I cannot cook well. Well, not very well. My dishes are a rotating band of proteins cooked with onions, olive oil, paprika, cumin, and chili powder. I’m a dependable cook, whose food sustains but doesn’t inspire.

            When someone cooks well, the food inspires. You’ll go beyond plopping yourself at a table to chaw on that grub. You’ll get a reservation several lunar cycles in advance, use your entire tax refund to pay for the tasting menu. You’ll wait in line at Momofuku Milk Bar.

            The moment you walk into Momofuku Milk Bar, you know it’s going to be good. Because New Yorkers will only wait on line to eat delicious food or buy newly released Apple products, and this is some line. People are humping up against each other to fit in the door, and every time a new person gets in line you feel the outdoors on the back of your neck, and hate them and the people in front of you for wanting cookies on the same cold night as you.

            Because ultimately, you’re always there for cookies. Sometimes someone will mention Crack Pie, which looks and tastes like it’s made of only sugar and butter, and you’ll run over to the East Village, monomaniacally discussing the last time you ate Crack Pie, and how it is unlike any other pie invented by anyone, even God . You see the Giant Window Peach, no words necessary, and burst in, Crack Pie your White Whale. If someone had suggested to you on the walk over that the night wasn’t going to end with a Crack Pie-induced stomachache you would have laughed in his face. Or punched it. But while you’re in line, you see the people standing around the elevated tables, shoving cookies into their mouths, and then you look at the menu and think, “Well, I can always get cookies and eat them later . . .” and before you know it you’re at a table, eating pie, and eyeing the cookies you got for tomorrow.

            The cookie menu reads as follows: cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie, chocolate chocolate cookie, blueberry cream cookie, and, the only cookie on-site that has a registered trademark, the Compost Cookie.

            This is the King of Cookies. Kookie Fucking Kong. A cookie whose ingredients include one and a third tablespoons of butter per cookie and more candy, chips, and pretzels than any Midwesterner could eat on Super Bowl Sunday. This cookie is boss, and shows its utter dominance by commandeering your taste buds so that after you take a bite of it you literally cannot taste any other kinds of cookies until your palate is cleansed. The woman who made this cookie- she cooks well.

            To cook well is to inspire the kind of fanaticism in your acolytes that makes them drool when they just describe your food.