Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Lisa Eats Everything

by Lisa Radding

Bacon cheeseburgers don’t need ketchup. As a child, I thought every burger should be accompanied by a bottle of Heinz. It’s true that if you obtain quality ground beef or doctor it up a little, it can have exquisite flavor of its own, but at BBQs I’d douse my burgers in ketchup. Of course, a burger meant a hamburger, plain and simple. I grew up in a kosher (style) home where meat and dairy stayed separate and traif didn’t exist. Only recently did I learn how cheese and bacon add layers of flavor and texture that complement the meat of this sandwich, rendering all condiments unnecessary. They bring a salty, smoky, and gooey blending of flavors that accentuates the ground beef for a really (artery cloggingly) excellent burger.

I’m learning all this on my “Lisa eats everything” yearlong adventure. It was a Rosh Hashanah new years resolution. The rules of the game are as follows: If someone offers me a food/drink I’ve never tried before, I have to try at least one bite. Nobody can make me pay for food I don’t want, but if they offer a taste, I can’t say no. The point is to be uninhibited, to look at a menu and order exactly what I want to eat, to order it the way the chef prepares it, even if there is a hint of shellfish in the sauce of an otherwise innocuous dish. Although at times I’ve considered this my chance to try a Cuban, clam chowder, chorizo (insert your favorite traif here), it is really an opportunity to learn about people, culture, and the world I live in.

Take for example the day I suggested that my friend Erin order a breakfast sandwich for us to split. Sausage, egg, and cheese on a croissant? Eww. But it wasn’t the sausage the irked me, it was the croissant. In my experience, breakfast sandwiches belong between savory carbs, like toast or bagels. Croissants are for jam or nutella, a sweet spread to soak up those buttery flakes of pastry. But Erin grew up sandwiching her savory breakfast in sweetness. It tasted as delicious as it sounded revolting. Thus I gained a token more insight into mixing flavors. Although the flavor profile in question here wasn’t the traif, only by allowing myself to eat everything could I try this combination, since the entire ensemble required consumption of sausage.

But resolving to experiment with taste and actually ordering ham are wildly different. A few days after Yom Kippur I stood in the adorable deli on my block struggling to say “croque monsieur.” While it’s gotten easier, placing a traif order and subsequently taking a bite still make me slightly uncomfortable. It’s not because I kept strictly kosher before last Rosh Hashanah, or because I have firm beliefs about the importance of Kashrut. In fact, I feel more confused about religious dietary laws than governed by them. More likely, the uncomfortable feeling is because in this exploration of people and culture through food, I suspend my own culture, which is closely tied to Kashrut, and is the right/wrong of food with which I was raised. On the other hand, eating everything has done for me what Kashrut does for many others: it has made me think sincerely about my sustenance and specifically about which food I am choosing to eat. This year I may not have eaten as the Torah prescribes, but neither did I take my food for granted. And I do see purposeful eating as a meaningful message behind seemingly archaic dietary laws. Despite feeling uncomfortable, I also feel exonerated by the fact that this project is designed to be thought provoking: I am more conscious of both what I consume and of how others understand food.

Although gaining food cultural knowledge is a life long project, as Rosh Hashanah approaches again, I’m ready to let the project change forms. I can stop this NYC bacon cheeseburgers tasting mission. When I travel, however, I’ll want to taste the local dishes… “When in Rome.” I have yet to discover where October will lead me, but I think it will be far from the ketchup bottle. Even if I grill an unadorned hamburger, the way I was raised to eat ground beef, I think I bring enough experience in the mixing of flavors to turn it into an exquisite sandwich in its own right. But maybe, before September ends, I’ll need one more reminder of that salty, smoky, and gooey sandwich that is so quintessentially American.

Photo by Savory.Recipes, licensed under Creative Commons.

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