I’ve never made friends by campaigning on the good eats platform; most of my friendships were wrought by geographical circumstance and a love for all things geeky. James is no different: We originally began correspondence as I blogged from Moscow and eventually found friendship in science-fiction television, but I’ll never forget the first time we discussed pizza, on the eve of James’s Daily Californian column on the subject. We shared our angst toward the favorite slices of the Berkeley student majority and exchanged our own favorites lists of Berkeley pies, lists that matched far too well. One day we discussed the merits of barbecue – the point of no return – and, well, now I’m writing this.

My friendship with David is another matter. Born out of fourth grade art hour, when the new kid drew a better chimpanzee than I drew an iguana, our friendship grew over the ensuing four years (as I cheated off of David in every math class), until he moved to the other side of Los Angeles (and I failed geometry). When we finally reunited in a college dorm triple, we’d become different people, and our friendship changed into something new, born out of The Sopranos and Iron Chef marathons. Eight years later, David is my oldest friend and the person with whom I’m most likely to spend an hour arguing the merits of good eats.

Ostensibly, my food-founded relationship with David began while I envied his drawing abilities in fourth grade. His mother was a restaurateur, and that was always some background detail I knew about David, even though I went to his restaurant only a couple times between fourth grade and college. The restaurant, a greasy spoon in Venice Beach called House of Teriyaki – which later moved down the street and became H.O.T., Too, then changed to Benice – was not a visible factor in my life until after college, when David and I both returned to Los Angeles and David became Benice’s head cook, co-owner and everyday fixture. My long-time friend became my chef friend.

Our relationship goes beyond the culinary, of course, but food will always be a big part of the friendship. When David’s passion for good eats evolved into a passion for the art of cookery, that aspect of our relationship changed. It’s different, dining with someone who works in a restaurant. David approaches his food like a chemist, breaking down the tastes and smells into ingredients, inferring from a bite how his order was made, and measuring out his respect for the establishment in plain terms. He spies into the kitchens of wherever we are eating, muses on what kind of restaurant he would like to open one day, and always tips the staff far too much.

However, the word chef didn’t really apply to David when it came to Benice. His cooking there was of the short order variety, and his creativity was limited to the versatility of eggs on a griddle. David did what he could, scraping together omelets out of sub-par ingredients and serving up an uninteresting-yet-never-disappointing menu of the usual diner options. He added his flare where he could, with quaintly painted tables and a charmingly sketched menu, and Benice evolved into a cool place for locals in the Venice area, or anyone on the west side that hungers for diner food without the ten-dollar price tag – including me.

Going to Benice became a ritual. I said hellos to a staff that often included my friends and stared down David as he slaved away in the kitchen, letting him know I was there, telling him not to screw up my order and challenging him to impress me. Afterwards, I joined him in the parking lot during a smoke break and chatted up the meal, other meals and life in general. It was a good breakfast experience, and truthfully, I would have been a regular at Benice even if David hadn’t been there, because I appreciate rice as a side dish that much, and I really do love their veggie rancheros.

Truthfully, David is not a chef. He’s just a guy who looks up to Iron Chef Sakai like toddlers look up to firemen and astronauts. At Benice, he was king of his short order castle, wearing a smock and chef’s pants like George Costanza wore velvet (if it were socially acceptable). Outside of Benice, David led an underachieving existence of simple creature comforts and recreational sleeping habits, talking trash on Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and other celebrity chefs without ever having gone to culinary school himself.

But David is still my chef friend. He has a chef’s potential and a chef’s mindset, as evidenced by the MAC knife he carries around in the trunk of his car, and there is a strain of real passion for the craft lurking somewhere on his person. After trying Bouchon’s scrambled eggs, David became obsessed with learning how to recreate what he still considers to be the holy grail of breakfast, and after I told David about Jocko’s and the best sunnyside up egg of my life, he charged himself with repeating it. I’m sure that for the rest of his life he will continue to chase perfection in the kitchen, even if it isn’t Kitchen Stadium.

Two weeks ago, David moved to Pittsburgh. Just like that, the Benice era of David’s career and the Los Angeles phase of our friendship ended. Where David and his MAC knife end up now is up to him – as he continues on a career path that promises to skate the razor’s edge between cook and chef for some time (a vocational hazard) – but I’m keeping expectations high as he embarks on a new life in a new city. We both stand in the eye of the quarter-life-crisis hurricane, unsure where we’ll be next year and approaching careers at the entry level, but as he keeps reminding me: I was the one who cheated off of him in math class.

An appreciation of food culture will always be a reoccurring theme with us, but lately David and I have had more to talk about than good eats. Even as I criticize David’s ambitions and he often downplays mine, our friendship is as strong as ever, even at a road-trip’s distance away. We’ll always have Benice and Los Angeles, but I mostly look forward to the day I visit Pittsburgh, when we burn hours at coffee shops, check out a local restaurant and talk about how life has been between then and now, because as it stands, things are looking sunny side up.

Benice
1715 Pacific Ave
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 396-9938

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under Los Angeles.