Hello again – here is another (quite short) essay to whet your appetites while I work on some longer pieces. Sorry for the impromptu break from writing, sometimes life gets wild and unmanageable and writing an essay about dinner just doesn’t feel like the write way to handle it. But I’m back…
I spent the last week in Austria with family friends. I ate a lot of incredibly good, buttery food. Homemade Leberkäse and currant jams. Creamy quark wrapped in a laminated dough. Poppy seed cake. I ate hot Frankfurters boiled in the Salzburg main square. I dipped them in sweet mustards and tore Semmel rolls into beautiful little bites. I washed it all down with sparkling water and was on my way in mere minutes. I ate Kaiserschmarrn soaked in plum preserves and dusted with powdered sugar. I drank cool, dry white wine on a verdant green hilltop surrounded by wine orchards.
But the best meal I had was “Nur was zum kosten.” Just something to try.
A small bowl of cornichons. 1 boiled egg. A round of soft cheese. A wedge of hard cheese. Smoked bacon cut into thin strips. A glass of fresh-pressed apple juice. Black olives in a white dish.
I ate little bites here and there with snatches of whole wheat bread between the sour pickles and the creamy brie. I lulled my empty stomach as I stumbled my way through a conversation, having forgotten that Austrian German and German German are two very different things. I felt relief, that the pomp and circumstance of the meal was thrown out the window. That it wasn’t a sit down meal, with fancy dishes and a table setting. It was the most delicious thing I ate all week because I felt comfortable and at home. There were no garnishes or flourishes, beyond what was simple and necessary. The dainty spoon placed at the top of small plate upon the wooden table was all the ornamentation that the bowls of brightly coloured snacks could ever need. The golden hue of the apple juice stood in for any decadent table setting and looked more beautiful.
I got a tour the next day of the Hofburg in Vienna and one of the features was the silver collection. The dishes were either a plain, polished silver, or detailed, floral porcelain. I noticed the difference between the Heath plates covering the tables at California restaurants: earth tones, simple, no details and the bright green, floral services of the European royalty. I wondered what the food looked like then, if it had been as appetising in the past. How strange and exciting would it be to eat a meal off of these ornate plates? Breaking all of the rules that I see implicitly followed by restaurants, chefs, food media icons.
I have a hard time imaging a dish this kitschy, full of soup, doing well on Instagram and it thrilled me. I was suddenly imagining all the new possibilities. What if my aim wasn’t to photograph the food?
What does it actually mean for food to seem delicious?
Back in Berlin, there are millions, if not trillions, of spots to get Turkish food like döner and durum. There are also plenty of places with offerings more akin to what you might actually eat in Turkey. But at the “fast food” spots the menu boards often feature photos of the food, poorly photoshopped. The food looks alien, too vividly coloured and oddly unappetising. But it’s nevertheless delicious.
One of our favorite spots in the neighborhood is called “imren.” There, you can get a cafeteria style meal, tray and all, and enjoy homemade ayran (a yogurt drink similar to a lassi). The photos on the board are horrifyingly realistic. But when customers walk away from the counter with a steaming bowl of lentil soup, or white beans stewed in a tomato-hued broth, my mouth waters. No, brown lentil soups and stews of lamb do not look good. But why do they need to? Food isn’t just for looking at.
A bowl of real, edible, delicious, present food is beautiful in a deeper way. It isn’t just a visual experience. It’s perceptual, sure, but it’s not 2-Dimensional. A photo of the smoked bacon I ate in Vienna would probably look unnerving. The same way a photo I saw this week on instagram of raw chicken in a pot of water looked sterile, unfit for human consumption. Had I been standing over the stove alongside the photographer, I would’ve been able to smell the broth developing into something fortifying and delicious.
Food is alive, like you and me. And photos of it are only one perspective. Unfortunately, it feels like the photos of food are trumping the real, pleasurable experience of eating the food.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Instagram eats first.” A few weeks ago I met with a fellow foodie for a meal, but before I could take my first bite, they asked me to stop so they could photograph the table. For a few minutes they took several (hundred?) photos of the food. They moved our belongings out of the shot, posed my hand and stood up to get a bird’s-eye view of the table.
I was struck by how suddenly the meal in front of me became lifeless and sterile. It was instantly removed from reality within which I sat. You’ve read it before, I’m not the first to examine the perspective of the photographer as a mediator of reality. But in that moment I grew uncomfortable watching the show take place.
Sometimes, when I’m flipping through my cookbook collection and I see a table spread with beautiful food, I wonder who, if anyone ate it or if it just sat there, growing cold, becoming less and less food-like and more and more image-like.
This week I’m trying not to take any photos of what I eat. Or even to think about it as a performance. I’m trying to eat in a way that feels natural and comfortable. As my wise friend recently said, “Sometimes I just want breakfast to be breakfast.”
I wonder how Turkish döner would fare in an ornate Sevre dish - is our sense of taste influenced by how food is served? Love your writing!