Scott Hocker's Meadowood Getaway

We asked five food-world luminaries to share their memories of food and love with us. Whether it was a plate of oysters in Paris or a tender cheek swiping of Philly cheesesteak grease, a lot of moments have been shared around the dinner table by these people. Here they are. And happy Valentine’s Day.

Illustration by Gant Powell

Food writer Scott Hocker's boyfriend does not like sweet potatoes. Scott Hocker wrote a cookbook on sweet potatoes. “By sheer dint of that being all there was to eat for a month in the house” during recipe testing, said boyfriend will now eat said potatoes, Hocker told us. “Conversely, I’m not a big chocolate fan. But in the last month or so, he made brownies and opened the floodgates of me wanting more chocolate things.” Ah, what love can do for the diet. 

Hocker shares a less romantic story about the duo below. Being very politic, he says it reflects “both the lovely and more thorny sides to being in a relationship.”

My current boyfriend and I had been dating for about a year, and we went to Meadowood for a Christmas dinner. We had one of the most amazing experiences food-wise, but also the biggest fight of our lives.

We both look back on it and laugh and cringe, and cherish the idea that this wonderful meal and this all-encompassing live-in-the-moment experience can be one of the best things we’ve done, and the worst.

The meal was supposed to be by Laurent Gras, but something happened with his family or something so Chris Kostow [Meadowood’s usual chef] ended up having to cook the meal himself.  Everything at dinner was fine, but we certainly left earlier than we would have. Things did get a little tense [at the table]. For me, especially, because of my job and the people I know there; I was trying to be politic. So there was no throwing of plates and what not, but forced politeness can make things weird for people.

The food heightened it. Basically, it was a pressure chamber for a number of things that had been hinted at but never talked about. They would eventually have been talked about anyway, but something about being away from normal life, where it’s not easy to fall on familiar distractions, pushes those strings. Plus, we were wasted on wine.

Eventually we had this blow-up fight—we were staying in those little cabins. He almost drove away and left me there.

We got a good night’s sleep, but didn’t talk the next day. We had to drive together, so there were lots of moments of passive-aggressive silence.

I just love that a memory around dinner can be so much more than the food itself. It’s not just, “Oh, my God, that was the most amazing fish stew I’ve ever had!” It’s a portal into a new sense of place for people you care about.

We had such a wonderful time; it was a lovely experience. We don’t look back and go, “God, I hate Meadowood because it makes me think of that fight.” Everything was lovely until it went off the rails. Those things work in tandem in a relationship of any sort, but especially in a romantic relationship. They are part of the same cloche.