We had crossed the line: Our free caffeine fix had gone from blessing to entitlement, and we’d gotten greedy. Before management could retire the espresso machine, however, the company collapsed entirely, a victim of the Internet bubble, and most of us were laid off—consigned to supporting our own luxury coffee habits for the foreseeable future.
This tragedy attuned me to the delicate emotional balance between wanting free food and being offered free food. That is, I always want free food, and I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to get it. And as a travel writer, I’ve even succeeded in getting paid to eat my way across five continents. Did you know that the basement food courts of department stores in Japan will often have enough free samples (of pickles, dumplings, cookies, etc.) to constitute a meal? That all over the world, Sikh temples (and street festivals) give away food? That bars in Milan, Bologna, Florence, and Rome often serve copious buffets gratis during the early-evening aperitivo hours? That Chabad Houses from Cancún to Kathmandu invite Jews of all kinds to partake of their free Friday-night meals: baked salmon, challah, hummus, and, always, a sweet cucumber salad? To hunt for these opportunities may be mercenary, but it’s also human, a postmodern version of our inherited hunter-gatherer instinct.
Yet a spontaneous offer of sustenance will always be infinitely more satisfying. In the spring of 2010, on assignment for The New York Times, I spent a couple of weeks walking from Vienna to Budapest, a journey that left me perpetually exhausted and lonely, my feet blistered, my back aching. Late one afternoon in Slovakia, I wandered into a tiny, tiny village—Velky Grob, or Old Grave—with no idea where I was going to stay and equally nonexistent command of the language. I flagged down a young couple walking their dog and asked, in awkward Slovak, if Velky Grob had a park where I could pitch my tent.
“Where are you from?” responded the woman, Katarina Synakova, in English. Ten minutes later, I was sitting next to Synakova’s grandfather, drinking homemade white wine, eating sugar-dusted pastries fresh from the oven, and chatting with her family in English, French, and Italian. That night, my hosts offered me dinner and a place to stay, and the next morning, when I was about to set off for the next village, 15 miles away, Synakova’s father handed me a flask of brandy he’d made 25 years before. I cherished each drop I drank, and made it last almost two years.
The memory of that kindness has stuck with me, and has made me regret that I don’t live in a village where I can offer such hospitality to strangers. (Here in Brooklyn, I encounter few clueless backpackers.) And so, instead, I try to pick up restaurant checks as often as I can, to make sure that friends experience the same random grace I’ve managed to enjoy so frequently. It doesn’t quite make up for my teenage freeloading, I know, but I’d like to offer this apology to fast-food-restaurant managers throughout Tidewater Virginia: If you’re ever in Brooklyn, dinner’s on me—all the Chicken McNuggets you can eat.
Matt Gross writes frequently for the New York Times travel section, is a contributing writer at Afar magazine, appears regularly in Saveur, and blogs about parenting at DadWagon.com. His last piece for Gourmet Live was about the eclectic eats of the Grammy-winning band Ozomatli. Follow him on Twitter @worldmattworld.
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