The True Meaning of Comfort Food

A story told by Chris Bianco and written by Cal Fussman

When you’re 12 or 13 years old there’s not much that you have verbally aligned with your grandparents, and even though I loved mine dearly the generation gap was wider back in the day than it is now.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a New York City fireman. But he spent the last 25 years of his life in Mystic, Connecticut as a fire marshal. We’d go to visit, and he’d take me and my brother out fishing. Maybe we’d catch a few flounder. While my grandmother was frying them up, we’d go out to get some pizza.

I remember coming home in the car and not having much to say, but the heat of the pizza was hitting the cardboard box and the aroma was oozing out and it began to close every gap between us. It felt warm to hold, it created anticipation, it generated a feeling that when we both opened up that box we were in the same place at the same time. We were connected. That was a time of comfort.

Food can do that even in an awkward moment. You might be in a place where you don’t know anybody around you, but then the pizza comes and everybody gets their slice and everything makes sense. You learn to play well with others. And that’s the only subject that really matters at the end of the day in school. All other things are possible if you can find that comfort.

To me, there’s a big connection between comfort and the question: What makes good things good?

I’m telling you, there’s not a single thing I’ve found in life – a pair of shoes, a tee shirt, a birthday cake, a home, or a raincoat -- that gets away from that question.

And my whole life’s work has been the pursuit of answers to that question. What makes good things good? Just as there’s an art to making a great pizza, there’s an art to making a great tee shirt.

What are the materials? Who’s putting it together? Do you look or feel differently in one over another? How does it empower you? Or disempower you? How does it make you feel comfort?

 I’m a freak about this. Trust me, I’m no fashionista. but I wouldn’t wear a thing in the world if it was uncomfortable.

That’s why I wear Sportiqe. It answers the big question.