Tonight's writing workshop was all about food. Christopher DeLorenzo is my very dear friend and mentor and he leads these workshops that get all of us writing in this wonderful dream state. He's sworn he'll be starting a Substack soon but in the mean time check out his website here. 💕
Why do we put any shame around eating? Why do we teach our young girls to watch their waistlines and count their calories? Or has that stopped now? Have we evolved past that yet?
I hope so. Because food is too good to feel shameful. Because one bite into a thick salt bagel with green onion cream cheese and I’m transported back to my childhood - but only if it’s a New York or a New Jersey bagel. It’s the water. It’s the comfort. The layers of gluten and too much cream cheese. Pillows of cream and bread and I am in the best parts of my childhood.Â
Take me to Angelo's Ristorante in Lyndhurst, NJ. Or maybe I’ll take you. We’ll order martinis at the bar while we wait for our table which will be in the back corner with one of those beer bottles covered in wax from hundreds of candles being burned in it. There are scenes of Rome and Tuscany badly painted on the walls. There are waiters who have been working all their lives there and should be retired by now. They bring you tartufo and gelato and ice cream sundaes with store bought whip cream and maraschino cherries and they serve them to you as if you’re in a Michelin star restaurant. The food is good and hearty and there is always too much of it. As if there is an old Italian grandma in the kitchen yelling at the chef to pile more food on that plate. Shrimp biscuit, clams casino, clams oreganata, eggplant parmesan - good but never as good as my mother’s, never like home.Â
I convinced her to send me the recipe years ago. And recipe is a generous word, no real measurements, more like a sounding out of the motions of how she makes it and how her mom made it and her mom before her. Still I didn’t want to share it with my siblings right away. Still I made it and it came out tasting just like hers. By some miracle. It’s a ritual. A meditation. It’s a day-long activity. The sweating of the eggplant and the making of the sauce. Use the good cheese and the best bread crumbs. It’s always worth it and it’s always better the next day, between two thick pieces of bread, heated up or cold. Bite it. Be taken home.
My favorite people are people who eat. I want to see you stuff your face in front of me. Get dirty. Let grease drip down your chin. Sauce on your fingers. Pants for napkins. Eat like no one is watching in front of me. Then I’ll know we’re friends.Â
Korean chicken with you on New Years Eve at that spot in the Tenderloin was maybe when I really knew I could fall in love with you. You ordered army soup and the best fried chicken I had had in a long time, and kimchi pancakes and sure the booze helped but we just ate, we dug in. Nothing self conscious about it. You loved that food, that meal, and you told me stories of eating in that same spot years before – and I loved hearing those stories. The army soup for days when you were in grad school, the late nights. I saw you and I liked what I saw in that tiny cramped restaurant full of drunk people not having any expectations on New Years Eve. Just sitting there, licking their fingers, drinking cans of beer, satiated, calm, letting the hum of the night determine their tomorrow.
Oh my goodness, yes! You resurrect a thousand memories! My wife is Sicilian, her grandfather a chef in the war. When we were a young couple he would arrive with an armful of groceries for us, and invite us for supper the next night. (they were down stairs) NO lie, at maybe six the next morning, wonderful smells would waft up the back hallway. By supper there would be a lovely cooked chicken, stuffed artickoke, maybe some grilled, seasoned eggplant, fresh Portuguese bread from the bakery across the street. The plates would be licked clean. A Michelin restaurant couldn't compete. Love, food, family--is there more? Christina, thanks for a wonderful post!
I'm back at Vazzy's in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It's East Coast humid August. Stuffing my face with twin stuffed lobsters and getting drunk on chianti with my mom and dad, loving the feeling of being in real summer and feeling rooted. I love your writing and how it always transports me to a place, a feeling. Thank you!