Smoker's Delight

Nieporent looks up midway through his steak, his aspect very much like John Belushi's in Animal House -- just before he stuffs an egg in his mouth to start the food fight. "Cohiba is probably the most counterfeited cigar," he says. "How can you tell? Check out the band. A fake Cohiba band looks about as real as a counterfeit dollar bill with Reagan's picture on it."

Battle of the Brands

Michel Roux can smoke anything he wants. So I ask him, "What does the guy who can smoke anything choose when he wants a great cigar?"

Roux replies with the assurance that all Frenchmen naturally posses in affairs du couer, (and cigar smoking, like a love affair, is a matter of desire and affection).

"You know, it's something of a paradox that on the one hand everyone talks about the scarcity of good cigars, and on the other hand there are more and more expensive brands than ever before. It's very confusing. I've been to the Avo plant, I've seen them made, and I have confidence in them. Don Linos are always reliable. I also like a cigar made in Honduras, Flor de Florez. In the end, though, I'm prejudiced towards my friends' cigars," he adds aphoristically. "It's a sign of true friendship when someone gives you a cigar. It's a great gesture -- unless of course it's a King Edward."

Point taken. We've all brought cigars to pass around. This profligate cigar-swapping is a trade-nexus as effective and widespread as blanket-giving among the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Coast. As a giver, you acquire a reputation for the munificence of your gift. The recipient acquires a great variety of goods. Gift-giving probably accounts for cigar smokers not evincing the brand loyalty of cigarette smokers. Wine drinking is a better analogy: there are a few wines that you like very much. You'll be offered many others. Some of these you'll really appreciate.

While the group has expressed a sense of not being taken in by the mystique of Cuban cigars, in the end it all rings as hollow as a beauty contest judge who carries on about "inner beauty." ("Inner beauty never got anyone a prom date," Erma Bombeck once told me.) Case in point: as the waiters set dessert before us -- which after all the alcohol, meat, and tobacco just had to be a cholesterol-rich crème brulée -- Tihany produces a handsome humidor.

We gather round as he opens it. The smell of rich tobacco emanates from within, in the way that I imagine miraculous light would pour forth from the Ark of the Covenant. Rather than Holy Writ, there are cigars in all shapes, none of them with labels. Though we have the whole world of cigars to choose from -- those we've brought as well as Patroon's considerable store -- we're all a bunch of cigar sluts when confronted with Tihany's top-of-the line Havanas.

I push back from the table, pat my expanding stomach, and join my fellow smokers in a haze of bonhomie. We're moving on to the next part of the classic program -- the jokes.

Nieporent begins. "So this eight-year-old millionaire walks into a whorehouse ... "

Peter Kaminsky (pkaminsky@aol.com) writes the Outdoors column for the "New York Times" and the "Underground Gourmet" column for "New York" magazine.

"Smoke Ring"

"Cigar, Unwrapped"

"Single Malt, One Smoke"

"Light Me Up"