Anthony Bourdain II

A couple other great episodes:

Hong Kong. What a great view into this world. Lost in Translation with actual conversations. The best noodles in the city are made in an apartment high in a building in the bad side of town. He is the only master left in the city from the ancient Chinese art of noodles. This is one of the most magical moments ever captured.

Pacific Northwest. Interesting look at Oregon young cooking culture.

Romeo y Julieta

It was a while back when the Romeo and Juliet made at La Romana in the Dominican Republic were something to hope for. Over time, the brand lost its kick  and the mastership of its Churchill's wrapping. Over its lifetime, the brand was known for producing over 1,000 personalized cigar bands. High quality Romeo and Juliet habanos brand to order.

But something happened. They became popular. The pressure to be in the stands carried back in the supply chain all the way to its seed, and something was lost. It is not a coincidence that the original family was also loosing its grip on the product over 4 decades in exile.
 
The resemblance to its origins was brought back on the "Centenario" issue (one hundred year celebration), and it did allured to the glorious past.

But that was it. The world changes. The Romeo and Juliet Churchill's don't contain the same leaves of past decades. They are not what they were...until I crossed paths with the habanos from the original soil. The same soil that in its desperation becomes eternal.

The Cuban Romeo and Juliet hasn't changed. It fires up like a turbo engine banishing its band becoming what it was before it was named. Its history ends and begins on its smoke. There is no time before perfection, and there is no telling of its future.

I walked by the original Romeo and Juliet factories on a daily basis. A long time ago, the building was meant to stand outside the city walls, outside the protection of the gates to be closer to its soil. But the city grew in her own selfishness making the tabacco factories an arcaic symbol of past times. The fragance emanating from the leaves cut and squeezed by the tabacco rollers slowly covered the neighborhood easily leading blind men back to their home after a night of drinking.

The Romeo and Juliet from the original soil remains. The glorious Churchill under a Shakespearean name still grows outside the gates.

Le Scriba

Accounting is an ancient trade. In the time of Pharaohs, sculptures were only reserved for the Pharaohs and major civil and religious figures. Ancient Egypt is built on the question of eternity. The building of monuments spanned decades to assure the immortality of the present ruler. "Human Gods" took their gold and their servants with them in the journey to the afterlife. And all the sudden, the scribe is made eternal in color sculptures in noble poses.

The Scribe kept the records on the building of pyramids and temples. They supervised the construction of monuments. It was a trade passed from father to son for generations. They were so revered that at times, they were exempt from taxes. The eternal quest for immortality starts to wane, and a trade starts to assume its righteous place among the immortals not because of its need for eternity but for its importance to make this life, eternal.

Scriba

El Cemí

The Tainos were one of the most advanced Aborigines of the Caribbean.

They were the first ones to encounter Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus having been a merchant made a catalogue of species, food, and plants from his first encounters. He listed tobacco; however, he listed it as the only item without economical value. Over the centuries, tobacco spread throughout the world like no other good.

In the US, there seems to be an association between tobacco and power given the wealth of plantations in the South which has been forever inscribed in modern culture through movies, but tobacco is more than that.

The Taino Indians used tobacco to speak to their spirits in ceremony. They smoked tobacco through their noses with a hollow trunk with two endings in one side. European smoked in pipes and bought tobacco from Virginia and Cuba's plantation using shredded leaves of the tobacco plant. Native Americans used the peace pipe and believed the smoke carried their prayers to Heaven. Moroccan caravans spread it across Africa and across desert cultures. Then colonial powers brought it to every single point in the globe.

But at some moment in history, the habano was born as the modern cigar. Why was this shape introduced when tobacco use was already widespread across the World.

Habano is the original name of the cigar given the first major tobacco factories were in Habana (Havana). There is no evidence of a link between the modern habano (cigar) and the Tainos Aborigines. However, one must wonder about the shape of this archaeological artifact found. It is called the Cemí. It is one of the oldest archaeological findings in Cuba, and it is very possible that there is a connection between certain tobacco tradition of the Tainos and the birth of the habano.

The oldest of these icons had been carved in a stalagmite and had a height just below 1 meter in one of the highest mountains in East Cuba which was the stronghold of Taino culture. This one was made out of wood. It represents a deity of the land (El idolo de la Tierra). This idol is called nowadays a deity of the tobacco plant.

El Cemí



Spaniards never got a hold of this area. Taino rebellions lasted years in this mountain, and in these caves, the Cemí dwelt among dried tobacco leaves and the smoke of the elders in wood carvings, stalagmites, and stones.

View from La Gran Piedra Mountain