The Power of Food in Storytelling
Think back to one of the best meals you’ve ever had and put yourself in the moment you ate it. Slow that meal down in your mind. What were you thinking, feeling, smelling, hearing at the time? What does that meal make you recall?
With that reflection, you probably recall more than just the food you ate, but perhaps who made it, how it was prepared, what senses it employed, and even the history of the dish itself. Food is more than just something that nourishes us each day, it holds a powerful story. For many it holds a connection to history and culture.
The particular meal that I reflect on brings me to a specific travel experience. A meal eaten in the small, hilltop town of Motovun in the Istrian part of Northern Croatia. For that trip in 2015, I had really high expectations for truffles and wine and amazing farm-to-table fare that may or may not be consumed under a beautiful shade tree overlooking a vineyard or olive orchard. I also had an older episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations on my mind as he traipsed through forests hunting for truffles and going out to sea to catch fish they’d eat on deck. Certainly we had some really wonderful meals throughout, but the dream scenario in my mind never really appeared.
But on our last night, we had decided to check out a small, little unassuming place we had walked past several times. Looked cozy, but nothing fancy. When we got there, it turned out we needed reservations. Yet we managed to get a table because a young couple and their dog let us share their six-top table with us, and thus began the best meal we had on our trip, perhaps one of the best I’ve had in my lifetime (and this was after a particularly gourmand-y trip to Copenhagen).
I almost remember the experience in slow motion. Naturally, I had ordered the white truffles with housemade pasta. The waiter placed the plate of rustic noodles on the table, then, white-gloved proceeded to bring out the raw white truffle and meticulously made a layer of thin pieces of the gray-yellow fungi on top of my pasta with his special truffle shaver.
I was beside myself with giddy delight. This was the food moment of the trip for me. Not only that, as we sat there, we discovered from pictures up on the wall, that this very restaurant (Mondo Konoba) turned out to be the exact spot Bourdain had eaten the white truffles on his episode. When I tasted that dish, the umami freshness of the mushrooms and the dense buoyancy of rustic homemade noodles transported me to the soil from which the truffles were harvested and the kitchen where the noodles were kneaded.
As I reflect on that food experience, certainly the eating experience was a big part of it. But it was much more than just the flavors. It was the place we were in, it was the fact that I had given up on the high expectations I came in with and it ended up being better than I had ever thought, it was the company (as this was my honeymoon). Within that meal contained a story about how I needed to let go of expectations and be in-the-moment. It was more than just the food, the food was the vehicle t getting there. You can read about that trip more here.
This is not the “fated” meal above, rather another delicious, black-truffle topped meal on the trip. I have zero pictures of that delicious white truffle pasta, perhaps a tell that I was truly in the moment.
And beyond the food-as-travel situation that I described above, food is an essential part of so many of our identities. There is so much about our personal and cultural history embedded in the food we grew up with, or didn’t grow up with, and how we relate to food.
In writing, food and our relationship to it can propel a story, can give context about the writer or the subject, can connect you to the place, and can encompass a story in and of itself. This is the very reason that our Scribente Maternum team is hosting an event called Writing Food & Identity with the incredible journalist, fiction writer, recipe developer, and entrepreneur, Lesley Téllez on Friday, September 10th (11am-2pm PDT / 2-4pm EDT). I’ll be hosting the event on behalf of Scribente Maternum as Lesley leads attendees through a really amazing discussion around how food informs our identities and the characters we create or report on in our writing.
As a writer who loves food—and someone who’s dabbled in writing about food—I am eager to expand my concepts of what food means for the stories we tell.
In the meantime, join us by registering now right here! It’s truly a bargain at $27.
