As someone who loves food, and who spends a good amount of time looking for the next great meal, I have many bites each year which are completely memorable and exciting. But it is rare that I have a bite that flattens me, that is transcendent, that makes me want to jump up and down in joy because of its perfection. And that experience? That is what people like me live for. It's the reason that we trudge through insipid bites, through bites that are boring, and through bites that are just uninspired.
It happened to me this year at Oliveto Restaurant. My good friend Jeanne took me to Oliveto's yearly truffle dinner this year for my birthday. The dinner is a joyous event. Everyone in the restaurant seems to be in a good mood, and the intoxicating scent of white truffles permeates the entire evening. At the beginning of the meal, we were presented with different sizes of truffles and asked what our truffle strategy for the evening would be. Our choices were to purchase and entire truffle, and to have it as our dining companion for the evening, or to have truffle shaved and weighed on each dish. We opted for the former, and purchased a truffle which we promptly named Luigi.
Each dish that we ate at the dinner was designed to show off the wonder of Luigi, and dish after dish coming out of the kitchen was wonderful. And then came The Dish. The dish that, looking back on this year, will be considered the highlight: a wild boar ragu served on a delicious polenta. It was simple and rich and each bite was full of flavor and depth. There is something about ragus that I have eaten in Italy - it's a back of the mouth tang or bite that I rarely taste here. It also had specific taste that comes from using the best ingredients one can find, and a flavor that only comes from patience and time with the dish.