Nikola Tesla at the table

Tesla did not eat like everyone else: his daily food intake followed a precise, almost scientific ritual, where each food was chosen to maintain 'the body's machine.' No starter-main-dessert here, but a personal succession: a milky evening treat, the memory of a festive pita from his Serbian childhood in Lika, a vitality consommé for intense workdays, the solitary and meticulously regulated dinner he took at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and a jarred sweet inherited from the Balkans. A table stretched between the Orthodox presbytery of his native Croatia and the palaces of electric America.

The thread running through Tesla's entire life: he ended his days nourishing himself almost exclusively on warm milk and vegetable juice, convinced that this austere diet fueled his intellectual vitality. Milk, mild and warm, is the signature of his table.