taste, memory, context

written from a biergarten, Friday 5pm

I believe that you can only begin to truly understand something by taking it apart and putting it back together. But unlike the reproducible breakdown of a mechanical watch or a gas car into their parts, perceived taste is highly dependent on variable and personal factors. Your childhood dependency on Cheez-Its may still outline your assessment of all crunchy, cheesy appetizers. How hungry and tired you are can make even the driest airport sandwich taste half-decent. The company of the lifelong friend formed over a shared Au Bon Pain habit and a mutual understanding of the sour, salty, and flavorful in life can make anything taste better.

Ayo Edebiri and Lionel Boyce wander around cities (with intention) in two of my favorite scenes in one of my all-time favorite television shows, The Bear (2022-). In Chicago, Sydney (Edebiri) self-directs a research tour of her home city, listening to music, taking public transportation and walking around markets, tasting pizza and caviar, wine and noodles, connecting with front of house, with VIPs. In Copenhagen, a parallel scene, Marcus (Boyce) tastes pastries and fried chicken, takes photos for his mom, learns from an established chef literally side-by-side.

I wax poetic to no end on Dave Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness. It’s the “Ratatouille moment”, the unexpected taste of home on the other side of the world, the moments that make you consider — very genuinely, for that elusive quarter-second — selling everything you own, jumping ship to any country that plays nice with your passport, attending any culinary school that will admit you. I have experienced this only a single-digit number of times in my life. One was actually last night, at Ernest, where a very fine seaweed-dusted fried doughnut (I spell it this way because it was not a sweet donut) brought together the traditional Chinese breakfast doughnut and a particular seaweed-flavored snack I had as a kid (wish I remembered the name or precise texture) into a very nice taste memory. (Thank you again, Daniel!) I’ve explained before the moments at Marlena that had us running to 7 Adams as soon as it opened. (They still have the best house rolls.)

I read an article about Smashmallow, the company that tried (and ultimately failed) to mass-produce gourmet marshmallows. I purchased a plant-based milk from Whole Foods today made from oats, walnuts, dates. Restaurants are combining the basic components of comfort food, and familiar snacks and drinks, into new experiences tailored to our changing tastebuds: gourmet peanut butter and jelly and bacon sandwiches, wood-fired grilled cheeses with caramelized onions and housemade fig jam, two-year aged parmesan on citrus-drenched radicchio, a cocktail that is supposed to taste like a spiked key lime pie Calpico, if they made that flavor.

I can’t help but feel guilty sometimes about connecting Michelin-starred meals to the chicken Caesar salads (extra croutons) I enjoyed almost every night in high school, the cheese Ritz Bits I’d get in return for fruit snacks in the lunch room. (I’ve always liked cheese.) I take comfort in the fact, though, that the greatest compliment to a chef is that they’ve made you remember something nice that you forgot about.

When that happens, it feels like reuniting with a friend.