Food For Thought
Part I
“Mr. and Mrs. Maltese,” the letter began, “This is to inform you that you have seven unused days at the Freemont Park Hotel in New York City. You must use these days before August 1st of this year.”
Polley and I sat down at her Ipad and carved out a four-day getaway in New York. On the New Jersey transit to the Big Apple, we discussed what museums to visit, and, as we exited a station, a woman in Islamic garb entered our car and sat down across from us. I noticed that what looked like a brown turnover wrapped in white parchment protruded from her beige tote bag. The smell of whatever that brown turnover was drifted to my nostrils, and the salivation began. I turned to Polley.
“So where are we going to eat?”
As we exited the womb of Penn Station, we were born into the enormity of choices of eateries and shops and things to do in the bustling, hustling city. I hailed a cab.
“You are visiting New York?” We were stuck in a massive, typical, traffic jam on Seventh Avenue. Balaaj, our cab driver, softened our impatience with conversation.
“I was born in New York, well, the Bronx, actually.”
Balaaj nodded.
Polley is the brave one. She always is. “I noticed your accent. Where are you from originally?”
“Iraq.”
My stomach began to growl as the traffic began to move. I watched the conveyor belt of restaurants glide past my window: Indian Palace, Ethiopian Oasis, Wild Ginger Thai, Pho Pleasure, Joey’s Pizzeria.
By the time reengaged in the cab conversation, Balaaj and Polley were deep into sharing family histories. Balaaj had learned all our grandchildren’s names, and Polley knew his wife’s names and the names of his two sisters and two brothers still in Iraq.
“Yes, I had to leave. I did not want to leave my brothers and sisters but I must.”
“May I ask why?”
“Of course. I was interpreter for American army forces. Once the troops leave, it was too dangerous for me. I must leave.”
Our movement stopped. Two unloading trucks double parked side by side forced four lanes of traffic into one. I stared again through the sparkingly clean cab window at Rosa’s Mexicano. Images of flautas de pollo and queso fundido and ceviche de camarones stimulated my hunger, and I coughed loudly so Balaaj would not hear the growling of my stomach. I wondered if I could slip out of the cab and buy a carnitas just to tide me over till dinner. Once a craving paralyzes my brain, it is hard to eradicate. Aside from my daughter-in-law’s home cooked carnitas, the best carnitas I ever devoured were not from a restaurant. We were in Colorado, staying in a flyfishing lodge near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, and the owner of the establishment took us on a tour of his property. I wish he hadn’t because we had driven a long way that morning and afternoon, and it was exceptionally hot for a Colorado July day. I wanted to collapse in our room and check out my fishing gear in preparation for the next day. But I acceded to my host’s wishes, and drove, then walked, to a corner of his land. The sweat poured off my head and dripped onto my loafers.
“I’m gonna offer quail hunting next season, but I gotta change the grasses.”
“The grasses?”
“Yeah. The grasses. I’m buying two hundred quail from England and stocking my fields here, but for the quail to survive they have to have the right habitat…the right grasses.”
“Oh.” A drop of sweat fell off an eyebrow and found its way into my eye. Through my partial blindness I noticed four men in the field below me hoisting heavy pipes and laying them on the ground. Their shirts clung to their bodies.
“What are those guys doing?”
“The Mexicans?”
I didn’t know they were Mexican. I nodded.
“They are laying pipe for irrigation. To have the right grasses you need water. And if you want people to irrigate your land, you pick Mexicans. They are the best at irrigation.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yeah. Definitely. Even if they didn’t come cheap, I would hire them because they really know their stuff.”
“Come cheap?”
My host slipped into a sotto voce pattern. “I can’t get regular guys to work for the same price. Last year I hired four American kids from nearby Montrose and they were worthless….and they wanted three dollars more per hour.”
I watched the men work on the pipes, and I just wanted to go back to my room. I lost my appetite.
I got it back when I entered the dining room of the lodge and the rich, earthy, complex smells of Adalia’s magic teased my nostrils. Adalia, our cook, prepared the best carnitas I had ever tasted. The meat was tender and moist and the spice had just the right amount of kick, and the ceviche de camarones lingered on the tongue just long enough to make one delight in being alive. Adalia offered us coffee. We nodded appreciatively and asked her to join us. She politely refused at first but then we waved her to a chair.
“You like the meal?” Adalia took off her head covering and silky black hair cascaded down her shoulders.
“Very much. How did you learn to cook like that?” Stupid question what I really wanted to gain some information, some secret into the delicious dishes we had just enjoyed.
Adalia gave a little laugh. “From my mother, Engracia. She taught me. I didn’t want to learn at first, but then I had to.”
Polley inhaled the aroma of the dark brown coffee before sipping. “Really? You certainly can’t tell. That was exceptionally delicious….and I love Mexican food.”
“Thank you. I am pleased.”
“Why didn’t you want to learn at first?”
Adalia leaned back in her chair. “Hmmmm. I was in school, in Universidad del Valle de Mexico. Yes. I studied there to be a…” Adalia looked at the ceiling….”a what you say, lawyer but not lawyer…..not yet lawyer.”
“Paralegal?”
“Yes. That the name. Paralegal. I almost graduate.”
“Do you have family here in Colorado?”
“No, I wish. I work here, save money, go
back to school, finish studying.”
We smiled.
Adalia smiled back and stood up. “You have now dessert?”
We smiled and nodded, and Adalia soon returned with two plates of Pastel de Tres Leches.
The light turned green, the traffic inched forward.
I heard laughing. Balaaj turned and said to Polley, “See? It works that way.”
I was still in Colorado wolfing down Adalia’s carnitas when my mind slowly worked its way back to the present.
“So, Balaaj, what did you do before you were an interpreter for the Americans?” Polley leaned forward.
“I was an engineer. Built bridges.”
Polley smiled widely. “My dad and two brothers are engineers.”
Balaaj shrugged slightly and a shadow of lost dreams spread across his face.
We registered at the Freemont Park Hotel, unpacked, and focused on our first major decision on this getaway—-where to go for dinner. The Freemont Park Hotel strongly recommended the Greek restaurant Milos. “Very good and just across the street.”
So when twilight arrived and we could hold our hunger no longer, we crossed Seventh Avenue and entered Milos. We were escorted to our table and introduced to our waiter.
“Good evening. My name is Aindrea, and I am honored to be your waiter this evening. May I get you something to drink?”
We sipped our Sauvignon Blanc.
“As a kid I worked one summer in a sweatshop cleaning ink bottles and fixing copy machines.”
“Hmmm. The wine is
really good. What made you think of
that?” Polley put down her glass.
“Four of the five older guys I worked with were all Greek…and each one was
named ‘Nick.’”
“No!”
“Yes. When I met the fourth guy, I said, ‘Oh. You from Greece as well?’ He stood up straight, struck his insulted pose and said, ‘No!!!!! I am Macedonian. From Macedonia!’”
“I thought Macedonia is part of Greece…you know, Alexander the Great and all?”
“So did I! I guess it is the regional thing. Like when someone asks, ‘Are you from New York?’ and I reply ‘the Bronx,’ just so they know I’m not from Staten Island….or Brooklyn.”
Then the food came. Grilled Octopus in olive oil with grilled Holland peppers and oyster mushrooms, Tzatziki, Taramosalata and Htipiti, warm pita and marinated raw vegetables, followed by Grilled Mediterranean sea bream with steamed vegetables and Grilled Madagascar Shrimp with endive salad.
In between those courses Aindrea stopped by to check on us and chat. Aindrea was really into basketball, especially college basketball. Polley graduated from Duke, I from Villanova, (which, just to remind people, won the 2018 national championship), so the chatting went on quite a while. Aindrea knew the names of all the players on our college teams, their strengths and their weaknesses.
“How do you keep track of all these stats?” I was on my second glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
“Oh. It is easy. I keep track on spreadsheet. Back in Larissa I was computer technician.”
“How beautiful is Greece? Never been there.”
“Greece is beautiful. I go back to Larissa once a year. See family. But no work there….and no college basketball like here. I come back with your dessert.”
Aindrea soon returned to our table with two plates of Karydopita, traditional walnut cake with honey lavender ice cream.
Back at the Freemont Park Hotel we discussed our next decision. What to do on the morrow. All the way up on the New Jersey Transit Train I considered taking the 8th Avenue line up to the Bronx, my boyhood home, and visiting Arthur Avenue with its shops of fresh made pasta, marinated artichokes, Tuscan salami, coppocola, and provolone. I wanted to inhale the rich aroma of parmesan Reggiano, and fresh baked Italian bread with sesame seeds and buy a paper cup of real lemon ice.
But back at the Freemont Park Hotel I was too full of grilled fish and walnut cake and Sauvignon Blanc to seriously vote for the Arthur Avenue option. Instead we decided on another nostalgic experience—visiting the Museum of Natural History, a wealth of lore and science that consumed hours….days….of my youth.
The next morning we had difficulty hailing a cab, so I dialed in my Lyft service.
Sunatillo was our driver, a young man, thin with thick black hair. We judged him to be in his twenties, but at our age people in their thirties we mistakenly judge to be teenagers.
As always, Polley initiated the conversation. She has a way of letting people feel comfortable enough to share freely.
“I am from Uzbekestan.”
I don’t think I ever knew anyone from Uzbekestan.
“What did you do in Uzbekestan?”
“I go to school, play soccer. Lots of soccer.”
“We like soccer, too.”
Sunatillo beamed. “Ubekestan not good in soccer but getting better.”
“You like it here…in the States.”
Sunatillo turned so far around in his seat that I thought the car was going to swerve off the street and onto the sidewalk.
“Here is great. Just play soccer in the park and work. Work all time and play soccer.”
“Work all the time?”
“Oh yes. Work seven days a week…finish
work play soccer.”
“All week?”
“All week. Must work to support family.”
“Are you married?”
Sunatillo turned around again a huge smile lighting up his face again, and I was afraid he would go through the red light.
“Too young. Have mother and two younger brothers, one younger sister. Too much work to marry.”
“Some day.”
“Oh yes. Some day. Some day I finish school, become a lab technician like my father before he die.”
We arrived at the museum. “Good luck to you.”
“And to you sir and lady. I love it here. Thank you.”
The only disappointment in the Museum of Natural History was that the long canoe filled with statues of Native Americans had been moved to the Smithsonian. I taught Catcher in the Rye, and one of Holden Caulfield’s favorite pastimes was to admire that exhibit. To Holden the canoe and the poses were frozen in time, a metaphor for his desire to remain forever in the innocence of childhood. But that was the only disappointment. The best thing about the museum was the people. People from everywhere, accents from everywhere, garb from everywhere. It was not about observing humanity, it was about being in humanity.
That night in the Freemont Park Hotel, I surfed the five hundred stations and settled on a cooking show featuring barbequing. The show was half over, but I was able to determine that it was some contest somewhere in the south, and the three hundred pound finalists sporting massive aprons and cooking in front of pickup trucks showcasing the stars and bars, the confederate flags, were sweating over charcoal grills. I wondered, as I watched them carefully monitor their briskets and pork shoulders, if they knew that barbeque owes its origins to slaves who received the worst cuts of meat to eat. The slaves learned that the only way to make those meats palatable was to slow cook them, and since they were not allowed to cut trees down for smoking, they became experts on types of driftwood and downed trees to use for smoking—mesquite and hickory and pecan. I wondered if that knowledge would change anything. Maybe change the decals on their pickup trucks.
On the way back home on the New Jersey Transit train, I wondered about many things. My neighbor Charlie’s engineering company sent him and his family to Brussels, Belgium for a year to work. When he returned, I asked him about his experience living in Europe. He was unenthusiastic.
“It was all right, I guess.”
“Well, at least you got to eat great food…..I mean, Paris alone is nearby.”
Charlie looked at me, surprised. “We ate every night at the hotel restaurant. Steak and potatoes. Every night. Layman and Curry picked up the tab, of course.”
“You can’t be serious. Tell me you never, the whole year, ate any of the local cuisine.”
“Those people eat things like snails.”
I just sighed. What was poor Charlie missing?
What are we missing? What would our nation be like without the import of panzanella and pizza and ravioli and moo goo gai pan and Szechuan chicken and egg rolls and baklava and minted lamb and pulled pork and hickory smoked chicken and sushi and sashimi and ramen and that is just the food. What about the importations of genius and energy from peoples from distant lands and distant views? What about jazz and the blues and Mardi Gras and Italian opera? What if we had not imported Greek democracy?
To my knowledge I have never heard of a couple engage in the following conversation:
“Let’s go out for dinner.”
“Good idea. What food are you feeling? Chinese? Italian? Mexican? I heard a new Ehtiopian restaurant opened in the next block. And there is always the Rib Cage—-pulled pork sandwich?”
“I was thinking, maybe Anglo-Saxon white.”
It the pilgrims had succeeded in keeping other immigrants out, then today fine dining would mean kidney pie and mixed grill.
And I continue to wonder. It is not about acceptance of difference. If I “accept” you, it implies that I am superior to you, allowing you to enter the bubbly environment around me. It is not about accepting difference, about accepting barbequed ribs. It is about appreciation of food, appreciation of diversity and all the rich potential they offer.
