The hapless, ZPZ tape-loggers, caffeine-jacked myrmidons who toil away in the filthy sub-cellar of our corporate headquarters, reviewing hour after hour of mind-numbingly repetitive and boring video tape, noticing this spectral apparition, began to lose their already tentative grips on reality. One scene after another, a glimpse here, a face in the crowd there, lurking suspiciously in the background in another scene, down the bar a few positions, pretending he doesn't know me in another -- or front and center; there he is.

It's Albert's very ubiquitousness in the raw footage, his omnipresence -- even in the scenes where the viewer won't see him, that tells you all you need to know about Spain -- and how damn good it is.

Understand: Albert, along with his brother, Ferran, is a chef/owner of the three Michelin starred El Bulli, the hardest to reserve, restaurant table in the world. He's a national hero, an international superstar in the world of chefs and restaurants. Suffice to say that just about anywhere in the world of fine dining, from Shanghai to San Francisco; when Albert walks in the door, the whole place goes on Red Alert. He's used to the very best. If there's a downside to his life in the culinary firmament, it's that too much foie gras, truffles and expensive wine come his way.

As a chef at El Bulli, hugely respected pastry chef -- and as the owner of a casual eatery in Barcelona, he can surely have the very best Spanish ingredients delivered anywhere he wants, quickly, with a phone call. You'd think, he'd be a bit .....jaded by it all.

Yet, there he was at Espinaler, gobbling up those supernaturally delicious, canned cockles and razor clams and mussels like he'd never had them before. Tagging along at Quimet and Quimet, shoveling in the tapas with a big smile on his face. Out in the country, with a silly red bib, a blissed-out expression, sucking down the calcots and the red wine like it was his last meal on earth.

I've never seen anyone so happy to be in Spain -- and (this is my point here) HE FREAKIN' LIVES THERE!!!

All that magnificent food -- all those cool little tapas bars, they're right down the street--and yet, it was like he just landed in Barcelona from Mars. His enthusiasm for his own country, his own heritage, the everyday places and things of Spain was something to see.

Naturally this made me misanthropic and deeply envious.

Why can't I have that? How come I gotta go halfway across the earth -- to like, Singapore, or Hong Kong (or Spain), for instance, to really get MY culinary jollies these days? He's on a magic carpet ride in his own town and I'm like a full-bloom junkie, the honeymoon period over, needing a higher and higher dosage to get off in MY home town of New York!. Why?

The sad fact is, we'll never -- and I mean NEVER have it so good as in Spain. It's not like we don't have great restaurants in Manhattan - -and will surely have many more. And certainly, we can get many of the same ingredients jetted over (more or les s-- if at a steep price). No. It's attitudinal. You can faithfully reproduce the look of a Spanish tapas bar in New York City. You can stock it with all the best, most authentic ingredients, just-jerked from the rivers, streams, soil and seas of Spain. You can staff the joint with the best cooks, dragooned off the streets of the parta vieja. And you'll still never be close to the real thing. Because what your tapas bar needs -- really needs -- is three or four or eight OTHER tapas bars (or casual Spanish eateries within walking distance).

You can't really enjoy this kind of food in a vacuum. You need to graze -- or at least know that you can graze (should the urge arise), bouncing from one place to another, a mouthful or two of what's good here, a glass of tinto, a few mouthfuls of what they do well over there -- another glass of tinto and so on. In fact, the whole customer base has to re-groove to accommodate this notion. They'll have to accept the idea that a small can of tuna -- or clams -- can actually be better than fresh stuff. And worth about $150 bucks.

That the fat of Spanish acorn fed pigs is the stuff of which dreams are made. That there's nothing unusual about growing up with Goya, Dali, Bunuel, and Gaudi. That midnite is a normal time to sit down to dinner.

The best example of What They Do In Spain that We Can and Never Will Do is to be found in the Extebarri scene near the end of the show. Here, at a rustic pub in the mountains near St. Sebastian, grilling has been raised to unthinkable zen-like heights. Hand made charcoals. A separate fire for each individual order. Separate grills -- and custom designed and crafted pans and implements to best achieve perfection.

Ingredients of a quality undreamed of by most mortals. This, in a simple, neighborhood-looking joint with a smoky bar and a self-taught chef who grew up in the village. It's where the Adrias, Arzaks and Aduriz's go for their own pleasure -- high end comfort food.

Back before cable, if you took a baseball bat and smacked it upside a television set in the middle of a show, there'd be a black and white sputter, a flash -- and then white noise and static. That was what my first bite of grilled elvers was like there. And the grilled gambas. And just about everything else in that chilly, wood-smoke smelling kitchen. A jarring, flood of endorphins, then brain overload, and for a second, a blinding light. Momentarily, the synapses shorted out. Sensation returned in a warm, intensely pleasurable afterglow of flavor. It was a sensation that related directly to the experience of a few weeks before -- in Tokyo. At Sukibayashi Jiro. Two seemingly simple things done well -- as well as they can be done. In Tokyo: old school sushi.
In Spain, grilled stuff with a little salt and a light spritz of oil.
Nothing, as it turns out, could be better

There are, on reflection, some similarities between the two destinations: in both cultures, the very best ingredients, presented in all their unadorned, un-fussed with, pristine simplicity, are celebrated and enjoyed with great enthusiasm. The cult of jamon in Spain, for instance, bears some resemblance to the Japanese obsession with the very best tuna. Neither culture requires additional ingredients or garnish to get the point. I love seeing what happens to Western chefs after visiting Japan for the first time. A very fine Italian chef friend of mine returned typically traumatized by what he'd seen and experienced. Weeks later, he still had that uniquely blissed out, confused, sort of hangdog look on his face -- an expression I can only compare to what happens after you've had the first really, really good sex of your life. It's a look that says, "I thought I knew a few things. But apparently I don't." It's devastating. The kind of earth-shakingly wonderful -- yet deeply upsetting event about which great romance novels are written (most, sadly, tragedies). Travel forces you to re-define the meanings of words you thought you knew. Just as watching the lives of rice farmers in Vietnam causes you to adjust your understanding of the word "work", and exposure to hutment dwellers in India requires a reexamination of the word "hunger" , you can never return from Japan and hear the word "sushi" in the same way. Utility sushi is suddenly, no longer enough. You will be at least dimly aware that there's "rice" and then there's a universe of unknowable varieties and subtly different grades and preparations -- about which neither you nor I have enough time left to learn enough about to even fake a conversation with a skilled sushi chef.

When, for a few days, or hours, your mouth comes to know the taste and feel of fish for which the proprietor paid $300 to $400 wholesale ... when you wrap two fingers -- gently -- around slightly warm, crumbly/soft rice -- over which a perfectly cut, slightly dressed piece of mackerel served at just the right temperature has been lovingly draped ... when you realize the old man in front of you has spent fifty or more YEARS just getting these seemingly simple things right, you enter a whole new dimension of food appreciation.

Yakitori: Bits of chicken on a stick are no longer a snack -- but the expression of centuries of thinking about pleasure.

Soba: A noodle is no longer just a noodle. The world turns on its axis -- and plain old vanilla food porn is no longer enough. Tonight, at Sukibayashi Jiro, you will see what is inarguably, some of the very best sushi available on the planet. And no one -- not the nerdiest of food nerds -- can argue that Jiro-san himself, is not among its greatest living practitioners.

I will spare you additional details, giving you time, I hope, to pour yourself a stiff drink, situate yourself comfortably on the couch, position a bucket of ice water nearby, and strap on some extra absorbent adult diapers to avoid embarrassing emissions. Foodies with heart conditions should probably medicate themselves appropriately. The Spain episode that follows next week will only make matters worse. Food bloggers will surely be caused to bleed unexpectedly and inexplicably from various orifices, a fine mist of brain matter and steam issuing from the ears.

A seemingly straightforward scene at "Espinaler" near Barcelona, where we crack open some cans of mussels, cockles and razor clams will cause, I'm quite certain, heads to explode across the internet, leaving only smoldering stumps. The gurgling pipe-loads of dark, African chocolate rumbling beneath the floor of Enric Rovira's workshop, when spread across marble, will no doubt initiate many newcomers watching with that special someone -- to the experience of rolling over into the wet spot. By the time the Extebarri scene rolls around, and the Imperial beluga caviar and the prawns and the freshly made, uncured chorizo and the just-killed baby eels start grilling over their individual fires of hand made charcoals, few will be left alive, I fear, to appreciate the Arzak scene.

You have been warned.

My instinctive reaction to this kind of inverse snobbery is normally a raised middle finger and a "I had twenty-eight years of standing behind a stove - while you were arguing over bundt cake recipes in a chat room, motherfucker! Now, kiss my ass!!"

But the fact is, there's a little voice in my head that completely agrees with their point of view.All those years hanging out with no one but professional cooks, looking out at the world through the narrow tunnel vision of the kitchen - it alters, irrevocably, one's value system and ties one's sense of self worth inseparably and inversely to how bad, physically, you feel at the end of the day when you roll into bed. While I may want to reach through the computer screen and across the ether to strangle some snarky Comic Book Guy who's basically sayin' I'm a pussy, there IS that subconscious connection in my mind between flopping half-drunk on top of the covers, my back, knees and feet throbbing painfully, smelling like Charlie the Tuna after a hard day's work - and the sense that I have completed a day of honest, virtuous toil.

Writing and making television DOES feel easier, less useful and frankly less worthwhile than cooking for a living. Maybe these budding snarkologists have a point; I mean ... who really gives a fuck what a career "television personality" has to say? I mean, MY knee jerk reaction, every time I see Ryan Seacrest, for instance, is to wish him a forced march off to a collective farm/reeducation camp. Surely that would be better for everybody; Ryan - and society as a whole. Wouldn't it?

So, with this in mind, and in the grip of a particularly powerful wave of self-loathing, I got the bright idea to return to Les Halles, the restaurant where I spent all my waking hours before the writing and the TV thing took over. I thought to myself: "There's an idea for a special episode! I'll go back to the same restaurant kitchen and challenge myself to work the same station as I used to six and a half years ago. In fact; I'll go back and work my old Tuesday double shift - where I'd work the very busy, very difficult saute station both lunch and dinner. Start prep and set-up at eight AM. Twelve noon to twelve midnight service. Let's see if the Old Guy can still do it after all these years - even at 51 years old. Even though I was beginning to lose it BEFORE "Kitchen Confidential" hit and I got my ticket out. Even though Les Halles has expanded since I left - nearly DOUBLING in size and seating ... And I'll do this smack in the middle of the Christmas season! The busiest time of the year!! THAT sounds like a great idea - in a self-validating, quasi-delusional, I've-Still-Got-It, last gasp kindofa way!

And it'll make good television!"

As the date grew close, it began to dawn on me that I was not so sure I could actually do what I'd hoped to do - that I was physically (or mentally, for that matter) up to the challenge. Carlos, my one time protege - and now the executive chef, had serious concerns. He pointed out, among other things, that the menu has changed - a LOT - since 2001. And that the busiest night I'd ever worked the line at Les Halles, we'd done 365 covers. That NOW they regularly did as many as 650 - with the same number of cooks!! And that I was suspiciously old - and out of practice - and couldn't possibly be serious about this whole enterprise anyway. This was a worrying vote of no-confidence, particularly since my crew would be filming the whole thing. Come victory or total humiliation - the unblinking eyes of three cameras would be upon me the whole day and night.

So I invited a friend along--to share the pain.

Eric Ripert is the chef of the three Michelin starred Le Bernardin in New York City. It's easily and inarguably one of the best restaurants in America - if not the world. Eric is also a good friend, prone to making rash decisions when drinking expensive tequila. So I fed him a couple of shots, told him of my plan - and double-dared him to join me.

"C'mon, fish boy ... Let's see if you can work the busiest, most thankless, turn- and- burn grill station in New York. Do you even know how to cook meat? Have you EVER worked a place as busy as Les Halles? Have you ever worked a place where you don't even wipe the rim of the plates? Can you handle that?"

Eric's words were. " It sounds like fun." (Add French accent here)

So, that's how it went down, friends. Unwitting customers who showed up for their reservations at Les Halles on December 18th (2007) had their gaze wandered over to the grease smeared kitchen window - would have seen an unlikely combo of rookie cooks preparing their steak frites and their pork mignons, struggling and sweating in our jailhouse "vato loco" kerchief headgear (obligatory since a recent Health Dept. pinch, says Carlos).

How did it work out? How did we do? Did we bring honor to our clan? Could Ripert restrain himself from wiping each plate and fiddling with garnishes? Did he manage to keep his hands off the tequila? Did the enraged regular line cooks of Les Halles, frustrated by the visiting team of dilletantes, shank the gabachos like jailhouse punks? Did I go under like a drowning man- - swamped by a torrent of orders? Or did I simply decide to screw the pooch, drop my apron and swan around the dining room for the duration?

You'll just have to tune in.