No matter how long it takes, we fall in love in a moment. It happens not only between people but also when we are offered some alien food, previously avoided or refused, now found inescapably delicious. At first, surprise. We halt, as a noisy room falls quiet at the clinking of a glass, and we are momentarily captured by the hush. Then comes the double-take as we try to reason out what we just tasted. Our senses zero in. The taste expands and we with it. Not only is this experience happening to us, but others also notice it. Our face lights up, our eyes open wide, or they close as in prayer as we chew our way into another dimension. This is the closest most people get to synesthesia, a sensory metaphor where the modality of taste and emotion join. It comes with the first bite or not at all.
I believe one can taste love. It was there in the ragu whispering on the back of the stove in my mother’s kitchen, in my nonna’s Risotto Milanese, in the chicken soup delivered by a dear friend when I was sick. It is there when any chef finds himself lost in the heart and soul of his craft. The feeling of food is a fundamental element of flavor.
I waited expectedly for my daughter to have such an experience. As a girl, she was a “picky eater” which is also quite common among teens. Parents talk about their kids at the grocery store, at back-to-school night, and commiserate as they freeze their humps in the soccer stands. It’s no consolation that other parents struggle with their kids’ food idiosyncrasies: “I can’t make anything he wants … Halloween candy is NOT dinner. What if she wants to become a vegan or just stops eating?” I respond with an unrelated but relevant anecdote: ‘Once, one of our house cats climbed high up a tree and was meowing inconsolably. My wife called the fire department. The fireman looked up at the cat and said drolly, “Ma’am, have you ever seen a cat dead in a tree?” Same thing with kids: if they leave most of their lunch, if they only relish candy, or if they scoff at dinner, don’t panic. They’re not likely to starve.
For the first four of my daughter’s teenage years, meat of any sort was anathema. The one surprising contradiction was her taste for Italian salami, although she’d learned not to eat it in public. When I packed her lunch with paper-thin slices of soppressata lovingly folded in warm homemade sourdough, she complained that the fine, funky aroma of ripened meat made her lunch stink. I wrote it off as something she countenanced from others at school, like a bad hair day. But secretly, my ego was bruised. My son Anthony also had his fussy phase as a young teen. I once made a wager with him that I could make a better hamburger than In-N-Out. I hand-chopped a marbled cap of beef sirloin, grilled the patty over fig cuttings, melted aged white cheddar over the meat, spread hand-mounted mayonnaise on a homemade bun, laid on a slice of ripe tomato and shredded gem lettuce from the farmer’s market. He took one bite and shook his head. Not even ‘pass the ketchup.’
As they advance in age, teens become sullen and often contentious at the table as their parents plead with them to just try the baked halibut or the lamb they could “eat with a spoon.” No thanks, they’d rather have Mac n’ Cheese or chicken tenders cloaked in panko.
As father and house chef, I have cooked meals for three diets, the gluten intolerant, the plain-o vegetarian, and something else to satisfy my egalitarian taste. When time or patience was short, we ordered in. Suddenly a bowl of ramen from the new noodle house turned into a craving, and the gnocchi ai funghi (that I could well have made better) became my daughter’s go-to Italian take-out. She mmmnned softly over a swipe of a soft-ripened triple crème that stretched my pocket at $41/lb. Ok, pazienza, I thought. At least it’s progress. But on another evening dinner, I was disconsolate when I watched her scuttle the protein to the edge of her plate and heard her gush over kale salad she’d had from the local vegetarian rabbit hut. Kale is not salad…At least its package would soon be compost.
In retrospect, the family table was the frontline of the drama of separation when kids are naturally inclined toward claiming their independence while their parents hang on in retrograde to the memories of them in their cribs. At times, I may as well have paved the way to the kitchen table with eggshells. We cajoled and sometimes argued. Sometimes there was silence. Dinner was about something other than the food.
As she advanced, my daughter started reading about cooking, googling recipes, and striking out on her own. I was greatly encouraged until I realized that I had to make several trips back to the market to replenish the fridge after her weekend cooking spree. One afternoon, I came home to puff pastry that she had spent the better part of the day rolling, refrigerating, meticulously folding, and forming. No way! One of the more daunting culinary feats! She was pleased with only a few of the dozen patisserie-perfect crescents on the sheet pan. That’s my girl. I suggested that one learns most from failure. At a certain point, I tried to nudge her away from recipes and to follow a more intuitive path. She balked but then a month later succeeded marvelously with the assumed simplicity of fried rice. She has been regularly turning out chocolate chip cookies that improve somehow with age overnight, savory scrambles with onions and mushrooms which she dishes up along with advice to love-stricken friends, and sweet concoctions she cooks in a glass in the microwave.
Thankfully, my kids’ appetites and attitudes have evolved as they have experienced more of life, travel, food, and people. We couldn’t believe who they were when we had guests at our table and heard them exchanging animated dialogue. We heard things told to others they would never have shared with as much gusto with us. We were lucky to receive a few mumbled words as they moved out the door. But it was evident to me that all my daughter’s experiences at the family table and beyond were preparation for what I had been waiting for. Meanwhile, I was making headway. The crusty chicken fingers gave way to breaded, pan-fried petrale sole. She was partial (and still is) to the crispy top of most anything—chicken skin, hold the flesh, the burnished top of a potato gratin, or sage leaves fried brittle in brown butter. Picking is her antipasto, taken as she whisks around the kitchen snatching fingers full of mom’s addictive granola, the cucumber atop the salad, or the residue sticking to the bottom of the roasting pot. Surprisingly, months after the malodorous school lunch, my daughter made better by proposing “Charcuterie Day” to her high school psychology class. I was thrilled. I like to think this is one of the reasons she aced it.
Both of my kids did stints at Chez Panisse. Anthony delivered wine. Luisa did brief stages in pastry and then spent time bussing dishes in the busy upstairs café. Before service each night, the chef briefs the corps on the nightly changing menu, and “tasters” are passed from waiter to attending service staff. One morning after her late-night shift, she came running into the kitchen— “DAD I ATE A QUAIL!!!”—What?? She went on to describe how that night’s host had offered her a taste of one of the entrées of the evening. At his good-natured encouragement, she accepted a food she would never have tried before. She took the first bite of the crusty quail leg wrapped in pancetta and grilled, then a forkful of the cavity, stuffed with cornbread and wild mushrooms and enriched with the bird’s liver. She mimicked the swoon for me at the taste of this hitherto exotic food; she praised the salting and the delicacy of the mushroom marriage and the overall savor, “AWESOME!!”
We are given to understand that the physical perception of flavor is determined by the five senses that signal the elements of taste—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and the elusive Japanese umami. When put to the test this should result in all palettes being equal. But this just isn’t so or let’s say, there is simply much more to it. How food feels in the mouth, the warm or searing heat produced by piquancy, the textures and temperatures that are infinitely variable. What we smell accounts for the lion’s share of the perception of “flavor.” But what about presentation? We “eat with our eyes.” Probably and not finally, the atmosphere in which food is enjoyed or tolerated colors the picture of food as an experience.
Umami, if it is a taste, is the most faceted of all. The literal translation means “essence, savory, meaty, delicious.” Umami is distinct and difficult to describe. But food is an art as well as a science, and chefs tend to think of umami as a perfect balance perceived by all the senses. Underlying umami is the occasion, the ambiance, and the service, all of which enhance it. A food has umami when it optimally transforms, when it reaches its peak of quality and fulfillment. Umami contains a promise of pleasurable outcomes. It conveys beauty and is affected by memory, ritual, and one’s personal history. Yet, umami does not exist unless one has the experience and understanding to perceive it.
I often think of my dear daughter, suddenly a young lady, in the afternoon-honey-colored light of our neighborhood restaurant, among co-workers who echoed her wide-eyed exclamation, now focused on that transformative bite, the quail that I would never have gotten close to offering, much less stuffed with its liver. She had crossed her own line into that other dimension of taste mixed with the feeling of food.