of habits and improvisation

On a recent trip to Victoria, BC, Kendall and I went three times to Rebar, taking in breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like pilgrims on a journey, we arrived eagerly, if somewhat shyly. The pattern of the day settled around our meals at the restaurant, much in the same way that the weekly rhythm of our relationship grew around food. We didn’t date so much as find ways of eating together. At first, we reserved for each other weekend evenings and special dishes designed to impress without seeming overwrought. Kendall's specialty--and the very first meal he made me--is salmon with lavender-orange salt, pasta with pesto sauce, and steamed asparagus; I made him flan and bread pudding with brioche and bourbon butter sauce. He made vegetarian borscht; I made walnut bread. One Thanksgiving, we baked a pumpkin pie together; the next year we made wasabi sweet potatoes with pork tenderloin in a balsamic vinegar and caper sauce. There were Saturday football cookouts at Beau and Ashley's, which inspired theme dinners later that winter. Asian night, for example, with peanut noodles and spring rolls and lime-pepita cookies, or Americana night, with gourmet mac-and-cheese and pulled pork and potato-buttermilk dinner rolls. (Luckily, more energy went into cooking and eating than into naming.) Food has featured prominently in our travels, and we've eaten at markets in Mexico and road-side barbecue trucks in Texas. We cheered Beau and Ashley in the barbecue competition at Dodge City Days and devoured their practice samplings. We followed the recommendations of parents (Rio Mar in New Orleans; Blue Sky Burgers in Amarillo), and searched out new favorites (El Reynaldo’s in Goodland, KS). If food initially provided an excuse to spend time together, changes in our relationship showed up in our culinary habits. We went from cooking for each other to cooking together. Dress and manners got more casual as the recipes got harder, and we found reasons to buy things like star anise and lemongrass and powdered shrimp and tamarind paste. Weekend dinners grew into multi-step affairs that necessarily included friends and leftovers, thereby weaving us more tightly into the textures of daily life together. We evolved a repertoire of recipes, got to know each other through the habits and nuances of food. What we’d eaten and would like to eat, the politics of food, how you can learn most of what you need to know about a person by the way he or she eats. Through the long bitterness of last winter, cooking and eating together was both catharsis and comfort, and our wedding this spring featured Gruber’s appetizers, Beau’s prime rib, wine from Kendall’s parents, and Stacy’s vegan chocolate cupcakes.

Because we’ve spent several years eating our way through their recipes, going to Rebar for the first time felt a bit like a first date with an old friend. It was silly and extravagant and a little obsessive, and completely in line with the habits that make us who we are. We promised ourselves that next time we'd check out Victoria's other food offerings, and we probably will. Sometimes, though, it's best not to mess with a good thing; after all, the salmon with pesto is still in heavy rotation.