After his interview, Luigi Trillatrium, the galactic gourmand, sat down to a plate of crusted squid foam with a side of carnivorous tangle-weed, lightly basted in Bellatrixian radioactive waste. He smacked his lips, and his external cheek taste buds swelled in anticipation. The chef’s eyes were on stalks, limber as Medusa hair, keeping a check on the dish from all angles, requiring Luigi to bat them away.

 

“I hope it is to your liking,” the chef lisped in high Tellurian.

 

“Undoubtedly,” Luigi uttered, digging in and rolling his eyes in ecstasy. “After all, it’s today’s special!” His mouth dribbling the full bite per the planet’s proper etiquette.

 

He reflected on the interview he just finished and reluctantly attended on his home world. The interviewer (snappy dresser, pretty, and far too skinny in Luigi’s estimate) had stared at him, clearly disgusted. She curled her lip when he burped.

 

“So tell me,” she asked, “what’s it like to subsist on, ah, everything?”

 

Luigi smirked and answered. “It’s not everything, or anything, it is the special thing! The rare and wonderful.”

 

“How do you determine if it’s bad, if it is intolerable to one species but delicious to others?”

 

“I do not fret about good or bad. I indulge what appeals to my taste. Preparation is as important as degustation. The care given is critical to the epicurean event.”

 

“Have your habits offended?”

 

“Of course, but those are the opinions of little people with narrow viewpoints.”

 

Enjoying the crust crackle, the fishy aroma, and the bubbly bursts of foam on his palate, he reflected on his childhood. As a teen (an introvert at that), Luigi went for a physiologic digestive dilation in defiance of his parents’ wishes. Kids his age wanted tattoos, he wanted more.

 

The modification allowed him to consume and gain sustenance from all forms of edible and non-edible substances. He could digest concrete with aplomb no different from caviar on toast points. It made him a sensation as his palate was pecuniary.

 

Roving the systems for dietary delicacies, Luigi was regarded by the galaxy’s inhabitants as the quintessential critic. He made or broke an eatery with a single flap of his nostril. His family’s endowment ensured several life times of culinary catechisms, as eating was his religion.

 

His focus was always on the special of the day. On some planets, the chef recombined the leftovers and on others; it was what the local farmer or hunter gathered. Luigi timed his trips to arrive on holidays, special celebrations, and significant historical events (time travel being a feature of his routine). This is when the entities would dish up their most rarefied cuisine.

 

Variety was not just the spice of his life, it was the main course. Some places served specialties that other places would bin as rotten. This only added to Luigi’s girth and grandiosity. His followers sometimes died off attempting to dine on all that he consumed. And it was a rare honor to replace them and follow the man and myth.

 

Occasionally, like today, he’d discuss his gustatory gallantry for the local gourmet vid shows. Usually, he’d be paid in carte blanche access to the esoteric dining haunts of the witty and rapacious. There they might welcome him with open tentacles, or drive him out with disdain.

 

Because not everybody liked an eat-it-all.

 

Luigi had not expected his celebrity. He just wanted a rare meal. Which sometimes ran him afoul of local authorities, as a delight may be unlawful. Then he’d shed his retinue to shield himself from the police and slipped off-world, quite a redoubtable feat considering his size.

 

He often suffered a kind of saturnine gout, and his skin took on monstrous hues, frightening children and the squeamish. Perhaps that's why the interviewer had found him disgusting. He used his outer layering to detoxify and expel ill vapors during digestion. It was a safety feature, making him unappealing to his kind. That is, on the few occasions he returned home like today.

 

He enjoyed the look on her face when she asked, “And when does this end? What is the ultimate for a galactic gourmand?”

 

“Hmm… I suspect it will be self-consumption,” he said, and winked. “My very own special day.” He delighted seeing her expression, especially when the studio audience gasped.

 

The very idea of death by suicidal digestion frankly appalled. Luigi even noted the faces of the camera squids who dry heaved a little. Only to enjoy seeing the audience politely pat their pancreases, a local variant on applause, and digest a little of themselves in the irony.

 

Luigi rose, taking a bite of the boom microphone in spite, smiled, and bowed. Ever grateful for the opportunity to be served, he promptly rolled to the bistro he was dining in now. Pushing the plate away, the chef collected the dishes with all of his many arms and asked, “And for dessert, Mr. Trillatrium?”

 

The dessert cart rolled up as if on cue. Luigi stabbed at the profiteroles made from tire rubber aged in the twin suns and stuffed with an expensive toothpaste imported from Pegasus three. The chef poured him a twenty-year-old fermentation of Necris sweat.

 

“My compliments, Chef.”

 

“To your abundant health, sir.”