No Substitutions

I love food. I love that every culture expresses itself through food and I love eating what comes from people who have thought about food more than I have. My first restaurant job was at Red Lobster as a busboy and I worked in bars or restaurants for a decade after that. I'm currently in New Orleans for work and I'm doing my best to use my free time to eat and drink my way through the entire city. This is a mission that I am so excited to fail, I thought to myself with each bite of the delightful shrimp po' boy from Headquarters I just ate.

New Orleans is my favorite food city for a few reasons, one of them being that it's cuisine is so defined. Sure, I've had great meals in Oklahoma City and Chicago and New Paltz, but they were just really wonderful versions of dishes you could reasonably order anywhere. Boudin balls and étouffée aren't on a lot of menus.

Great chefs amaze me with their resourcefulness and creativity. They ask themselves simple questions like, "how can we use the rest of these meat scraps" and difficult ones like, "can I turn this cheese into foam and is that a good idea?" They source the best ingredients they can find at the best prices while still allowing a dish to be profitable (mostly). They often grow their own vegetables or spices, and usually maintain semi-legal relationships with various mushroom foragers, Amish breadmakers, and dairy farms etc. They then think about how all of these items can come together in a way that tastes good. They hire others to help cook the food and ideally every person and ingredient has a vital role. A sort of cosmic mise-en-place.

And we believe in them. Eating at a restaurant is an expression of trust. We trust that our food will be clean and sanitary, we trust that it will be prepared with care, we trust that they're trying. Maybe it won't be the best meal we've ever had, as there can only be one of those, but we hope that it's satisfying.

I have a rule for myself when eating out. Don't substitute anything in a dish. The chef has thought about it more than you have and you're doing a disservice to your own experience in thinking you can make it better. I encourage you to join me in this rule. If you have an allergy, sure, I understand, but "I don't like olives" is no good reason to remove them from the twelve-ingredient dish you ordered. They have a place, too.

The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis. There were other pieces involved but they don't really matter in the context of this piece. The general manager of the Mavericks, Nico Harrison, thinks this trade was a good idea. Luka Doncic is 25-years-old and one of the three best basketball players on the planet. The Mavericks made the NBA Finals last season. Anthony Davis is a very good basketball player. I'm sure you know most of these pieces of information.

At risk of comparing human beings to food, running a basketball team is not so dissimilar to being a chef. You're hiring and firing and you're looking for value in places it isn't traditionally found (it's ramp season or PJ Tucker can get us over the hump). You're trying to make something great. Your fans want something great. And Luka Doncic is really, really, really great.

When I was a kid the Seattle Mariners traded away Ken Griffey Jr. and I was upset. To me, then, the point of having a baseball team was to have a guy like Griffey on it. The point of being a baseball fan was to root for a player like Ken Griffey Jr. As I learned more the Griffey trade made sense. He wanted to be closer to his hometown, he wanted to play for his dad, it all tracked. He wanted out. But Luka Doncic didn't want out. He didn't know about it until it happened. As I've gotten older my stance hasn't much changed on my original view. The point of having a basketball team is to have Luka Doncic on it. The point of being a basketball fan is to root for a player like Luka Doncic.

             Imagine for a moment your favorite restaurant won a James Beard award last year and summarily stopped making its beloved cuisine. It decided one day that no longer would we serve Old World French peasant dishes reimagined, but instead every Friday was pizza night. Great pizza is great, right? This, I imagine, would feel like a betrayal. Now think as a Mavericks fan. You’ve been going to the proverbial Dallas Mavericks restaurant at least 82 times a year since you can remember. It feels like home. Each game you trust that they’re trying. And now it’s just pizza night.

-Michael Campana