In Venice, Italy (a favorite, oft-returned-to destination of Ernest Hemingway’s) he dined at Ristorante del Doge and the Gritti Palace Hotel, where he would order fish risotto and lobster ragù. In Havana, he dined at Bodeguita del Medio, drank “Hemingway Daiquiris” at the Floridita, and gained a reputation as the drinking buddy of fellow bon vivant Ava Gardner.
In Hemingway’s book “A Moveable Feast,” published posthumously in 1964, he expounded on the spiritual ability of good food to nourish more than just the body, writing (via Goodreads), “As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
Indeed, Hemingway toted a special affinity for Paris, a culinary love also shared by fellow late great writer Anthony Bourdain, where he waxed poetic about the interplay of food, romance, and the human experience with lines like, “Hunger is good discipline,” “Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary,” and “We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”
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