Another Leaf From the Book of the Future of Restaurant Guides and Rankings
Following from A Day in May by my fellow editor Alice Huang, we are delighted to publish this exceptional contribution from Frances Khan Lin, the Co-Founder of Song Collective, artist, writer and trained Emergency Medicine physician.
Restaurant 1.2 is Currently Under Beta Testing
By Frances Khan Lin
I stepped out into the cool air from the four-walled building where human lives teeter tottered on the edge of an abyss. It had been nearly 22 hours. I was definitely hungry, despite the lingering smell of infected wounds and the fresh imagery of what multiple abdominal stabs could do to a person.
Understated, this is what I would call a bad shift. And it happened to be the worst snowfall of the season. My car was buried. I was physically and mentally incapable of freeing it from winter’s grasp.
We were all required by the State to be implanted with sensors that could analyze what nourishment your body optimally needed. But I was chosen for beta testing beyond physiological replenishment. Restaurant 1.2 was being introduced into the market.
And what I needed now was a Restaurant. The word “restaurant” came from the French verb se restaurer, meaning to restore yourself. Historically, establishments were set up to serve “restoration” in the form of bouillon to persons of sensitive disposition. I wondered where was I going to be taken? Definitely, far away from antiseptic smells that never quite covered up the diseases of human flesh.
Too weak to walk back to the hospital and too tired to dig my car from under the snow, I decided to tunnel an igloo by the side of the parking lot. I crawled in, closed my eyes, allowing Restaurant 1.2 to guide me.
Not more than a moment, I found myself surrounded by the clear sounds of stones. I could hear water rushing past smooth tumbling ones, juxtaposed with the dampening clang of hoofs meeting others covered in moss. The leaves rustled in whispers of a primordial language. I knew it had just rained from the smell of soaked earth that travelled with the breeze. It gently brushed my skin.
I tried to orient myself with my five senses. It was the laughter coming from a young girl who was standing above me that woke me up. I took her offering hand and came to a stand while letting go of the soft, damp moss intertwined between my fingers. She was with an elderly lady who must have been the grandmother. With a kindly nod she passed me an empty woven basket. There was no exchange of words, yet we began our walk together. The deep smell of fungi was undeniable. I saw them blooming everywhere. Under the nook of a fallen branch, glistening in purple hues. Crowded on stems, in clumps of buttery yellow, gelatinous substance.
We stopped, got on our knees and dug some from its roots. Although I did not understand their language, I was able to follow the teachings of the elderly woman. She picked a red speckled mushroom from the ground, turned to reveal the gills, pointed at the veil around the annulus and brought attention to the bulging bulb at the stem while she shook her head. Amanita muscaria, somehow my implant was equipped to pass on the identification to me.
We found mushrooms with lactating gills and little nibbles off the edge filled the mouth with fiery Sichuan peppers. We found Boletes that stained indigo when its plump porous gills were pressed. I watched with fascination this exchange of love, care and knowledge being passed on from grandmother to granddaughter. Fatigue was long in the distance.
Suddenly, one and then two, followed by a hillside of what looked to be sprouting black leaves appeared before me. But upon careful inspection they were more like tubular trumpets that barely had gills. They definitely smelled like fungi with a sweet hint of nuttiness I have never smelled before. I picked one up, and tapped on the grandmother’s shoulder in inquiry.
She gleamed. Nodded at me a second time. Took the black fungi to her nose with a deep inhale and put it in her basket. After the three of us filled our baskets, following the skip of the little girl, we entered a cottage where a woman who must have been the mother greeted us. That distinct bouquet of rain, earth and sweet nuttiness filled the kitchen as she dusted off the mushrooms we foraged. Heating a steel pot over a proper wood fire, along with some chopped garlic and lard, she stirred in the little “black trumpets”. Two other people came into the cottage, one matured and one on the brink of manhood. Together we all sat down. With each bite, the day sunk further into my subconscious and so did my understanding of how life and earth were intertwined.
Ten minutes later, I opened my eyes. Under the guidance of Restaurant 1.2, I was rejuvenated. I climbed out of my igloo, retrieved my car from the snow and drove home. Proteins where shifting in my brain and the imprinting was in process. The flavors from my trip into the forest, tied me to a larger world because a family living in Costa Rica had opened their homes to transporters like me. It gave us access to the exploration of food that city life could not provide.
I arrived home. My odorless liquid meal waiting for me. This was 2089, we no longer wasted time on eating. This was part of the State’s Efficiency Movement that was meant to increase productivity. Optimal nourishment needed for individualized metabolism could be analyzed and that information was relayed to a centralized distributor, run under the regulation of the Food, Safety and Health Department. A machine, much like “The Replicator” from an historical show known as Star Trek, materialized the sustenance you needed for the day in order to upkeep a balanced diet. Like I said, no time wasted.
However, Restaurant 1.2 that I was beta testing was a new implant. It had taken me beyond eating. It was engineered to read and interpret brain waves, then carefully create experiential journeys through flavors that would be added to a person’s Memory Bank; reshaping the mind and healing the soul.
As I drifted off, the faint scent of a sweet nuttiness plucked from soaked earth accompanied me.
When I read Frances’ piece, I could not help but think about 19th century French author, Marcel Proust, and his famous “madeleine” cake and how its scent revived the narrator’s childhood memories. Indeed, scent has a strong power of suggestion. The idea of people getting nourished through an implant is certainly appalling for those of us who prefer to enjoy the pleasure of the five senses combined altogether, but I found exciting to explore the new findings about the power of scent. Would it be possible, as Frances suggested to me in one of our conversations, that one day, restaurants become implantations with programmes coded by chefs, who curate flavour experiences to help nourish the mind?
If you enjoyed this piece, you would probably want to know more about Grace. Meet her here:
Food+ Journal would welcome hearing your reaction and comments. And if you have your take of a story from the future you’d like published in this journal, please write to the editors by 7 July 2018 to indicate your interest.
