During Covid, I started baking.
Like many people, I suddenly had time and nowhere to go. I became obsessed with difficult recipes, especially the kind that looked beautiful online. One of the most ambitious things I attempted was a vegetable tart with spiralled layers of carrots, courgettes and aubergines arranged carefully across the top. The food was getting better almost everywhere.
But fewer experiences were genuinely surprising me.
For a long time, I thought what I loved most about restaurants was the food itself. And of course, food matters. Technical mastery matters. Precision matters.
Ingredients matter. But when I look back at the meals that have stayed with me emotionally over the years, very few are tied purely to taste.
What I remember instead are fragments.
Being seated at the counter during my first tasting menu experience at Hedone and suddenly feeling closer to the chefs, to the rhythm of the kitchen, to something usually hidden.
When I look back at the meals that have stayed with me emotionally over the years, very few are tied purely to taste.
At Noma, noticing that after the first course, the cutlery began being placed differently because someone had quietly realised I was left-handed.
The almost unsettling precision of the service at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London. The feeling that the team somehow anticipated needs before we had even expressed them ourselves. Present exactly when needed, invisible when not.
A communal table at a WeAreOna pop-up in New York where strangers briefly became part of the same experience.
A picnic set above London, on top of the Shard, with
Fortnum & Mason.
A bread trolley at Steirereck carrying dozens of breads all baked that morning.
A mole at Pujol tied to years of history and repetition.
A vegan butter at Eleven Madison Park whose story stayed with me as much as the flavour itself.
Recently, a dish by Julia Sedefdjian at Baieta stayed with me for the opposite reason. Just a few peas, perfectly cooked, nested inside a softened onion leaf with a pea shoot. Quietly inventive. Simple enough that it almost felt achievable, which somehow made it even more memorable.
None of these memories are really about perfection.
They are about attention.
Atmosphere.
Story.
Surprise.
Context.
Participation.
They are about feeling something.
And increasingly, I’ve started wondering whether modern fine dining has accidentally optimised too heavily for visual perfection and consistency at the expense of friction.
Because friction is often what makes experiences memorable.
The cutlery began being placed differently because someone had quietly realised I was left-handed.
Today, you can eat extremely well almost anywhere in the world. Ingredients travel globally. Techniques spread instantly online. Aesthetic trends circulate faster than ever. The same ceramics, the same glassware, the same carefully placed garnishes begin appearing across cities, countries and continents.
You sit down in a beautiful restaurant and, within minutes, you could almost be anywhere.
That, to me, is where an experience starts losing emotional value.
I want to know where I am.
Through the ingredients.
Through the craft.
Through the service.
Through the atmosphere.
Through the objects on the table.
Through the language being spoken around me.
I love when crockery or glassware is locally sourced. When there is a story behind the material itself. When the environment shapes not only the food, but the entire emotional experience around it.
And maybe this is also why temporary hospitality experiences have become so emotionally powerful.
Not because they are inherently better than restaurants. Most are not.
But because temporary formats allow for a kind of freedom that permanent structures often struggle to sustain.
Restaurants, especially at the highest level, exist within systems of consistency, reputation and permanence. Temporary experiences operate differently. There is often more room for risk. More permission to surprise people. More freedom to create something emotionally concentrated rather than endlessly repeatable.
You might only have a week.
One chance to get it right.
And guests know it too.
That changes the energy in the room.
People arrive differently when they know something will never exist in exactly the same way again. There is anticipation. Attention. Presence. Even a kind of collective adrenaline.
You were there.
You shared it.
You became part of something temporary.
And in a world where so much feels endlessly accessible, repeatable and documented, maybe rarity today is less about luxury and more about emotional intensity.
Memories are becoming one of our strongest currencies.
Temporary formats allow for a kind of freedom that permanent structures often struggle to sustain.
The meals I remember most are rarely the ones that were technically flawless.
They are the ones that made me feel unexpectedly present.
The ones that briefly reminded me where I was.
Written by
Éloïse Mercier-Fox,
Founder of Gaiama
@lunchwithmayan
What Photographs Fail to Capture
“Every dish has a moment worth capturing.”
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