I first met David Eastis 15 years ago when he presided over the Silicon Valley chapter of Slow Food, originally among the first five chapters the U.S. Eastis was the Shakespearean "mine host" of a gluttonous event at the upscale Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park, where 56 gastronomes of all shapes and sizes feasted at a snail's pace for over three hours.

The resulting May 1, 2003, Metro cover story was the first one I ever wrote and one of the first major features on Slow Food anywhere in the Bay Area. I contributed a bottle of Benedictine to the meal, which felt like a Fellini movie in the slow lane, and then quoted Rabelais and John Ruskin in the story. Such were the days.