Do you remember, ma? We used to devour episodes of No Reservations together in front of that bulky silver Hitachi thing that stood in the corner of our mouldy ground floor flat like a three-legged robotic rhinoceros. You’d sometimes let me stay up late watching it with you and we would gobble up together every morsel of the familiar ease, the nobullshit take on cultures and their cuisines, the simplistic escape to places we could never even imagine taking breath in, the heartfelt meals and the many many people across this earth with whom he would converse and eat.
Food was the language we all shared as we crossed over and passed through those borders, partakers all in his culinary pilgrimage. We ate and drank and burped with the gumbo shack regulars in the Deep South and the noodle stall hawkers in Thailand or wherever it was he’d bring us to. Those minutes spent sat before his world, nestled in next to you, were absolutely everything to me. Do you remember, mama? It’s why feeding and being fed are sacred and deep acts of care to me. It’s why travel is not mere escape, but a wholehearted embrace of the familiar within the other. It’s why I have so often sought out that experience of being unmoored and unfamiliar as we all felt we were then. But it’s how I've often ended up finding home and comfort buried in the pockets of a hand turned pastry or long broiled stew…
Bourdain & Mother blessed me with a gift of loving home in places, faces and foods I never thought I’d find it.
