The Stomach, The Expressway To The Heart

I'm not exactly a foodie.

First of all, I'm a grazer. I don't often sit down for a meal; I'm all about interval snacking. And for me, food is primarily a socializing tool, not an end in itself.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good meal. But in the "eat to live" versus "live to eat" divide, I fall squarely in the former. Actually, more accurately, I eat to drink. 'Cause far more than a foodie, I am a girl who loves her wine.

Last night may have changed that.

Six of us went to Momofuku Ssam Bar last night, and immediately following the appetizers, our entire group proposed to the chef. He graciously accepted and sent over steamed pork belly buns to our table to celebrate the engagement.

Have you seen the movie, Ratatouille? About the rat that dreams of being a chef? In the movie, Anton Ego, the gaunt, bitter food critic who loves food so much that he only swallows when he LOVES it, sits down to a meal, prepared, unbenownst to him, by a rat.

And with his first bite, he is immediately transported to his childhood - a warm, glowing childhood with a mother who cooks lovingly for him.

Biting into those pork buns last night produced an emotional response of the same intensity.

It was love.

It was warm, comforting, delicious, decadent, sweet, salty, tangy, satisfying love. It was get-weak-in-the-knees, slide-off-your-seat, love.

We lingered at Momofuku long after our meal was finished, wondering if we could just spend the night there and have breakfast in the morning. We then considered following our new fiancee back to his place and gazing at him raptly, expectantly, hungrily, until he continued to feed us.

We did neither of those things, but we did stand outside the restaurant for a long while, doing our respective "happy tummy" dances out on the sidewalk.

And this morning?

I'm hungry. And fairly certain I dreamt of pork buns.

For those of you reading this post, the chef, Francis Derby, is OURS. So back off.