SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
It is Main, Middle and Gay right here?
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
PATRICK O'CONNELL: Yes. You're on Main Street, Middle Street and Gay Street. And...
SIMON: This is the title of your book, right here.
O'CONNELL: You got it. And we now have acquired all the property on Main, Middle and Gay, both streets and everything facing. It was destiny (laughter).
SIMON: In 1978, Washington, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains - had just a couple of hundred residents and a disused gas station on Main Street, which is where Patrick O'Connell opened a restaurant. Today, The Inn at Little Washington is one of just 30 American restaurants to have ever earned three Michelin stars. And Chef Patrick O'Connell has remade the small town into a world destination with a five-star hotel to sleep off your meals, tasteful shops and a daily parade of geese.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We are elated to introduce you to our fabulous flock of American Buff geese...
(SOUNDBITE OF GEESE CLUCKING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Dolly, Dorothy, Daisy, Duchess, Minnie and the apple of our eye, our gander large and in charge...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Duke Von Gosling.
SIMON: O'Connell's new book is not a cookbook. "Main, Middle & Gay" is a memoir of a man who was ridiculed in his youth in small-town Southern Maryland for playing with dolls. He found support and his stage in restaurants.
O'CONNELL: Well, the wonderful thing about restaurant people - they're a unique brand, much like theater people. You're not only allowed to be as crazy as you want to be. You're invited to be as crazy as you want to be. As long as you can do a good job, you're accepted and embraced. Also, the restaurant business invites the notion that there is the fantasy out front, as we say, and then the reality - blood and guts behind the scenes. So you're quite used to dual realities if you're a gay person. You're used to where you can be somewhat real and other realities where you must be very careful and walk the line and pass.
SIMON: At 15, and despite the misgivings of his parents, Patrick O'Connell found a job in a local burger joint called Mr. H's.
O'CONNELL: There was an old, wizened restaurateur named Mr. Hardesty (ph), and he had grown up in the business. And in that era, restaurant people were kind of like carnival people. They were rough and ready, with hearts of gold, but bulletproof, in many ways, on the exterior. And that was addictive and alluring.
SIMON: What did you find addictive and alluring in it?
O'CONNELL: Well, I could see what the average person didn't see in a restaurant experience. I loved people, and I loved the reaction that they had from food and the power that you could have over them by giving him something good to eat.
SIMON: He went to schools and left, traveled through Europe until his money ran out - not studying cuisine anywhere, but learning as he ate, watched and saw possibilities.
O'CONNELL: I was not a good student in anything I did, it seemed. So I didn't learn in a normal way, I realized. A wise man once said, certain things can't be taught. They have to be caught. And so I went around catching a lot of things. An artist often imitates. So I had the capability, often, of seeing something and replicating it. I did grow up with Mrs. Paul's fish sticks, which we ate on Friday, and pineapple upside-down cake and macaroni and cheese. They're part of our heritage. They're part of who we are. They're like old family photographs. We don't need to burn them or throw them away. And why not reimagine them and bring them forward?
SIMON: For instance, he says, one of his first kitchen crewmates, a Black woman, treated him to a pot of black-eyed peas for New Year's, a Southern tradition. And the chef began to think, ah, what about dressing it up a little with seared duck liver and salad greens?
O'CONNELL: And I put some shallots in the pan, some balsamic vinegar and let it turn into a glaze. Then I spooned that over the foie gras, and I put a little Virginia country ham down on it. And I thought, jeez, what a unique taste. What a unique flavor.
SIMON: A day or two later, says the chef, Craig Claiborne, the famed New York Times food critic, who was from Mississippi, stopped at The Inn at Little Washington.
O'CONNELL: And we needed a quick lunch, and I made that dish, and he swooned, which is always a good sign.
SIMON: (Laughter).
O'CONNELL: And then, later, wrote about it as the best thing he ever put in his mouth. So he said that it also encapsulated the idea of American cuisine at that time, that it was taking the soulfulness of this simple, indigenous foods that we took for granted - that and cornbread and those things...
SIMON: Yeah.
O'CONNELL: ...And elevating them and juxtaposing them in unique and different ways.
SIMON: You write in this book that you have a - I don't know if you use the word gift - a knack. You can taste the off note.
O'CONNELL: Yeah. Which is, of course, a curse because you train yourself to only see the flaws.
SIMON: Yeah.
O'CONNELL: So it's a little hard to go out with friends (laughter)...
SIMON: Oh, gosh.
O'CONNELL: ...When...
SIMON: I guess it would be. Yeah.
O'CONNELL: ...You just - it's all flaws because - it isn't that it's wrong. It's that it could be better. And when I see something that could be better, I just want to do something about it.
SIMON: Strange question - can you enjoy a Cheeto?
O'CONNELL: I can enjoy anything. I'm not a food snob. I did, for a little while, rather like Doritos. And...
SIMON: Oh.
O'CONNELL: (Laughter).
SIMON: Oh.
O'CONNELL: ...But at the right moment.
SIMON: Chef O'Connell is 80 now, still cooking daily, greeting guests and expanding the environs at The Inn at Little Washington. He's hosted stars and presidents and peers, like Jacques Pepin and Julia Child. Queen Elizabeth had lunch there. The chef won't dish on what she ate. He says in his memoir that all the stars and attention to his small-town restaurant can carry a cost.
O'CONNELL: You feel, very often, today, that you get placed on a pedestal not through your own desire or making - simply so that you can be knocked off it. And I think it's the same in politics or the same in many arts. It was actually a famous politician, who I won't name, told me this. The test is whether you survive the attack after you've been so-called knocked off the pedestal. And if you can handle that, then you get a special pedestal.
SIMON: And why are you here in the country and not New York or Provence or...
O'CONNELL: Well, I have this strange idea - it came to me early on - that every human has a geographic place where they belong. And if they can find that place, everything will fall into place for them. So when I bought a little shack here at age 21, I felt this is my place. This is my spot. I breathe differently. My priorities have shifted. The country puts everything in perspective for me.
SIMON: After reading this book, of course it's an art - but an art that people put in their mouth chew and digest. I mean, it's not like...
O'CONNELL: Yeah.
SIMON: ...What Monet did. So...
O'CONNELL: No.
SIMON: ...It just (inaudible) from you.
O'CONNELL: But I often tell young culinary students that while it is an ephemeral art, there's no trace of it, but the memories last a lifetime. And very often, on your deathbed, it is said that you reflect on the greatest meals that you've ever had in your life.
SIMON: Yeah.
O'CONNELL: So they become part of you, part of yourself. They enhance your life, and you would be bereft without them.
SIMON: Chef Patrick O'Connell - his new book, a memoir, "Main, Middle & Gay." Thank you so much for being with us.
O'CONNELL: You're so welcome. Thank you for coming out to our little place in the world. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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