I'm wandering through the city, on a food pilgrimage. I'm retracing memories - of pierogi, of candy shops; I'm following more recent paths of delight -- the French cafes of Chelsea; and I'm trying to open up other doors of taste, or testing where I've come without quite knowing it. I'm drinking out of deep bowls -- a cafe au lait in the morning, a "Brussells Breakfast" in the afternoon. I'm drinking the tea with milk, loving the light creamy texture and tasting the wisp of sugar amidst the sharpness of the steeped leaves.
Monday night I went to Rice, a restaurant on its way out of town. After an especially comforting meal for a boyfriend recovering from a terrible hangover (at a bar the night before, my third braniversary, he laid on the bathroom floor, literally spooning a toilet), Rice became my go-to place when I wanted something familiar and easy, a blend of tastes that are simple (as almost nothing at all, in the best way), sweet, and hot: vegetarian meatballs with black rice, or arepa corn cakes with fresh corn, cheese, and cilantro. Now with the owner's imminent plans to close, it's as if the restaurant is having a fire sale: no ice cream for cookie sandwiches, no black tea, and half-empty tables at its one remaining shop, in Dumbo.
Tuesday I returned to Veselka, my former comfort food haven in the years I lived in Brooklyn and the East Village. I sat around a table with my brother, my two nieces, and their Peruvian exchange student, Naylamp (fifteen years old and the new "closer" of the family when it comes to cleaning plates). Everyone loaded up on meat and carbs, as one is wont to do in the Ukranian restaurants of the East Village. An homage to my old favorites, I ordered a small plate of pierogis (half mushroom-sauerkraut and half potato). Boiled not fried. I used to love that fantastically bland food, smeared with sautéed onions and sour cream. I barely tasted it now but kept the loss at a distance, imagining instead, as in the olden days, what taste I wanted to end with (potato?) and relishing the apple sauce as my new favorite condiment, so sweet and tangy. I also had a lentil salad -- something I wouldn't have ordered back in the day, both because I'm not convinced it was on the menu then and because it would have been too rich for my budget. In the late '80s and early '90s, I'd have a bowl of lentil soup instead. As we sat in the now airy and open space, I could still imagine sitting at a table with my friend Aline, both soaking wet from the rain on a dark night, with our coats and umbrellas dripping water to make a pool behind each of our chairs. Was this my first taste of lentil soup? I'm not sure. Aline and I started ordering it regularly when we needed something comforting, or we'd get a can of Progresso lentil soup for home, sometimes to be followed by a pint of Haagen Daaz Vanilla Swiss Almond ice cream. But now I may be collapsing different seasonal comfort foods into one big pot.
My salad was delicious -- filled with lentils, some peppers, onions, greens, feta cheese. Cheese was a staple at the house with Aline: we would go to East Village Cheese and pick up wedges of Brie for a dollar, alongside a box of Carr's wheat crackers. My brother stopped at the cheese shop -- still standing, thank god -- on the way to Veselka while I dipped into the bookstore. Sitting at the lunch table I thought about the cheese we would have later that night. Would I taste it? What kind of crackers did he get? How much did it cost? As we prepared to go, Matt said he wanted to use the bathroom and asked where it was. As I looked around, I realized we were likely sitting in it, or where it used to be. A whiff of the sweet cherry cleaning smell rampant in East Village bars twenty years ago wafted into my memory. I honestly don't remember if Veselka used the same stuff, but I couldn't imagine the space of the bathroom without it coming through.
The second half of the day included a visit to Economy Candy, one of my favorite places in the world -- as much for the economy as for the candy. The girls wandered about in a daze, as does almost anyone I've ever brought there for the first time. Matt found a tin of "chocolate straws" which he remembered having at my Grandma's house in Wyoming when we were kids. I was surprised and delighted by his nostalgic sentiment. My memories of those visits with my grandma are bound with food and with comfort, but I imagine my brother would more likely associate those days with adventure, as he was constantly climbing some giant rock or another with my cousins, turning into some other rowdier boy while I daydreamed in the back bedroom or visited relatives with my grandma. When I visited her on my own, she'd take me to the grocery store and let me pick out anything I wanted. We drank iced tea in the evenings as we watched television together. She sat in an easy chair with her feet up, and I sat on the orange-red couch -- the couch I tried to duplicate years ago when I was shopping for a new sofa. It's not the same, of course, but I realize that much of my house is an attempt to duplicate hers in some form or another. The death of my grandma when I was 13 was the greatest loss of my life. I remember her house as a sanctuary, in which I formed many habits for life, and in which I became a kind of historian, but the sort of historian who loved her grandma's collection of doorknobs and who pored through her yearbooks over and again. My grandma wanted to be a journalist, but she became a pharmacist. I harbored dreams of journalism but found other forms of writing. I know she would be so proud of my books, but of this blog? I honestly don't know what she would say.
Later that evening, Matt brought out the can of chocolate straws for dessert. I reached for an orange one and was disappointed at its flavorlessness and the fact it wasn't filled with chocolate. Had I misremembered these treats myself? Was it that I could not taste them anymore? I tentatively took another, this time a pink one: it was sharper, crunchier, and filled with chocolate. A vague memory washed over me that this was how they were: some were cheats, without chocolate and without the flavor I imagined they would have, while others were exactly what they should have been.
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