I love food, and I like to dine out occasionally. When I find a good restaurant, I try to go back often and support their business. And it saddens me when I have to break up with a restaurant: either because my taste changes, or the restaurant loses its luster in food or service.
Sometimes my taste takes me to a different direction from where the restaurant wants to go (or where it’s staying). Fine, I can live with that. What I cannot stand is when a restaurant starts to get sloppy. The menu changes, the food isn’t prepared as attentively as it used to be, or the cleanliness just isn’t kept up (gross!).
The thing is, I noticed each time when things started to go downhill, and I wish I could’ve spoken to someone – I genuinely wanted to offer feedback so they could’ve gotten back on track. But I got the feeling that the wait staff didn’t really give a crap. Whatever happened to those little anonymous feedback cards? I would’ve gladly filled them out, with sad faces and all.
For the record: I just had a terrible experience at Franny’s (my favoritest restaurant in the whole wide world). The host lady is new and made us wait for 15 minutes even though the place was half empty (her answer: “we’re trying to pace it”, even though we have been there every week and never had to wait if there’s an empty table). The food was uninspiring: pasta was flat, the salad leafs were not fresh, and the moz was lumpy in some places and competely missing in other areas. I hope this is not the start of a sad decline.
About six years ago, I went through a period of constant fatigue. It came over gradually, and I noticed it because I was feeling tired everyday and nothing helped. I was worried and a bit scared. I went to the doctor’s but there was nothing wrong with my blood test.
I was living in Hoboken at the time. Iridesco, the design studio Danny and I started, was in its third year and we were getting by. We worked long hours and ate out a lot. I consumed a lot of cheap pasta, pizza, fried rice and Indian food.
A friend of mine heard about my diet, and suggested that I tried cooking and eating more home-cooked meals. She explained to me that restaurants often use cheaper ingredients and bad oil, and our body needs to work extra hard to process all that junk.
So I started cooking again. I heard about the farmers’ market in Union Square. I bought a loaf of peasant bread for the first time in my life (from Bread Alone) and was amazed by the taste (and still am every weekend when I have their bread fresh). I started to watch what I eat. And gradually I got better and felt fine again.
After getting back to cooking, I became interested in the ingredients. I started to notice the difference between produce from the farmer’s market and those from the supermarket. These days, I favor organic and local food not just for moral and health reasons, but mainly because they taste (a whole lot) better. My wife and I enjoy trying out the different varieties the market offers (who knew there are so many kinds of potatoes!). There’s also something about just going along with whatever the season offers, even though it gets kind of sad and boring during the winter.
I like creativity. I like to cook. And most of all, I like to be free. With the Foundation, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to. You saw the kitchens. It’s a machine. The organization is too perfect. It is predictable. I don’t like that. I want to start a new phase where I don’t know much.
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