With my second visit in three days, I detect a high smell in the air, figuratively speaking, that I have gotten used to, I admit, over the years. It gets to be unnoticeable, as, I’m told, it can be with smog over LA. Il Formaggio Kitchen, the redoubtable cheese shop extraordinaire that happens to be based here in Cambridge (still at the original location, though, in keeping with their surging success over a great many years they now have a location in deep downtown Manhattan, to be added to the outpost they added to what is now a roster of stores located in the South End. These are all redoubts (speaking of being a formidable adversary—as in the food or foodie wars) of the invincibly deep pockets of the carriage trade who reside, or at least shop, in West Cambridge, the South End, and the Lower East Side (ensconced in the Essex Street Market).

What the stink is, of course, is the deep smell of lots of bucks. Money, in short, which you must have in long supply if you are regularly to shop in these establishments. I’ll have to look into it, but it almost appears as if each store, in having its own identity (with logos, or “marques,” drawn in the same faux primitif simple line) is declaring something of a separate sensibility. Perhaps the name has been licensed or franchised, or perhaps the estimable Ihrsan Gurdal, founder of the original West Cambridge store, and now a “knight” of some sort, of whatever French order bestows such honors, and absolutely with a reputation that exceeds the boundaries of the enclave of classically conservative Cantabrigian big money in which it is situated, has partial ownership. And if it is complete ownership, I am sure there is some plausible reason, beyond whim (or utter ignorance) that inspired a different “look” for each of the satellite locations.

I’ve never visited either the South End Boston or Lower East Side NYC stores, but I assure myself with some confidence that the prices are comfortably at parity with the Cambridge outlet. And the stink I keep referring to derives from the ever-increasing, no-end-in-sight, inflationary trend in prices that the rare products (and not so rare, but merely significant as a set of signifieds (as the linguists mean the word, as a noun) for the usual crowd of Mercedes/Audi/BMW/Volvo drivers who consume them) sustain in these bastions of plenty in the midst of universal want.

In short, the store was always too damn expensive, and it gets even more so, for no apparent reason. Though I’ll reserve wholesale (so to speak) condemnation until I have occasion to speak with representatives of the establishment. I’d like them to explain how it is that a six-pack of Badoit, the sparkling water of choice by a wide margin in France (distinguished from the much more famous Perrier by the pinpoint size of the bubbles of the former, as compared to the latter—every Frenchman knows that Perrier is a late afternoon hot summer’s day refreshment, or a mixer for a cocktail, in short a thirst quencher, with some rough equivalency to having a “Coke” here; indeed Source Perrier (owned by the conglomerate Nestlé, which finds ways of making money even in the gas infused into their mineral water products) has introduced a sparkling water (l’eau pétillante) to compete with Badoit, its prime differentiation being the tiny bubbles that emulate Danon’s flagship bottled water, as common in France as we believe Perrier to be. And just to round out this little digression before I make my point about money and egregious excess in the gentle rolling back streets of patrician Cambridge, I will note that Badoit, not to be outdone, or beaten out of any market, has introduced its own line of sparkling water, same name, just much bigger bubbles, like Perrier’s in size: no doubt important to penetrate that all-important, if practically non-existent these days, American tourist market, which only knows from Perrier.

In all events, let me sum up my point this way. A six-pack of Badoit, in liter bottles—plastic incidentally, as the glass versions seem to be distributed only to the trade, to go on offer in restaurants and bistros—costs approximately 4.50 euros at a French supermarket (actually it costs exactly that; I just checked on-line), which at the current insulting and injurious rate of exchange is $6.51, or a little less than a dollar-ten a bottle (about the price of San Pellegrino, in a liter bottle, at the Whole Foods Market… not exactly your price leader here in the US).

Well, Il Formaggio, driven by the esoteric preferences of their clientele, has sold Badoit in one-liter six-packs for years. It used to amuse me (for reasons no longer clear to me—in the interim my head has gotten either clearer or foggier) that at the time a liter of Badoit was selling for about 70 or 75 cents in a French supermarket, it was 18 bucks the six-pack at Il Formaggio.

Times being what they are, and inflation being the phenomenon it is, the price, I just took note, has risen to $25.50 currently, or about, well, about the price in US dollars of four six packs of the refreshing beverage in France.

So one of my questions of the denizens of Il Formaggio is how they justify a 300% markup for what is a common beverage in France, the quintessential market for bottled water, as it always had been (most of the brands, the many many brands, sold in France are centuries old; now it’s by preference, no doubt to some degree in the past it was for reasons of health and hygiene that ordinary citizens found a bottled water they could call their own and stick to it, through every meal). Bottled water is still not a universal phenomenon in the U.S., but a habit of the upper decile (I’m guessing) of the entirety of economic strata in the U.S., that is, the regular consumption of bottled water, and specifically mineral water (not the de-ionized, reverse osmosed municipal tap water that gets bottled by Coke and Pepsi, and lines the shelves at the Safeway next to the Coke and Sierra Light).

While I’m at it, and I’m just picking on Il Formaggio at the moment, regarding two products of extreme familiarity to me, a part-time resident of France, and concerning products I use regularly and without any particular sense of imminent danger as a result to the overall condition of the household exchequer, I noticed that a liter can of the excellent, but not superior by any means, olive oil of the Alziari family, an oil they press from various olives, but in this case, the famous olives of their native Nice (where their own retail shop is located) costs north of 43 bucks, almost 44, at Il Formaggio.

I do buy the Alziari product in France. I prefer French olive oil (to the more prevalent and better-known Italian, not to mention the Spanish, Greek, and several other quite fine oils), and it’s hard to come by in any place, but France (and I can only suppose this is because the French do like to keep certain things to themselves—and if I remember the pertinent facts clearly from Mort Rosenblum’s prize-winning book, Olives, they export only about 2-3 per cent of their annual output). In Nice, the Alziari liter of AOC Niçoise extra virgin olive oil, costs either 13 or 14 euros, depending on the time of year. That would be, just a tad (or a quarter, that is, two-bits, if you like to speak the language of coinage) over 20 bucks. That’s not 300% markup, it’s true, but it’s still more than twice the price (inexplicable in a way since a metal can weighs more than a plastic bottle, and olive oil, ounce for ounce, certainly weighs more than fizzy water) [ed. note, added later: just so I don't get any more comments, the foregoing is, of course nonsense, on two points, at least, and deliberately so: an ounce is an ounce, so by weight an ounce of oil weighs exactly the same thing as anything else weighing an ounce; water, however, is denser than oil—oil floats on water for god's sake—so any given volume weighs more than the same volume of oil, anyway, about 25% more, but this still doesn't excuse the markup on Badoit at everybody's favorite cheese shop in West Cambridge—I do these things on purpose, to see if you're listening... most of you aren't, or, more likely, you don't give a crap, which is probably smart].

There’s more to be said, given that any number of goat cheese specialties sit proudly at the entrance to the cheese department, waiting for you to take a round or a cylinder or a what have you home with you, already growing spots of greenish mold—not characteristic in France, even of the aged cheeses; it means these particular specimens have been, shall I say, away from home for a very long time—and each at a price from two to three to four times as much as it will cost you in the weekly market, week after week, time without end, in even the most humble of market towns near goat farms (and they raise goats all over the place).

Yes, there’s a smell emanating from West Cambridge, and it isn’t goats. But more later, after I look into it.

The reference, of course, is to that black, gummy substance distilled (yes) from the roots and wood of the pine tree (leave it at that; I’m not Linnaeus and this is no botany lesson) and used to seal the wooden ships that plied the seas and other waterways from time immemorial to the age of metal vessels. Even the little boat of rushes that protected the biblical baby Moses was famously lined with pitch (not quite the same thing as tar, but same principle—I’m not sure the Egyptians knew about tar, and frankly I don’t care).

Let me warn you now that if you check one of those ultra-reliable research sources, as I do, like Wikipedia, you’ll be told all kinds of sea stories (my mother would have called them “bubbe meissen,” but no matter, same difference*) about how the jolly British sailor came to be called by what it alleges is the benign, if not amiable, designation. The full epithet is “Jack Tar.” Because, no doubt, the British add “Jack” to every hail, or common expression alluding to another fellow—as in, “I’m All Right Jack,” the name of a British movie about the labor movement, a comedy no less, that was released in the 50s in the U.S. (and starred such stellar character actors as Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, and Margaret Rutherford). It was spectacularly funny, even to the 13 year-old I was at the time. How much deeper would have been my enjoyment had I known that the full common expression, from which the title derived, as I know it now, is “I’m all right Jack, fuck you.” As in, I’ve got mine, you can take care of yourself…

Let’s just say, whatever the connection of that resinous by-product to its uses at sea, the linguistic echoes speak volumes to the intent of its use. Tar, in short, is an objective correlative, a damn good one, if you ask me, in any story concerned with self-preservation.

Tar still has its place, I am sure, in more and more specialized applications, in this age of more and more generalized and amorphous interests in general life, which humans seem to want to pursue with the migratory zeal of lemmings. I notice there is still a tar-like substance (derived, no doubt, not from the distillation of what emerges from a pine tar kiln, but from the distillation of our jolly friend, petroleum, and commonly called, in its most common form, “coal tar.”) I used to chew bits, tiny bits, that we kids would find in the streets of the Bronx after a road repair or, more usually, a roof repair of the graveled flat roofs of the housing projects in which I grew up. I remember the tang of its aroma, and the spicy satisfying bitterness for the few moments we could stand to keep it in our mouths before its purely noxious qualities came to the fore. Possibly this was a precursor for my later career as wine taster (strictly amateur), not to mention coffee. I can’t say, but I do know in retrospect that the ritualistic steps, practiced intuitively were not far different. One difference was the absence of a spit bucket.

It’s the mention of spit that reminds me of my subject here, though it reminds me as well of some common expressions that should be kept active, if in the background of one’s mind, while contemplating this subject, as in “so angry I could spit,” or that great maternal euphemism for vomit, especially in reference to babies, “spit up,” or the curses from any one of no doubt dozens, but for sure the handful of latin, countries any one of which begins in the form, “I spit on…[to be completed as appropriate: your shoes, your new Audi G7, your future grave site, etc.].” My subject is a recent, rare visit to Starbucks.

My memory of Starbucks dates to the days when, in the ascendant as the corporation fulfilled the strategies of a prescient Howard Schultz who bought the original company from its founders in 1987 and proceeded to do what they refused to do: sell brewed drinks, including espresso, in addition to the beans which were the hallmark of the generation of what only seem to be sui generis establishments, all started in Seattle: coffee bean, and coffee bean only, roasters and purveyors. The founders, who started out buying their beans from Peet’s (whose founder, in turn, had been their mentor and inspiration: one of the founders of Starbucks still works for that chain, long since outdistanced by, and pale in comparison to its prodigal child), had the odd notion that coffee was a drink to be prepared and enjoyed best at home.

It was Schultz, at whose feet (shod in whatever shoes he prefers I would gladly spit upon at any opportunity, so great is my contempt, which started instantaneously when I learned at the very same time—he bought out the Starbucks founders in 1987 and immediately started out on his global conquests, at which he has succeeded only too well—about the existence of the shop(s), the tenuous connection of the brand with, and, for any deep lover of American literature, the innately moronic and, for some of us, profane, desecration of the name of one of literature’s noblest characters, the indomitable first mate of the ill-fated Pequod, the whaling ship in which most of the action takes place in that classic novel everyone claims to have read in its entirety, Moby Dick, and which has about as much to do with coffee, as Longfellow’s epic poem “Evangeline” has to do with pork belly futures in the Chicago commodities markets, and I hadn’t even tasted the vile, foul-smelling substance they dispensed as yet) can be laid all of whatever it is you hold dear, or revile, about Starbucks, its stores, its ethos, its products, etc.

It is allegedly Schultz who insisted on the signature “dark roast” (in scare quotes, because, lordy, it is scary that they still call the end result coffee beans; I don’t know what the generic term for the byproduct of total destructive incineration is, or I’d use it) and the attendant flavors (if, again, we can stretch the language, pliant, if not elastic as it may be, and thereby one of the great languages, in all its linguistic potentiality, for creating poetry—but we are talking Starbucks “coffee” here, and any such talk is the antithesis of poetry, as the fluid spoken of is the antithesis of its designation; a new vocabulary must be invented to have proper terminology with which to refer to their products, “swill” having long since been bankrupted by the imagination of the demented lot at Starbucks headquarters who concoct everything revolutionary they have introduced to the world in the name of the plant Coffea L., whose seeds (no, they’re not really beans) have for so long provided so much pleasure until the Schultz came along, and he had all he could do to have them provide what is clearly the more compelling objective, money, because what he seems to have done best is to find ways of brutalizing and abusing this ancient plant, revered for centuries by men (and if we are to believe it, the gods) as a divine natural gift, with fire to produce concoctions and decoctions that until recently seemed to have the magical property mainly of parting fools from their money while simultaneously dulling their sensory organs, and especially their palates, into complete insensibility).

My first protest, which consisted of boycott, occurred in 1996, when the revered (and for good reason) Coffee Connection, a chain started by the man whose name is synonymous with great coffee in the Northeast, at least, George Howell, decided, that is, George decided, to besmirch his reputation by selling his company, his stores (more, really, in the way of cafés), his products (a line of several types of coffee beans, which were roasted with exquisite care and sensitivity to the subtle and not-so-subtle differences among the varietals) to Starbucks. I can’t blame him really, as it must have been an astounding amount of money involved, and worth every penny to La Schultz, who in one stroke, not dissimilar to the blitzkrieg strategy employed so effectively by the Wehrmacht, with minimal destruction and maximal effectiveness by way of assimilating whole peoples under a new regime. It was in 1996, that the Coffee Connection locations operated by Starbucks under that name, for a while after the acquisition, changed the identity on all stores, and all but a handful of products. And of course, the announcement (again, just pure classic marketing strategy, which does, effectively, crush any confusion, but with the collateral effect, usually, of also crushing even a thread of whatever it was that distinguished a superior product from the dross now substituted for it by the conquering party in the eternal wars of acquisition) was accompanied with the promise that the “Coffee Connection” name would never be allowed to die or disappear. Here is where a lesser story-teller would insert, with no creativity or originality whatsoever, a tired reference to that hoary and mythical real estate offering concerning a bridge connecting Manhattan with one of the lesser boroughs.

There have been several more personal boycotts since, of ever-greater duration, even as I, in my well-meaning open-mindedness, belied I admit by a totally erroneous appearance of scornful, brusque opprobrium, more often than not interlaced with many words consisting of four letters and sometimes in witty, if not ingenious new combinations (though never attaining the demented kinds of violent yoking of otherwise attractive, if not tantalizing, flavors to produce some vile complex formulation with a four dollar, or higher, price tag only to be found at Starbucks—or in some tepid, uninspired, but, if possible, even sweeter, and certainly cheaper knock-off available at McDonald’s, where it stands no more chance of actually tasting like something intended for human consumption than at the more expensive namesake for all things carbonized to a state of utter mineral decomposition, no taste that is, except for sugar, and not just sugar, but sugar qua sugar, not as mere sweetener and helpmeet to other, more particular and flavorful ingredients—though it is customary at least in the United States to invert the usual formulation, so we always are asking, in effect, to have a little coffee, or tea, or chai, in our super-saturated solution of sugar water) still would occasionally venture in to see if some miracle had occurred. Or if my aging taste buds had atrophied into a state of submission. Or if, well, the possibilities in the long history of mankind and his struggle with good and evil…

I’ll give anybody a chance, except maybe Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, or Reinhard Heydrich. So, indeed, periodically, I would check in on Starbucks and order, usually, a small coffee (I still refuse to recall the strangely designated sizes of beverages, mandated by Schultz, except that the word “venti” does rattle around in my head, I suspect, because it’s the largest size, and the word sounds like “vent” to my Francophone ear, which reminds me of “wind” and so I guess it will be forever associated, as a kind of gastric mnemonic, with a big fart, which, given the venti-sized coffee-like beverages I have essayed over the years, would in fact be preferable, given the choice of what to ingest; I mean, a small dose of methane, sulfur gas, etc. never killed anybody… I don’t know if anyone should let Schultz know this, or he might be tempted to, well, you know, you never can tell about a man who would offer anything that will sell for just under a five-dollar bill to an innocent public, with a Jones for anything sweet, and a pathological addiction to foods that will give them a chronic, incurable disease for whatever remains of their lives, and I offer as evidence this, the list of ingredients of one Starbucks current beverage offering, lifted intact from their corporate website: “Mint Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino® blended creme with Chocolate Whipped Cream: Classic chocolate and spearmint flavor combined with milk, mocha sauce, Frappuccino® chips, blended with ice, and then topped with chocolate whipped cream and mocha sauce”). I will only add this drink, in “medium” size (see their website for the correct Starbucks terminology, God help your soul) contains 400 calories and 80 grams of carbohydrates. You can also order it, I believe, as a big fart, that is, in “venti” size.

And every time I checked in, I checked right out, and proceeded to pour some perfectly good water, adulterated with the infused residue of the cremated remains of what have formerly been the seeds of what I only hope and pray the USDA, not to mention the FDA, periodically checks to ensure does in fact, start out as Coffea L., since the end result, after processing (I refuse to call it roasting) is, I am sure, indistinguishable from what would have resulted had they chosen to put several tons of kudzu through a blast furnace and grind the output into a rough powdery substance.

For a while there, one of the merchandising master strokes of Mr. Schultz (I’d call him Herr Schultz, but that wouldn’t be fair; he’s Jewish as I understand, though since Bernie Madoff, of course, this qualification hardly constitutes exoneration… yet having already alluded to some famous Nazis of their day, well, even I see the impropriety; that we share a given name doesn’t help either, because it’s only a source of embarrassment for me, since, Oh, I’d say, some time in 1987) brought me into the stores, but ironically never for the coffee. Even with no other choice in view, or within walking or driving distance, I would never need to have coffee that badly. No, I went in for the music CDs. And I bought a few. But after a while, even these infrequent visits became impossible, simply because the very air in a Starbucks is permeated with the smell of flames derived from carbon-based fuels being applied for torturously long periods of time to plant matter, and that, frankly, makes me want to spit up.

Recently, after what I would say has been a hiatus of a few years, at least three, I ventured into a Starbucks. My lovely companion, Jody, who I attest is a true coffee afficionado, but who does not suffer my violent antipathy and is far more compliant, especially in the face of my seemingly (I am sure) sudden and inexplicable stated desire to enter a Starbucks establishment (this one, as if being a Starbucks weren’t ignominious enough, being located in the ignominious confines of an otherwise tragically unremarkable minor Massachusetts city, called Worcester) entered with me. Having just spent, the two of us, some several weeks (as in almost two months) in the paradisiacal rural confines of southern France, where all things flow good and plentiful, and especially the coffee, which they have been drinking for far longer, along with their Italian brethren, the alleged inspiration of Schultzy’s original vision, but I know hype when I see it; at this point, he can afford to buy Italy… personally I don’t think he ever stepped foot in the country, never mind drank even three milliliters of the brewed beverage they call (as do the French, with their penchant for calling a thing what it is), “espresso.”

Further, we, Jody and I, have become enamored of one of the more successful manifestations of the means devised to tap into the love of humans for coffee, the products marketed under the brand name “Nespresso.” But more on this much later, that is, at some other date, other than to say, we now consume mass quantities of such products, brewed, as the good founders of the badly named original Starbucks intended, at home—these are, in essence and in fact, espresso products. Suffice it to say, our taste buds are primed and fully acclimated to the taste of varying degrees of excellence in the homely, but estimable, art of brewing fresh roasted ground Coffea L. into an ambrosial hot liquid, which satisfies many of the senses, but certainly the olfactory and those of taste (not to mention sight: the lovely colors of a perfect crema crowning the limpid, deeply colored, yet translucent umbral shades of such an infusion).

Well, let’s make short of this essentially disquieting episode. I sashayed in. I ordered a double espresso “for here” (what should be a redundancy; except in the outlets of American-based chains of prepared food purveyors, there’s hardly any such thing as a coffee to go in France, and so an order for a café (by which is always understood an espresso, unless you look even vaguely American, in which case you will be asked, by a server straining their meager knowledge of English, if you mean, in fact, a café crême, which is to say, further, what we call in this country a café au lait (though they are not the same), but is, in fact a cappuccino, different drinks mind you (with a particular dialectical variant thrown in there, which actually constitutes a different means of composition—that is, a crême is not the same as an au lait, and the French, in their marvelously precise way, will always correct you, especially in a rural café, where they don’t have a ready supply of scalded milk, but they do have the steamer jet of the espresso machine; and I won’t even get into the differences constituted by a macchiato, the Italian term, of course, for yet a different drink altogether, and as such must be ordered by this term) will always arrive in a proper cup, usually ceramic, though sometimes, rarely, of glass (it’s the Swiss and the Italians who seem to take that extra delight in seeing the drink in its entirety) on a proper saucer.

My drink, which I ordered (I’m being very careful here: I’m still not sure it was ever, at any time at any stage of its existence, any part of the plant called Coffea L. and I for damn sure am not going to call it “coffee” or café, or even espresso, because the latter would connote that I, however much it may have to be inferred, would accord it the status of that prepared beverage known generally and generically as coffee), arrived in a paper container. A container, a cylinder more or less, of narrow diameter, “all the worse to drink you my dear…,” or perhaps so circumscribed in the mistaken notion that this would concentrate the aromas (a term I also use advisedly, as, in situations where one might opine that “a stink arose,” one would not ordinarily, except in inordinately poetic circumstances, be inspired to say, meaning the same thing, “an aroma arose.)” Further, of course, Starbucks being a corporation founded and based still in the Pacific Northwest, irony does not apply. Ever. One must be careful never to speak ironically in a Starbucks. You not only might, you absolutely will be taken literally, and they are likely to bring you what you ask for.

In this case, I should have been ironic, as they didn’t, though they thought they did, bring me what I asked for.

My first surprise was to see some wisp of a crema floating on the top of what was clearly a liquid in this paper cup (it was shifting around in a manner I associate with liquids of a certain limpidity and viscosity), but this was a cruel, final delusion.

I lifted the cup to my face, and my nose being rather large it was what first encountered, Thank God, what was issuing from the cup. I put the cup down. I caught Jody’s attention. I asked her to smell what was in my cup. “Smell this,” I said (I was in Starbucks, literal mode…). She did. She made a face.

Now my father raised me to be a scientist. That he failed in the main is besides the point. What he left me with were certain habits of mind, and certain methodologies. A scientist forges on, to go boldly, etc. I smelled and would have quit there. But, I was determined to carry this through. Besides I had paid the better part of two dollars for, not a double espresso, such as one would get in France where a double means using one larger cup to hold the volume of two smaller cups of a single—all of equal strength—but for the idiotic American version of a double, that is, a double “shot”, concentrating (as if this were possible with any Starbucks ground coffee product; further concentration seems impossible, in the sense that cold fusion is, at the present time, only theoretically possible… I wonder if the Department of Defense is in touch with Howard Schultz…) a single dose of water forced through the volume of grounds required for two cups of espresso) the noxious brew that sat, with no warnings otherwise posted, innocently in my paper cylinder. I took a tentative sip. I don’t recall if I swallowed it, but I must have, because I have no recollection of a spit bucket, though I instantly realized this is what is missing in every Starbucks around the world—and it’s an item that would sell like hot cakes in their stores, including the on-line store… I’d buy one.

“I can’t drink this,” I said, when Jody asked me where I was going.

I walked up to the counter. I waited until one of the bright young things asked if I needed some help. I told her, instantly catching the attention as well of she who, I guess, represented the on-duty management. “I can’t drink this,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

“I don’t want my money back. I just want a large glass of water so I can get this taste out of my mouth.” “What’s wrong with it?” I was asked.

“It doesn’t taste like coffee.” “Well, it’s espresso. See…” and I cut her off. “I just came back from ten weeks of drinking espresso in Europe. I know what it tastes like. This tastes like tar. It also smells like tar. In fact, coal tar.”

“If you would, just give me the water, and I’m all right.” I didn’t call her Jack.

* Same Difference is, of course, the name of my book. You can order it here. It has nothing to do with Starbucks, though I think I mentioned it once, no doubt invidiously. https://www.bertha.com/same_difference/private_edition.html

Chicken and fixings

Jody’s Lemon & Rosemary Chicken with herbs and garlic
Haricots verts with kalamata olives and garlic sautéed in EVOO
Heirloom tomatoes with local mozzarella [Fiore di Nonni]
2006 Jean-Luc Colombo Viognier “La Violette”

What is strange about produce shopping in France were all the apples available throughout the summer.

I don’t know where they were coming from, as I didn’t buy anyway.

My cling fruit juices were flowing as is appropriate.

The pears were only barely beginning to appear and will be in very full swing in the autumn.

I’m still trying to get over the shock and depression of shopping for the first time since back in Cambridge, and walking through the local Whole Foods. When we were in Nice, just before we left, I took Jody into Monoprix, actually a low to middle middle class chain across France, known for discount pricing. They only sell midline brands on most things (so, although there’s no equivalent as our department stores, like theirs, are much more comprehensive, so it isn’t a department store, and they also sell OTC products, like CVS, and now have begun installing very ambitious food departments. Anyway, Whole Foods makes Monoprix (where not too many very very serious foodies would not shop; spiritually equivalent to eating at Appleby’s) look like the food halls at Harrod’s in London, or the Galleries Lafayette in Paris.

If anything confirms that the French are serious about food, it’s the food departments at Monoprix, which is otherwise a place to get cheap underwear and your favorite toothpaste at a better price. I should mention that in the Monoprix outlets in Paris, at least, they also sell, in their personal care products departments, brands for items that require going to carriage trade toiletry and pharmaceutical stores, things like Klorane and ROC.

We saw a dozen different kinds of pâté en croûte, and an equal number without croûte. Produce better than the French supermarkets (but worse than daily outdoor market stalls). Cheese department(s) that put any place here to shame, including Il Formaggio right here in Cambridge, with its cheese cave, and pretentious airs and astronomical prices. I say department in the plural because it would appear they have at least three places to buy cheese, I think according to your needs and budget.

Monoprix even has an affordable cheese section, where the cheeses are already apportioned and wrapped in plastic with a weight and price. You can buy a whole Reblochon at the attended counter (or any number of other cheeses from every region of France, never mind just the South), or you could buy a half a small round (250gm, or a scant ounce more than half a pound) for 3,12 euros (about $4.40). Aged crottin (goat cheese) were under 1,50 euro each. I checked at WFM yesterday; a particularly desiccated plate of specimens were seven bucks each. One further rung below this department is the one that is familiar-looking to us: the branded cheeses (think Kraft or a grade or two above) in thermoplastic, vacuum-sealed packaging.

Their wine section, with wines from every region of France represented in depth, and in price (from ~ 2,50 euro to over 30 euro a bottle, for wines, in the latter instance, that would be astronomical here), was at least as big as the largest outlets here that have to sit on the highway here to find a building with the room.

The butcher, charcuterie, bakery, cheese departments are all staffed with knowledgeable people who work scrupulously (I’ve watched them, re: cleanliness, precision, manners, attentiveness, friendliness) to serve you from really overwhelming choices of items.

And everything is way cheaper (and this is a Monoprix on the main shopping street, also lined with fast food outlets, chain stores, cafés, and a shopping mall (with underground garage) that takes up a city block in mid-size coastal city, not particularly wealthy except in the suburbs up in the hills, and which depends entirely on tourism, and the tourists do NOT shop at Monoprix… it’s strictly a venue the locals know about and prefer) than in the U.S.–take your pick of chains, and skip WFM, which is stacking the deck.

The lack of variety in our stores, the dearth of real choices, the degree to which food is processed and packaged, the distance you are from true artisanal products, from the sources of the food, and certainly the profound difference in quality (in terms of appetite appeal, actual taste, and concern with nutritional value) is going to be hard to prevent from being profoundly depressing.

Any assertion that food is expensive there, which I’ve heard from people who should know better, and not of extreme value, compared to the abundance and price here, is total horse manure. The comparison is odious, and the truth lies elsewhere.

And don’t get me wrong. You can buy dry breakfast cereals and sweetened soft drinks over there (of course they use beet and cane sugars to much greater degree than we do, which is hardly at all, though, ominously, high-fructose corn syrup is making inroads), it’s just who would want to?

Yelp is for people with short attention spans and whose quotidian vocabulary, beyond "cool," "dude," and "excellent" seems to consist largely of the word "yum" to express ultimate gustatory satisfaction. On the other hand, I write in complete sentences, use many multisyllabic words, sprinkled among a framework of the basic Anglo-Saxon lexicon of mono- and two-syllable words that allow us to use Twitter, which is apparently the summum bonum of man's evolution to date, if not for eternity... And I do go on at length, as I believe nothing worth commenting on is worth giving short shrift purely for the sake of brevity. "Cutting to the chase," and "bottom-line" or "long-story short..." are not incentives to me to desist from my habit of pursuing a subject to its conclusion, however comprehensively I feel it needs analysis, consideration, or comment. You don't like it, lump it. Don't read it, and don't bitch to me. There is a limit of 5000 characters on the Yelp site, and so far this is a constraint I have welcomed as a challenge, to see if it's possible to contain my remarks to this quota and still be able to say something meaningful. In an admittedly and self-consciously redundant effort, what follows is the entirety of my Biscuit comments. It may induce you to visit Yelp. Seeing signs of such an effect will induce me to continue to contribute at that site. Otherwise, I'll simply mainly ignore it and concentrate my efforts in the development of material for more propitious venues in terms of reaching my audience: whoever that turns out to be. After five years of writing blog essays and other verbal products, I'm still not sure who or what that is. The presumption is, it is self-defining, and for the time being, I still have the leisure to see how it defines itself, even as I step up my efforts to get greater exposure so that audience can at least identify itself, while deciding if reading what I have to write is worth their time. But that's enough rationale. Here's "The Biscuit" from Yelp: ]

The preponderance of the reviews appear to be by transients. Not surprising as the neighborhood immediately around The Biscuit is a haven for graduate students mainly from Harvard and Tufts. Though they’re smart enough, God knows, they make up for abundance of brains by a deficit of taste. Since the days it opened, as Panini — a reference to being primarily a bakery, and not to the more recent sandwich modality — the place quickly became popular, especially in the morning. It is patronized mainly by students, office workers, especially from the nearby Cambridge Hospital and a large branch of the Cambridge Health Alliance offices across the street.

Comments on Yelp, many of them ill-informed, are not generally helpful.

It’s a very homey place. The counter folk are exceptional, or always have been, and were, until recently, quite stable. Immensely friendly and, if you’re a regular, they’ll certainly learn your name within several visits, know your preferences within a few more. Even on your first visit will engage you in a warm conversation, however brief, whoever you are. Music, “programmed” by the bakers, is wildly, wonderfully eclectic; it rarely seems to disturb the many “keyboard” warriors.

The owners, Greta and her husband, are invariably on premise, unless tending to the school needs of their two young children. He is usually ensconced in the rear bakery, which runs from extremely early morning to mid-day–they are also a supplier of bread to other outlets, including restaurants–and the most visible part of their business is the retail trade which streams in throughout the day. It can get busy enough, especially on “non-school” days–weekends, academic breaks or holidays, that every table is full, or partially so, and people are encouraged to, and do, share tables.

There is a huge crowd of regulars, single people, couples, & groups of four or more who have regular dates to meet on weekend mornings. There is a strange air of quiet liveliness. The place is relaxed for the most part, well lived-in in feeling.

The association with Gus Rancatore of Toscanini ice cream was terminal. He had and has no interest financially in the bakery, and for the use of the name, and his supplying coffee and ice cream on some variant of a license basis, the new owners who bought the original Panini, had a recognized identity. This briefly caused great consternation among the Cambridge and Somerville regulars who made use of the limited offerings, mainly bread, coffee, and breakfast pastry items. Panini at one time only offered the now well-loved savory scones–a genuine signature item of this little place–as a single flavor, the original cheddar and onion, and ONLY if the baker on duty felt like making them; they even threatened once to discontinue making them, which elicited stern protests from regulars.

The Biscuit still uses many of the original bread and pastry recipes instituted by the original owners of Panini. They have also added items of their own devising, and instituted the sandwich, soup, and broadened the sheet goods (what they call frittata, baked on a croissant dough base, like pizza, plus actual yeast-based pizza) selections, added some very much sweeter items than the usual selection of muffins and scones, including bread pudding, brioche-based items, like a new chocolate brioche, a cinnamon coffee roll, which they call a pecan strudel… There are a number of other excellent choices, all mis-named slightly, but descriptively enough.

All in all, offerings seem to cater to more adult tastes, which may account for some Yelp complaints about items not being sweet enough. In fact, sugar as an ingredient is kept to a minimum, and there are more than the usual number of choices of savory items, including a broadening of the savory scone varieties now on offer every day of the week and among the most popular.

The sandwiches are made fresh and continually through the day and wrapped and kept on ice right on the counter. What people seem to miss is that this ensures that there is NO WAIT for almost any item on offer. Fast food indeed. And there is none of the arrogant, snotty, indifferent, or pea-pod-people behavior at Darwin’s, where you must wait for what are the sometimes inept ministrations of the sandwich makers.

The soups are fresh and there is usually a choice of at least two and sometimes four soups daily, changed daily, made from choice ingredients.

The coffee has returned to excellence after the present owners allowed the relationship with Toscanini to lapse. Gus’s coffee is horrendous. There is the noted expansion into the making of other beverages, including chais, and a broad various “steamed” selection.

The pastries, and the breads, for that matter, are well differentiated offerings from other shops. Other coffee purveyors do not make their own baked goods (1369, Bloc 11, etc.), and Hi-Rise and Carberry’s are too far to be real competition, though they are real alternatives.

In what is allegedly the first opportunity for the public to have electronic access to the Presidential inner sanctum (Bush encouraged people to write to him via snail mail, and he promised to write back… some day; big whoop—of course, he ignored everyone, so instant feedback was of little merit, but I digress), you can send a message, up to 500 characters (another big whoop; but it’s good discipline for a prolix asshole like me). When you use the link above, it will take you to the White House home page. Click on the link in the upper-left hand corner that says “CONTACT Us” and it will take you to a page with a form for your identification, and a box to hold your 500 characters of pure wisdom (or bile, or whatever you care to send).

I’ve sent several messages since January 20-something (when the site first went up), mainly urging urgency to be impressed upon the Congress with the economic recovery legislation, and trying to hold the Big O’s big feet to the ethical reform fires he lit himself (I had the pleasure of giving him crap about giving Mr. Daschle and Mr. Geithner a ‘free pass’ as I called it, and an hour-and-a-half after I posted the White House, Daschle up and threw in the towel… That’s responsiveness to citizen outrage!)

Of course, Mr. Geithner, that slippery guy, did slip through, and he’s the subject of today’s rant by me to the Big O.

To stimulate your activism, and encourage you to write to O, write to your Congressional delegation (write early, write often), I here reproduce my message of the day to the White House:

“You disappoint in significant ways. Allowing Mr. Geithner to prevail on phase 2 of the banking bailout is same old same old. I’m surprised there’s no provision for fruit baskets and discount coupons for body man services for bank executives. You promised real change in government. The bankers who enabled this mess deserve censure, if not divestiture and removal, if not outright prosecution. This isn’t real change, it’s Small Change: the name of the homeless newspaper here in Cambridge.”

The ostensible reason was an errand on their part, to pick up their monthly allotment of a full farmshare of meat (steer, pork, and some other stuff—there were an awful lot of bits of tasty things in that big cardboard box). As Super88—the Asian food connection in that neck of the urban wilds, where Brighton Avenue splits off from Commonwealth, just beyond the megalopolis formerly known as the Boston University West Campus—is just down the street, it seemed a natural to chow down.

From Dim Sum Chef we ordered (in no particular order of importance or delectability), the tripe with ginger and scallions, the B.B.Q. pork buns, the rice noodle rolls with shrimp, the eggplant with black bean sauce, and, as a kind of dessert, the bean paste buns. Across the way, at Kantin, we ordered the roast duck and pea pod stems. And the cost, for the three of us gave us five bucks and change from two twenties. Not bad for a mini-banquet.

There was nothing to be faulted. Rather, it was as good as some feasible standard of what good dim sum should be. I’ll make special mention of the tripe (not for all tastes I realize, but if it were always prepared this well, and one can learn to overlook the esthetics of the dish… anything might be possible in opening new personal gustatory vistas), which was incredibly well done, light, toothsome, and tasty, with none of the shortcomings of the dish at the hands of anything less than the most deft cooks. The French and the Italians, who suck this stuff down, and when it’s good over there, it’s very very good, though that doesn’t always happen, could learn a thing or two in Allston-Brighton.

We then repaired to where the Stillman van sat, with a long line of customers waiting to pick up their monthly order, just outside the Clear Flour Bakery at the corner of Abbotsford and Hamilton Roads in Brookline. Tse Wei and Diana, who, it would appear, have a sweet tooth apiece (and the toothpick thin physiques to allow indulgence), wanted some pastry, and I wanted coffee, and saw a loaf of bread I thought might be interesting. So we stopped in at the bakery (with a somewhat shorter line, but a line nevertheless, on a sultry 18-degree noon).

The bread does not disappoint, though, as I find so often, the designation, that is, the mere naming of the bread was a tad pretentious. We were in Brookline after all, not Haut Provence (whence I have just returned). The loaf I bought was called a “pain meunier,” or in pseudo-colloquial French “miller’s bread.” Though I doubt it. I’ve never seen anything with such a name, here or in France. There’s that perennial classic fish dish, “sole à la meuniére,” or sole cooked in the manner of the miller’s wife (floured and quickly sautéed in butter, and finished with freshly squeezed lemon juice), but this bread has nothing to do with that and vice versa.

Other bakers, a little more honestly, or at least less pretentiously, would call it 5-grain or 7-grain, or however-many-grain it actually is. It’s a light loaf, with a lovely crisp crust, and good, even crumb, toothy but light, as is the loaf generally, with bits of coarser grain visible. The bread is described on their “Bread Availability” matrix (which lists 30 types of bread, not all of them available every day) in this way:

Each step of taking grain to flour is used: cracked wheat, whole wheat flour, wheat germ & white flour

I would have put it a little differently, that is, I think they meant, “the product of each step…,” although this can be said of any bread, in a way, as you cannot mill flour without doing something with the germ, without first cracking the wheat (if that’s the procedure you use), and white flour does entail some processing they’re leaving out. In short, it would appear it’s whole wheat bread with a much fuller pedigree, and some crunchy bits that milling usually pulverizes.

The bread is equally good of course, and pretense has no flavor, not perceptible to the palate, but gustatory pleasure is more than a physical experience.

As is evident at the Super88, where they put on no airs at all.

As for the coffee from Clear Flour, I will note only two things. They are, of course, a bakery, not a coffee house. And the coffee, in keeping with the general air of carriage trade pretention, was “Fair Exchange” or whatever it’s called, wherein the imbiber has some assurance that the original coffee grower wasn’t screwed in the process of getting you your 12 ounces of java in a paper cup for a buck-fifty, as you wait your turn in line to order your baguette or “Rustic Fougasse.”

What the imbiber can also be assured, and I don’t blame the grower, as there are, if I may paraphrase, a lot of “steps to take the beans to grounds,” before you can suck down that cup of nice hot joe on a very cold day, is that the coffee may not exactly taste like coffee. Indeed, as I pointed out to Tse Wei and Diana, who patiently waited while the car warmed up as I sipped my coffee (as I won’t drive drinking a beverage), the coffee, miraculously, had no aroma whatsoever. It seemed like a miracle. They had managed to manufacture opaque brown water, saleable for $1.50 a cup. The miracle ended with the first sip, for, as I again pointed out, I could attest that it also had no taste, except it was incredibly bitter.

We pay too high a price for assuaging our consciences, on the presumption that everyone involved is as vigilant about the quality of the product as those who produce real coffee, without also trying to make you feel good about it, separate and apart from the gustatory experience. And they don’t necessarily screw anybody in the process either. And certainly not the coffee drinker.

Political and social correctness, it would seem, comes at the expense of simple pleasure.

If I find out easily how to retrieve the old entries, which now date back at least a year, I will restore them here (it may take a while, or it may happen all at once if it can happen at all). In the meantime, you can blame an outfit called Web.com, which is the hosting service I have used for many years, quite reliably, until their management seems to have drunk water tainted with drugs that induce dementia. They have instituted steps, uncalled for and certainly unsolicited, which they deem improvements, and which have, among other things, wreaked havoc with the likes of this lowly blog of mine. This is as opposed to the high and mighty blog of mine, called “Per Diem,” which you can reach by clicking here, and which remains thus far unsullied and unbowed (though unreplenished for what will soon be five months, since the death of my beloved wife Linda; but this drought soon will end), and with luck (and my continued payment of fees for maintaining the blog out of the reach or the clutches of Web.com) will remain so.

So carry on… As is my very good intention to do, and best wished to you all, as I set about, among other things, rebuilding and re-developing this blog.