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How to Prepare for the Meal of Your LifeSeize the moment, and unbutton your pants |
Six months ago you nabbed a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town. Now the meal of your life is two days away. You have to be prepared. You have to be psyched. You have to make the most of it. But how?
First, you have to be hungry. Teeth-grinding, stomach-growling, napkin-eating hungry. Lonnie Varisco, chef and headmaster at the Culinary Institute of New Orleans, says that he and his wife didn’t eat a thing the day of their hotly anticipated dinner at Emeril’s new restaurant. “It’s best to be starving when you arrive at the restaurant,” says Varisco. “Even if the food’s mediocre”—which Emeril’s wasn’t, he assures us—”you’ll love it.”
Wendy Jones, who teaches at New York’s Culinary Institute of America, recommends turning anticipation into a sublime torture. “I’d get myself excited by reading every article written about the restaurant. If I had pictures of the food, I’d even put them up on the bathroom mirror.”
But if you find yourself cranked too tight in the hours before your meal, find a way to relax. Amiram Elwork, a Philadelphia psychologist, suggests positive visualization, even when you’re stuck in traffic and in danger of missing your reservation. “Imagine yourself enjoying delicious food, being treated by the waiter as someone important. Creating those images has a biochemical effect on the brain, setting yourself up for a positive experience.”
Once you’re at the table, it’s soothing to say a little prayer, as the Hare Krishnas do to thank Lord Krishna before each meal. “It brings our consciousness to the present and makes eating a meditation and a spiritual act which nourishes the soul as well as the body,” says Jivanausadhi Dasi, who runs the Hare Krishna temple in Hartford, Connecticut.
“It helps to be hungry,” says Dr. Miles Rogish, a psychologist in York, England, “so you’ll pay attention to the details.” But hunger requires discipline, especially once you sit at the table and put your napkin in your lap. Strive for balance between your howling, primitive core—the so-called reptilian brain that signals you to lunge for the dinner rolls—and the more advanced levels of consciousness where you experience the pleasure of anticipation.
So you’ve starved yourself, tortured yourself, taken deep breaths, visualized obsequious table service, and invoked a prayer. Now it’s time to eat well. Which brings us to our final tip: Leave the sexy, tight clothes at home. Varisco, the chef from New Orleans, will don what he calls his “vacation pants” before a royal feast. Likewise, Rogish makes sure his pants are just comfy enough, “so that I can unbutton without them sliding off my ass.” Because no matter how much you’re paying for the meal of your life, you’ll no doubt be required to keep your pants on.
Illustration by Felix Sockwell
this is exactly the sort of article that puzzles me. who IS it aimed at? does a newbie/oldie/whatever really need to know that it helps to be hungry to better enjoy a meal?
i'm glad to be corrected.
Yes, I was hoping for the article to contain tips like: "eat a low-fiber breakfast so you'll have more room," or "exercise that day so your body will be prepared for more calories" (I just made up these examples; don't trust them)
For those of us who "live to eat", we respect and honor every meal like this. What's the big deal here?
Personally, I think its going a bit overboard. The best moments I've had have been unexpected and not prepared for. My main piece of advice, beyond being decently hungry (ie, don't fill up on the bread) is to not drink too much alcohol before eating, as that is the one sure way to not be able to appreciate what you're eating (unless the dinner is bad, and then it is helpful).
My impression is that this is meant to more tongue-in-cheek ... we eat 3 meals a day and of course don't need to be told how to eat. But since snagging a reservation in some fancy restaurant requires so much effort and anticipation, they provide tips to help you out on the "big day."
visualisation doesn't work. It just makes you more starving and more apt to veer the car off the road into a drive thru Burger King.
I must concur, this was quite useless. I would have liked to know whether eating a large breakfast might better expand the stomach for the special dinner that lay ahead.
I generally have something to eat before a really great meal. Food prepared with care, skill and love ought to be appreciated on a deeper level than pure primal hunger, and it's difficult to appreciate the subtleties of refined cooking when super hungry.
Of course SOME hunger is good and natural. But I'd deem it an insult to a great chef to eat her/his stuff while ravenously hungry. One wouldn't gulp a great wine thirstily, after all!
The difference between humans and animals is we have the ability to transform bodily urges into gestures of beauty. The stronger the urge, though, the harder the transformation...
If I don't eat all day, my stomach shrinks and I get full really quickly (which often means two courses into a delicious seven-course meal.)
great comments! perhaps this article does serve a purpose?
This is such fabulously vapid writing. I get the idea that the writer has
not yet actually -had- the meal of her life, and is thus somewhat
unqualified to be writing the story. What would make it better? Well,
rather than pulling a couple of names from the rolodex and asking
them a superficial question or two, how about tracking down people
who eat professionally. Who regularly need to prepare for a large
meal. Restaurant reviewers, competitive eaters, someone I never would
have thought to ask but, because Chow writers are smarter than me,
you did.
All the suggestions here suggest that part of eating the Meal of
Your Life is pigging out, stuffing an empty stomach as full as
possible. That's so wrong. But even if the goal -were- to stuff
yourself silly, there may well be techniques that go beyond the
obvious "don't eat much beforehand." For example, diet and exercise
during the week leading up to the Big Meal can have a tremendous
effect on your dinner. What about the pacing during the meal? What
about afterwards? What determines the best time of day? And on
and on.
A few hours before eating at the French Laundry I was sitting curbside, noshing on a trio of pork tacos. Here's hoping the quality of content improves!
so if i pray to lord Krishna, starve myself, and visualize sunny days and cute puppies i should be able to have the best meal of my life?
What I would suggest is to eat a little before you go to that restaurant. You can't taste all the food has to offer if you are so hungry you are scarfing it down because you didn't eat the whole day.
To everyone: this article is a pot-boiler (no pun intended) in a couple respects. CHOW's business model involves this sort of "content" (outside of the user-created content of Chowhound), so someone's gotta be employed to crank out these little nuggets of useless. The point is to make the site more attractive to advertisers.
So here's something practical. If you're going to wear loose waisted trousers or unbutton the top button, wear suspenders.
The currently popular , empire-wasted swing dresses are a HUGE boon to ladies who eat seriously ! (I just wanted to contribute something vapid to this article)