Amuse Bouche

“To accompany my mother to a restaurant is a mortifying experience. When we go in, she looks over the tables, checking what other people are eating, sometimes so closely that she alarms the diners. She reads the menu with excessive attention and torments the waiter with malicious questions that force him to go to the kitchen and return with written answers. Then she urges us all to order something different, and when the food arrives she takes photos…  The rest is easy; she takes a bite from each plate and with that taste knows how to interpret it later at home…” From Aphrodite by Isabel Allende.