Remembering the First Taste

Jonathan Lung

Remembering the First Taste

            No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? -Proust

            Proust describes in the quote above about how his whole life changed after trying a new food and drink. No longer was his life “mediocre” after the first bite. Much of Proust description about the experience of remembering what a food taste like for the first time is the same experience I often go through when I ponder about food. Foods such as pizza, Chinese leek pie, and Southern fried chicken influenced my life in such pivotal ways.

            Pizza was one of the first meals I ate as a child. I tried it for the first time on Christmas Eve and fell in love with it instantly I placed it in my mouth. It was the Christmas miracle that my parents unexpectedly received since I did not want to eat anything before that day. I was only a year old when this all went down.

            Chinese leek pie was introduced to me when my youngest aunt visited my family in Mississippi from Taipei, Taiwan. She brought Chinese groceries as presents to celebrate my first birthday. My aunt spent a whole day preparing the Chinese leek pie intending to feed my whole family. However, when she set the plate of Chinese leek pie on the table, everyone noticed how I was drooling and pointing at the food. My parents gave me a small piece, and the rest is history. To this day, the food’s nickname is Little Aunt’s Pizza.

            The first time I tried fried chicken was on a bet I had with my father. We had a bet on who would win the NASCAR race one Sunday. Since I lost the bet, I was forced to eat whatever my dad would eat for one whole day. Since I am a picky eater, I could barely shallow most of the different dishes that my dad ate throughout the day. However, my dad took me to a local fried chicken store to pick up some chicken to eat at home. Sitting next to the freshly cooked fried chicken, I was seduced and fell in love eating fried chicken ever since.

            To this day, I often wonder what it would be like to re-experience those first tastings. Of course, I still have a lot more experiences to try for the first time and maybe they will be just as memorable as eating pizza.