“Good food brings everybody to the table.” ~Lidia Bastianich
It should come as no surprise that I ate well last week. And like most weeks, I drank well, too. But besides eating my usual fair share of bacon and drinking a few liters or so of Earl Grey, what was the best thing I ate last week?
It was pizza. And not fancy pizza either, but pizza from one of those popular chains that delivers.
Delivery pizza! What a great invention. Am I right or am I right?!
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t even close to being the best pizza I’ve ever had. I mean, I’ve been to Naples. And I lived in Chicago. But this pizza was delivered to my workplace for an employee celebration luncheon (I’m HR in case you didn’t know), and well, in my experience, nothing truly brings people together in a happy way quite like food can.
I work at a non-profit museum, and while we don’t get to celebrate as much as I’d like, when we do, food is usually involved. Our 100 or so employees range in age from 15 to 75, come from all over the country and have a variety of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds; we have high school students, artists, people with PhD’s and everything in between. Nothing seems to bring us all together like food does. And simple food like pizza in cardboard boxes does it best, I think. Paper plates, napkins, canned sodas in a cooler—those things all level the social playing field around the table, if you will. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like conversations just flow better around greasy pizza.
Anyway, that was the best thing I ate last week. Delivery pizza. Not because it tasted better than my favorite deep-dish pie, but because it brought everyone to the table.
XO
