There was once a man who loved food more than anything in the world. He’d eaten everything. Blowfish in Osaka, prepared by a chef with a licence and a steady hand. Fermented shark in Iceland, which he described as “a mistake, but an educational one.” Century eggs, surströmming, casu marzu, hákarl, huitlacoche. He’d eaten a soup in Chengdu so spicy the waiter made him sign something first.
And then one night, in a dockside bar in Marseille, an old sailor with one eye leaned over and said: “You’ve eaten everything, have you? Have you eaten puy?”
“Puy?” said the man. “What’s puy?”
The sailor just laughed, finished his drink, and left. But at the door he paused, and muttered, half to himself: “Very few have eaten puy. I expect few every will…” His voice trailed off as he left.
Well, that was it. The man couldn’t sleep. He asked chefs in Lyon — nothing. He asked spice merchants in Istanbul — they shrugged. A monk in Bhutan went pale and said only, “The one who makes puy lives where the air is thin and men do not go.” A shaman in the Atacama drew a mountain in the sand, then rubbed it out and charged him forty dollars.
Ten years, this took. He sold his house. His wife left him for a man who was satisfied with sandwiches. He crossed the Gobi on a camel with a bad attitude. He was robbed twice, married again briefly, and once spent a winter in a Mongolian yurt where his only food was something he chose never to ask about.
Finally, in a village at the foot of an enormous, cloud-wrapped mountain, an old woman pointed upward with a trembling finger. “The man who makes puy,” she whispered. “Up there. Three days’ climb. Many have gone. Few return, because honestly it’s a very annoying climb and most people give up.”
He climbed. Through ice storms. Past the bleached bones of less committed foodies. On the third day, fingers blue, beard frozen, he dragged himself over the final ledge — and there, impossibly, was a small stone hut with a warm light in the window and a smell drifting out of it that made him weep.
He hammered on the door. It opened. A little man in an apron looked out.
“I’ve come,” gasped the traveler, “across ten years and forty countries. I’ve given everything. Please. I must have puy.”
The little man nodded slowly. “Aar,” he said. “What sorta puy?”
The traveler blinked. “...What have you got?”
“Well,” said the man, wiping his hands on his apron, “Oi got chicken an’ leek puy, steak an’ ale puy, bacon an’ cheese puy, mince an’ onion puy... an’ if yew hold yew hard a minute, there’s a cheese an’ onion puy jus’ coming outta th’oven.”