Bad Things I've Eaten: Five Course Lunches

As students of food, we have to be critical of our eating experiences, especially on our study trips. Even during the bus trips, stopping at Autogrill for coffee and pee-breaks can provide insight into Italian food culture (Personally, I love watching Italians standing around small counters and high tables to sip espresso and eat sandwiches at these rest stops. They take refreshment with a jauntiness and gusto you just dont find at a McDonalds along i-5 in the stinking middle of California).

Every time we eat provides an opportunity to think critically about food and culture. Our recent trip to Umbria provided an intense array of these opportunities, and I come away with these criticisms:

Almost everyday of the trip, our class sat down to a four or five course lunch. Sometimes we did lunch and dinner, which meant four to five courses, twice in one day, and as many as ten plates of food (sometimes more) within six or seven hours.

These meals displayed the wealth of Umbrian cuisine and the warmth of our hosts hospitality. But truly, this hospitality needs enlightenment. These big meals need tweaking.

Bold Tuscan Cigars provide mild relief for an uncomfortably full stomach.

When eating multiple courses, one has to trust that the chef has orchestrated the courses in such a way that one dish leads to the next, flavors intensify or increase in depth and complexity as the meal goes on, and most importantly, the diner has to trust that the chef has considered how much a human being can comfortably eat in one sitting.

In Umbria, we were shown no such consideration.

Instead, when served a plate, we were also given a dare. This bowl of lentils, drizzled with bright green, "new" olive oil tastes delicious: nutty, earthy lentils spiked with peppery, grassy, fragrant oil. But, the same bowl of lentils could be your undoing if you eat the whole thing. There could be pasta, meat or fish, more vegetables, and dessert to come. Go ahead, eat all the lentils. "I dare you," says the chef.

Perhaps you resist, nibble at the lentils, soak up the precious olive oil with a crust of bread, and manage to stay strong through course one. Then comes the pasta, one of the best pastas you have ever tried or can at least remember. Rigatoni: cooked to a perfect, toothsome al dente with homemade pork sausage, fresh cheese, and black pepper. Again, the chef says "I dare you." This could be the best pasta you ever eat in your life. Surely, you are dying to finish the whole bowl, gather up the remaining sauce with a piece of bread, throw down your napkin, and leave Italy a changed man, but you still have no clue what comes after the pasta.

After the pasta, there is meat, or fish, or pork, served with roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, vegetables. After this, they mock us with dessert and offer us coffee, like offering a cigarette to a man walking out to face the firing squad. Why even bother with the coffee? As if any us stand a chance of doing anything remotely productive with the rest of the day.


I hate to complain about being served so much amazing food, but the experience provides important lessons to chefs, hosts, restauranteurs, or anyone who has to plan a meal for other people: first, the chef has to think not only as a cook, but as a eater. Too many chefs think, "I could cook that, then cook that, and cook that...", but never ask, "Could I eat that? and then that? and then that?" I doubt any of these chefs could have finished all of their meals. Second, these long, multi-course meals aim to show off the skills of the chef and the delicous products of the region, but by serving so much, in the end, no one dish or ingredient ever has the chance to truly shine. Even if the chef serves the best roasted pork any one has ever tried, it will not taste good if the guests are already stuffed with beans and pasta.

Quite simply, less is more. The more these cooks served us, the less we could truly appreciate. End of criticism.