I Have A Dream, Of Egg Curry

I thought I made the "perfect" egg curry, but upon reading about Jiro Ono, the 85-year old sushi-making legend of Tokyo, Japan, I have thoroughly revised my position on what constitutes perfection, not only in the culinary sphere specifically, but in the larger sphere of human endeavors.

Jiro has been making sushi since he was nine (when he left home), and he has been making sushi everyday of his life, including holidays (which he loathes), and confesses that he even in his dreams he experiments with ways and means of improving the craft.

Despite the thorough sushification of his being, Jiro still doesn't believe he has reached perfection in sushi making.

Perfection, in Jiro's sense of the term, is paradoxically, an ego-transcending notion. Jiro isn't looking to reach a pinnacle when he can say "Ah, there I have nailed the perfect sushi, and its time to rest."

Perfection, on the contrary, is a constant process of self-improvement and discipline and involves more than just getting the task on hand done flawlessly.

Besides, sushi, it is implied in the documentary Jiro Dreams of sushi, is simply a means to an end, which is the unflagging pursuit of the holy grail (of the perfect).

In an era of mass production and fast gratification of desire, Jiro's art, belief and life-style--he has lived in the same tiny, unadorned, tiny apartment for years and takes the same train to his restaurant in the basement of an office building in Tokyo--seems impossible to replicate, unless one is gifted with a strength of character and a single-mindedness of purpose that is rare.

Jiro's "hole in the wall" eatery can accommodate only ten patrons at a time. 

A meal at Jiro's--about twenty pieces of sushi per serving--costs three hundred and seventy dollars.

Walter Benjamin would say that Jiro's sushi has its "aura" intact.

As for my egg curry? I realize, somewhat shamefacedly, that it would be sheer buffoonery on my part to use the adjective "perfect" in conjunction with it. It's just a routine egg curry with no a strand of aura about it.

Besides, the making of it comes wrapped up in my ego: I feel that when it's time or occasion for me to name my favorite dish (there are one too many more than 85% of which I am unwilling to cook for fear of failing in the process to do so), I would reflexively say "Egg curry," and revel in that statement momentarily because its one dish that I have cooked multiple times with confidence.

My involvement with the egg curry is petty. No wonder neither eggs, nor the curried version of them, ever come into my dreams.