Bacon is one of the few things on earth that a man can use to measure whether he’s home or not. After eight weeks of European breakfasts, I needed three mornings in a row at table 19 in the Midtowner before the question got settled. The bacon here is cooked the way bacon was meant to be cooked — crisp at the edges, no microwave shortcuts, not the almost-raw European ham-like floppy pork I ate for the better part of two months. Bacon, done right.
The Europeans have us beat on a few things. Olive oil. Old masters. Pasta dishes. The general willingness to spend two hours on a meal that probably didn’t need to take more than thirty minutes. Fair enough, no argument from this writer. But pancakes and bacon are ours, and it isn’t even close. Eight weeks of European breakfasts and I’m here to tell you the cold cuts and baked beans do not stack up. Not even close.
I started two hundred miles above the Arctic Circle in early March. And was two hundred miles above Africa by late April. London and Milan and a month in Tuscany were sandwiched in between. Five Yonderlust groups along the way — a veteran group through Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to start. Three new groups in Tuscany after that. A short Easter break to catch my breath, and a veteran group again in Portugal to close it out.
Came home grateful. Grateful for table 19. Grateful for the parking spot that’s always waiting on me in front of the restaurant at 6:45. Grateful for the team back home that ran five restaurants and two bars without missing a beat while I was off staring at a fjord. Grateful for a family who puts up with my weird schedule and numerous eccentricities. Grateful, frankly, that any of this is the life I get to live.
A morning like this one will get a man thinking.
Two months on the road has a way of stirring up the questions one tries not to ask. Now I’m back at table 19 with three glasses of iced tea (man, I miss iced tea) and the same question is still waiting on me.
What scares me isn’t failure. It’s living a life that never really mattered. Falling short doesn’t keep me up at night. Playing small does. Standing before God one day knowing I played it safe when I was called to live fully — that’s the one that does.
For years, I didn’t have a name for that particular fear, until I heard someone on a podcast last year tag it as “the fear of an unlived life.” That phrase has stayed with me. The unlived life haunts me because it isn’t built in one big surrender. It’s built one small compromise at a time, one day at a time, until one day becomes a lifetime.
Gifts buried. Words unsaid. Work undone. Comfort crowding out purpose. That’s the version of my life I’m fighting against — every morning, every decision, every yes and every no.
The real loss isn’t losing. It’s never stepping into the life I was meant to live. I’m not here to coast. I’m here to go all the way.
I’m sixty-four years old now. Working harder than I worked at 34, and I worked hard at 34. I don’t know whether that’s age tightening up the calendar or whether I’m just more plugged in to the work than I used to be. Probably a little of both. The years feel shorter and the list feels longer, and that combination tends to make a man pick up the pace.
The actuarial tables give me about fifteen more years. The insurance people peg me right around 79. With all due respect to the bean counters, I’m not interested in those numbers. My goal is a healthy 100. That isn’t me being cute — that’s an actual plan. Eat better. Move more. Sleep well. A plan, not a wish.
That isn’t fifteen summers left. That’s thirty-six. More restaurants to open. More countries to discover. More mornings at table 19. More opportunities to hand to the next generation of people who work with me. The well isn’t anywhere close to dry.
I’m blessed to love what I do — and I mean that. Restaurants, podcasts, books, tours. Over 1,500 Yonderlusters across 10 years. A team I trust enough to leave for eight weeks at a time. Most people don’t get to say any of that.
I don’t take any of it for granted.
Plenty of folks can’t travel. Health, money, the season of life they’re in, kids at home, jobs that don’t allow for it — the reasons are real, and I’m not preaching from a villa. Travel isn’t the only road out of the unlived life. It’s just one of mine.
A friend told me once about a guy he knows whose entire borders end at Oxford and Destin. Everything he’s ever wanted lives in the space between. Granted, those are not bad borders. Oxford is charming and Destin’s beaches are some of the best, anywhere. But the borders are the borders. He’s stayed inside them his whole life and never wanted out.
Some of us are wired to keep pushing the line. I’m one of them.
Travel does things to a person that books and podcasts can’t. It makes you smaller in the best ways. Stand inside a 12th century church in Tuscany and your problems back home stop looking quite so big. Sit at a long table in Norway with the aurora borealis pulsing green over the roof of the lodge while nobody at the table says a word, and the existence of God stops being a question.
Watching the world from a couch in front of a TV and standing in the middle of it are not the same thing. Not even close.
The world is bigger and warmer than cable news will ever let you believe. You come home different. Quieter than you were. More likely to pick up the phone and call somebody you’ve been meaning to call for two years.
The unlived life is built out of small nos. No to the trip. No to the unfamiliar table. No to the stranger who could have become a close friend. It’s a life narrowed down to six square miles and ten familiar meals, and it shrinks quietly until there’s nothing left to shrink.
Travel is the opposite of all of that. Every trip is a yes. Yes to discomfort. Yes to people you haven’t met. Yes to food you can’t pronounce and a language you don’t speak. You can’t coast through a week in Portugal the way you can coast through a Tuesday back home. Travel demands your attention, and attention is the first thing the unlived life surrenders.
There’s also this. A week on a good trip leaves more memory behind than three months of ordinary life. The unlived life travels light on memory. The lived life is loaded with it. Travel is one of the few reliable ways to add weight to the record.
And travel is practice in saying yes. You book the flight. You get on the plane. You sit down and share a meal with people you don’t know who, within a matter of days, will become friends. Every one of those yeses is a rehearsal for the bigger yeses — the calling, the risk, the thing you’ve been putting off for fifteen years.
That’s the bridge. Fear the unlived life, and travel is one of the answers. Not the cure. Not even close. But a good and faithful start.
Back at table 19. The bacon is gone. The waitress refilled my tea glass three times without being asked (they know me well). Thirty-six summers left, give or take. Plenty of time, and not near enough.
I came home grateful. Always do.
Onward.
Minestrone Soup
I created a version of this in the early days of the Purple Parrot Café in the late 1980s. When we opened Tabella, I revised it and it’s a regular menu item.
¼ c. Pure olive oil
1 ½ c. Onion, diced
1 ½ c. Carrot, diced
1 c. Celery, diced
½ c. Garlic, minced
¼ c. Kosher salt
1 tsp Dried basil
1 tsp Dried oregano
½ tsp Dried thyme
2 tsp Fresh ground black pepper
¼ tsp Crushed red pepper
2 ea. Bay leaf
2 TB Balsamic vinegar
½ c. White wine
¼ c. Tomato paste
2 ea. 28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes, chopped
1 gal. Vegetable Stock
2 c. Zucchini, medium dice
2 c. Yellow squash, medium dice
1 ea 10 oz. package frozen spinach, thawed, drained
2 ea 15 oz. can kidney or cannelloni beans, drained
¼ c. Pesto
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
Heat olive oil in a stockpot over medium-high heat.
Add onions, carrots, celery, salt, peppers, basil, oregano, thyme and bay leaves. Cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add wine and balsamic vinegar. Continue cooking for 3 minutes.
Add tomato paste and cook 6-8 minutes, stirring constantly, being careful not to let it burn.
Add canned tomatoes and chicken stock. Simmer for 1 hour.
Add zucchini, squash, spinach and kidney beans and cook for 8 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in pesto and Worcestershire.
Yield: 1 gallon
(Robert St. John is a chef, restauranteur and published cookbook author who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss.)
