The smell of black coffee immediately brings me back to childhood hours spent at my grandparent’s house in the country. My parents did not drink coffee, but my grandfather had coffee every cold morning before breakfast. I remember looking at fresh pastries at the bakery, the croissants with butter, raspberry cream donuts, kaiser rolls, walnut snails ready to eat while waiting wide-eyed, watching a thousand people pass by and then a thousand more. A tall glass of orange juice reminds of the sun shining warm across the breakfast table. Getting together the last bit of change in my pocket to buy a fresh pretzel from the stand, or something warm to drink when the wind blows cold.
Food is not just about luxury – not just about the foie gras with black truffle, or having caviar twice a day. Food is not about differentiating between to have and have not. There have been times in my life I have been able to afford the finest, and times in my life when I have not been able to afford more than bread and $3 wine. Food is about appreciation. The something so immensely powerful in memories of cooking and eating and sharing round a table. Each moment tastes a little different as it passes, as we grow up and grow older, but they all smell the same. I didn’t love the taste of mushrooms, or liver and onions, or anything with a complex flavor profile as a child, but I can remember the smell of what my parents and grandparents cooked from the stove and in the oven.
So to this we seek our favorites, latch onto the familiar sensations that come from the tastes we love, and the memories from the smells we know. But we also seek the beauty of trying something new; searching for flavors previously undiscovered; the need to go beyond the familiar and dive headfirst into a life of culinary adventure. If you have fallen in love with one taste, one dish, one small bite, then surely you can love another.
A midday break for lunch gives respite from hard work. A tough day that ends with a cold beer or glass of wine. A meal with friends, dining out or eating in, creates an atmosphere of unmatched, unbridled contentment, food on the table, drink in hand, the world spinning until it stops for that single moment when your fork passes your teeth. A life where we can sit around long tables with seats filled with smiling/laughing faces, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the tabletop covered in plates and glasses and silverware, the pièce de résistance glowing in the center.
I am now surrounded by food from all over the world. This is something our modern, globalized world has afforded us. I can enjoy East African for lunch and East Asian for dinner. I can enjoy classics from my grandmother’s kitchen, and then go out for tamales and beer before getting ramen or pizza late-night. Everything old and new coming together. Classic dishes from homelands near and far (the familiar smells and tastes of friends and neighbors), mixed with an always-changing array of new ideas, new ingredients, new influences.
Which is more important, the dishes of antiquity, or the foods of future? They are equal at the dinner table.
It reminds us that the best parts of life are simple. Those who seek to take over the world have never truly enjoyed the things it has to offer. A world that can produce these smells, these tastes, these moments that last forever. It is only when surrounded by food and drink and people to share it with that these questions can even be asked, that life is evident, tangible, and good.