Trite but this came to me the other night. Dead heroes, who would you like to share a meal with?
Hunter S. Thompson
Jack Kerouac
John Lennon
Anthony Bourdain
My Dad
Florence Nightingale
Marie Curie
Justice Bertha Wilson
Maya Angelou
Willa Cather
Walter Cronkite
Eleanor Roosevelt
There's some nice lists here. If we were really sharing a meal, I'd want the food to be the focus, and the conversation to germinate organically from our taste buds. So in that case, I think of:
Alice Waters
José Andrés
Anthony Bourdain (miss seeing him)
Charlie Trotter (really miss him)
But if conversation were the focus, maybe over a 25 year old Glenlivet and a good Cuban, I'd want:
David Hume
Thomas Paine
Robert Green Ingersoll
Mark Twain