3 ideas
The first requirement for writing well about food is a large appetite, because only volume and repetition give the eater enough experiences to compare and remember. Liebling mocks Proust for building a whole cascade of memory on a single madeleine dipped in tea, and suggests that a heartier eater, stimulated by richer meals, would have produced even more.
Eating on a fixed student allowance forces a diner to judge value dish by dish and bottle by bottle, and so to hunt out the small, unpretentious restaurants where quality exceeds price. The rich eater, who can simply order the most expensive thing, never develops this discrimination. For Liebling, a modest allowance that has to be stretched is the best training a palate can get.
Liebling presents Yves Mirande, an aging boulevard playwright, as a great eater whose lunches ran through many courses with several bottles of wine, after which he worked through the afternoon and looked forward to a large dinner. The portrait serves as a vivid example of the capacity and gusto Liebling admires in an eater.