Danny Bowien: What is the food you’ve done the most? And you told me —
Anthony Bourdain: Omelettes.
Bowien: Probably omelettes, mostly. So, what’s your move?
Bourdain: Look, I go with the Jacques Pepin platonic ideal. Eggs, salt, pepper, cooked in butter. Not over-beaten. You want a little rippling in there — texture. And cooked baveuse meaning a little wet. A little wet. And just in a pan, figure eight pattern. Don’t over-scramble, don’t over-beat. Pull them off the heat just before they’re done. Finish as they sigh onto the plate and serve.
Bowien: I don’t know how I can answer that better than him, so I’m not gonna try. But one time I tricked Wylie Dufresne — they were having a wd~50 holiday party at Mission Chinese Food and we set up an induction burner in the corner, and we got some eggs and a pot and a whisk — ‘cause I knew Wylie was like — if anyone knows Wylie Dufresne, he’s the king of eggs, he loves eggs. He loves scrambled eggs. So I was like, “Hey, chef! Can you help me? I don’t really know what I’m doing over here.” And this is in the middle of their holiday party. And we had a tin of caviar and all these eggs and I said, “Hey, can you help me? I just need to figure out how to do these eggs over here.” And he was like, “Oh you mean midtown eggs.” And I was like “What are midtown eggs?” And he said, “It’s how everybody wants their eggs cooked in midtown.” And he just showed me. He’d just butter, eggs, whisk. Whisk it really on and off the heat, slowly until you get these little tiny curds. And he finished it at the very last second, I wanna say he finished it with cream cheese and not crème fraîche. It gave it this really silky, luxurious texture.
Bourdain: Crème fraîche.
Bowien: And then yeah, he put it on top of toasted white bread, like white toast points and then we put caviar on it. That was the best scrambled egg I’ve ever had in my life, obviously. But even without the caviar, it was crazy because he had this technique. But I tried doing it with him and completely messed it up the first time, so, you know. Thing is about the eggs, it’s like, chefs nerd out ‘cause it’s the most unforgiving and most satisfying thing to make in the world. So, I can’t — but, his answer was the best. I don’t really scramble eggs at home that often.
Bourdain: I make a lot of omelettes still. I still. I hated cooking them professionally, but at home? You know, cooking an omelette for someone you care about –
Bowien: Yeah. Oh, it’s the best.
Bourdain: Unlike most of my career … that feels —
Bowien: Egg white omelettes ever? Have you done an egg white omelette for yourself ever?
Bourdain: You shouldn’t be intimate with anyone who just eats egg white omelettes. I mean, that’s the end of a relationship right there.
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