He’s initiated into the latest culinary trends, the ones that are all the rage in Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Dubai; he experiments with techniques that, before this, he had never even heard of, among them sous-vide cooking, which owes nothing to the bravura performances of a chef but is based on slow cooking at low temperatures, allowing a better concentration of juices and resulting in a tender consistency of the flesh. They’re crazy about it in these prestige restaurants because it was developed by chemists who determined the precise clotting time; because it is infallible, leaves nothing to chance. Mauro is not particularly excited by all this: he considers this cooking method interesting only for the cheaper cuts of meat. It’s perfect for a pot-au-feu, for example, cooked for forty-eight hours at 175°F, but ridiculous for a fillet of beef. On the other hand, he learns quickly. And starts to get bored.

One day, the boss asks if he’d like to work at another of his restaurants, newly opened in one of the city’s most fashionable areas. The place has a radical concept: ten diners served a ten-course meal, open only in the evenings. The height of exclusivity and intimacy; the ultimate experience. This elitist idea creates a mimetic desire, similar to those provoked by limited editions and rare privileges: people are proud of having dined there; they think about it for a long time in advance, and the endless waiting list never gets any shorter. Mauro imagines it will be an adventure. He works hard, and everyone is impressed by his coolness under pressure, his creativity. But a few weeks later, when the owner tells him about his plan to create a chain of upmarket restaurants aimed at the global business class who travel to various cities on vacation, Mauro shakes his head: he’s not interested. He can’t imagine extending his time in this type of restaurant, has no desire to hang around any longer in this milieu of Thai society. He would like to see something more of Asia than this city, which has changed almost overnight from a paddy field to a luxury air-conditioned mall, this human anthill high on consumption, magnetized by the West.