Bigger.

I left the woods and made my way over to Hattie's Grille in Suttons Bay, my favorite restaurant in the vast expanse of northern Michigan, though there are three others that could also survive in the competitive atmosphere of Chicago, or the coasts—The Rowe Inn, Tapawingo, and the Walloon Lake Inn. Naturally there are other good places but they have largely neglected a responsibility of first-rate restaurants, which is to educate our palates. Jim Milliman is the owner and chef of Hattie's Grille, assisted by Alice Clayton, a birdlike young woman who is breathtakingly deft in the kitchen.

  When I arrived during the afternoon prep work Milliman was busy making three desserts, bread, and a pâté all at once. Then his wife, Beth, called and asked if he could whip up a white-chocolate mousse. He smiled and began chopping Belgian white chocolate. I poured a largish glass of Trefethen Cabernet, which is a steal, and was reminded again of the sheer speed that is demanded of the chef. I used to daydream of becoming one but the fantasy dissipates when reflecting on the exhaustion of preparing a dinner for ten. My own restaurant could only accept a daily party of four, at most. My hands are clumsy. I typed five novels with a single forefinger. Frankly, this limited my interest in revision.

  Milliman doesn't go in for fancy names for his creations; his smoked whitefish pâté is called just that, and a lovely dish of his devising, medallions of Maine lobster in a tequila sauce, carries no frilly adjectives. He is particularly skillful with seafood though I enjoy his pheasant potpie, the garlicked veal chop on a wild-rice pancake, his chicken thighs braised in stock, cream and shiitakes.

  I was strangely silent, sipping or gulping my wine, in hopes I would be asked what was bothering me.

  “What's bothering you?” asked Milliman, who is accustomed to me in full babble about food matters.

  I explained my thigh thoughts, ranging through culinary history down to the sociopolitical implications of exclusionary food faddism, the penchant for fey minimalism in the upwardly mobile groups. I finished with, “Do you think this all stands for something bigger?”

  “Absolutely,” Milliman said. Then we discussed approximately a hundred good ways to cook chicken thighs, branching out into turkey thighs (I favor the nutrition nag Jane Brody's way of poaching them in vermouth with fresh vegetables and a head of garlic). For duck thighs and legs you need go no further than Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France, or to Madeleine Kamman. Alice Waters bones rabbit thighs and grills them with pancètta and fresh sage. I prefer my thighs with two wines I got from Waters's husband, the wine merchant Stephen Singer: any Bandol, or a chianti called Isole.

Jim Harrison, from "What Have We Done with the Thighs?'