Surprisingly, the never-exactly-slim Ebert spends little time reflecting on how much he misses the taste of his favorite foods. Instead, he says, what he misses most is the interaction that comes with eating and drinking.
He writes that “when it comes to food, I don’t have a gourmet’s memory.” Unlike Ebert, I do consider myself a ‘foodie,’ and I’ve always focused my recollections of food primarily on tastes. I remember eating sweetbreads two years ago at Mario Batali’s NYC restaurant Babbo. I can recall my first taste of real gelato, during a family trip to Italy when I was eight years old. I can even remember my first anchovy at age three, snuck straight from an open can in the fridge.
Those are three eating experiences that will probably always stay with me. But when I really think about it and put myself back in those particular moments, it’s true that I don’t really, fully recollect what any of these things tasted like. At age 31, I know unmistakably what an anchovy tastes like, and I’ve had really good gelato more times than I can count. So, undoubtedly, if I do remember a taste when I reminisce about these experiences, it is more recent encounters with these foods that my mind is substituting.
What I do recall vividly in all these memories are people, and places, and feelings. I remember eating at Babbo because I was with my now-wife, shortly after we had gotten engaged; because eating at Babbo was high on my New York must-do list, impossible as it was to get a reservation; and because we managed to grab a table at 11 p.m. one night after eating dinner somewhere else and then going into the restaurant on a whim, thinking “we shouldn’t do this, but then, this might be our only chance.”
I remember gelato in Italy because as an eight-year-old kid, eating ice cream al fresco in a different country, where everyone I encountered was speaking in a language I’d previously only heard during visits with my dad’s relatives, made me feel special and worldly; and primarily because it takes me back to family vacations, at a point during my childhood when my family seemed to me to be a steady, unshakable unit.
And the anchovy experience? Well, I’m not even sure I’m pulling that one completely from memory, to be honest. When I think about it, I have a pretty clear picture in my head. But I’ve heard my mother tell that story in vivid detail so many times over the years—how I’d come into the living room after my snack and sat next to my mom, only to have her wonder why my breath smelled like cat food, and how my grandfather, who passed away only two years later, was visiting at the time. So perhaps I’ve allowed myself to create a mental image of the experience, so that I can hold on to that moment in time as long as possible.
I love food and can’t imagine not being able to enjoy a great meal. Food is life, in so many ways. But Ebert’s essay is a reminder that we don’t only eat with our taste buds. If you lost the ability to eat and drink, what memories from meals past would stay with you the longest?
