Philosophically Eating

I like tamales served in a bucket or coffee can. I like oysters spread out on an ocean of crushed ice or scattered on a tile bar. I love fried chicken in a grease-stained cardboard bucket. And there is little better than a mound of shrimp or crawfish piled on a spread of yesterday's newspaper. I am happy with anything that can be shared.

I spend a lot of time explaining my ideas about dining to the guys who come to work at my restaurants—"It's not just about the food; it's about the entire experience: who's at the table, the service, the background music, the day everyone has had, etc." These are the tenets I believe dearly.

Much of this stems from the fact that my fondest memories of dining all happen to be when it was most communal: sharing my first pizza at Bianco with a close friend in Phoenix, dim sum with my staff during our first trip to New York for a Beard meal, a giant plate of Willie Mae's fried chicken after Katrina, and, most recently, a giant pot of blue crabs at the beach with our closest friends.

We all lose our way at times in the dining experience, whether it be because we are in a hurry and we eat purely to refuel, or because we are quick to rush to judgment about food, service, or atmosphere, and we lose sight of the experience as a whole.

I like meals that we start by sharing. Meals we pull from the same pile and experience together. It becomes "our" food and not "my" food, and it pulls folks together as someone invariably reaches for the same piece of corn you had your eye on, but you could not be happier for them to have it.

The table is a gathering place, not a station for thrice-daily activity, and I, too, forget this at times. Fortunately, we have wonderful friends to enjoy our lives with, as we did at the table every night for the last week. Almost all of our dining was communal or family style, and all of it was wonderful, no matter what we were eating. Although it's hard as hell to beat a pile of freshly boiled crabs.