The Best Meal I Ever Had

Michelin stars or Pizza Hut?

“ It isn’t the lavishness of the gift that counts, but its pricelessness.”
— Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality

The last course was a cider doughnut with cinnamon ice cream, not what you’d expect from the number one restaurant in the world. But that was the thing about Eleven Madison Park. Nothing was what you expected, and everything was exactly right.

For years, eating at the world’s best restaurant had lived on my bucket list. In November 2017, it stopped being a someday. From the moment they greeted me by name at the door, the evening moved like something choreographed. Midway through the meal, a bar cart appeared. The staff had learned I love cocktails. The old-fashioned they made was one of the best I’ve ever had.

The entire evening felt like time had shifted to a different speed. That’s the only way I can describe it. Time slowed down.

It wasn’t one extraordinary gesture. It was detail after detail, each one given its full moment of attention. Every person who approached the table. Every course that arrived. By the end of the evening, the certainty that nothing had been left to chance.

And then the cider doughnut arrived. Alongside it, a full bottle of Apple Brandy and an open invitation: as much as we wanted. That was when it clicked. The feeling that had been building all evening finally had a name. Abundance. And I had felt it before, just not at a restaurant like this one.

Book It

Growing up, my parents worked hard to make ends meet. Pizza was not an average weeknight dinner. Pizza was a birthday or a good report card. Pizza was a celebration.

In sixth grade, my classroom participated in Pizza Hut’s Book It program. Read enough books, earn enough coupons, and get a personal pan pizza. For a kid who already loved reading, it felt almost too good to be true.

I read everything I could get my hands on. When I had enough coupons, I didn’t use them on myself.

I took my mother, my sister, and my brother to lunch. Each of us ordered our own personal pan pizza. I handed the waitress my coupons. My mom looked at her and said, “She’s paying today.”

I remember thinking I might burst with pride. I was the one treating my family.

The Same Feeling

Will Guidara was the co-owner of Eleven Madison Park. Unreasonable Hospitality is his account of what it actually took to build that restaurant into what I experienced that November, and his theory of why it worked.

Guidara describes presence as caring so much about what you’re doing that you stop thinking about what comes next. That’s what time slowing down actually means.

A full bottle of Apple Brandy at the world’s best restaurant. A personal pan pizza paid for with reading coupons. The same feeling, exactly. Abundance.

The Coordinate: Exhale Stillness

In the ENOUGH Principle, Exhale Stillness means pause before you plan. It’s the first coordinate because without it, nothing else is possible.

Abundance works the same way. You can’t feel it while you’re moving too fast. You have to stop long enough to let the moment arrive.

At EMP, the staff created the conditions for that. Every detail attended to, every distraction removed. Time slowed down because someone had decided it would.

In a Pizza Hut in Montana, a sixth grader arrived at the same place differently. She had saved her coupons, gathered her family, and given them something that felt like more than lunch.

Abundance shows up in more places than we think.

What the Culture of More Gets Wrong

We rank experiences. We optimize for prestige, for what will make the best story later.

This is scarcity versus sufficiency with abundance.

Scarcity says: abundance requires the extraordinary. The bucket list meal, the milestone occasion. Ordinary moments don’t qualify.

Sufficiency says: abundance is a feeling, not a price tag. A meal at the world’s best restaurant and a personal pan pizza paid for with reading coupons can deliver exactly the same thing.

You just have to be present enough to receive it.

A Small Practice

This week, notice one moment where abundance shows up unexpectedly. Not in the extraordinary circumstance, but in an ordinary one.

It might be a meal shared with someone you love. A small gesture that lands harder than it should. The moment when enough stops feeling like a compromise and starts feeling exactly right.

Pay attention to what that feels like in your body. That feeling is the signal. That’s what you’re learning to recognize.

See you next week.

P.S. I'd love to know: what’s a meal or moment that felt like abundance? What made it feel that way?