Keep an open mind - Shawn Loughlin editorial
Maybe because it’s 4:17 p.m. on a day that didn’t feature an overly hearty lunch or because we’re working on our Farms to Tables issue and I recently spoke with local superstar farmer Jeff Linton, but, as I write this, I have food on the brain.
As anyone who knows me or who reads this column regularly, I am not one to turn down an opportunity to enjoy a tasty meal. And, in recent years as I have travelled a bit more and opened my mind to different foods, I have been a bit more adventurous with what I’ve allowed to be on my plate. This has largely come as a result of patronizing restaurants that feature blind tasting menus, meaning that (once you’ve established you don’t have any allergies or major food restrictions), you sit down and wait as between, say, eight and 15 smaller courses are served to you with no advance knowledge of what they will be. Having said that, I have taken to ordering some of the more exotic dishes on the menu as well at some of these places.
In Montreal, for example, I ate a horse steak at Joe Beef and a foie gras breakfast sandwich at Liverpool House. There was a lot of seaweed in Ireland. There have also been a lot of raw things and, somewhere along the way, I became a big fan of steak tartare.
Anyway, back to the point, the very concept of a blind tasting menu dictates that you’re willing to try whatever the chef has designed for you that night, unless it will make you sick.
That’s why, in the years following this food awakening - if you could call it that - it’s been funny to watch Tallulah start eating and develop her own preferences (Cooper is still on just one food and it’s not on any menu).
Kids are going to be fussy about things that are new and different - I was ready for that. What I wasn’t ready for was the rate at which she would turn things down that I know, for a fact, she would love. Not only that, but same-day incidents that left me shaking my head.
Here are two you’ll enjoy - both birthdays.
First was Tallulah’s second birthday. We had a cake and offered her some special cookies as well (white chocolate-covered Oreos from Sweets N’ Treats, which she now loves). She wouldn’t touch either of them, despite the fact that we were celebrating. No big deal, right?
It wasn’t - until later that day when she was splashing around in her beloved puddles and I had to plead with her to stop drinking puddle water. Good for the long-term health of her immune system, perhaps, but far from equal to cake or cookies in regards to taste.
The second was my birthday and it was a similar situation. Jess procured a long-awaited and much-anticipated Black Forest Cake from Wilhelmena Bakery (I grew up on the stuff, with German grandparents, but hadn’t had one that wasn’t a sad, grocery store imitation in many years - though my mother-in-law baked a valiant first effort for me one year). Again, Tallulah wouldn’t hear of eating any of the delicious cake that day, but she found herself interested in another of my gifts: a set of wooden coasters gifted to me by Scott. She took one look at the chocolate brown discs, said they looked delicious, and tucked in (luckily not too hard, saving us an emergency first visit to the dentist for her).
There have been others too, like the time she followed up a lovely weekend breakfast with some leaf from one of our garden plants.
Maybe one day, Tallulah will dig into a tasting menu with her parents, unsure of what is to come next, completely in the hands of a more-than competent chef, but it might be a few years until we get to that point.