What If the Food Was Never the Main Attraction?
2 min
One morning in Paris, Iwoke up with something important to do: call Baba for his birthday. He was in Sierra Leone, so my happy birthday serenade had to happen over the phone. Somewhere between expressing gratitude for his existence and catching him up on my culinary adventures across Europe—the restaurants I’d been to, the meals I’d had, and what had surprised me about dining alone—Baba managed to drop a gem in a way only he could: “Food is here to help us talk.”
When we get together, he said, we can make so much of the food. What are we cooking? What are we eating? Is there enough? But ultimately, the main thing is that we get to talk. Then he said something else: “Talking is doing. It’s a way of life.” I wrote that one down.
I think that second part is what stayed with me most: talking is doing. We so often need a reason to gather—a meal, an occasion, somewhere to go, something to do. But maybe sometimes those things are simply the invitation. The talking is what we came to do.
Now, let me be clear: I love food. I love a beautiful restaurant. I notice the lighting, the plates, the flowers, the chairs. I love thinking about what I’m going to serve when people come to my home. I can spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about how a table should look. I’ve written before about my love of aesthetics, and I’m not giving any of that up anytime soon. I don’t think Baba was suggesting those things don’t matter. Maybe the care we put into the food, the table, the room is part of the invitation. A way of saying: come in, sit down, stay awhile. But the invitation isn’t the gathering itself.
A few days before our conversation, I’d walked into Esse, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Copenhagen, alone. It was one of the meals I had been looking forward to most on the trip. The restaurant is built around a zero-waste philosophy—local ingredients, preservation, fermentation, creative reuse—and you could see that thoughtfulness everywhere, down to the jars of fermenting ingredients lining the shelves. And somehow, for all the intention behind it, nothing felt overly precious. The music was good, the room was beautiful, and I settled in, excited for what was ahead.
At a nearby table, an Australian couple made a comment about what I was about to experience. That small exchange opened the door. A comment became a question, the question became a conversation, and before long, we were sharing pieces of our lives with one another. Over the next two hours, one beautifully considered course followed another, and our conversation continued alongside it. I walked into Esse alone and left deeply satisfied—not only by what I’d tasted, but by the unexpected connection that unfolded along the way.
And maybe that’s why Baba’s words landed the way they did. When I think about the gatherings I’ve loved most, the menu is rarely what I remember. I remember the question that made someone pause before answering. The story I’d somehow never heard despite knowing someone for years. A conversation taking an unexpected turn and revealing something new. Looking up and realizing none of us had noticed how late it had gotten.
Maybe that’s what Baba meant when he said talking is the doing. We may gather around a meal, but what we take home are the stories, the laughter, the questions, the things we learned about one another—and sometimes ourselves.
Maybe the food just gets us to the table.
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