What Makes Our Favorite Foods… Our Favorite?

We all have our favorite foods. For us, it’s a spoonful of creamy peanut butter, melt-in-your-mouth milk chocolate, a familiar cup of joe. For others, it’s anything from the secret family recipe that mom made every Sunday to the best burger in town. Whatever they may be, we all have those foods (and drinks) that transport us away from solely eating to fuel our bodies to eating for pleasure. It’s those moments of pleasure we’re working to recreate — and preserve — here at Voyage Foods. And so in the spirit of bringing more of these memorable experiences to our everyday eating, we thought we’d break down (as we see it) the factors that go into making certain foods stand out from the rest.

Exceptional Taste

This one almost goes without saying, but of course deliciousness is a core requirement for any food to top the list. But as many of us know, any given food exists on a spectrum when it comes to taste and mouthfeel, depending on who prepared it and how it was prepared. We believe that delivering on exceptional taste requires time, dedication, and care to be put into the preparation and process of creating good food. 

“Food can be very transformational, and it can be more than just about a dish. That’s what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy.” — Alice Waters

Once the box is checked for great flavor, it allows us to go deeper into the experiences we have with food, experiences which — as Alice Waters points out — can be incredibly intimate. Because while food is a necessity to keep us going physically, it is great food that enriches our lives in other ways, from the emotional to the social. 

Shared Company

As we’ve covered in other writings (see our piece on the importance of good food during the holiday season here) it’s not only what we eat that gives us pleasure within our dining experiences, but equally important is who we are with. If we were to recall our most memorable experiences with food, we could almost certainly guarantee we weren’t the only ones at the table. 

Whether it’s an intimate dinner for two or a large affair where laughter and reminiscing drown out everything else, sharing food with others is nothing short of an act of love and appreciation of common ground. And if nothing else, it gives us the opportunity to slow down and fully savor what we eat.

The Nostalgia Factor

Lastly — but certainly not least important — is how what we eat today connects us to the past. Perhaps the most obvious connection here is that to our formative memories with food. Maybe it was the first time you baked a pie with your grandmother or maybe it was the daily PB&J tucked neatly into your lunch box. The personal connection we have with our favorite foods pulls us — quite strongly — towards them in the the present. But going even further beyond our personal connections to food, historical and cultural connections run even deeper. Our unique food cultures that have been passed down to us through generations have shaped us as individuals and how we celebrate our heritage. Creating space for our simultaneously unique and shared food cultures allows us to better understand our communities of the past and connect to those in the present. 

While there are most certainly a myriad of other ways in which our favorite foods present themselves to us, the above exist as the foundation to understanding how they often come about. And here at Voyage, we’re dedicated to integrating each of these factors into the food and drink we create so they can be enjoyed forever. Because knowing how and why we savor particular foods is certainly important, but making sure we can continue to do so is absolutely critical.