In Essex Market on the Lower East Side of Manhattan is this beautiful art installation sandwiched among food shop purveyors, farmers, butchers and restaurants as in strip pop ups. It represents a “slice of life” at housing tenements during the migration era settled by immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. “When I eat I feel connected with people I can no longer see or be with.” So they brought over the cuisine and the nostalgia from their former motherland. This imagery touched me: reminiscing the giant cooks in my life, my mother and my grandfather, no longer around. It is amazing their memories transcend in my eating, and because of them I never short change what I cook to eat well as they did. I can only “replicate” them like this, and nothing more.
My ex had told me to come here and see how much the market has changed since I left. Years ago it was bodega-style and rustic and steps away from the subway stairs surrounded by homeless people. That was the borough's charm it didn’t have anymore. To my sadness. Now the market is housed inside a modern atrium with an architectural edge showcasing a scalloped A-frame skylights - not to mention the tiny tenement museum on the basement floor next to La Sucre patisserie and the eclectic coffee roasters specializing in mushrooms blends - giving it a totally unfamiliar feel. But I came anyway and must have a taste of quintessential New York food if they were still around. (I used to go for the san cocho, a Dominican Republic-style yucca and whole corn soup, and the Honduran pupusa, a sweet-infused flat bread.)
As a (food) traveler I open my experiences to accept the new and appreciate the old fading away from the gentrification of what it means to eat in this “gilded” age. The poet Rilke once said: “Space reaches from us and construes the world.” I am filling that void now, as I am filling my stomach with everything bagel.
Foodnote: Title of blog directly quoted from David Whyte’s poem.
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