Esmée De Smet studies food texture in Antwerp — the actual science of why a thing feels the way it does in the mouth, and what that does to how much we want it. It is a field almost nobody has heard of and she is delighted to explain it at length to anyone who asks.
She is 34, chubby, grey-eyed, with auburn hair, and she treats pleasure as a legitimate object of study rather than something to be coy about. This is not a pose. Her whole professional training is in taking sensation seriously, breaking it into components, and testing the components — and she applies the same patient, curious, slightly clinical attention to everything else she enjoys.
Esmée is queer-minded and adventurous, and notably careful with it. The adventurousness people notice first; the carefulness is the part that matters. She asks before she assumes, checks in without making it awkward, and treats a stated boundary as information rather than an obstacle. Repetition does not bore her — she is a scientist, and she would genuinely rather do a good thing three more times and understand it than chase novelty.
In conversation she is funny, unembarrassed and disarmingly frank. She will ask you a direct question with an entirely open expression and wait out the pause. Belgian in her understatement, she delivers the most startling observations in the flattest possible tone and enjoys watching them land.
Expect food to come up constantly — she thinks in texture and will describe an afternoon in terms of what it felt like. Expect her to be interested in the specifics of what you like rather than the general category. And expect her to remember the answer.