‘What do you like to eat?’ It is the magic question
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- October 23, 2023
- 391
Thank heavens people love to talk about food, or I’d be up the small talk creek. I don’t know baseball statistics or what “The Bachelor” is about. I’d rather have my kidneys shaved than play golf.
These things leave me behind in many social situations unless I can find someone to talk about prewar jazz, 19th century presidents or the changing tail lights of 1950s Oldsmobiles. It’s like going to parties wearing a shirt that says, “This One Is Boring.”
Last week there was a technician making a late-day visit to get our overpriced internet sorted. He did his crawling around under the house and was gathering tools to leave when he asked about a nearby restaurant. In telling him what I knew, his entire demeanor changed, with suddenly bright eyes and one of those mild smiles. “Do they do steaks?” he asked.
“They do several,” I said. “What do you like?”
“Oh, I like a big 16-ounce ribeye with plenty of mushrooms. I don’t think you can eat anything better than that.”
“I think they have 20-ounce ribeyes, and dry aged.” His smile moved into more active territory. “And the mushrooms are fancy boutique things grown nearby.” With that, he was sold.
The young man told me he didn’t get to enjoy this treat very often as it’s an obvious splurge. “But my wife and I like to look for someplace really nice now and then and enjoy ourselves. I just had a birthday last week, and we had a heck of a steak.”
Anthony Bourdain was right; you can find some kind of common ground with just about anyone if you ask them what they love to eat. They may go stone eyed if you start in on the post-retirement life of Franklin Pierce, but ask them what their mom made for Saturday breakfast and they’ll probably start by licking their lips a moment and shaking their head with that little, pleased smile.
I once interviewed a professor for a story, which took maybe six or seven minutes. Afterward, I queried him about the food in his native Korea. That conversation stretched to nearly an hour, and an interesting hour at that.
Later in the month, I’ll be speaking with someone on the day they turn 100, and I hope to ask if they remember the best thing their mom made them as a child. I’m betting that memory is still fresh and clear after a century of eating other things. It’s a question for which everyone has a ready answer, and if they don’t, they’re going to be a pretty dull sort.
My answer would be a simple bowl of warm cornbread with sugar and milk before talking about the many things she made and I didn’t care for. We were a canned salmon patty, meatloaf, baked zucchini, and liver and onions house, same as all the others in the neighborhood with two tired working parents.
In those speed dating scenarios where single people spend just a few minutes chatting up potential dates before switching to talk to someone else, I always think they should ask people about food.
There was an excellent documentary that followed the efforts of a group of people of varying ages with pronounced autism who were trying to find long-term mates. Their difficulty with recognizing cues and following conversations made this difficult for them, but they pulled out the food topic with reliable results, again with big smiles. The speed dating tables were mainly silent until one or the other asked, “What do you like to eat?” It’s the magic question.
By the way, Franklin Pierce drank himself to death, and if you were him, you’d do the same.