Taste, My Compass
Following Taste, Finding More
Bianca Mozzarella | Warsaw, Poland
My relationship with Taste has grown commensurate with how much I have allowed its role in my life to liberally drift and expand.
Taste has long been a formidable teacher, inspiring and fueling understanding, presence and discovery. Inside every bite and sip, it challenges and pushes out my aspirations, perspectives and boundaries.
More recently, I identify with Taste as partner and enthusiastic underwriter of my life’s work and purpose. Without all of its nudges, my life would simply be too boring and bland – on and off the plate.
In the last year, however, Taste has assumed the new and notable role of astute and reliable caretaker. It comforts and reassures long before I realize I am sliding out of sorts. When Taste is in this mode, it unlocks a homecoming for me, a return to self and center through just the right mix of passion, flavor and connectivity.
During my first official journey to Poland as The Untethered Traveler, I struggled with all the “things.” Imposter Syndrome. Crushing Isolation. Burnout. And the deeper I traveled into Poland, the more susceptible I became to an unshakeable dread that I didn’t have the right to try at my own thing. My window had passed. My skill set was wrong. My gumption misplaced.
By the time I made it to Warsaw, my fourth Polish city in ten days, I was traveling on fumes of self-doubt and self-pity.
But the moment I stepped into Bianca Mozzarella, a totally random, side-street find, something inside of me broke free. It confronted and quashed the toxic talk track in my head.
Walking in, I felt my whole body relax under the aroma of focaccia baking. Bianca had all of my favorites – skin contact wine, mortadella, anchovies on buttered bread. I took a seat at the window with all of them laid out on small plates before me. As I watched a sunny Saturday afternoon in Warsaw play out, I felt Taste settle me down.
I can’t explain what happened that afternoon. I can only confirm whoever walked into Bianca was not the person who walked out. With serendipitous space to breathe and be, Taste had not only set the table with everything I loved and needed, it had done what every good compass should do; it pointed me in the right direction.
