A visit from much-missed Fritz Blank

His preserved memory is acute and finely textured, rich with rollicking tales of late-night muskrat feeds in the Jersey marshlands, and of the grandeur of his German grandmother Oma's turtle soup, the toast in its day of the saloons of Pennsauken.

But at 68 and a few pounds heavier, chef Fritz Blank confesses that this week's visit home from Thailand has not been merely exhausting; it has been, he says frankly, disorienting: "I had trouble remembering where Broad and Market was."

It has been less than three years now since he closed his long-running French classic Deux Cheminees on Locust Street, so named for its profusion of fireplaces. The dining rooms were chandeliered, the crab soup silkily rich (laced if you wished with an optional shot of Scotch), an occasional Polish or German interloper tiptoeing onto the otherwise strictly haute French menu.

Blank retired after a couple of false starts and headed off to Thailand. He sends e-mails to old acquaintances, ruffling feathers, weighing in on Philadelphia culinary flaps of the moment: A proper hoagie's lettuce should be leafed, "not shredded," he opined in June. "The tomatoes should be [very ripe] sliced to order, not presliced and stuck in the Fridge. . . . the roll should be inside-out, as they say, the doughy center removed to make it more a salad sandwich than bread bomb."

He signs his missives variously. Sometimes faux formally, chef retraité, denoting his retiree status. Or when feeling friskier, Fritz-of-the-Jungle - in boldface.

His first choice for a last stand, if all the world was available, would have been Vienna and its seductions. But his dear friend and former partner (in the business and in his personal life), Leonard Bucki, had preceded him to Thailand where, among other properties, he owns a lovely beachfront home.

The two men live near each other now in Pattaya (though Bucki is with another companion), taking breakfast among friends at a local hotel where, by now, "we are known."

Upon his return there on Tuesday, things are set for Blank to move to a six-bedroom Japanese-style villa on a 12-acre spread to the south, goldfish ("not koi, they're nasty") in the ponds, taro-root farms all about, fields dotted with Brahman cattle, and pheasantlike jungle fowl bred to be fighting cocks.

So it will be, finally, Blank and his cat Bobo, a fixture who prowled the upstairs residential quarters and sprawling culinary library at Deux Cheminees, and Bucki and his current companion.