Spring Break 2011: Kant Gone Wild

I believe it was the great philosopher Immanuel Kant who never got much further than 10 miles from his place of birth, yet he held the whole world in his mind and managed an intellectual and social life so rewarding that the rest of us, though arguably better traveled, would undoubtedly envy it.

I am thinking of Kant lately because I took some time off from work recently and was, for a number of reasons, unable to travel very far for a traditional American “spring break”.

While there weren’t suntans and just-caught shellfish in the cards for me on this particular spring break, I feel that, like Kant, I have had the whole world in my head and have managed a pretty rewarding social life. This has been a week of meals with friends: Friends no longer present, celebrated in memoriam. Friends who haven’t been seen in 20 years, here again before my overjoyed and disbelieving eyes. Old friends and coffee, catching up without skipping a beat. New friends and the breaking of bread, not being afraid of the real scatter-fests most of us are underneath the façade.

These meals with friends have been fantastic but I think most people would speed on by the venues we’ve chosen. None of the restaurants we selected this week have been particularly chic.

I cook for a living and I love, love, love great meals. It’s great fun to sample the handiwork of a well-publicized chef. But great meals, for me, go way beyond the stuff on my plate. Really, I don’t care if a restaurant has five stars or no stars. I don’t care if they publicize their intelligent and sensitive food politics on the menu. I don’t care if they charge a week’s salary for an entrée or just a few humble bucks. I don’t care who decorated the place, who contributed to the menu, or what rising star worked the hot line that night…the most important factor that defines a great meal is one’s dining companions. Food is never better than when it is shared with a friend.

Just give me real ingredients (however simple and humbly prepared), shared with real people (simple and humble are fine with me here, too) and you have just given me manna in some faraway pantheon.

Ah, but here I am, not 10 miles out of Cleveland, and even my thoughts on food are sort of Kantian: it is impossible, really, to be truly objective at the table when the totality of the moment is so influenced by the others that are so much the center of the experience.

And I am grateful for that skew in my world view. Friends and family, I love you so and am glad to be here with you.