Occasionally, a gifted, energetic cook will make pho at home -- a major task, given the time needed to make the broth -- and one of the best bowls we ate was served to us at home by Nguyen Huu Hoang Trang, a veteran of restaurant kitchens.
The best roast goat I ever ate was served from a copper tray at a villa high in the mountains above Muscat, the capital of Oman, the reclusive sultanate that stretches some 2,000 miles along the Arabian Sea and whose opulent past enriches its modern culture with soft infusions of ancient colors, textures and tastes.
His "coconut apple", the yellow spongy centre of a germinated coconut, which is not usually eaten, is served with seaweed.
I wasn't conscious, until later, of any of this: that my eating was serving some purpose for me, that this was an addiction over which I had no control, that this tenacious and complex illness tapped into a deep malaise and was what I used as a cover to throw over anything I didn't want to see, feel or deal with.
When it was time to eat, cake was served before pizza, and "You to Birthday Happy" was sung.
Surely among the best I've eaten, it was served on a layer of tripe sliced into teeny strips and cooked into a kind of confit with strips of ginger.
Food was almost always prepared early in the morning and stored in a cupboard or under netting until it was eaten, when it was served into bowls and eaten with a spoon; rice was occasionally served using bare hands and was sometimes eaten by hand.
Mr. Olson "tore into the owner," insisting the team would not eat unless everyone was served, recalled the team's coach, Paul Winters. "If he sees something that is wrong in his mind, he goes after it," Mr. Winters said.
"I grew up in the '70s," said Ms. Louis, an acclaimed chef in Portland, Ore ."I ate everything that was served to me.
They found that the best predictor of the amount of a food eaten was the amount that was served, although usually the amount eaten was less than the amount served.
