There’s No Reason to Put Off a Good Burger

With my sister in Turkey on a day we thought we might have our last meal! Alas we lived to tell the tale!

I have been enjoying the Netflix show Last Meals of late, which features different celebrities discussing their last meals with a host. What makes the show so unique is that it seems to create a space where the person really opens up, which makes me believe that a lot of our feelings about food are from cherished memories and times that were joyful.

I watched one episode with Matthew McConnaghey where he described his mom’s terrible cooking with so much love. You could almost picture him as a child reacting to the burnt roasts that came out of the oven but eating them anyway to please her. His chosen meal began with a cheeseburger, which was apparently invented in 1924 (who knew?), a margarita, no mayo coleslaw made with his wife’s recipe, and a scoop of tuna fish salad from Judy’s Deli in Los Angeles. I enjoyed his love of Heinz ketchup, which I also happen to share and his musings on what makes a perfect tuna fish salad.

He also went on to have a fried bologna sandwich (my mom always made mine on toast), tonnarelli pasta with gambero rosso prawns, and coffee cream from the Meneghetti Wine Resort in Croatia, paired with a strawberry pavlova and vanilla ice cream from a Greek island.

These choices seem a bit all over the place, but in the end, they seemed to represent things he had come to love first in childhood and then as a successful movie star. They tell a story of an incredible life starting in small town Texas and then world travel where his palate was expanded and his tastes changed.

I get that completely about food and of course it made me wonder about my own possible choices. For me, I would have to go with a cheeseburger as well from Houston’s, the famous Hillstone restaurant that closed many years ago in DC. My fries would come from the original Hard Rock Café on Park Lane in London. I would have a glass of Veuve Cliquot to start. There would also need to be a healthy amount of Heinz ketchup on the side along with some malt vinegar and salt.

The second course would be my grandmother Venturella’s ravioli. I liked both the cheese version and the pork and spinach. My mom always made them perfectly with her homemade marinara sauce. That was a constant request as a birthday meal growing up. I still dream about them. To accompany the ravioli, I would have to have a glass of Chateauneuf de Pape, my favorite red wine. Maybe some of my mom’s sauteed escarole on the side would be a nice vegetable accompaniment. Dessert to end this meal would be a light as air chocolate mousse topped with the most amazing thick whipped cream. If I was truly sentimental, I could also have a cassata cake, which was my Sicilian birthday cake made by my mom for many years.

There are a lot of memories wrapped up in that meal. My dad loved to take my sister and I to Houston’s as kids growing up. How I loved those outings of family time together when he was home and wasn’t traveling for his job. I would always request a drive by the White House on 16^th Street, when you didn’t have to worry about security and to see the monuments lit up at night. We were always indulged even though I know now that it was very much out of the way.

As children in London, my dad would take us to Hard Rock (it was very cool back then and the only one in the world) for a taste of America. I could not wait to go and recall begging for us to go back every time. I probably overdid the ketchup back then too!

I helped my mom make the ravioli many times growing up. I had her make them with my kids too, so they could enjoy them. My grandmother was old by the time I was born and not able to make all of her famous recipes. I love thinking of her life and experiences as someone who moved at a young age from Italy.

I have made a lot of fancy foods in my own kitchen over the years and been exposed to a lifetime of wonderful meals. Yet for my last meal, the thing I seem to want is comfort and beautiful memories. I think that is all that many of us want.

I find it interesting that when I recently asked people this question virtually no one couldn’t come up with one item for their last meal. Some people said chicken parmesan, steak with a baked potato, seafood paella, or lobster with drawn butter. One person flat out refused to say what their last meal would be as “no one should know what that is until I’m dead.”

That is an extreme reaction I suppose, but it belies the feeling that perhaps some of us are uncomfortable with the idea of thinking about our own deaths, which is not entirely surprising. It’s fun to think about a meal if you were about to go before a firing squad, but this person who was a hold out on sharing anything tangible did get me thinking.

Maybe that’s the real lesson of the last meal: We spend so much time worrying about what comes next that we forget to enjoy what’s right in front of us. There’s something to be said for savoring the good things while we can, whether that’s a great meal, a memorable experience, or simply a really good cheeseburger.

And on that note, I believe a good cheeseburger is in my future. Maybe not at Hillstone, since the only one around here has closed, but somewhere new. After all, there’s no reason to put off a good burger.