad. It is the first thing to be offered freely to any visitor to a ger, whether an old friend or a complete stranger. They shook their heads at the idea of a world so barbarous that people went about selling tea to one another. This is what comes of cities, they muttered.
I too tried to look suitably shocked. It was a moment of cowardice. I was unwilling to let on that the sale of tea was commonplace in my own uncivilised country. I wasn’t sure I could offer any reasonable explanation.
A year after my ride across Mongolia I was waiting in Hong Kong airport for my Mongolian girlfriend. I hadn’t seen her in six months and when she appeared beyond the glass, all suddenly seemed right with the world. She looked wonderful in a beret a
nd a leather jacket. And then she came out through the arrivals hall bearing the scent of her homeland. The moment we embraced, I was assailed by that nostalgic smoky aroma. It was the smell of a thousand miles of Mongolia, of countless invitations to countless meals, and of the open hospitality of the steppes. Now a world away, in a city that was the antithesis of the empty steppes, it was the scent of love.
The ’Cue Quest
DOUG MACK
Doug Mack is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis, with a digital home at www.douglasmack.net. His articles and essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, WorldHum.com and many other publications. He is currently working on a book about his attempt to tour Europe guided only by a 1963 copy of Europe on Five Dollars a Day.
I don’t suppose my father would want me to classify him as a barbecue nut, at least not at the outset. He’d want you to know, first, that he is an architect and a professor, that he is not a ‘nut’ in any form but a studious scholar. He is a historic masonry expert. Fittingly, his own façade is stoic and proud – but there is one sure-fire way of coaxing cracks, of making his eyes glimmer with schoolboy mischievousness and his thick white moustache flex with glee.
Barbecued ribs. Specifically, pork ribs in the Kansas City style, slathered in a robust, tangy, tomato-based sauce. Not any ribs will do, mind you. Only the good stuff, please, or else you’ll really see Mr Unflappable come to life, all flustered scowls and dark mutterings unbefitting of a scholar.
Dad indoctrinated me into the cult of the ’cue long ago. Some of my earliest restaurant memories are of visiting rib joints around Minneapolis, and I’ve known good sauce from bad since long before I could spell ‘insipid’.
The core of this indoctrination, however, occurred away from the table during my childhood bedtime stories, when the marquee attraction was often an essay from Calvin Trillin’s trio of food books, American Fried, Second Helpings and Alice, Let’s Eat. Oh, sure, we went through all the classics of the children’s lit canon too, with their talking animals and their oh-so-plucky young protagonists and their Very Important Lessons to be learned. But those always felt like half-hearted side dishes in comparison: nutrient-rich and ostensibly good for me, but utterly unsatisfying and borderline nauseating, like cauliflower or beets.
My favourite of Mr Trillin’s essays, the ones I most savoured and went back to for second helpings, were the ones about the restaurant he called the best in the world, Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque, in his hometown of Kansas City.
It has always shocked me that Dad has never been there, never fact-checked Mr Trillin or even set foot in that barbecue-mad town. We’ve talked about it for years: A barbecue road trip! We should do that sometime! And then, inevitably, one thing after another gets in the way: school, work, health, life.
But now, somehow, here we are: on the road. Mom’s off on a church trip to Paraguay, so Dad and I have decided, finally, to make a pilgrimage of our own. We’re somewhere just south of Des Moines, nowhere near Kansas City, but we’re already sniffing the air, hoping for a telltale wisp of smoke. We think we can make it out, just a hint, somewhere in the distance. Our mouths are already watering, our stomachs grumbling a timpani rhythm.
In the manner of fathers and sons everywhere, we don’t really talk much, by which I mean, essentially, at all. But I’ve tossed a certain book on the back seat and when I take over driving, Dad pulls it out, unprompted, and begins reading out loud. We’re a good fifteen or twenty years removed from the last bedtime story, but his inflection hasn’t changed a bit: steady, professorial tone, becoming distinctly more reverential when he comes to the hallowed words ‘Arthur Bryant’s’.
Forget almost smelling it: we can almost taste it. Hearing the words again provokes a rush of nostalgia and memories, like Proust’s madeleine – but trust me, Marcel: barbecue is better.
We have a few other stops before we can get to Bryant’s – we want to check out the full range of goods on offer in Kansas City. I’ve tried to figure out exactly how many options we have – that is, how many barbecue places there are here, total, from sidewalk vendors to fancy restaurants with tablecloths and, we’ve heard rumours, even proper porcelain plates with parsley or some such highfalutin’ garnish – but I can’t find a firm number. Most sources simply say ‘over a hundred’ and leave it at that, but somehow, that seems low. Looking through the online directories leads me in the opposite direction, overestimation, since every bar in town, plus a few random consulting firms, seem to have added themselves to the ‘barbecue’ keyword search, in hopes of jumping on the bandwagon.
Dad and I have a long list of contenders to sample, and we hope we’re up for the challenge. I’ve stashed a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in the glove compartment. We’ll end with Bryant’s. And we’ll start, right now, with one of the hoity-toity places, Fiorella’s Jack Stack.
Our server doesn’t blink when we mention that we’re on a barbecue road trip. She quickly points us to the menu section titled ‘Ribs, ribs & more ribs’, her hand pausing along the way to discreetly gesture to the text: ‘Highest-rated barbecue in the country – Zagat Survey of America’s Best Restaurants’.
But something’s amiss. The menus are professionally designed and printed; the art on the walls is tasteful; the whole place is clean to the point of bland. Our napkins are cloth. The display of sauce bottles by the entry appears to have been carefully arranged by an interior designer. And when my food arrives, it is served on, God help me, a silver platter. With a dainty bowl of sauce and a twee little serving spoon.
This is just wrong. As Mr Trillin and my father have taught me, and my own relentless research has confirmed, barbecued ribs are best when the setting is decidedly inelegant. They should be served on butcher paper or a paper plate; porcelain is sometimes acceptable, though pushing it. But nothing fancier. It takes patience and a single-minded fanaticism to cook ribs properly, so any frippery is, I always fear, a signal that the proprietor has something on his or her mind other than the meat, and has quite possibly resorted to the microwave and Liquid Smoke.
I take my first bite, wincing, calculating how much Coke I’ll need to wash away the … Oh. Never mind. These are some good ribs: a rich flavour; a subtle, buttery edge; an agreeably robust sauce. I sample the various meats on my silver platter and think, well, maybe the people in this city really do know what they’re doing.
I look over to Dad for validation, but he volunteers no opinion. When I pry, he offers a shrug that the casual observer might mistake for carefree indifference. But from years of experience in deciphering the precise posture and rhythm of this gesture, I understand the true meaning: disappointment.
Out of courtesy, or perhaps pity, he waits until we’re back in the car to explain, with a sigh: ‘They just weren’t that tender.’
‘Would you throw rocks at it?’ I ask, channelling Mr Trillin.
‘Well …’ he pauses, then chuckles. ‘I suppose I would not throw rocks at that barbecue.’
The next morning, a haze hangs in the air everywhere we turn, taunting us, tempting us. Outside a gas station on a forlorn stretch of State Line Road, we see a man – at least, we guess it’s a man, though his face is obscured by a thick grey cloud – stoking the fire inside a homemade smoker built from half a rusted fifty-gallon drum. We make a mental note to come back later.
The haze follows us to Country Club Plaza, where there’s an outlet of Gates Bar-B-Q. But we’re not ready to eat yet – the architect wants to take a stroll around this historic shopping district, see the buildings. It’s a discordant place, part mall, part Seville-on-the-Plains, full of Spanish-influenced buildings and an overabundance of courtyards, fountains and statues. We spot an aggressively hip Italian restaurant, of the variety that Mr Trillin mockingly calls ‘La Maison de la Casa House’, full of pretty people eating pretty food – and not seeming to be enjoying themselves one bit.
Our stomachs grumble out of pity for them and we head back to the car, then west out on Merriam Lane, a highway wit
h a distinctly desolate, backwoods feel, to Kansas City. Just when we’re starting to wonder if we’re lost, we spot the haze again and follow it to our destination. The setting here is much more along the lines of what we’ve dreamed of all these years: an endearingly deteriorated house with a brick patio out front and, standing sentinel on the side, a massive brick smoker, its doors held shut by a hatchet jammed between the two handles.
Woodyard Bar-B-Que is just that: a wood yard selling oak, hickory, apple and other types of wood for those who want to do their own cooking. In the 1950s, the father and grandfather of the current proprietor, Frank Schloegel IV, would grill lunch for customers who came to buy wood; eventually, due to popular demand, the barbecue business became official.
Mr Schloegel IV is standing behind the counter when we arrive, amiably chatting with the customers. When we mention where we’re from, he points towards a group of motorcyclists pulling out of the parking lot. ‘Those guys came down from Owatonna’ – a town in southern Minnesota – ‘just for lunch.’ Dad and I exchange arched eyebrows, impressed.
As we settle in, we realise we might never leave. There’s a subdued conviviality among the employees and our fellow eaters, and as we sit on the shaded, almost overgrown brick patio, we feel for all the world like we’re at the best backyard cookout ever, just chatting with friends, enjoying the summer day. The food makes it all the more idyllic. The meat has a complexity I’ve never experienced before, a seductive, subtle fruitiness that initially catches me off-guard but quickly wins me over. That telltale gleam of delight creeps into Dad’s eyes as he eats, and within an embarrassingly short period of time our paper-lined plastic baskets go from overflowing with meat – ribs, burnt ends, pulled pork and chicken – to being merely abstract art of sauce and grease splotches. Dad still isn’t ready to crown a new rib champ, but he has no quibbles.
A Moveable Feast Page 9