Thoughts on Food and “The Best”

If you love to eat you can cook.

~My dear grandmama

It is no secret that I am a food motivated bat. I love eating, preparing, and serving food. Over the years I have developed some strong opinions on the fundamental elements of good eating. In no particular order:

• Taste and Aroma
• Texture and Temperature
• Appearance and Presentation
• Ingredients
• Skill
• Novelty and Nostalgia

Allow me to elaborate on each:

Taste and Aroma

This should be obvious enough, but the flavor of a dish is really the first thing we all think of when we think of food. Science tells us that there are really only 5 flavors to play with sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. I am sure you can imagine the sweetness of ice cream, the saltiness of popcorn, or the umami of sauteed mushrooms. The key to good taste is to keep the flavors in balance. Two of my pet peeves are food that is either too salty or is not seasoned enough. Yet, the 5 flavors are only a quarter of what we have to play with. Most of our experience of taste (about 80%) is perceived through our sense of smell. Smell gives us flavors like fruitiness, citrus, woodiness, astringency, etc. I dare you to think of a food that has only taste or only aroma.

Texture & Temperature

This pair of elements have to do with the mouthfeel of the dish. Texture describes the tactile sensation of a food. Is it crunchy, creamy, gelatinous? Temperature is self explanatory. Is the dish meant to be hot, cold, lukewarm, etc? Consider for a moment the difference in the experience between warm noodles like Italian spaghetti and meatballs and cold noodles like Sichuan sesame noodles. Would something with the texture of ice cream be as appealing if it was warm?

Appearance & Presentation

We eat with our eyes before we ever put the fork in our mouth. The appearance of a meal helps the mind establish an expectation of whether or not we enjoy it. This is why chefs spend so much time trying to get that perfect sear or food in a commercial that looks so delicious. If it doesn’t look amazing you’re likely not going to enjoy it.

Ingredients

Food is only as good as the ingredients that make it up. Ingredients often are what tie a dish to its sense of place and time. Good ingredients are highly localized and seasonal, giving the meal a connection to the land and time of year. Although, in the modern world food processing has allowed us to transcend these constraints of time and place we still seek out food that is both seasonal and local. Rainier cherries are always better in season than when they’re frozen. Dungeness crab is a unique food of the Pacific Northwest, making our region something worth visiting.

Skill

Some food is just hard to make from a technical standpoint. I cannot bake bread to save my life and I could never hope to smoke meat to Rabbit’s Texan standards. Some foods require a specialist and when executed well they provide a connection to the chef who prepared it. The feeling that someone went to immense effort to prepare a pleasure just for you. An indulgence that you yourself could never hope to make yourself. Whether it’s a good bagel, good pizza, or good bbq I have so much respect for the people who care about their craft.

Novelty and Nostalgia

Novelty describes the uniqueness of the experience of your food. Modern molecular gastronomists have created some rather unique dining experiences in the areas of form, appearance, and texture. Nostalgia describes the familiarity of a dish, i.e. comfort food. When times are tough or we’re put in a new environment, we often seek out comforting food from our past to bring a sense of familiarity.

I used to be incredibly biased towards novelty. My first few years in Seattle I made a spreadsheet, The Foodulator, in which I collected thousands of recipes and local restaurant recommendations. Each week I would randomly pick one recipe to prepare and one restaurant to order takeout from, swearing never to repeat myself. It was good fun during lockdown but each meal was a bit of a self experiment. The thing with experiments is that they’re likely to go bad as often as they go well. In my experience a bad meal is often more memorable than a good one. I was trying many new foods but I didn’t feel like I was eating well. 

It was a chance encounter with a celebrity chef (who wholeheartedly endorses this list) that set me on a new path. He contends that nostalgia is superior to novelty. We eat to satisfy our spirit as much as our body and nothing quite does the trick like savoring something you know you have enjoyed before. Personally I have found that familiar food brings people together around a table in ways that high concept edible potpourri cannot. I do still explore, the Foodulator still exists, but in a reduced form. I will try something new but only if it has a relationship either conceptually or literally with a dish I have enjoyed before. It is ok to be picky in some things. We each have our own unique sense of taste and it’s fine to indulge it as often as you want. Hopefully this rambling bat has given you a better appreciation for why you like the foods you do. Life is short, eat what you like.

Bonus: “The Best”

I am a bit infamous amongst my friends for having a very simple rating system when it comes to food. A meal is either “the best” or it’s just not in consideration at all. It’s really quite simple; something is “the best” if it’s a meal I desire to have again. There are good meals and even memorable meals but something is only “the best” if it’s a food I want to have in my life on a recurring basis. To quote Mary Berry “here we’re only interested in the best.”

And we all deserve the best.

~Fel

All images are from Wikipedia and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution.