What is comfort food?

This October break, I went to my roommate’s house for the long weekend. I chose not to go home because I didn’t want to pay travel expenses and my best friend/roommate offered for me to come over. Though they are not my family, we are very close and I can consider them family. Essentially they are a home away from home.

While we were there, of the many things we did throughout our day, mealtime was our favorite. Since good food is in shortage at Wheaton College, we had to indulge and what better way than to eat out at a restaurant for every meal?

On Thursday, on our way from campus to his house in Andover, Massachusetts, we stopped in for a late lunch at a Vietnamese Restaurant known for its Pho, or rice noodle soup. This soup usually contains beef or chicken as well as bean sprouts, cilantro, lime, and pepper. It is a very popular Vietnamese dish that has been globalized the rest of the world. To compare it to something, it is like a healthier version of ramen noodles. It was just my best friend and I enjoying the graces of a hot broth of vegetables, noodles, and beef. It was definitely the best meal of that break because it had meaning to me.

Pho is considered to be one of my comfort foods. I don’t regularly eat it but my mother makes it on occasion when she has the time. Being part Taiwanese allows me to try foods of my culture and those that are in ties, associating with foods like dumplings, noodles, and sticky rice, a sweet and glutinous dish with pork and mushrooms that my grandmother usually makes for the holidays. A comfort food should mean something to the eater and bring back a sensory memory or reminder of what something was like in the past. Of the many interpretations, it can bring a feeling of peacefulness, happiness, or of the feeling of being surrounded by loved ones.

The last time my mother visited me at school this year, she brought up a stockpile of food for me, including homemade sticky rice and pho. The pho was from one of my favorite restaurants. It was tasty and emulated the thought of my mother caring to buy something for me. Even though I was away from home and hadn’t been back since I left for school, the food on that Thursday delivered me back to my house eating with my family through the sensory experience when I smelled the citrus-beef broth escaping from the bowl in front of me. It reminded me of when my mother visited and calmed my homesickness down. In my own sense of the word, comfort food brings me back to a time and place where that food was present, the setting was filled with family and friends and happiness was contagious. Being at this restaurant with my roommate reminded me of this type of time and the next time I eat pho, I will remember the feeling once again of comfort food, adding the emotion of eating pho with my roommate that one great weekend to my memory.