Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert)
C‘It’s a scene in the Oscar-nominated Korean film, Past Livesin which the two protagonists Na-young, she, and Hang-seo, him, sweethearts in middle school, they meet again in New York more than 20 years after their farewelldue to Na-young’s first move to Canada.
In the meantime, she has married Arthur, an American Jew, he is single and is invited to dinner by the couple. “What do you like?” Arthur asks Hang-seo, trying to dispel the awkwardness. “Pasta!” the man exclaims with sincere enthusiasm.
I don’t know about you, but I believe in the conditioning power of food. Pasta, for example, is socializing: it is a food that recalls a family or, in any case, a friendly context, rarely seductive.
Yes, of course, someone will remember the old Barilla advertisement shot by Federico Fellini, in which the maître d’ of a high society restaurant offers the most sophisticated dishes on the menu to an elegant lady who interrupts him by chanting: «Rigatoni». The provocative intent, however, is attenuated by a rarefied and dreamy photography.
Instead, just go back to a film like Eat, pray and love to find a splendid one Julia Roberts who prefers to flirt with a plate of spaghetti rather than with the handsome Luca Argentero, who faces her at the table.
So what is the food of seduction par excellence? Let’s go by approximation: something that you don’t have to cut, sip, bite, shell, handle and that shouldn’t spin, drip, splash and, above all, remain between your teeth. In short, something that lands in the mouth with an elegant and definitive gesture: a bite and off we go, keeping eye to eye.
I have no doubts: it’s sushi. The aesthetic perfection of Japanese food it is the right counterpoint to desires that struggle to be repressed, to glances that linger and thoughts that gallop. It is food that can be shared or stolen from other people’s plates, it sits there, suspended between two sticks, simulating the balance that must be found. Or lose. You do.
For the more refined, the sake ritual allows both to fill the other’s glass with a gesture that is already an invitation to let go. Think about it. And you, what food do you prefer to seduce?
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