This question is, in my opinion, a culinary Rorschach test of the most fiendish complexity. The answer reveals as much about a person's views on food as any I can think of (with the possible exception of 'White rice or brown?').
Pondering a response gets us thinking about what we value when we eat. Flavor? Technical skill on the part of the cook? Ambience? Company?
What responses do we expect in ourselves when we have a a good meal? A flood of emotion? The spark of memory? Do we want to be dazzled and impressed? Would we rather be comforted and coddled?
The question has been popping up a lot lately. First, there was the awesome Last Supper challenge on Top Chef last week. Then, there was a discussion in the New Yorker review of Modernist Cuisine, where John Lanchester wrote,
There is no taste inherently better than another ... tastes are not innate but learned and the acquisition of taste is a kind of dance between the person at the stove and the person at the table. The dance between the cook and the eater goes on longest at home, which is why we grow up loving a food from our first and most sustained encounter with it.
This view was echoed in a recent interview in which Grant Achatz (talking with Terry Gross) described how his signature dish of pheasant, shallots, cider and burning oak has been known to move customers to tears. Because it is mind-bendingly delicious? Because the artistry is so exquisite? No. It is because the aroma of wood-burning sometimes takes diners back to their childhoods, when they played in piles of crisp autumn leaves. To me, that's about as profound as food can be. I get it.
But I don't share it. I'm afraid none of this rhapsodic navel-gazing explains why I eat - or what I find worthy in food. Call me shallow if you like, but I do not eat to have a transcendent metaphysical experience. I eat because I'm hungry and because food tastes good. Sure, it can provide insight into an unfamiliar culture or another person's way of thinking. Yes, it can be eye-opening if the ingredients or techniques are unfamiliar. But ultimately for me it's about the functionality of food, all the way. Pillows full of cinnamon smoke? I understand the thinking, but I think I'd rather have a nourishing bowl of really good soup that tastes fantastic and fills me up, thank you.
I'm totally with Michelle Bernstein on this one. Nostalgic daydreams won't provide much comfort as I prepare for the hereafter, but let me relive my first exposure to revelatory restaurant dishes (and by that I do not necessarily mean expensive or elaborate) and I'll go quietly into the night.
After Bravo's Last Supper episode, Sir and I discussed at some length which meals we would choose to experience again. Astonishingly, it transpired that we agree on the time and place of our individual choice for The-Best-Meal-of-All-Time Blue Ribbon (although not the course; a mere detail in the grander scheme of things).
The time: July 1991. The place: Voros Kaviar (Red Caviar), a Russian bar on Ostrom Utka in Budapest. For the first time in our lives we ate borleves (a spiced wine soup); blinis with caviar and sour cream; fogash paprikash; and orange souffle with apricot sauce.
The joint was on an unremarkable back street and hard to find; not elegant but not a dive, either. There weren't very many customers. I don't remember the decor, or the service, or the music playing in the background (although I know it was not gypsy violins, thankfully). Certainly none of the food prompted philosophical reveries or, indeed, striking emotions of any kind. But something about it was really, really good. Up to that point in my life, that wine soup was the best thing I'd ever eaten; an epiphany about the possibility of flavor.
Would it taste as good again, if I had exactly the same soup in my own kitchen now? It's not an hypothetical question: the first thing I did the morning after my culinary awakening was drag Sir all over town so I could find a cookbook with the recipe in English. I was successful and have made wine soup many times since. It is always delicious. But is it the same? Not quite. It probably wouldn't be as good if I went back to Voros Kaviar and ordered the identical meal tomorrow. Food is never the same twice, no matter what Michelin-starred chefs claim. At any rate, a quick bit of online research has revealed that the bar no long exists as it once did: after the end of Communist rule it became Arany Kaviar (Gold Caviar) - and I can only imagine what it has become.
And that is why for my last meal I will need a time machine and a teleportation device. That will enable me to enjoy the shock of the new (as, ironically enough, it once was) all over again.
Fractured Amy's Last Meal
First course:
Borleves. Voros Kaviar, Budapest, Hung. (circa 1991).
Main course
Grilled loin of gemsbok. Arnold's restaurant, Cape Town, SA (present)
Sauteed spinach. Ristorante Tinelli, Edinburgh, UK (circa 1998)
Zafrani pulao kashmiri. Spice India, Allentown, PA (present)
Dessert
Pistachio macarons. Dalloyau, Paris (Bois de Boulogne) (circa 1988)
Can you believe it? Could it be true? Even though it would hardly matter at that stage in the proceedings, my entire meal would be unexpectedly, coincidentally, and gloriously gluten-free.
My conscience will be clear when I meet my maker.
Borleves (wine soup)
This recipe is word-for-word as it appears in Elek Magyar's classic text on Hungarian cooking, Az Inyesmester Szakacskonyve (The Gourmet's Cookbook), published in English by Corvina. The recipe appears on p. 61 between those for vajleves (butter soup) and zabpehelyleves (rolled oat soup). I guess leves means soup. The destructions don't specify red or white wine: at Voros Kaviar they made it with some sort of chardonnay-ish number and that is how I always do it.
- 1.5 pints good table wine (see above)
- 1 lemon
- 3 inches of cinnamon
- 2 cloves
- 8 egg yolks
- 8 tablespoons of sugar
Bring the wine to the boil, add the juice and chopped peel of the lemon and the spices. Beat the egg yolks and the sugar until fluffy, then strain the boiling soup onto them. Put back on the heat and beat with a whisk until thick. Strain and serve.
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