Taper Down
I used to have this funny habit when I ate out at restaurants.
If I really liked what I was eating, I’d order another version of the same thing, only smaller and simpler.
I called this my “taper down” dish.
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For example, one summer when I was in high school, I had a job near this really good Korean restaurant.
At least once a week I went there for lunch and ordered bibimbap.
That is, a huge bowl of steamed rice, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, spinach, carrots, and zucchini, topped with grilled marinated beef strips, a fried egg, and sweet-and-spicy fermented chili paste sauce, all of which you mix together.
I ate my bibimbap for half an hour.
Then I asked for a side order of plain white rice with the same sauce.
I was full.
I just happened also to be hungry.
If that seems like a paradox, observe anyone with an ice cream sundae.
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When I was in my mid-twenties, my younger sister spent a college semester abroad in Italy.
My parents and I visited her and went to a restaurant where we all ate fresh egg pasta with truffles.
The others were ready for dessert afterward.
That was too far, too fast for me.
I needed a taper down dish first.
I ordered a truffle omelette.
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This isn’t a travelogue, but suffice to say New Orleans is a really good taper down community.
So is Seattle’s International District and the Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco, where friends and I pioneered the second-order taper down.
That’s a taper down of taper down dishes, visiting multiple dim sum restaurants in succession, ordering slightly fewer items each time.
Another cherished spot is the pizza-by-the-slice place built into this fancy cheese shop, The Cheese Board, in Berkeley, California.
There they actually incorporate the taper down into meals without you asking for it.
With every slice, you get the cutest extra little half-sliver.
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Time passes.
Tastes change.
My metabolism isn’t what it used to be.
I don’t eat out much anymore.
And I almost never get a taper down dish when I do.
Still, sometimes, I feel the pang and beg Crissie to detour driving home on a date night.
In this case, I seek out a particularly low-grade variant of the original:
V8 after gazpacho
Salted peanuts after pad Thai
Fro-yo after crème brûlée
It’s my version of ending a classy night out at a dive bar.
Probably anyone with a personal pattern they’re working their way out of does the same thing.
We need something good enough to satisfy the habit while also bad enough to make us stop.