Some of our most powerful memories are those associated with taste, aroma and the visual sensations of eating. I just came from my Saturday ritual of having lunch at 8 China Buffet on 86th Street. The hostesses know me from years of patronage and just point me to my regular table when they see me at the door. More and more non-Chinese customers are finding their way to the restaurant but the bulk especially at lunch at Saturday and all day Sunday are Chinese families. Gustatory pleasures must be a Chinese value.
A visit to 8 China is like going to the Tusita heavens of Buddhist lore. Everything, it seems, the heart remembers from childhood treats and unforgettable family dinners at Chinese restaurants in the Philippines where I grew up were available on the restaurants three rows of hot food, an ice-refrigerated table of shellfish and salads at one end and Chinese cakes at the other, a sushi and cook-to-order bar, and a separate buffet for non-Chinese sweets like French-inspired palmier, layers of crisp puff pastry shaped like a palm leaf. As I said, it's a feast.
Chinese food at one end of the Eurasian land mass, Italian, French and Spanish food at the other end. These are the antipodes encompassing my culinary desire. Of the three Mediterranean cuisines, Italian is the equal of Chinese food for sheer variety and exquisite delights. While foods with taste too complex even to analyze are supreme examples of the cook's art, simple foods can be just as evocative. On a trip to Cinque Terre in 2006, I reveled in fresh figs, a fruit we didn't have when growing up. Outside of California, Americans know the fruit only by its dried incarnation, nothing like the juicy treat of the fresh fruit with its lovely purple skin. No wonder the fig when pressed open with thumb and index finger has been compared to the sex organs. Food and sex: man's most powerful urges!
I shot this on a glass-topped table at Portovenere where we stayed while exploring the Tyrrhenian coast.
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