The Making of a Memory

Does food taste different based on where it’s eaten? Can the same mouthful, the same morsel, the very same bivalve from the same ocean be charged with new flavors? Not flavors inherent in the flesh or the sauce, but flavors projected upon it by just the right circumstances…

I think so. I think the experience of food is so much more than the scientific makeup of what we put in our mouths; it’s the cumulative experience of that food and that day and that moment, and once in a while, they come together to produce a sensual memory. And I don’t mean sensual in the fleshy, carnal way, I mean sensual as in truly 'of the senses'; a memory more of the body than of the mind, and one that will sooner be evoked by a taste or a sound than a cerebral recall.

I remember a scene in the original Parent Trap movie where Hayley Mills meets her grandfather for the first time and immediately starts sniffing his lapel. Her explanation: “I’m making a memory”. She goes on to explain that from that moment forward she will always remember her grandfather, and how he smelled of peppermint and pipe tobacco. I think the reason I recall this scene so well- besides the fact that I’ve seen that particular movie more times than I’d like to admit- is the universality of that feeling; the sense of a moment in time being so precious that we must take it all in, account for every stimulus at that split second in time before it is whisked away. The very transient nature of such a moment makes it poignant, and I think the very futility of holding on to it is what makes us try so hard.

I was lucky enough to make one of these ‘culinary memories’ this weekend: sitting on the end of the patio at a local seafood joint with an enviable dinner companion, boats puttering around the docks, the sounds of seagulls mingling with fellow diners’ revelries, the sun starting to go down behind me. It sounds cliché- and it was. My writing this is not an altruistic attempt to make you feel what I felt in that moment- that would be a waste of words. Instead, I hope to add another facet to my memory, which for today is fresh on my senses. Selfish? Perhaps- but it is my memory.

Now, I’ve had oysters before; but I swear they’ve never tasted brinier, fresher, more perfect. There’s no doubt that these were some fine oysters- dressed with a squeeze of lemon, the tang of mignonette, each one sliding down followed by a sip of cold beer. But it was more than all this…was it the water lapping right under our table, the sun nearing the horizon in a very fitting parallel to the evanescence of the experience, the summer approaching its end, the shiver of cool air meeting bare skin, tingling from the cumulative effects of the day’s sun, sand, and salt…I’d like to think so.