It was with some surprise that I viewed the seared foie gras on my plate. It was floating in what appeared to be a brown sauce whose base was mostly fat from the liver - there was a line of white truffled oil circling the whole ordeal. A small and thinly sliced piece of toast lay in the sauce, the smell of butter almost overpowering the smell of truffles, with a single quail egg laying over easy in a hole in the bread. It was poetic, it was prosaic, and it was completely unexpected.

My last experience with foie gras was an excellent one - Judd, myself, and a few others sitting around a table at Les Halles, using our forks to pull a bit of the ground of foie gras onto small pieces of bread. It was decadent in a way that most meals fail to be - a strange cocktail of luxury and of dirt stained elbows, sweat lined collars and laughter that starts from the belly. The foie gras lasted for only a few bites, but they were delicious.

This experience was a bit different. There was no sharing involved, there was no overt joy at seeing such a beautiful piece of food. There was only my intense focus on how delicious it would be. I used my knife and gently, with the tines of my fork gently prodding the top of this quivering block, I pulled the knife down and through. I picked up the slice with my fork and cut off a small piece of bread, and then ate them together. It was masterful and for a moment I forgot that there were other people at the table, people whose opinions of me certainly mattered in a business sense, and instead I let the sensation of eating overtake me.

It would be hard for me to determine which dining experience was better or more enjoyable; on one hand I had foie gras with friends and laughed about things that were more humorous because of the company I keep. On the other hand I was eating in the bosom of luxury, wearing a suit that is sometimes too tight on the shoulders, and which gives me the posture of a choir boy. I can't really say which experience I preferred - I don't know that preference for anything applies to either situation. I can say that both situations revolved around the same meal, the same feathery black earth sensation that spread from my tongue outwards. I can say that eating something so purposeful in its intent makes a person different, it changes not only who you are at the moment, but who you are in consideration. There is no other way to describe such an experience, except to say that it should be considered an experience and not simply a memory, or a story to tell friends after two glasses of wine.

Now I am sitting in an office, smelling faintly of recovery, that acerbic high tone of the nose, and thinking about how this moment will never mean anything more than a shrug, a glance, or five fingers drummed in quick succession.

-Rich
everyone we knew loves someone else