One of my favorite things about appetite is also one of the most mysterious: the yearning for something specific, the certainty that I want fresh grapefruit juice this morning, or winy Keemun tea, or iced coffee; or that it must be pizza for lunch, or crab cakes, or a carnitas burrito, heavy on the cilantro. I'm not talking only about the gradual realization of what I want to eat that comes when I read a menu, weighing the appeal of carrot-ginger soup over Caesar salad, tasting the combination of halibut and cockles in saffron broth with onions and fennel versus a roasted lamb sandwich with marinated peppers and mint aioli in my mind's palate, or responding to the sight and smell of dishes being carried past my table. I'm thinking, also, of the sudden hunger for a specific dish that can only be satisfied at a special place (or maybe can't be satisfied at all -- as in the case of nostalgia for a vanished dish, one cooked by a late grandmother, say, or at a restaurant that no... More >>>