last meal

Ahoy,

If you could choose your last meal, what would it be? I remember that as a question on top chef challenge. The chefs had to prepare the last meal requests for these great chefs they admired. Every meal stepped back to basic comfort food their parents cooked for them when they were young. The chefs had this challenge of making basic food, but not making it too basic to be disappointing or too fancy to be unfamiliar. I've had so many meals - sometimes basic, sometimes fancy - but I'll always revere tomatoes the way my grandma made it, and broccoli the way my mom made it.

Perhaps it was over-dramatic of me to regard this past weekend as our last meal, but it felt like what would our last outing before everything changes. Soak it all in. The wood of the chopsticks, the grain of the plate, the tiling on the walls, the stacks of glass under each lightbulb, the curve of the bench, and cascades of SF light through the non-slanted windows. We tried beef carpaccio because I was curious about all the rage on cooking shows. The idea of it is really strange and foreign and disturbing to me, but it was delicious in a not-too-chewy-but-smooth-peanut-saucy-tangy-flavour sort of way. We tried taro rolls, which was sweet of him because A claims to hate taro but I think he just says that to send me into a frenzy. They tasted like not-enough-taro-but-needs-the-lettuce-wrapped-and-sauced-to-taste-best-flavour. The shrimp was packed with punch-you-in-the-mouth-delicious-you-don't-want-it-to-end-flavour. And the albacore came with pickled mangoes that I wish weren't pickled but tasted perfect-and-not-too-vinegary-with-the-albacore flavour. We realized we perhaps ordered too much food after the second dish came out. His smile was delectable nonetheless. I'll forever regret if he thought otherwise.

scrumptiously satiated,
JT