I graduated with my masters in journalism back in 2014 and took an unpaid internship with a culinary review publication. After hitting a bit of a plateau, I started taking international gigs to expand my palette. I started by hitting the sun drenched Mediterranean villas, street food and local establishments. Italy, Greece then onto Iberian Spain and Portugal, you get the idea. It was when I visited France that I came across a very prestigious idol of mine. He was the reason I even started my career path. We shared a bottle of wine one night and he looked over my work. He told me I was starting in the wrong direction, when it comes to building a critical flavor palette. He informed me that you must work from the bottom up (literally). You must establish an objective palette before you enter the world of subjective palettes. It made so much sense, and I was amazed I was being given such good advice from my idol. I was willing to do whatever he suggested, but what he said next did give me pause.

He told me I had to eat feces. If I’m going to build my profile, it has to be from the very bottom up. He told me the objective scale doesn’t go from dollar store hot dogs to escargot. It goes from real visceral matter we are naturally opposed to ingesting. The bottom of the scale must be feces. Human feces for that matter, as it’s the byproduct waste of all the ingredients and culinary technique. It took a minute, but I completely understood where he was coming from. We finished the bottle of wine and he said he’d love to do the honors, if I had a bowl and cutlery at the ready. I accepted his offer, and waited patiently while he took the bowl into the bathroom.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but it was a definite learning experience. The bare bottom of my critical palette was established just then, and it’s helped me make more poignant critiques of world cuisine. I’ve kept this secret until now, but I thought I’d share it with you.