Protected: A New Mother Hungry for the World on Her Plate

“Oh No” by Adrienne Celt takes the form of a restaurant review, a critic’s first assignment since giving birth to her child. Oh No is the nickname given to Au Naturel, a restaurant that “seeks to replicate, through its food, the experience of existing in the natural world.”

Being the reader that I am—a writer and editor, searching for my last short story as the editor of this magazine—I immediately found an analogy. After all, writing, in its most basic intent, seeks to replicate through words the experience of existing in the world, natural and otherwise. “I believe that food and eating can be artful—indeed, can be art,” the critic-cum-narrator declares, as if to permit my interpretation. 

“Oh No” is both the story of a meal—and therefore, by the terms set out, of art—and of a new mother recalibrating her sense of self. The narrator describes “looking at that tender place where one’s identity used to sit, and watching with held breath to see whether it might be growing back.” Her identity has been largely constructed around food, but not for the sake of nourishment. She loves food for its ambition and its scope. Motherhood forces her to consider food for its nutrients, to be practical and still. 

Entering the restaurant, the narrator is in a raw state. The waiter wordlessly accommodates her baby and this simple professional kindness nearly brings her to tears. As she and her infant son are seated in an elegant back booth, the reader nestles in beside them, eagerly awaiting the first course. 

She orders the tasting menu. The dishes are both fanciful and extreme, pushing the boundaries of what can be served on a plate. Told with Celt’s wordperfect style, the effect is as thoughtful and evocative as the perfect wine pairing. The result is nothing short of a philosophical treatise on the nature of personhood and artmaking, which, like a complex mouthful, shifts in flavor and texture from first taste to swallow.

Recommended Reading has been a weekly fixture in my life for fourteen years, since the first issue. I can’t help but smile that the last story I’ll acquire and edit—No. 728—begins with the words “longtime readers,” of which we have many. If you’re one, I thank you, and much like a food critic simply enjoying a good meal, I look forward to joining your ranks.

– Halimah Marcus
Editor, Recommended Reading