What restaurants do you want to try? Jessica and I have a list of restaurants that we’d love to go to; it’s wide ranging from famed Gramercy Tavern to simple recommendations from friends like Strip House. How do you decide where you’d like to eat, in the distant future for special occasions, or even for any ole meal? Most of us get ideas from friends and co-workers, but, how do you know which recommendations to trust? A while back Jessica came up with a term that I love and now use to describe people with trustworthy taste in food: “Taste Buds”.

Wikipedia tells us that “taste buds are small structures on the upper surface of the tongue, soft palate, and epiglottis that provide information about the taste of food being eaten.” Implied in that definition is that we trust our taste buds — if our tongue likes a food, usually, so do we. Well, Jessica tells us that Taste Buds are friends on the cutting edge of food that provide information about the taste of food being eaten. And if these buds like a food, usually, so do we.

Do you think about who your taste buds are? I do. I think about which of my acquaintances seem to pay attention to food and understand it. That way when I receive recommendations, I know which to trust.

But when I think about a dining experience, it’s not just about the food; after all, I can cook a lot of the food at restaurants to equal or better quality. I also pay special attention to the overall experience, particularly service and decor. So, I also think about which of my acquaintances are trustworthy judges of environment. Wikipedia also tells us that “…the fingertips possess the highest concentration of touch receptors… making them extremely sensitive… Fingers are thus commonly used as sensory probes to ascertain properties of objects encountered in the world…” So I’ll term the trustworthy people as providing Finger “Tips”, because they are my sensory probes, other than taste.

Interestingly, just as in my body, friendly Finger Tips and Taste Buds are not necessarily found in the same acquaintance. Some people are phenomenal gauges of experience and poor judges of food; and vice versa for other people. In some cases, there are external limitations. For instance some people keep kosher, while others are vegan and vegetarian.

Think about who your finger tips and taste buds are, let us know if you have any funny stories about discovering who is who.

posted by Lon at 10:35 PM Filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.