It's not an experience, it's a meal

Friday's New York Times included an article about how it's no longer enough for food writers to wax rhapsodic over a genuinely delicious meal. No, writes William Grimes, that's too pedestrian. Today's reader, weaned on a steady diet of extreme sports and reality TV, wants food writers who dare to eat dangerously -- trying an ethnic delicacy that could prove fatal, for example, or downing as many hot wings as possible in 30 minutes. As Grimes puts it, "Cheap airplane travel, mass tourism and television, not to mention a horde of scribbling journalists, have shrunk the globe and placed absurd demands on anyone trying to deliver an exotic experience to readers. When everyone, either in person or through the Food Network, has sampled street food in Hanoi, what's left?"

The thing is, he's right. We've all been tricked into thinking that eating has to be a "dining experience," and that our experiences aren't authentic unless they risk, if not life and limb, at least nausea and cold sweats. Heaven knows I've been sucked into it -- hell, I started this blog with the idea of using it to inspire myself to eat more adventurously, and I'm far from what you might call a picky eater. It's embarrassing to realize that I've gotten sucked once more into the zeitgeist, fallen prey to the sad notion that a challenge is more worthy than a pleasure.

And so I will note for the record that on Sunday I ate a tiny chocolate-dipped pastry puff filled with zabaglione (custard flavored with marsala wine), nibbling it to make the "experience" last rather than succumbing to the temptation to pop it all in my mouth at once, and that it was not a challenge at all. It was simply a creamy, flaky, sweet, sensual pleasure.