You Have a Problem

If you have ingested my cooking, then you most certainly have a problem.

Hello. My name is Jacques Monet, I am a chef. And you have a problem. Yes, you. You most certainly have a problem.

Look at you sitting in this Americanized bastardization of a French Bistro. Are you even aware that we French resent what you Americans have done to the word Bistro? This is not a bistro. It is a what you call a "Corporate Chain Restaurant" that serves "consistently good food", which is code for bland food for bland pallets. In my native France we would not serve this swill to our hogs.

But this is not your problem

This is food. You Americans have no idea that is what it is. So count your lucky stars that I am here to show you what food is.

You may think that this is your problem, but it is not your problem. Then whose problem is this? It is my problem.

"You must see the world," my mother tells me. She is an unfeeling cold bitch, so naturally I must do what she says to curry her favor.

So I go to see the world. And where do I end up? In Roma? No. In the Virgin Islands? No. In Rio where they samba because they cannot afford food? No. I end up here: in an "American Bistro" in Cleveland, Ohio, where I create meals. No, I take that back, there is no room to create meals here, because the "Corporation" has recipes that I must follow and stagnant menu featuring the "chicken fingers", well done meats and something called "lava cakes".

This is my problem

In your mind this is the kitchen of the Bistro in which you sit. But you are fool and this is nothing but a stock picture chosen to take up space.

I should probably begin by telling you a little bit about myself. I'm 34 years old, a Frenchman living in Ohio. I attended the Paul Bocuse Culinary Arts School, and graduated Magna cum laude at the age of 21. Chef Bucose told me when I left that I must suffer for my art, and that will make me the greatest chef in the world. And that is when I left to see the world. While I saw the world I had many lovely women, and we made amazing love to each other. But I pressed on, looking for the most tortured place on earth that had also had the best art museum in all the world.

And that is how I come to be in Cleveland. Not only is it tortured, but it has a beach where I can take long walks by myself where I can brood about how unfair life is.

Not only did this filthy, dying and gritty place have an amazing art museum, but it also has the best symphony that I hear outside of France. And because the French love a tortured soul and great art, here I decide to make my stand. Here I will forge my character. Here I will save these digusting people from themselves.

So what is your problem?

In time, I will get to your problem. This is another of your problems, America; you want always to rush to the end. You tell the punch line even before you savor the set up. This how a nation of pigs acts. You want immediate satisfaction, always. When a waiter asks you what you want for dinner inevitably one of you will say "I'll start with dessert!"

Just like a fine meal you must take you time when it comes to catharsis. You cannot rush a great a epiphany, no?

No is correct!

I must start somewhere, so I read the paper, and it is of no use for me to find the proper position.

So I go to the bank and am very displeased to find that it is not Nationalized. Filthy rotten capitalists. They will not give me a loan because I have no income. How can I make income if they will not give me a loan? I argue. But they do not listen. And then the rent is due, and I do not sleep on the street for that would be too much torture. No?

So, I swallow my pride and decide if I must sell my soul to the devil I will take a job at a newly opening café in a shopping mall. I am disgusted with myself, but I need to pay the landlord for my apartment. And besides, I tell myself, you will be in a kitchen! But I soon find out it is not a kitchen, but factory for corporate food. I think about leaving, but where will I go?

And when I look out at the serving floor what do I see? I see large women, and screaming children, shoveling this slop that they serve as food into their - how do you Americans say it - "pie holes", and I make sick in a trash can. This what I see in America, fat people, getting fatter on bland, tasteless food.

Why is this your problem?

You see a fish. I see a food source that would benefit from my natural talent and secret ingredients.

Now, after twenty years in this rotten place, twenty years of slaving away, making an Onion Soup that no French person would even pollute a gutter with, I have taken matters into my own hands, so to speak.

That white sauce on your $9.99 plate of Fettuccine Alfredo? I ejaculate into it. That creamy ranch dressing that you defile my salads with? I ejaculate into that, too.

NO! you say. Most certainly, I assure you.

And that Sauce Bearnaise served with the Tuesday Night Steak Special $10.99 "rib eye"? My ejaculate gives it a "flavor" that the weekly free newspaper that no one reads, calls "Amazing!"

"Not the creamy potato and leak soup?" you plead. I reply "Yes, that too."

Why do I do this? WHY? I will tell you why. Because if I did not tell you this you would not know that I ejaculate into your food. Well, maybe you would notice if you were Paris Hilton or Zachary Quinto.

But I assure you that nothing on the children's menu contains my ejaculate, because that would be perverse. And I am not a pervert. No. I am French!

Even we French know that there are limits to what we can do to the chicken finger or the hot dog served on a bun.

Bon Appétit!

See also

• I Have A Problem