I saw someone offer a friend a "chef's kiss" on Facebook in thanks for a kind word. I said, wait a minute! Who's a chef? (This was back in the good old days when we could actually go to restaurants and have professionally-made dinners.)
Then I looked it up! Chef's kiss is defined as "a gesture and expression meant to show something is perfect or excellent. The gesture is made by pinching the fingers and thumb of one hand together (often in an OK sign), kissing them, and then tossing them dramatically away from the lips."
Didn't that seem like something from a movie or tv show, where the chef concocts a perfect Lasagna Tommy LaSorda and puts it on a plate to applause and acclaim and makes that gesture like this?
I could also picture Italian chef Hector Boiardi making this gesture. He was the guy who invented canned spaghetti and sold it under the trade name "Chef Boyardee." For the record, no canned pasta product will ever earn a chef's kiss from me, any more than canned Chateaubriand would.
Someone else said that the Italian term "al bacio" - literally "as good as a kiss," can be conveyed with that hand gesture that also means "delicious."
Good food is like a kiss. Understandable.
But then someone said they were at a party and pulled an "Irish goodbye," and once again, just like the time Peggy took me to the art museum and I had no idea what everyone else appreciated, I had to look it up. On the surface, I guess that the Irish goodbye was to walk away singing "Molly Malone" or "Danny Boy," but I found out that it means "leaving a party without saying goodbye."
I hope someone among my Irish friends can explain why someone would slip away from a soirée without a proper leave-taking. I know some people say goodbye without leaving and some leave without saying goodbye but I never know why.
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