41. A Pastry Chef's Tale – Sarah Dajani
Within a few months, I had quit my job and moved to Paris to enroll in pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu.
Eight years ago I made a decision: I wanted a more interesting life. I was twenty-five years old, three years into a grueling consulting career. I was working myself ragged and traveling nonstop—in one month I took over twenty flights. I wanted to move forward to the next chapter of my life, but I was too busy to even figure out what that could be. So I called my friend. You all may know her—she was in treatment for leukemia at the time and had just won an Emmy for her New York Times column and video series. When I shared with Suleika my situation, she asked me, “What is the thing you’d never regret trying?”
Within a few months, I had quit my job and moved to Paris to enroll in pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu. As I learned the art of pâtisserie, I felt free and creative. So much so that, together with a friend, I decided to open a Middle Eastern wholesale bakery inspired by the tales of A Thousand and One Nights. I poured myself into the business, baking ten-hour shifts by day, doing the tedious work of bookkeeping by night.
My dream was to sell our pastries in Harrods. If you haven't been there, it's a landmark—a multi-level department store in London's Knightsbridge neighborhood. It has a bookstore, two tearooms, an ice cream parlor, a toy store reminiscent of FAO Schwartz, and an enormous basement food hall. That food hall was my wonderland. They had cakes that stood like towers behind glass casing, frosted in pink and purple ombre buttercream with jam sandwiched in between each layer. Their fruit stand looked like an 18th-century still life painting. And don't get me started on the biscuit selection—well no, actually, I will pause and comment on one of the biscuit tins that both lit-up and played music.
It took us eight grueling months of effort to get our products on their shelves. When we did I stood in front of our display and wept tears of happiness. But not too long after, against the grim reality of slim margins and fluctuating order volumes, we faced what so many small business owners—especially in the food industry—dread: we had to close shop. When it happened, I took it hard. Not only did it feel like a huge derailment of my career (remember the jet-setting consultant?), but it felt like a part of my identity had disappeared in a puff of smoke. Remembering those days now makes my heart ache for all the small businesses facing closure today.
– Sarah Dajani
Prompt:
Think of a brick-and-mortar store that you love. It could be a place you go all the time, or at least you did pre-pandemic. It could be a favorite shop from childhood—a place where you went to buy sodas and candies or to eye things way beyond what you could afford on your allowance. Write about what you saw, smelled, tasted, purchased—or didn’t. Write about the first time you visited, or the last one, or anytime in between.
As a bonus: If that store is still around, do something to help it stay in business or to lift their morale.
Dara Carroll
Location: San Francisco, CA
About: I am a non-practicing lactose intolerant who wrote about ice cream. In addition to regularly eating dairy, I am a middle-school teacher. And constantly fighting the urge to say too-cheesy but too-true things about how the kids are the real teachers.
Age: 32
The walk to Hole in the Wall is more important than arriving. Most of it is up Van Buren- the mostly quiet mostly residential East-West street that we live on. Lived on. It’s the cross-street meaning that you are walking past the sides of houses and their alleys, rather than gazing up at their faces or down along a continuous row of them. It’s more criss-crossy. More like a slice of layer cake turned over on it’s side. More stop sign pauses and breaks for passing cars.
As we follow the mirror pattern, street house yard alley yard house street, we will probably talk about one of two things. Actually, because you are not a part of the immediate family you will talk, mostly listen, about one thing. Our destination. We will tell you that, “it really is a hole in the wall!” (from Mom). “Yeah it’s so small that the address is 901 AND A HALF”. My delight as I say this only slightly more disguised than my mother’s. Which is not.
We will probably tell you what we will order. I am generally the most effusive when it comes to food.
“The swirl with a chocolate dip top is a classic. It’s messy but great. I also really like the homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches. Think chipwich but homemade and better. Another thing that’s good is…”
“The cookie sandwich is new, not a classic,” My brother.
“Devin it was new when we were 13. They’ve had it most of our life by now.”
But even as I say it I will know that anything that was not there on the first day we found it will always be new. My argument, therefore, does not earn a response. And it is also more important to return to walking you through the menu. The malts, the diptop options, the anecdotal evidence of pros and cons.
After you have what I consider foundational knowledge, my Dad will, in a quiet moment, say,
“Hmm. None of that complicated stuff for me, thanks. I’m going with good old chocolate in a cake cone. But it’s got to be the custard.”
“Oh they have the best custard __(insert your name here because my Mom definitely will)____”. She needs to know that you are listening at this point. “Yes the ice cream is good but the custard is really something special.”
But she is still on the fence.
“I think I might go all out and get a sundae. Although that might be too much for me. Would you help me eat it, Richard?”
“Mmm, nope. Just chocolate for me.”
She deflates slightly.
“Dara? Dev? How about it?”
“I’m getting a malt. I don’t see why you would get vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on it when you can have it all be chocolate.” Devin is more animated now.
“You can get chocolate ice cream in the sundae.”
It continues for a bit. They are both missing the point and neither talking about the same thing. I wait it out until,
“Dara?”
“Sorry, I’ve gotta have that chipwich.”
Now Devin, sensing the tipping point, might now encourage her. “You can still get it, Mom.”
Depending on whether or not we’re on the same team at the moment, I will either jump in with my own encouragements or needle her about indecision to get back at his kindness.
In almost all cases, however, she will end up with a small chocolate cone. By this time we will also have completed three-quarters of the journey and we will not have asked you what you are getting.
It is now time to turn off Van Buren and down Oak Park Avenue. Here you have to start paying more attention to the walking part. It’s one block of subsidiary suburban commerciality and then the noisy and exposed highway overpass. But it goes by quickly because the pink awning and the line of summer sticky bodies is visible.
There is another family closing in from the opposite direction and I pick up the pace. I motion frantically to the rest of you as I do. Isn’t it obvious that we need to cut them off?
I don’t know about you but the rest of the crew is unbothered and slightly entertained. I smile as I prepare for the jokes about my desperation that would look pointed on this page but are spoken in the voice of intimacy and amusement. I bask a bit. I ham it up to get more happy admonishment before the energy disperses.
If there is time before our turn, we will take this opportunity to repeat our delight over the smallness of the shop and the halfiness of the address. Now with the visual evidence of the address and shop themselves. As we get closer to the door our little party must choose a formation.
“Mmm, I think I’ll wait out here. Can you just get me a -”
“Small chocolate custard in a cake cone.” One or all of us will cut off Dad. He smiles sanguinely.
Devin will wait outside with Dad. We again fall along gender lines, despite our acutely progressive politics, of course. This is Oak Park, after all.
With a visitor present I will likely squeeze into the vestibule they call shop with excitement but without I might let the cloud of Dev’s buddyship with Dad gather and almost involuntarily rain down a caustic word or two for Mom. But today you are here and Mom and I bundle you in for the “full experience.” It is good you are here. Every family needs someone to tell their stories to.
Photo: Dara Carroll
Genko Kathy Blackman
Location: Seattle, WA, and Phoenix, AZ
About: I'm married with 2 grown kids, mostly retired, a Zen Buddhist priest living with advanced ovarian cancer. This prompt really resonated with me, bringing up vivid memories from my childhood.
Age: 71
Freeman’s
Growing up, my dream was to become a butcher like old Mr. Freeman. That may seem like an odd ambition for a young girl in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1950’s, but Mr. Freeman told me he had the best job in the whole world, and I believed him.
His tiny shop had 2 butcher’s blocks, a cooler full of produce, pickle barrels filled with pungent sours and half-sours, and high shelves of dry goods – sacks of flour and sugar, canned beans boxed cereal. There was a big wheel of rat-trap cheese behind one butcher block, sawdust on the floor, and a screen door up front that squeaked and slapped each time a customer passed through.
The usual customer would sit in front of Mr. Freeman’s butcher block and work out with him what cuts of meat to buy for the week, while Mr. Freeman’s son, Jerry, or his hire, Rudy, would gather produce and groceries off that customer’s list, pile it all in a box, and drop it off at the customer’s house along with the meat on their next “run.” But not my grandmother; her routine was different.
My grandmother was Mr. Freeman’s very first customer when he set up shop in the 1930’s, and she had made sure that everyone in town came to shop there. He would always say his shop made it through hard times because of her support. But that support was never financial. My grandmother’s bank account never really made it out of the Depression, and she could not afford to ask for particular cuts of meat, or to choose her own produce out of the cooler. Instead, when she walked in the door, she and Mr. Freeman would play out their own script, honed over time.
“Katie, thank goodness you’re here! These picky customers have left me with some cuts I can’t sell, and I’d be so grateful if you could help me so they don’t go to waste!”
“Well, Morris, I didn’t have any of those things in mind to cook this week, but if it helps you, I’ll take them.”
“You are a lifesaver Katie! I’ll give you a good price on the lot.” The meat would show up on my grandmother’s back porch later on that day, along with a carton of produce culls, the backbone of our meals for the week. This scene played out over and over again.
The high point of my week was going to Freeman’s with my grandmother. Old Mr. Freeman let me sit at his butcher block, like the regular customers, and taught me the basics of being a butcher. Most important was to listen to the customer talk, he said, to find out what they needed. Much of the time they didn’t need meat so much as attention, and one of the joys of being a butcher was you could give that to them, while you worked. He taught me how to sharpen knives, and to cut meat so none went to waste. He said a good cut of meat was a work of art, a pleasure to see and hold and cook.
Time went on, and old Mr. Freeman retired and moved away, leaving the store to his son. My grandmother died shortly after, and my mother discovered the new Acme supermarket nearby. Shopping became just another chore.
Sometimes I really miss Freeman’s. Not the meat – I’ve been a vegetarian for years. I miss old Mr. Freeman’s generosity of spirit, the way he provided us with food without ever making us feel beholden, or inferior, in any way. The most important lesson I learned from him was that generosity is not the same as charity. True generosity opens up and includes the whole person, not just their needs. It’s a blessed thing.
Sharmila Rao
Location: Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
About: An aspiring writer seeking the companionship of words.
Age: 53
Memories in brick and mortar.
The sweet fragrance of jasmine delicately floats on sandalwood notes and blends with the intoxicating aroma of freshly ground coffee beans - Ah! Matunga! You eternal temptress!
Potentially seductive, this concoction is the single most distinctive feature of Matunga - a vibrant locality in the heart of Mumbai, majority of whose residents are originally from Southern India.
Naturally called for then is the abundance of flower shops, bursting with fragrant blooms, that line the narrow lanes; a few ornate temples; and the many cosy restaurants serving South Indian delicacies, highly popular in all of India and the world over.
Tucked in a corner of one such leafy lane, is a small restaurant that goes by the name of Amba Bhavan. It has a very deceptive unpretentious exterior but in reality that only belies the impressive menu on offer. The most memorable is the special South Indian Filter Coffee.
It has an interesting origin. According to popular Indian lore , in the 1600s Baba Budan, a revered Sufi saint secretly brought some coffee seeds from Mocha, in Yemen and planted them on the hills in his home state of Karnataka in South India. Since then, coffee is grown all over the South.
Filter coffee or "kaapi" as it is colloquially known is a true work of art: a concentrate is collected through slow percolation of finely ground coffee powder in a traditional Indian filter. This infusion is then added to boiled milk and frothed with an amazingly unique expertise of animated hand movements.
The end product is best described in the words of Rev. Edward Terry, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe an ambassador at the court of Emperor Jehangir who provides a detailed account of its usage (1616):
"many of the people there (in India), who are strict in their religion, drink no wine at all ; but they use a liquor, more wholesome than pleasant, they call coffee !
Sunday evenings are mostly spent by the family in Matunga: a leisurely stroll down the main Station road and the curious browsing in small but interesting shops selling essentials, books, toys, fresh vegetables, fruits, traditional snacks and crispies.
Shopping done, we head straight for Amba Bhavan. The waiters are bustling around grabbing dishes from noisy kitchens and serving the continuous stream of hungry frequenters at a commendable speed.
One is amazed to see the endless plates of steaming hot, and spongy, soft idlis to be dunked in spicy sambars, or eaten separately with a variety of tangy coconut chutneys, and the assortment of delicious dosas.
As we settle into a small table for four, our familiar waiters serve us with a smile and keep up the friendly banter as we tuck in.
Finally its the much awaited time for a cup of Filter Kaapi! Piping hot coffee is brought in shining stainless steel glasses frothing luxuriously at their rims . The potent aroma arouses the taste buds and the first sip of exotic caffeine sends an instant flush of pleasing stimuli straight to the brain. The world does stop still.
Time and taste in fact continues to stand still in Amba Bhavan. My husband was a regular patron right since his early childhood; me and my son got happily stitched into this simple gratifying pattern of Sunday outings, for keeps.
I am sure Amba Bhavan will continue to embrace our next generation with open arms too...