One winter break from Brown, Hernán Merea ’87 and I traveled to Peru, where on a side street in his native Lima I was transported by a fresh jugo that was my first taste of mango, like an intense, gingery version of the peaches I’d grown up with in rural Virginia, fresh from the orchard down the way, sweet and ripe like I’ve rarely found anywhere else. Later, in Arequipa, we both were newcomers to cuy, aka guinea pig, served on its back, paws clenched, front teeth bared in failed defiance, bits of long fur still clinging to its side. What little I could scrape off its skinny ribs tasted nondescript, like chicken. To drink, Hernán, on a mission to try every traditional small-town offering, recommended we order chicha de jora, a weirdly viscous sour beer I learned was traditionally made with spit, to speed fermentation. I’ll sure never forget that meal.

Delicious or disgusting, food is uniquely evocative, perhaps in part because we literally can’t forget it—if we forget to eat, we’ll die. If we eat badly, we’ll get sick. And if we’re sick, it’s often a job for chicken soup—or, if you’re chef Gabriela Álvarez-Martinez ’11, time to creatively adapt your native cuisine to be as healthy as it is delicious. 

Food is baked into our memories of Brown—like getting fresh-cut slabs of Muenster cheese on pumpernickel from Big Mother Coffeehouse or Portuguese sweetbread from Fox Point’s Silver Star Bakery, just out of the oven in the wee hours after a night of carousing. Top chef Suzanne Goin ’88 centered her latest restaurant on Portuguese cuisine, in large part because of her memories of Portuguese food in Providence.