As someone who loves cooking, there’s nothing more attractive than watching someone you find hot light up the kitchen. Whether its chopping vegetables or shifting the frying pan, the arms are on full showcase and the attention to flavour is enough to make you swoon, especially if they let you taste the sauce in the process.
Over winter break, I watched Stanley Tucci’s travel and food show Searching for Italy (2021) on BBC iPlayer and think that that in itself supports my argument. Not only is Tucci the most suave and cultured man, seeing him cook a bowl of pasta certainly made me mamma mia. It’s certainly a step-up from pierce-packet macaroni cheese. When on the one hand restaurants are allegedly bad first dates, because eating in front of a stranger is stressful, I’ve often heard people trying to seduce others by offering to cook them a meal.
Not only is Tucci the most suave and cultured man, seeing him cook a bowl of pasta certainly made me mamma mia
Whilst largely unsuccessful, programs like ITV’s Dinner Date (2010) take on this premise. However, Dinner Date fails to focus on the intimacy that food offers, again focussing on the stress of perfecting cooking rather than the innate sexuality it inspires. The expression ‘better than sex’ is often applied to food, with people experiencing what’s colloquially termed as ‘foodgasms’, from eating something sensational. Of course, there is also the sexual imagery symbolic in food, with popular Tik Tok accounts, like Cedrik Lorenzen’s, creating the ultimate food porn. I’ve never before seen dough be so violated.
In an age where we’re always looking for the next best thing to spice up our sex lives, food has always been a staple to the sexual appetite, which is why I didn’t appreciate Harry Styles’ ruining of the whole meal Florence Pugh had prepared in Don’t Worry Darling (2022). Even if he did eat her instead. Food doesn’t replace sex but heightens it, so we should all switch one spooning for another from time to time and sweeten our desert.
