My friend Karl is my favorite kind of foodie precisely because he isn’t one. He doesn’t follow the careers of hot new chefs, and he doesn’t know when truffle season is. He has a list of foods that he avoids. But then, one day, he decided to eat his way through it, because, hey, if there’s something to be excited about in this world, why shouldn’t he be excited about it too?
Once, as I described to him my love of sushi and how marvelous something as simple as a piece of fish on a bite of rice can be, he grew intrigued, so we decided to have some together.
As we sat down at my favorite place, I asked Shimizu-san if he had any needlefish that day. He nodded, and I waited for it, like how you wait for a favorite song at a concert. When he delivered it as his opener, a tiny mound of ginger wedged in a slit in the silvery skin, the curtains pulled back and it was showtime.
The flavor was lovely but not in itself astonishing—briny, clean, a taste of fresh sea. But then, somewhere around my fifth or sixth or eighth chew, that flavor exploded, amplified. Not different, really, but louder, much more of itself. It was active. It moved, and that’s what was thrilling about it. I started stamping my feet and cursing out loud (albeit reverentially, of course).
Karl examined his piece, dipped it in soy sauce, and put it in his mouth. He started chewing… chewing… chewing… and then his eyes popped open, his brows furrowing. “Whoa! What just happened?” he asked. He paused to finish chewing and to reflect, then answered his own question, talking about how the flavor just went bang, about how unexpected that was, how new.
As I listened to him talk, I realized that what I was hearing was familiar. It was the same Karl that just read a poem that made him think something new, the same Karl that just heard a bass line or a guitar lick that made him feel something new. That’s when I understood that my favorite thing about him is that he’s game. He’s game for life. He’s looking for it. He looks for those moments when some new and wonderful thing about living reveals itself to him. He’s the best kind of foodie, the kind for whom food is not an obsessive entertainment, the kind for whom food isn’t even life, but for whom food speaks to and touches on and connects to the wonders of being alive.
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