Sometimes, you sit down to a meal that is so good, it launches you into what can only be described as a food retrospective.
You start thinking about how your eating habits have changed over time. You discuss your food history: What you grew up eating with your family and how this may or may not influence your current choices. You remember The Shift: The moment when you went from not liking or being afraid of a certain food or dish to trying it and then eventually being completely won over by it and now totally craving it.
This is what I felt when the server placed a carving board of salumi and cheese on the table in front of us at Diavola today. Because out of everything on that lovely dish, my favorite item by far was the terrine.
Who would've guessed? For most of my life, spreadable meat has freaked me out. I mean, how on earth can anyone trust a meat product that is shaped like a small loaf of bread and can be sliced as easily as butter?
It took me years to actually voluntarily try pâté. I think the first positive experience I had with it was in grad school. I took Carisa to a French restaurant to celebrate her engagement/upcoming wedding, and they served us bread and pâté to start. And she ate it and liked it, so I tried it, too.
And it wasn't bad. And I didn't die.
After I moved up to the Bay Area and got a job in wine, I began to run into pâté more frequently. Often, at huge wine tastings (like Family Winemakers), where the crowds were big and drunk and had already picked over the cheese table, pâté would be the only option. I would eat it simply to survive. And discovered that, well, it was actually kind of addicting.
The affinity grew as we started to eat French food more often. Our favorite SF restaurant was L'Amour Dans Le Four, and we often ordered pâté there. (Theirs came with a port jelly over the top.)
Though that restaurant has since been turned into office space, my new-found love for pâté has only become stronger.
Which led us to the next topic of conversation: Now that our food "limits" have changed, where do we draw the line?
But that, I think, is a blog post for another day.
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