Bacon Sandwiches

It's the simple things...

Marcus Mitchell was larger than life. He was a big man, probably around six and a half feet tall, possessing a stocky frame to go with it. He was born in Zimbabwe but became somewhat of a stateless refugee like so many African families escaping persecution or lack of opportunity in the land of their birth.

Marcus enjoyed the freedom and hospitality of his adopted Kenyan homeland. He also enjoyed many friendships, which I suppose is normal for a generous and outgoing person. Most of all, he liked eating and drinking. It was a natural progression for him to seek employment as a chef. However, Marcus had no formal training. In his own words, he “completely bullshitted” his way into his first job (it also helped that his pork belly was food worthy of all the pagan gods!).

Marcus was quickly poached by a popular restaurant that had recently come under new ownership. The Talisman in Nairobi was known as a local watering hole and restaurant for smokers. The new owners wanted to take it up several notches. While Marcus was inexperienced and raw, these factors actually made him more attractive as a manager/head chef. He was young and eager, and would not be afraid to push the edges of the culinary envelope. He was exactly what The Talisman needed to go from a popular local dive to a world-class dining experience.

It didn’t take him long. Within a year, The Talisman was the No. 1 ranked restaurant in Nairobi. The popularity of the beautiful venue was only eclipsed by the delicious cuisine and the quirky, funny, and large chef with an infectious laugh that carried across the entire campus. You could stand all the way on Ngong Road and know if Chef Marcus was in the bar.

The Talisman became a success in large part because its chef loved it as much as the customers did. When he finished cooking, Marcus didn’t go home. He went to the bar or sat at a table with his patrons. He’d stay for hours, telling stories, reciting dark poetry (his own), drinking Pilsner Lagers, and downing round after round of Jäegermeister.

Marcus’ popularity led him to be voted Kenya’s Chef of the Year. In keeping with his jolly and eccentric reputation, he received his prize wearing a Prince Charlie Tuxedo complete with Scottish kilt. He was later interviewed and asked to describe his favorite thing to eat. One would expect the Chef of the Year at East Africa’s most popular restaurant to have taste as exotic as the community and menu he served. Nope. When the question was put to him, Chef Marcus didn’t hesitate. He looked straight at the camera and replied, “A bacon sandwich, of course.” The interviewer was taken off guard. This was unexpected. When pressed for elaboration, Marcus replied “It’s the simple things, dahling.”

Chef Marcus was correct. A glance of the last meal choices of some famous death-row inmates reveals a collection of comfort foods that took men facing the tragic end of their lives back to a time when eating wasn’t just satisfying an animalistic urge, but a source of contentment and security. Grilled cheese sandwiches, fried shrimp, mint chocolate chip ice cream, A&W Root Beer, fried chicken, steak and potatoes, peas and carrots, and, of course, apple pie, can be found among last meal requests. The saddest I recall was the beverage choice of one man sentenced to death in Arkansas on two counts of murder. He asked for cherry Kool-Aid.

Men wounded on far-away battlefields are known to cry out for their mothers. When facing extreme peril, we desire to shelter in the safest place we know. For many, it’s in the arms of Mama. For others, it’s being transported back to perhaps the only happy time in their lives— when a cup of cherry Kool-Aid was a feast.

There are certainly better chefs in the world than Marcus Mitchell. Doubtless, many chefs in Nairobi were at par or above Marcus’ level of experience. But where Marcus beat them all was in understanding food, and what food does, and what food means. You can’t learn this lesson in any culinary school because the curriculum is unique to every person on earth.

It is learned wherever our safe space resides. It can be a physical location like grandma’s mint-green kitchen, or a favorite backstreet deli. But more often than not, it’s a memory—a wonderful memory—which Chef Marcus, for his part, would recall, in all its colors and flavors, the minute he smelled the unmistakable odor of bacon frying in an iron skillet, and sank his teeth into the grease-soaked sour dough toast, mortared together with mayonnaise, perhaps a sliced avocado, and the juicy little porker.

Not long after Marcus won his Chef of the Year award, I was off adventuring in Sudan. Cut off from all communication with the outside world for several days, I finally stopped at an office which had a satellite internet connection and was able to check in with home.

Immediately, my phone began dinging with notifications of dozens of messages. They were all bad. Friends and family were sending me word of Marcus’ tragic death by a brain aneurysm. He was just 39 years old. It was early in the morning, but I remember rummaging through my pack to find a bottle of whiskey I had saved for the return journey. I must have looked quite odd, sitting in the sweltering heat, drinking an entire bottle of Jura, and weeping like a child.

Marcus taught me so much. He was not very religious, but his work had a very spiritual dimension. Food was how he loved people. Like Christ, food was a prominent feature of Marcus’ own sacrament. Many theologians spend their lives trying to discover the lessons Marcus seemed to know by nature. It’s not about the food. Food is merely a host for something far more precious: the Source of life. The next time you eat an ordinary bacon sandwich, you can remember this lesson. For me, I’ll remember Marcus.