Julia Child once famously said, “People who love food are the best people.” By that measure, I am an absolute gem.
I grew up in the rural South, where working in the family garden was part of my daily chores. We were literally “farm to table” decades before it became trendy to eat only organic and post curated photos of every meal online. I’m from the Clean Your Plate generation, and my parents were not about to cater to our individual inclinations. While I don’t see how eating everything placed before me was ever really going to help any of those starving children in Africa I always heard about, I can say it instilled in me a willingness to try new foods and a broader palate than I’d probably have developed on my own.
I moved away from my small hometown as a young adult and landed in the big city of Atlanta. I can still recall my girlfriends and me teetering through the streets of downtown in impossibly high heels, headed to salsa dance, and passing all the elegant people streaming out of the fancy five-star restaurants we were entirely too broke to afford. “Someday,” we would muse. “Someday.” Instead, we would dance ourselves silly and then sit barefoot on the patio of Café Intermezzo in Midtown because they stayed open until 2 a.m. and served a slice of chocolate cake the size of our heads that we could all share.
Over time, as I got to know the city, I learned that those elegant eateries downtown weren’t the only amazing places for food. I discovered the long stretch of highway just outside the city’s perimeter that is literally miles of outstanding small restaurants boasting food from nearly every corner of the globe, thanks to the many immigrants that populate the area. I had the best taco of my life there from a place that was once an old gas station before it was converted into a tiny luncheonette. The date I was on that day turned out to be the love of my life and is now my husband.
Just this week, I made a reservation at one of those fancy five-star joints downtown. I’ll be dining with those same girlfriends from the young and poor salsa-dancing years. We are celebrating one of us turning fifty.
One thing I have learned in all these years is that what really makes a meal a GOOD one is less about the location or even the ingredients and way more about the people at the table. Whether it’s a taco in an old gas station, sharing a stool with your soulmate, or chocolate cake in a concrete courtyard, sitting hip to hip with your dearest friends, what makes those meals and moments delicious are the ones you’re sharing them with. Be it the kitchen table in your childhood home or the buttery leather booth you had to make reservations for months in advance, may we learn to savor every flavor.