I Love Food. That’s Basically the Whole Story.

Food for Thought • Chef David Wilmott

Apparently, today is I Love Food Day. Which feels more like a personality trait.

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Because saying “I love food” is a little like saying “I enjoy breathing.” Of course you do. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s actually something worth talking about here.

Because most of us don't just love food because it tastes good. We love everything that comes with it.

Food Has Never Just Been About Being Hungry

Think about some of your strongest memories. There's a good chance food is somewhere in the background. A grandmother's kitchen. Something your mother made every Sunday. The restaurant you went to on your first date.

Or that one dish somebody used to make that you've tried to recreate 47 times and it still doesn't taste exactly right. You know the one. You followed the recipe, bought the ingredients, even used the same pan. Still wrong.

Sometimes the missing ingredient isn't an ingredient.
It's the person.

That's the part of food we don't talk about enough. Food has this strange ability to hold memories. You can smell something cooking and suddenly you're not standing in your kitchen anymore. You're eight years old again.

That's powerful.

Then Some of Us Went and Made It a Career

I loved food enough that eventually I decided:

You know what would make this even better?

Deadlines, payroll, food costs, hot kitchens and people sending steaks back because they ordered medium-well but somehow wanted medium. 😂

Becoming a chef definitely changes your relationship with food. You stop simply looking at a plate and start analyzing it. Needs acid. Needs salt. Pan wasn't hot enough. That sauce broke. Why did they put microgreens on that?

And perhaps the most important culinary question of our generation:

Who told everybody balsamic glaze needed to go on everything?

But even after years of professional kitchens, restaurants, catering, recipe development and building businesses around food, I'm still fascinated by it. I still love discovering an ingredient. I still love figuring out why something works.

And I still love taking a bite of something I'm cooking and thinking, “There it is.”

Every cook knows that moment. You've been tasting and adjusting—a little salt, maybe acid, maybe heat, maybe sweetness—and then suddenly everything clicks.

That's the moment.

Good Food Doesn't Have to Be Fancy

This might be one of the biggest things I've learned as a chef. Some of the best food you'll ever eat won't have tweezers involved. It won't have edible flowers. Nobody is going to explain the “concept” of the plate for seven minutes.

Sometimes it's fried chicken. Sometimes it's a bowl of pasta. Sometimes it's rice with something delicious spooned over it. Sometimes it's a sandwich eaten while standing over the kitchen sink because apparently we're not getting a plate dirty today.

And sometimes it's something somebody cooked specifically because they knew you loved it. That's food too. Actually, that's some of the best food.

Technique matters. Ingredients matter. Seasoning absolutely matters.

But food doesn't have to perform to be good.

Food Is One of the Few Things We All Have in Common

We may eat differently. Our kitchens look different. Our seasonings are definitely different. And we are absolutely going to disagree about who makes the best macaroni and cheese.

Important Chef's Note:

Do not bring that discussion into the wrong family gathering unless you're prepared for consequences.

But every culture has food traditions. Every family has dishes. Every person has something they crave when they need comfort.

And somewhere in the world right now, somebody is standing over a pot making something the way somebody taught them to make it.

That's one of the things I love most about food. Recipes travel. Techniques travel. Ingredients travel. Stories travel. And eventually they land in somebody else's kitchen and become part of another story.

Maybe That's Why I'm Still Here

I've cooked professionally. I've owned a restaurant. I've catered events. I've developed recipes. I've written about food. I've taught people how to cook.

And now, through Forks247 and Kitchen Studio, I'm spending even more time exploring why cooking works instead of simply telling people what to cook.

And somehow, I'm still not bored. If anything, I'm more curious. Because the longer you cook, the more you realize how much there is left to learn.

One ingredient behaves differently because you changed the temperature. One technique completely changes a vegetable you've eaten your entire life. One little splash of acid wakes up a dish you were convinced needed more salt.

Food keeps teaching you.
Meal after meal.

So Yes, I Love Food.

Not just because it's delicious. I love what happens around it—the conversations, the experimenting, the mistakes, the traditions, the ridiculous debates, the recipes written on old pieces of paper.

I love the dishes we make when we're celebrating and the dishes we make when somebody needs taking care of.

I love that after all these years, I can still walk into a kitchen with a handful of ingredients and think:

Okay. What can we do with this?

Maybe that's really what I love most. Food never feels finished. There's always another ingredient, another technique, another story, another table.

Another meal.

And apparently we needed an official day to celebrate that. I'm not complaining.

Now I Want to Hear From You

If you had to choose ONE food you could eat for the rest of your life without getting tired of it, what would it be?

Don't overthink it. And yes, we're judging your answer. Respectfully. 😂

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Forks247 is where Chef David Wilmott explores food, technique, recipes and the stories behind what we cook.

Want to go deeper? Step inside Kitchen Studio, where we break down the why behind better cooking, one lesson at a time.

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Chef David Wilmott
Forks247 • Built on Flavor.

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