Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What it means to me to eat everything.

This blog is about trying - and loving - food.  All types of food.  Food from all over the globe.  Food everyone already enjoys and food most have yet to try.  Food that’s endemic and food that’s nearly impossible to find.  Simple, unadorned edibles, like fruit or seeds, and labor-intensive, elaborate meals finished with flourishes.

Above all, this blog is founded on the notion that it is extremely unlikely that you have already tried your favorite food.

I hope to make your mouth water as you consider dishes you’ve never tasted.  If my writing fulfills its function, it’ll do the impossible: bloom phantom flavors from words.

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Here is what this blog is decidedly not about: exotic food used for shock value.

It cheapens food that has real meaning to people, that has sustained them for centuries, that has its place in ritual and in tradition.  It cheapens it to treat trying it like you’re rolling down the hill in a barrel or entering a hot dog eating contest or bungee jumping naked.

This doesn’t mean I take eating unnecessarily seriously.  Sometimes food is funny, like when a really well-made xiao long bao explodes on your shirt when you take a bite, or when the strand of sauce-covered spaghetti you’re slurping just won’t end, or when you’re in a nice restaurant and there’s no way to get the marrow out of a lamb bone other than to dig it out with a doctored straw or upturn it over your face.

But I assume that everything – even things I have to try and forget my culinary norms to swallow – is delicious until proven otherwise, and I hope to convince you to try approaching eating the same way.

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