“It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes."
"That's how I feel about eating," Sirine interjects, and some of them laugh.
Aziz lifts his chin and lowers his eyes silkily. "Please tell us more."
"Well, I mean..." She fumbles for words and tears apart a slice of bread, trying to think what she means. "Something like... tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes."
"Fabulous metaphor," Aziz says.
Nathan lifts his head. "That's giving other people power over you."
"No more than usual," Aziz says. "Somebody's always going to have the power, and somebody's always got to bake the bread." He turns and smiles suavely at Sirine. "You've got the soul of a poet! Cooking and tasting is a metaphor for seeing. Your cooking reveals America to us non-Americans. And vice versa."
"Chef isn't an American cook," Victor Hernandez says. "Not like the way Americans do food- just dumping salt into the pot. All the flavors go in the same direction. Chef cooks like we do. In Mexico, we put cinnamon in with the chocolate and pepper in the sweetcakes, so things pull apart, you know, make it bigger?”