{"id":90441,"date":"2026-07-26T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=90441"},"modified":"2026-07-25T17:10:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T23:10:32","slug":"what-does-summer-taste-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/what-does-summer-taste-like\/","title":{"rendered":"What does summer taste like?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"What<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a little early in the summer to luck into corn as perfect as I did last weekend: kernels plump and sweet, that satisfying snap when you bite in. Corn is one of those foods so intrinsically tied up with summer, along with tomatoes, strawberries and stone fruits (all to be extra carefully washed in this unprecedented cyclospora surge, of course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summer\u2019s flavor profile begins to form in us early: the foods we ate as children, inseparable from our sun-bleached memories of ourselves in our dated outfits with our dated haircuts. Summer to me tastes like corn and tomatoes and peaches, but also like the flat, grainy surface of the little wooden spoon that came packaged with the individual cups of ice cream they served at camp. Watermelon, Hi-C fruit punch and Cracker Jacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One summer, just out of college, some friends set up a kettle grill on their rooftop and we got busy putting together a cookout, our first as actual adults. \u201cWe should make hot dogs!\u201d someone suggested. That sounded right. \u201cWe should have barbecued chicken!\u201d Naturally. \u201cWe should make M.M.B.s!\u201d I declared, to bewildered stares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was one of those moments that occur often when you\u2019re young, when you realize your experience of the world is narrow, that what was standard lingo in your family is not legible to anyone else. We\u2019d called burgers made on the grill M.M.B.s in my family for so long that I\u2019d nearly forgotten what the initialism stood for. \u201cMichael\u2019s Marvelous Burgers\u201d were named for and by my father, the resident grill master. Summer, to me, tasted like M.M.B.s: sculpted patties, salted, peppered and latticed to perfection on the back patio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Not Summer Until You\u2019ve Had a Proper Shandy,\u201d a headline in The Times read last week. The shandy, the beer-and-lemonade mix, is \u201cthe entry-level drink, an intro to your first proper pint\u201d in Britain, according to the restaurateur Annie Shi. Another headline: \u201cSummer Tastes Like Mango (And Vice Versa)\u201d rounded up treats from across New York including Thai sticky rice and frozen Mexican nieves. We could each fill out our own \u201cSummer Tastes Like \u2026\u201d headline. The taste of the season is specific, personal, instantly familiar. That not-altogether-unpleasant sensation of a grain or two of sand in your beach sandwich, the charred edge of a campfire marshmallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked my dad about M.M.B.s recently: Was the recipe a closely guarded secret, as I remembered? Wasn\u2019t there an egg thrown in with the ground chuck? Certainly this mainstay of my summer palate was a Kirsch family heirloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that secret, honey,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe tried to make it a big deal because it wasn\u2019t a big deal,\u201d he said. \u201cWe tried to embellish it, dress it up.\u201d (He didn\u2019t remember the recipe specifically, but he thinks that, yes, there may have been an egg, and perhaps a bit of breadcrumb, for binding.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, summer tastes to my dad like grilled chicken breast sandwiches with strips of zucchini. My friend Franny says it\u2019s warm tomatoes off the vine with Duke\u2019s mayonnaise, hot Gatorade from the cup holder in the car. For my colleague Minju, hot Korean soups with wilted kimchi she grew up eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does summer taste like? It\u2019s a sort of silly question, but the answer comes from someplace deep. Now I just have to hunt down corn as good as last weekend\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n