Valentine's Day is all about food love for local chefs

Sumptuous. Decadent. Lush — when chefs speak about food, they do so in what easily could be considered suggestive terms.

This is not an accident, coincidence or poor innuendo. Instead, it is a recognition that food is about feeling, and when a first class chef talks about food, the feeling it stirs up in them happens to be love. A love they tend to lose themselves in mid-conversation.

For Gary Papp, owner and chef at the Palate in Rehoboth, talking about the sensory experience begins with it a hint of the romantic. He connects the feelings of the words people use to describe foods with the ways they literally feel while tasting the food.

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“For me it always is about foods that entice your senses with flavor combinations,” he said. “A romantic dinner is a way to get your senses going.”

The idea that there is a way to chemically entice the senses lies behind the belief in and search for aphrodisiacs, but the very search also is a place where poetry and science meet. The quest for a love potion probably is as old as unrequited love itself.

Increasingly, though, there are ties between what we know about chemistry and the dream of a food that can act upon people.

Foods that increase testosterone or estrogen — like oysters and strawberries, respectively — always are included in lists of aphrodisiacs, as are items like chocolate that share chemicals released in the brain when people feel love and desire.

Whether foods considered aphrodisiacs are chemically effective is secondary to the fact that they tend to be practically effective. That, chefs argue, is as much the context for the food as the food itself.

Lisa DiFebo-Osias, owner of the DiFebo’s restaurants in Berlin, Bethany and Rehoboth, has been hosting an “Aphrodisiac Dinner” on Valentine’s Day for 20 years. For her, the Valentine’s dinner is about intentionality.

“Quite honestly, we eat aphrodisiacs all the time," she said. "For me, it’s just kind of more about celebrating these different ingredients. But it’s not just about the food that night — we give everybody a poem to read to each other, provide love dice, it’s the whole dining experience.”

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Experience is another recurring theme that is suggestive as well as appropriate. Talking about the Palate’s prix fixe menus for Valentine’s week, Papp talks about the surrender, handing oneself over to the chef’s will.

“Sometimes it is nice to have someone take everything out of your hands and you just get to enjoy it,” he said.

It is a notion that also appeals to chef Wilson Gates, owner of The Buttery in Lewes. His special Valentine’s meals are served in threes — three ways of preparing the oysters, the made-from-scratch chocolates, the entree selections. The diner has an amount of control, but also is challenged to try things they otherwise might not have considered ordering.

“Two is OK, four is too many,” he said, “Three ways you can try it and see which ways you like it.”

Eating out for Valentine’s Day is about more than just going through the motions of a romantic relationship. The deeper point is for everyone to get to show off a little bit, he said.

It is the reason all the chefs and staff members at the better restaurants really get excited for the day. They know couples are coming out with the intention of impressing one another, even and especially those who have been together for some time.

It is about taking the time together seriously, taking the food seriously, but also having a lot of fun doing it.

“We have all these different food experiences, warm, rich, deep, juicy,” Papp said. “Things to get your senses rolling, wine pairings you can talk about and experience together.”

Gates said that, while Valentine’s Day menus can be, and often are, aphrodisiac heavy, the larger picture is about letting the fact of treating yourself and your beloved be the thing that draws you closer during the meal.

“When you eat really good food, and it’s done really well, it is beautiful in itself and is a massive aphrodisiac,” he said. “It promotes so many memories.”

DiFebo-Osias said there are almost too many ways to see the holiday and to celebrate it.

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“The thing is it is great to be taken care of,” she said. “It’s not Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, it’s about the couple and I love that.”

And, while she definitely is romantic about the holiday, there’s a filial attitude in her approach to the dinner and the notion.

“We start celebrating this when we’re in kindergarten with those little cards. Valentine’s Day is a chance to celebrate love,” she said. “We move so fast in our world. Slow down, each person is a Valentine. Celebrate that. More now than ever, it really needs to be celebrated.”