Taste as a metaphor for knowing
Calvino's original title for the story ('Sapore, Sapere', or 'To Taste, to Know') suggests that taste is used as an extended metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge. This is demonstrated throughout the narrator's gradual discovery of Mexican culture, which is conveyed via his symbolic engagement with the culture's cuisine. This link between food and knowledge is most obviously expressed when the narrator suggests that the cuisine is 'always offering new terms to be recorded and new sensations to be defined’. The metaphor also extends to the narrator's relationship with Olivia, given the archaic, euphemistic sense of ‘to know’ within the context of ‘carnal knowledge’.
Taste as a metaphor for communicating
Tasting new food also becomes a metaphor for the couple's non-verbal communication. This is made clear when the narrator describes Olivia's eating in expressive terms: '"Did you taste that? Are you tasting it?" she was asking me, with a kind of anxiety, as if at that same moment our incisors had pierced an identically composed morsel and the same drop of savor had been caught by the membranes of my tongue and of hers.'
Names as metaphors
Throughout the story, the translations of restaurant names and dishes have a metaphorical significance. For example, the bar called 'Las Novicias' ('The Novices') refers to the story of the nun and the priest, which the narrator later compares to his marriage with Olivia. Similarly, the dish called 'gorditas pellizcadas con manteca' ('plump girls pinched with butter') bears a sexually suggestive meaning within the text.
"Walking like somnabulists"
Near the beginning of the story, the narrator uses the following simile to describe his experience of Oaxaca: "And, walking like somnambulists, not quite sure we were touching the ground, we headed for the dining room". The comparison to somnambulism (sleepwalking) implies the couple's detachment from the unfamiliar environment around them.
"The memory was like a trompe-l'oeil"
The narrator uses this simile after he draws a comparison between 'the regular little square' of the Mexican city and his 'reassuring memories of evenings in a familiar, provincial Europe'. The reference to 'trompe-l'oeil' (a form of optical illusion) suggests that these memories are hazy and that there is a degree of unreliability to the narrator's wider cultural commentary.
