My mum had a huge chest freezer in the kitchen for over fifty-five years full of things she had cooked and frozen. A few years ago it finally broke and, when she defrosted it, I asked if she’d found a leg of dodo at the bottom! They don’t make appliances like they used to, that’s fo’ sure. She eats Jamaican food most days. Even when she comes to my house she brings her own food, not because I can’t cook but because she knows I like her cooking better.

thirty-five

“To escape the heat, I went to a diner on Bleecker Street. I was paying my respects, I suppose, to a city that did not look askance at a woman out and about alone. I sat down at a small table and ordered a glass of wine and a Caesar salad. I had grown to love the communal solitude of New York. I would miss this city where I learned to embrace ambition and to try things that felt beyond my reach, but much as I loved it, South Africa was the place where I felt there was unfinished business.

That time at the Chinese butcher, you pointed to the roasted pig hanging from its hook. “The ribs are just like a person’s after they’re burned.” You let out a clipped chuckle, then paused, took out your pocketbook, your face pinched, and recounted our money.

Chapter 4: Lessons in Enlightened Hospitality

“Table transformed contemporary Indian cuisine in the United States—and the engine behind that transformation was Chef Floyd Cardoz, who cooked food inspired by his Goan heritage.

Chapter 7: Setting Expectations

“These restaurants paved the way for what was to come a few short years later: Kung Pao Pastrami at Mission Chinese and the Cheezus Christ pie at Roberta’s, a barely converted, concrete-floored, graffiti-covered former warehouse in Bushwick.