It was all the talk of the Upper Upper West Side. Despite everything else there was to lament in these sad and strange modern times—What’s up with D’Agostino’s?
Shopping at that neighborhood grocery store had become like visiting Iron Curtain Bulgaria. One day, there was no canned dog food; the next day, the dog food had arrived, but there was no toilet paper. Apple juice disappeared in June (except for that lone bottle of Mott’s Natural that hung on for weeks). Stock clerks kept pulling items to the front of the shelves, one deep, hoping that ten boxes of elbow macaroni could make the pasta section seem full. (It didn’t.)
Sadly, there’s a pattern here. In the past three years, three other supermarkets in our neighborhood have closed, and none of them have been replaced. If (when) D’Agostino’s goes, there won’t be a single mainstream food market in a forty-block swath of Manhattan.
Well, it’s not as if I live in a food desert (as, sadly, far too many Americans do). Our neighborhood is blessed with a lovely family-run greengrocer/deli on the corner and a natural foods store a block up. There’s a Whole Foods seven blocks north, and real estate blogs claim a Trader Joe’s is coming this fall. Still, I’ve tried to do The Big Weekly Shopping at each of them—but honestly, none of these stock everything I need. And in New York City, where you do your food shopping on foot, lugging packages home from multiple stores is quite frankly a pain in the ass.
You see, for nearly three decades, D’Agostino’s was where I did The Big Weekly Shopping. This is where I stood in line to buy bottled water after 9/11, and candles in the blackout of 2003. Where I bought milk, bread, and eggs before blizzards (1996, 2006, 2010, 2016—thanks, climate change!). It was the store that didn’t lose power after Hurricane Sandy.
And even more important, it was where I bought baby food (aisle 2) for my kids, until they graduated to blue box macaroni (aisle 3) and chicken nuggets (the end of aisle 7). Where I bought last-minute soccer snacks, the cake mix for birthday cupcakes, frozen pigs-in-a-blanket for my son’s annual Super Bowl party. The summer my daughter went vegan, I found almond milk, tofu, and hummus there. After my son’s nut allergy was diagnosed, I vetted all their baked goods to find the ones that were safe for him to eat.
D’Agostino’s had a decent produce section, where automatic misters kept the lettuce fresh (and cooled off my kids on a hot summer day). It had a sushi bar, fresh baked goods, and a very obliging butcher. But it was also the store where I could buy cat litter, a case of Diet Coke, Tide detergent, and Bounty paper towels—all the name-brand products we secretly need. Everything in one place—and then they’d deliver it.
And then it struck me—that’s what I’ve tried to provide in each edition of Best Food Writing.
Every year, I delve into piles of magazines and newspapers, scan endless websites, and forage through bookstores (a shout-out here to Matt and Nach at the indispensable Manhattan culinary bookstore Kitchen Arts and Letters). After seventeen years of doing this—the first edition of BFW came out in 2000—my end goal remains the same: to provide a robust mix of what’s up in the world of food writing. To assemble in one place a wide-ranging sample of all the intriguing food writing that’s been published this year.
On one hand, there’s the topical—reflections on the trends that made this year different, from meal kits (Corby Kummer, page 26) to extreme dining experiences (Jennifer Cockrall-King, page 21) to the failures of farm-to-table pieties (Debbie Weingarten, page 31). We’ve got John Birdsall turning the proper noun “Brooklyn” into an adjective for an entire artisanal mind-set (page 12), and Matt Buchanan archly describing high-end coffee orthodoxy (page 40).
But on the other hand, we’ve also got a reaction against trends and PC food snobbery, from Helen Rosner’s chicken tenders (page 8) to Kat Kinsman’s gumbos and goulashes (page 13) to Keith Pandolfi’s drip coffee (page 55) and Max Ufberg’s classic diner food (page 166). Kathleen Purvis (page 90) cries wolf on one chic “lifestyle” cookbook writer, while Rachel Levin (page 286) hands us a poignant shortcut around an uber-trendy San Francisco breakfast spot.
Within the covers of this book, I’ve also tried to strike a balance between cooking and dining, between everyday meals and special meals. There are pieces that focus on home cooking, with or without kids, from Phyllis Grant (page 82) trying out cookbook recipes with her children, to Andrew Sean Greer (page 276) remembering his mother’s dinner parties, and Pete Wells (page 271) embracing his role as home chef on vacation. Flip a few pages, however, and you can shift gears to contemplate the culinary wizards who create meals we could never reproduce at home—such as Jason Tesauro’s piece on Danish chef Bo Bech (page 210), Brett Martin’s homage to Jacques Pepin (page 249), or Daniel Duane’s frantic afternoon with Dominque Crenn (page 86).
I keep coming back to the fact that as humans, we’re somehow hardwired for breaking bread together. During a four-months-long kitchen renovation (see Best Food Writing 2011 for that tale), I could always pick up a tasty rotisserie chicken and bagged salad at my grocery store to create the semblance of a family meal, even if it was eaten on the living room sofa off the four plastic plates we hadn’t packed up. There’s a powerful lure to the foods we eat together as families—as we learn from Laura Donohue, cleaning out her mother’s kitchen (page 96), Besha Rodell revisiting the beach shacks of her peripatetic childhood (page 107), and Victoria Pesce-Elliott hungering for her ailing mother’s meatball recipe (page 114). It doesn’t even have to be a happy memory to be powerful, as Betsy Andrews (page 103) brings home.
Even when we don’t cook at home, we long for that human connection. I turn to Tove Danovich’s profile of a commuter bar (page 170), James Nolan’s essay on the right way to dine alone (page 175), or Michael Procopio’s valedictory blog post after his mother’s funeral (page 119). Of course, that connection can be just as strong when the subjects are drinking in company—as Rowan Jacobsen (page 44) and Wells Tower (page 48) so skillfully evoke.
The beauty of a full-service grocery store is also that it can offer a wider and more diverse range of products than you can find at the simple corner store or at the specialty shop. So do food writers, in our increasingly globalized food culture, help us expand our horizons. In these pages, you’ll find guides to exotic fare such as puffin (Brian Kevin, page 132), Swiss fondue (Tim Neville, page 240), Soba noodles (Francis Lam, page 264), or the legendary Cockentrice (Chris Newens, page 126). Howie Kahn takes us on a dizzying culinary tour of Singapore (page 187), topped only by Todd Kliman’s phantasmagoric journey to Mexico City (page 193). And it’s not just about taste-testing these foods; their cultural connections matter just as much. Which brings us to L. Kasimu Harris, jonesing for the New Orleans cure-all Yakamein (page 141); or Mikki Kendall (page 146), explaining why Beyonce carries hot sauce in her bag. Pableaux Johnson (page 158) writes his life in gumbo while Oliver Sacks (page 290) wrote his in gefilte fish.
Superstitiously, I still carry a crumpled “$5 Off” D’Agostino coupon in my wallet. It’s true, I could do all of my shopping online or at a cavernous, anonymous big box store. But it won’t be the same.
I ache for the check-out clerks and delivery guys I’ve dealt with for twenty-plus years. And I’ll admit, I’m also grieving the fact that I no longer am feeding small children—the realization that my kids have grown and will soon be moving out of our family home.
But I also mourn something bigger—the passing of a culture wherein we shop in person, in real time, fondling the produce and eyeing the meat. I mourn the loss, in our increasingly gentrified neighborhood, of this community nexus, where old and young, black and white, rich and poor met face-to-face. In an America that’s increasingly factionalized and incensed over the differences among us, here was a place where folks of all stripes came to buy the simplest of all things: food.
Where we smiled at each other and took our turns at the deli counter.
Where we let shoppers with only three items go ahead of us in the checkout line.
Where we practiced being human.
I refuse to lose that. I’ve just got to go out and find me a new store.