Kitchen Diplomacy

"If anybody knocks," he says, "don't open it."

A moment later, Egan appears on the TV screen, greeting the Koreans. There are a dozen of them, including two women and several kids. Egan escorts them to tables and delivers mugs of beer. Soon, workers appear bearing trays of salad. Egan sits down and starts talking, his mouth moving silently on the screen as his hands gesticulate grandly.

After a while, he stands up, walks off-screen, then returns holding a fishing rod, which he presents to Pak. The Koreans stand and applaud.

A few minutes later, Egan walks off-screen and pops into the tiny office, bearing a tray of sizzling barbecued ribs. "Eat these [bleeping] ribs," he says, "then tell me about [bleeping] Texas!"

He hustles off, and reappears on the TV screen, carrying ribs out to the Koreans, accompanied by his wife, Lilia, and their two daughters, who are also serving food. He sits down to eat and chat, then he stands up, walks off the screen then returns holding a fancy bow and arrow, the bow equipped with high-tech pulleys, the arrow bearing a razor-tipped point.

Several Koreans wipe the barbecue sauce off their hands and examine the bow and arrow, looking suitably impressed.

"They like weapons," Egan says later.

'I'm From Jersey'

It all began with Vietnam.

In the early '70s, when Bobby Egan was growing up in the tough Jersey town of Fairfield, son of a roofing contractor, he figured he'd finish high school, then go fight in Vietnam, like so many other Fairfield kids. To prepare, he took up shooting and hunting. But by the time he graduated the war was over, so Bobby worked as a roofer for his father, and in 1982, started his barbecue business.

But he remained obsessed with Vietnam and with reports that the Vietnamese were holding American prisoners of war in secret prison camps. He decided to investigate by befriending the diplomats at the Vietnamese mission to the United Nations, inviting them to Cubby's and taking them fishing.

When his father saw him hanging around with communist diplomats, he was shocked. "Jesus, what's going on here?" Walter Egan recalls thinking. " Do they have him brainwashed?" He reported his son to the FBI -- "I'm a flag-waver," he explains -- and he was relieved to learn that Bobby was informing the bureau about his activities. "They said, 'We know everything he's doing.' "

The FBI declines to confirm or deny any relationship with Egan, says Bureau spokesman Stephen Kodak. But the FBI certainly kept voluminous files on Egan, which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Most of the words on most of the pages are blacked out, but the censor let stand an anonymous observation that Egan was "obnoxious and pushy."