December 29, 2025 & January 5, 2026 Issue

Notes on this week’s issue:

1. Richard Brody, in “Goings On,” reviews Jim Jarmusch’s new movie Father Mother Sister Brother. I’m a fan of Jarmusch’s minimalist style. Brody calls this new film “an unusually plainspoken entry in the Jarmusch cinematic universe.” I think I’ll check it out.

2. Sheldon Pearce, in “Goings On,” praises Bill Charlap and Dee Dee Bridgewater’s new album Elemental. He says, “The music is charming and jaunty, its looseness and zest owed to an alchemical balance between these two performers.” Charlap is one of my heroes. Pearce calls him “an impressionist pianist,” but he’s much more than that. His invention and technique are phenomenal. He’s an amazing improviser. He’s a genius! On the other hand, my taste for Bridgewater’s singing is still developing. At times, I find her delivery halting and discordant. I credit Pearce for noting this album. Anything by Charlap is worth listening to.

3. Remember Babbo? I do. I’ve never eaten there, but as a result of reading Bill Buford’s two brilliant “Babbo” pieces – “The Secret of Excess” (August 19 & 26, 2002) and “The Pasta Station” (September 6, 2004) – I feel I know it intimately. That Babbo is gone. Its wild, ingenious co-owner and chef, Mario Batali, is gone, too. But, as Helen Rosner tells us in this week’s “Tables for Two,” there’s a new Babbo with a new chef – Mark Ladner. Rosner is not impressed. “Can you have Batali minus Batali?” she asks. Her answer is no. She says,

On my first visit to the original Babbo—God, it must have been twenty years ago—I remember being stunned at my first bite of the beef-cheek ravioli. (“Of all the pasta dishes—indeed, of all the dishes—on the menu, this is probably the one most associated with Babbo,” Batali writes of the recipe, in “The Babbo Cookbook” from 2002.) I froze. I think I stopped chewing. I was astounded that a mouthful of food could be so forceful and so silken at once. I wish I could say that I felt the same way about the version at the new Babbo. Some of the disappointment, I’m sure, had to do with the difficulty of measuring up to memory, but it was also right there on the plate. On one evening, the filling was oddly crumbly and dry, and on another the ravioli’s thick chicken-liver ragú—a striking departure from the light, buttery emulsion that dressed Batali’s original—was broken and greasy.

Rosner’s verdict may seem harsh. But that’s what I like about her. She doesn’t pull her punches. 

4. Bruce Handy’s “Talk” story “Shadow Boxing” tells about the re-creation of Joseph Cornell’s Utopia Parkway studio in a Gagosian gallery in Paris. Handy writes,

With the exhibit opening in just a few days, a team of eight workers was beavering away inside the gallery, moving stacks of old magazines, rearranging tchotchkes on shelves, applying a patina of grunge to new jars and boxes to make them look as if they’d been sitting in a cellar since the Eisenhower Administration. The gallery’s normally pristine white walls had been painted to resemble water-stained cinder blocks. A professional set decorator had added fake cobwebs to the corners. (Fine steel wool does the trick.) One could almost smell the mustiness.

Cornell is one of my favorite artists. I enjoyed this piece immensely.

5. A special shout-out to Lawrence Wright for his delightful “Takes” tribute to A. J. Liebling. Wright says, 

For my generation, Liebling still loomed as a model of incisive journalism with a personal voice. He was scholarly and highly literate while also at home with hat-check girls and the bookies at the racetrack. He barbecued the reactionary intellectuals of his era, but portrayed ordinary people with warmth.

I totally agree. Liebling is one of the New Yorker greats. 

Toward My Own Theory of Description: Pasta and Clams

Paul Cézanne, Pines and Rocks (c.1897)

What does toasted grasshopper taste like? Hannah Goldfield, in her “Tables For Two: Oxomoco” (The New Yorker, October 8, 2018), tells us:

On a recent evening, a pair of appetizers made for a thrillingly terrifying spread. A hamachi and peach aguachile, a dish similar to ceviche, was powdered so aggressively in crimson chile puya that it looked almost bloody. “It’s like lava,” commented one diner. “Or surgery!” said another. A beef-tartare tostada was bloody, the raw meat as sweet and juicy as fruit with a slight metallic tang. Its garnish of identifiable segments of toasted grasshopper was not for the faint of heart, but it rewarded the brave, with a flavor that went from nutty to bitter to honeyed.

Description of taste isn’t mentioned in Dora Zhang’s Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist Novel (2020). Zhang defines description as “a form of textual visualizing.” But description is much more than that. It’s a form of textual touching, smelling, tasting, and hearing, too. Today, I’ll focus on tasting. One of my favourite descriptions of taste is Bill Buford’s evocation of the flavor of a plate of pasta and clams, prepared in the Manhattan restaurant Babbo: 

This is what happened: Mark, having cooked up a large quantity of linguine for its regulation six minutes and thirty seconds, emptied it into a pan of New Zealand cockle-clams, sloppily dripping lots of that starchy water on them in the process, a big wet heap of pasta on top of several dozen shellfish. He swirled the pan, gave it a little flip, swirled it again, and then left it alone so that it could cook, bubbling away, for another half minute. (This was curious, I thought, watching him – you don’t normally leave a pan of pasta on the flattop.) Then he took a strand and tasted it. He gave me one. It was not what I expected. It was no longer linguine, exactly; it had changed color and texture and become something else. I tasted it again. This, I thought, is the equivalent of bread soaked in gravy. But what was the sauce? I looked at the pan: the cockle-clams had been all closed up a few minutes earlier, as they cooked their shells had opened, and as they opened they released the juices inside. That’s what I was tasting in this strand of linguine: an ocean pungency. “It’s about the sauce, not the little snot of meat in the shell,” Mario told me later. “No one is interested in the little snot of meat!”

What I learned in an Italian kitchen was that a meal is about the pasta, not the sauce. But here, in tasting this strand of linguine, I was discovering that it wasn’t about either the pasta or the sauce; it was about both, about the interaction between a pasta and a sauce, the result – this new thing, this highly flavored noodle – evocative of a childhood trip to the sea.

Pure poetry! It’s from Buford’s superb “The Pasta Station” (The New Yorker, September 6, 2004; included in his 2006 Heat). Again, as in Whitney Balliett's description of Elvin Jones’ drumming, quoted previously, the passage blends two kinds of description: action and taste. We see the dish being prepared; we taste the result: “an ocean pungency,” “evocative of a childhood trip to the sea.” 

Interesting Emendations: Bill Buford's "Good Bread"

Bill Buford’s "Good Bread" (April 13, 2020) is one of the most absorbing, entertaining, and beautifully written New Yorker pieces of the last ten years. It’s about his apprenticeship to a Lyon baker identified simply as “Bob.” There’s a version of it in Buford’s recent memoir Dirt (2020). It's interesting to compare them.

In “Good Bread,” Buford writes,

On Sundays, the baker, Bob, worked without sleep. Late-night carousers started appearing at three in the morning to ask for a hot baguette, swaying on tiptoe at a high ventilation window by the oven room, a hand outstretched with a euro coin. By nine, a line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people and from music being played at high volume. Everyone shouted to be heard—the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands. Everyone left with an armful and with the same look, suspended between appetite and the prospect of an appetite satisfied. It was a lesson in the appeal of good bread—handmade, aromatically yeasty, with a just-out-of-the-oven texture of crunchy air. This was their breakfast. It completed the week. This was Sunday in Lyon. 

In Dirt, this passage is longer and consists of two paragraphs:

On Sundays, the boulangerie belonged to Lyon, and Bob worked without sleep to feed it. Late-night carousers appeared at two in the morning to ask for a hot baguette, swaying on tiptoe at a high window by le fournil, the oven room, an arm outstretched, holding out a euro coin. By nine, there were so many people going in and out of the door that it never closed, the line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people, and from music (usually salsa) being played at high volume. (Bob fell in love with salsa, and then with Cuba, and then with a Cuban, his wife, Jacqueline.) Everyone shouted to be heard – the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands, all cash.

The crowd fascinated me, all strangers, everyone leaving with an armful and with the same look – suspended between appetite and the prospect of an appetite satisfied. I learned something, I got it, the appeal of a good bread – as I was able to find it here, just across the street from our apartment: handmade, aromatically yeasty, with a just-out-of-the-oven texture of crunchy air. No one lingered. This was their breakfast. It completed the week. This was Sunday.

The differences between these two passages fascinate me. Note the change from “three in the morning” to “two in the morning.” They both can’t be correct. Which one is accurate? I vote for the New Yorker version, because I know it’s undergone the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking process. Note also the extra detail in the New Yorker version about the window: it's a ventilation window. Note the additional “le fournil” in the Dirt passage. Note the change from “hand outstretched with a euro coin” to “arm outstretched, holding out a euro coin.” And then there’s the additional “there were so many people going in and out of the door that it never closed,” the parenthetical “Bob fell in love with salsa, and then with Cuba, and then with a Cuban, his wife, Jacqueline,” the “all in cash,” the “The crowd fascinated me, all strangers,” the “I learned something, I got it,” and the “as I was able to find it here, just across the street from our apartment” – all in Dirt. 

One of my favorite passages in “Good Bread” is the description of Bob and Buford making deliveries:

Bob drove fast, he talked fast, he parked badly. The first stop was L’Harmonie des Vins, on the Presqu’île, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said). Two owners were in the back, busy preparing for the lunch service but delighted by the sight of their bread guy, even though he came by every day at exactly this time. I was introduced, Bob’s new student, quick-quick, bag drop, kisses, out. Next: La Quintessence, a new restaurant (“Really good food,” Bob said, pumping his fist), husband and wife, one prep cook, frantic, but spontaneous smiles, the introduction, the bag drop, kisses, out. We crossed the Rhône, rolled up onto a sidewalk, and rushed out, Bob with one sack of bread, me with another, trying to keep up: Les Oliviers (“Exceptional food”—a double pump—“Michelin-listed but not pretentious”), young chef, tough-guy shoulders, an affectionate face, bag drop, high-fives, out.

Here’s the Dirt version:

He drove fast, he talked fast, he parked badly. The car, by force of habit, reminded him that he was late and put him in an instant accelerating delivery mode. L’Harmonie des Vins was the first stop , on the Presqu’ile, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said). Two owners were in the back, busy, preparing the lunch service, but delighted by the sight of their bread guy, as if a friend had popped by unexpectedly, even though he came by every day at exactly this time. I was introduced (“a journalist who is writing about me”), quick-quick, bag drop, kisses, out.

Next: La Quintessence, near the Rhône (narrow street, no place to park, so he hadn’t, cars backing up behind him, none of them honking), a new restaurant (“Really good food,” Bob said, pumping his fist), husband and wife, one prep cook, frantic, but spontaneous smiles, the introduction (“writing about me”), the bag drop, kisses, out. 

We crossed the Rhône, rolled up on to a sidewalk, and rushed out, Bob with one sack of bread, me with another, holding it between two arms like a hug, trying to keep up: L’Olivier (“Exceptional food – a double pump – “Michelin listed but not pretentious”), young chef, tough-guy shoulders, an affectionate face, even if too busy to smile, bag drop, high-fives, out.

Again, the Dirt version is longer, this time divided in three paragraphs. It contains eight additions: “The car, by force of habit, reminded him that he was late and put him in an instant accelerating delivery mode”; “as if a friend had popped by unexpectedly”; “(‘a journalist who is writing about me’)”; “near the Rhône (narrow street, no place to park, so he hadn’t, cars backing up behind him, none of them honking)”; “(‘writing about me’)”; “holding it between two arms like a hug”; and “even if too busy to smile.” 

One sentence in the “Good Bread” passage – “The first stop was L’Harmonie des Vins, on the Presqu’île, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said)” – is restructured in Dirt: “L’Harmonie des Vins was the first stop, on the Presqu’ile, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said).”

“Les Oliviers,” in “Good Bread,” is “L’Olivier” in Dirt. “Michelin-listed,” in “Good Bread” is “Michelin listed” in Dirt.

I find all these variations fascinating. Why? Because it shows that nothing in writing is absolute. There’s no one way to say anything. The writer is faced with dozens of choices every word of the way. Contrasting these two versions affords a glimpse of the writing process, or, perhaps more accurately, of the editorial process. My guess is that the Dirt version actually came first (even though it was published after “Good Bread” appeared in The New Yorker). The New Yorker’s editors took the Dirt version and subtly trimmed it. I confess I slightly prefer the more compact New Yorker piece. But I relish Dirt’s extra details, too. For example, that “holding it between two arms like a hug” is very fine, creating a vivid picture of the way Buford carried the sack of bread into L’Olivier. Or is it Les Oliviers? 

Best of 2020: Reporting Pieces

Photo by Paolo Pellegrin, from Ben Taub's "Five Oceans, Five Deeps"

Here are my favorite New Yorker reporting pieces of 2020 (with a choice quote from each in brackets):

1. Ben Taub’s “Five Oceans, Five Deeps,” May 18, 2020 (“Most submarines go down several hundred metres, then across; this one was designed to sink like a stone. It was the shape of a bulging briefcase, with a protruding bulb at the bottom. This was the pressure hull—a titanium sphere, five feet in diameter, which was sealed off from the rest of the submersible and housed the pilot and all his controls. Under the passenger seat was a tuna-fish sandwich, the pilot’s lunch. He gazed out of one of the viewports, into the blue. It would take nearly four hours to reach the bottom”).

2. “April 15, 2020,” May 4, 2020 (“As the sun came up, dully brightening the morning, it revealed that the day was ordinary and out of the ordinary at the same time. Figures appeared far apart on the boardwalk, each one alone, each making a different exercise motion. One was using a jump rope, another had two small dumbbells, and another a piece of pipe. Many wore masks. On the horizon to the left lay the narrow sand spit of the Rockaways, a stratum of pale-brown beach below a gray-green line of bushes and trees. To the right loomed the grayish point of Sandy Hook, in New Jersey. In between, a small boat motored slowly by, its wake as white as a bridal train. The ordinary-extraordinary day settled in and locked itself into place. The labyrinthine streets of Brighton Beach were so unbusy you could forget the sidewalks and wander in the middle of them anywhere. The whole city had become a waiting room”).

3. Alex Ross’s “The Bristlecones Speak,” January 20, 2020 (“Spears of dead wood jut into the air. The trunk is a marbled hulk stripped of bark, like driftwood thrown from a vanished ocean. A ribbon of live bark runs up one side, funnelling water and nutrients to clumps of green needles high above”).

4. Bill Buford’s “Good Bread," April 13, 2020 (“By nine, a line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people and from music being played at high volume. Everyone shouted to be heard—the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands”).

5. Burkhard Bilger’s “Building the Impossible,” November 30, 2020 (“Unlike the slide, which bullies through the apartment like a giant intestine, the staircase seems to crystallize the spaces it’s in. Built of white nanoglass—an opaque and extremely hard synthetic stone—it twists up through the building in precisely organized shards, offering sudden glimpses through the rooms unfolding around it”).

6. Vinson Cunningham’s “Eightyish,” April 13, 2020 (“Outside, I imagine that each stranger’s head is crowned by a saint’s halo of fatal droplets, waiting to surf on one of my breaths into my body and cut through my lungs like a spray of glass”).

7. Jonathan Blitzer’s “Juan Sanabria,” April 20, 2020 (“He’d been among the first fatalities. ‘Was he the eleventh person who died? I was trying to figure out if he was the tenth or the eleventh,’ Comerford told me. ‘That made this whole thing very real. Before, the deaths were just statistics. Knowing that one of them was Juan, it gave the thing a face’”).

8. Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Independent People,” June 8 & 15, 2020 (“That evening, the weather was clear and cool—by New York standards, too cool to eat outside, by Reykjavík standards balmy. The outdoor cafés were crowded. Restaurants had been asked to arrange their tables to keep groups two metres apart, but some diners, I noticed, had pushed the tables closer together. Everyone was talking and laughing, masklessly. The scene was completely ordinary, which is to say now exotic—just people meeting up with friends for dinner. For a traveller these days, this might be an even better draw, I thought, than glaciers or whale-watching”).

9. Luke Mogelson’s “The Uprising,” June 22, 2020 (“Barricades around the four surrounding blocks impeded traffic and law enforcement. The sidewalk outside the Cup Foods grocery store—where an employee had called the police after suspecting George Floyd of using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill—was buried under bouquets, mementos, and homemade cards. Activists delivered speeches between the gas pumps at a filling station; messages in chalk—“fight back,” “stay woke”—covered the street”).

10. Dana Goodyear’s “From the Ground Up,” October 12, 2020 (“The walls are made from elongated quartzite bricks, with gray-scale variations reminiscent of the larchwood slats of his atelier. Open seams in the ceiling allow sunlight to enter in ghostly lines—some defining an alternative volume within the space, others fanning out like an annunciation. A brass spout funnels water from the source, St. Petersquelle, into a brass basin with cups attached by chains. In one secluded pool, swimming around a corner reveals a chamber where the human voice harmonizes with the room so that humming creates a glorious Gregorian echo”). 

2020 Year in Review

Illustration by Min Heo, from newyorker.com

Let’s begin with a drink. I’ll have one of those Root of All Beers that Hannah Goldfield mentions in her “Tables For Two: The HiHi Room” (January 20, 2020). It “mixes a licorice-and-sarsaparilla witch’s brew with rye, vermouth, and honey.” Take a little sip. Ah, that's fucking wicked! Just what the doctor ordered. 

Okay, down to business. What to make of this year’s run of New Yorkers? Well, there was a hell of lot written about Trump. I skipped most of it. There was a hell of a lot written about the pandemic. I read every word. Best pandemic piece? No contest: “April 15, 2020” (May 4, 2020) – a brilliant mosaic portrait of twenty-four hours in the life of New York City as it struggles to deal with the pandemic, written by twenty-five New Yorker reporters and illustrated (in the online version) by seventeen photographers. Sample: 

As the sun came up, dully brightening the morning, it revealed that the day was ordinary and out of the ordinary at the same time. Figures appeared far apart on the boardwalk, each one alone, each making a different exercise motion. One was using a jump rope, another had two small dumbbells, and another a piece of pipe. Many wore masks. On the horizon to the left lay the narrow sand spit of the Rockaways, a stratum of pale-brown beach below a gray-green line of bushes and trees. To the right loomed the grayish point of Sandy Hook, in New Jersey. In between, a small boat motored slowly by, its wake as white as a bridal train. The ordinary-extraordinary day settled in and locked itself into place. The labyrinthine streets of Brighton Beach were so unbusy you could forget the sidewalks and wander in the middle of them anywhere. The whole city had become a waiting room.

  

But great as it is, “April 15, 2020” is not this year’s most memorable piece. That honour belongs to Ben Taub’s extraordinary “Five Oceans, Five Deeps” (May 18, 2020). An account of an exploration team that builds an amazing one-of-a-kind submersible, named the Limiting Factor, and pilots it to the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean trenches, it brims with superb description and arresting details (e.g., “Now, as snow blew sideways in the darkness and the wind, he threw a grappling hook over the South Sandwich Trench and caught a lander thrashing in the waves”). In my review of it, when it first appeared, I said, 

Reading “Five Oceans, Five Deeps,” I was in awe of the way Taub put me right there with Vescovo inside the Limiting Factor as he explores the bottom of, first, the Puerto Rico Trench, then the South Sandwich Trench, then the Java Trench, then the Mariana Trench, and, finally, Molloy Hole, in the Arctic. It’s an epic journey. I enjoyed it immensely.

Another piece I enjoyed enormously is Curtis Sittenfeld’s short story “A for Alone” (November 2, 2020), about an artist named Irene who’s doing a project on the so-called Billy Graham/Mike Pence rule that if you’re a married man, you don’t spend time alone with another woman. The project involves inviting men to lunch, asking them to fill out a handwritten questionnaire, and taking a Polaroid photo of them. This project flares into an affair with one of Irene’s interview subjects, a geologist named Jack (“Man No. 6”). 

I devoured this story. It intrigued me; it excited me; and I found myself mirroring off the character Jack. Does the story prove the rule's validity? Maybe, but it also shows it to be, as Jack says, “so depressingly heteronormative.” The piece abounds with wonderful lines. I think my favorite is “She wants his questionnaire to impart some central truth, to give her closure, and, while it’s nice, the niceness pales in comparison with what he said moments after filling it out—‘It’s you specifically’—or the many ardent declarations of devotion in the months that followed.” Sittenfeld’s return to Jack’s questionnaire after the affair suddenly ends is inspired. The whole story is inspired – one of the best I’ve read in a long time.

Other highlights: Bill Buford’s “Good Bread” (April 13, 2020); Alex Ross’s “The Bristlecones Speak” (January 20, 2020); Burkhard Bilger’s “Building the Impossible” (November 30, 2020) – all crazy good! But that’s enough for now. Over the next few days, I’ll roll out my “Top Ten” lists - my way of paying tribute to the pieces I relished most. Thank you, New Yorker, for helping me get through this insane year. I propose a toast. Here’s to you, New Yorker, you gorgeous creature. I love you. 

Bread, Bread, Bread

Leo Espinosa's illustration for Bill Buford's "Good Bread"

Reading Bill Buford’s “Good Bread” (April 13, 2020), I recalled two other excellent New Yorker “bread” pieces: Lauren Collins’ “Bread Winner” (December 3, 2012) and Adam Gopnik’s “Bread and Women” (November 4, 2013). It’s interesting to compare them.

Buford’s “Good Bread” is about his apprenticeship to a Lyon bread maker identified simply as “Bob.” Here’s his description of Bob’s boulangerie:

By nine, a line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people and from music being played at high volume. Everyone shouted to be heard—the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands. Everyone left with an armful and with the same look, suspended between appetite and the prospect of an appetite satisfied. It was a lesson in the appeal of good bread—handmade, aromatically yeasty, with a just-out-of-the-oven texture of crunchy air. This was their breakfast. It completed the week. This was Sunday in Lyon.

Collins’ “Bread Winner” profiles Apollonia Poilâne, “C.E.O. of the company that for eight decades has made Paris’s most celebrated bread.” Collins says of Poilâne,

Thin, pale, and refined, Apollonia—more of a baguette of a woman than a miche—is a formidable presence. She dispenses her opinions with the peremptory air of a mother-in-law giving child-care advice. She makes recommendations with the efficient gravity of a doctor writing a prescription. Still, she projects a mixture of innocence and experience. Her eyes are often hooded, from fatigue, but so are her sweatshirts. “I have a very instinctive and simple approach to bread,” she told me. “My philosophy is a small array of breads, each with its own use. I do not believe in making one bread with hazelnuts, one with almonds, and one with cumin, just for the hell of it.” Her other prejudices include breads that contain meats (“doughy and nasty”), breads that contain cheeses (“frivolous”), breads that contain novelty ingredients, such as algae (“not very relevant”), “organic” breads (“I don’t believe in paying money to some guy sitting behind a desk to certify something, when my father and grandfather before me were working very closely with their suppliers to make sure there were as few pesticides as possible”), panini (“pointless”), bakeries that sell soda (“drives me nuts”), and the French habit of eating foie gras with gingerbread (“fucking disgusting”).

Gopnik’s “Bread and Women” tells about a weekend he spent with his mother, learning how to bake bread. He says,

As we mixed and kneaded, the comforting sounds of my childhood reasserted themselves: the steady hum of the powerful electric mixer my mother uses, the dough hook humming and coughing as it turned, and, in harmony with it, the sound of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the background, offering its perpetual mixture of grave-sounding news and bright-sounding Baroque music. (A certain kind of Canadian keeps the CBC on from early morning to bedtime, indiscriminately.)

All three of these pieces are wonderfully evocative. For example, here’s Buford’s account of accompanying Bob on one of his delivery rounds:

Bob drove fast, he talked fast, he parked badly. The first stop was L’Harmonie des Vins, on the Presqu’île, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said). Two owners were in the back, busy preparing for the lunch service but delighted by the sight of their bread guy, even though he came by every day at exactly this time. I was introduced, Bob’s new student, quick-quick, bag drop, kisses, out. Next: La Quintessence, a new restaurant (“Really good food,” Bob said, pumping his fist), husband and wife, one prep cook, frantic, but spontaneous smiles, the introduction, the bag drop, kisses, out. We crossed the Rhône, rolled up onto a sidewalk, and rushed out, Bob with one sack of bread, me with another, trying to keep up: Les Oliviers (“Exceptional food”—a double pump—“Michelin-listed but not pretentious”), young chef, tough-guy shoulders, an affectionate face, bag drop, high-fives, out.

Here’s Collins’ description of Poilâne’s manufactory:

A baker was sliding a batch of pale miches into the oven with a wooden paddle the length of an oar. He and his apprentice wore canvas shoes, white shorts, and white T-shirts. They looked like tennis pros. The air was warm, with a breakfasty smell. The oven roared. To make the loaves, the bakers had churned flour, water, and salt in a mechanical mixer. (It’s like a KitchenAid, but many times larger.) After letting the dough rise in a wooden box, they shaped it by hand, then let it rest a second time. Finally, the master baker used a razor blade to score the top of each loaf with the signature “P.” (The practice, known as “docking,” insures that the loaf doesn’t burst while it’s baking.)

And here’s Gopnik’s description of bread dough's feel:

I was taken by the plasticity of every sort of dough, its way of being pliable to your touch and then springy—first merging into your hands and then stretching and resisting, oddly alive, as though it had a mind of its own, the collective intelligence of all those little bugs. Bread dough isn’t like dinner food, which usually rests inert under the knife and waits for you to do something to it: bread dough sits there, respiring and rising, thinking things over.

You can tell from the sensuousness of their descriptions that all three of these writers love bread. Buford says of a roll he’s served at Boulangerie Vincent in Le Bourget-du-Lac:

It had the flavors that I had tasted at breakfast. I asked for another roll, broke it open, and stuck my nose into la mie, the crumb—Frederick’s routine. It smelled of yeast and oven-caramelized aromas, and of something else, an evocative fruitiness. I closed my eyes. Bob.

Collins says of Poilâne’s signature loaf: 

A Poilâne miche brings to mind something with which a troubadour might have sopped up broth at a medieval tavern. It reverberates in the mouth for a few seconds after you’ve swallowed it, as though the taste buds were strings.

Gopnik describes the smell of baking bread:

Then, there are the smells. There’s the beery, yeast-release aroma that spreads around the kitchen, the slowly exuding I’m-on-my-way smell of the rising loaf, and the intensifying fresh-bread smell that comes from the oven as it bakes. The deepest sensual pleasure of bread occurs not when tasting but when slicing, cutting into softness that has suddenly gained structure: the pile of yeasty dough, after its time in the hot oven, turned into a little house, with a crisp solid roof and a yielding interior of inner space. 

Mmm, so good! These three “bread” pieces are double bliss: the subject is delicious; the writing is divine.

April 13, 2020 Issue

There’s an abundance of great writing in this week’s issue. Samples:

The Navy hospital ship Comfort went under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge at about nine-twenty last Monday morning. Trucks on the bridge blew long blasts of welcome on their horns. The ship appeared suddenly in the overcast day as if out of nowhere; the medical-clinic white of her hull and superstructure blended in with the sea and the sky. In Von Briesen Park, on Staten Island, ship-watchers had set up cameras on tripods six feet or more apart on a bluff overlooking the Narrows. The MarineTraffic mobile app told them what time the ship would arrive. Four McAllister tugboats awaited the Comfort just north of the bridge, their bows pointing toward her. As she passed, they swung around and escorted her in. Another tug, carrying film crews, veered among a wider entourage of police and Coast Guard boats, and private craft practicing police-enforced nautical distancing, all under a small, hovering flock of helicopters. [“Ian Frazier, “Bringing in the Comfort”]

We moved on, put the car in Park, and scrutinized the kit’s simple instructions as if our lives depended on them. My wife swabbed her mouth and sealed the test stick in a tube—not as simple as it sounds: the stick was too long and had to be broken on the edge of the tube, but it was yoga-ishly bendy rather than brittle—before sealing the tube in a plastic bag, which she then sealed in a bubble-wrap bag before returning it to the box. We crawled forward, broke the seal on the window, and tossed the box into a blue bin indicated by a final hazmat-suited sentinel, who waved us on. We drove out past the huge and patient cemetery. All the time in the world, it seemed, resided there. The sky was its usual expectant blue. [Geoff Dyer, “Home Alone Together”]

By nine, a line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people and from music being played at high volume. Everyone shouted to be heard—the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands. [Bill Buford, “Good Bread”]

Later that afternoon, I think, although it might have been the next day, I walked with my wife down Flatbush Avenue, toward her mom’s house, where we’d pick up some packages and wave hello. It’s normally a twenty-five-­minute walk, but now it seemed interminable. Walking outside these days requires too much geometry, too much spatial intel­ligence. Older men, apparently untroubled by the dictates of distancing, were seated, as they always are, at folding tables and on the hoods of sedans. They played cards, made jokes, drank from Styrofoam cups, blasted music. I toggled swiftly between annoyance at how they clogged the sidewalk, concern for their health, and then—probably foremost—envy at what looked like a good time. We took sweeping, parabolic detours around their tight huddles, sometimes slipping between parked cars and walking in the street. One persistent, petty worry is how much of a dweeb I feel like when I’m thinking about infectious disease. [Vinson Cunningham, “Eightyish”]

When I rode my bike down Regent Street’s dramatic curve on the afternoon of Sunday, March 22nd, all the stores were shuttered. Apart from a couple of guys in track pants eying the Rolex display at Mappin & Webb, the upscale jewelry store, the sidewalks were empty. We’re accustomed to reach for the phrase “post-apocalyptic” to describe an urban landscape devoid of life, and the Christian preacher with the microphone and the amp who was haranguing an almost deserted Piccadilly Circus added to the dystopian atmosphere. [Rebecca Mead, “Avenue of Superfluities”]

This week’s New Yorker also contains several wonderful illustrations, including this one by Leo Espinosa for Bill Buford’s “Good Bread”:

Granta's Great "Journeys" Issue

I’m enjoying the hell out of Granta’s “Journeys” issue (Winter 2017). It poses the question, “Is travel writing dead?” and provides responses from thirteen writers, including New Yorker contributors Geoff Dyer and Samanth Subramanian.

Subramanian, in his reply, calls travel writing “the most fundamental kind of literary work.” I agree, especially if a broad definition of the genre is adopted, e.g., Bill Buford’s “pre-eminently a narrative told in the first person, authenticated by lived experience” (“Editorial,” Granta 10: Travel Writing, 1983).

One of the most interesting responses is Colin Thubron’s. He says travel writing contains a vital ingredient that computer programs like Google Earth can't substitute for, namely, “experience on the ground, the traveller’s raw intimacy with the sensuous texture of place: its smells and tastes, its street life and conversation.”

That’s what I hunger for, not just in travel writing, but in all writing – “experience on the ground,” “raw intimacy with the sensuous texture of place.” Classic New Yorker examples of it are John McPhee’s “Coming into the Country” (June 13, 20 & 27, 1977) and Ian Frazier’s “Great Plains” (February 13, 20 & 27, 1989).  

Culinary Quests

In conjunction with The New Yorker’s launch of its new Food & Travel Issue this week, the magazine’s online Archive spotlights eight classic New Yorker “culinary journey” pieces: Susan Orlean’s "The Homesick Restaurant" (January 15, 1996); Calvin Trillin’s "Where's Chang?" (March 1, 2010); Adam Gopnik’s "Sweet Revolution" (January 3, 2011); Elif Batuman’s "The Memory Kitchen" (April 9, 2010); Bill Buford’s "Extreme Chocolate" (October 29, 2007); Kelefa Sanneh’s "Sacred Grounds" (November 21, 2011); Jane Kramer’s "Spice Routes" (September 3, 2007); and Dana Goodyear’s "The Missionary" (January 30, 2012).

I relish “culinary journey” writing, particularly a subcategory I call “culinary quests,” in which the writer searches for, say, the perfect pumpernickel bagel (Calvin Trillin’s "The Magic Bagel," March 20, 2000), or a golden-brown Baumkuchen baked the traditional way (Mimi Sheraton’s "Spit Cake," November 23, 2009). My favorite New Yorker “culinary quest” piece is Molly O’Neill’s wonderful "Home For Dinner" (July 23, 2001), a “Letter From Cambodia,” in which O’Neill superbly describes Le Cirque chef Sottha Khunn’s return to his hometown, Siem Reap, to learn how to make the one quintessential Cambodian dish – “sea bass steamed over a broth of lemongrass and galangal (a gingerlike root), thickened with butter and enlivened with chopped tomatoes, chives, and basil” – that has always frustrated him (“He worked and reworked the dish, and it earned him critical praise, but he felt that some minute calibration between sweet and sour continued to elude him. ‘Not yet the perfect balance, the sensation that lets the customer taste the world as I taste it,’ he said”).

“Home For Dinner” ’s tagline (“A leading chef tries to reconcile himself to the past with one perfect meal”) neatly captures the story’s essence. If you enjoy culinary quests, as I do, you’ll likely devour Molly O’Neill’s great “Home For Dinner.”

Credit: The above photo by Hans Gissinger is from Mimi Sheraton’s "Spit Cake" (The New Yorker, November 23, 2009).

Interesting Emendations: Bill Buford's "The Pasta Station"

Mmm. It’ll soon be time for the appearance of my favorite thematic issue of the magazine – The Food Issue. It usually comes out around this time each year. In anticipation, just to whet my appetite, I went back and reread one of the all-time great "Food Issue” pieces: Bill Buford’s "The Pasta Station" (The New Yorker, September 6, 2004). It’s a funny, wonderful account of Buford’s experience working the pasta station at Mario Batali’s Babbo. One passage I really like contains a beautiful parenthesis. It occurs during Buford’s description of his experience making orecchiette for the first time. Buford says orecchiette “is regarded as one of the easiest pastas to make.” He describes rolling it out by hand “until it looks like a white tube.” He continues:

You then chop the tube into bite-size segments and crush each segment on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb, and, like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape under the pressure: when you remove it, it has ridges underneath and, on top, it’s shaped like an ear (unless it was one that I had to peel off my thumb that first day, in which case the ridges looked like a tic-tac-toe board, because I invariably had to do the thing twice, and wasn’t able to line it up correctly the second time, and the ear was all large and distorted, a floppy flap of dough, more like a cartoon elephant’s ear than a normal ear, because my hands had got so clammy from the anxiety of finally making pasta that it wouldn’t come off my thumb).

Just for the heck of it, I compared this passage with the version Buford included in his book Heat (2006). Here’s the book version:

You then chop the tube into bite-size segments and crush each one on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb. Like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape under the pressure and when it’s removed it has ridges underneath and is shaped like an ear (unless it’s like the one I peeled off my thumb that first day, in which case the ridges looked like a tic-tac-toe board, because I invariably had to do the thing twice, and wasn’t able to line it up correctly the second time, and the ear was all large and distorted, a floppy flap of dough, more like a cartoon elephant’s ear than a normal ear, because my hands were so clammy from the excitement of my finally making pasta that the damn thing wouldn’t come off my thumb).

The two versions are similar, but there are some interesting differences. For example, in the magazine version all the action (chopping, crushing), plus the “child’s magic trick” comparison, together with the long parenthesis illustrating how complicated the seemingly simple orecchiette-making process can be in novice hands, flows together in one sentence; whereas in the book version, the chopping and crushing are situated in a sentence of their own, and a new sentence containing the “child’s magic trick” analogy and the breathless parenthesis has been created. Also, note the change from “each segment” (in the magazine version) to “each one” (in the book version). Note also the change from “you” (“when you remove it”), in the magazine, to “it” (“when it’s removed”), in the book. And note also the additional bit of description “on top,” regarding the location of the ear-shape, in the magazine version. Perhaps the most interesting difference is the change from “clammy from anxiety” (in the magazine) to “clammy from excitement” in the book. Are any of the changes made in the book an improvement on what appeared in The New Yorker? I would have to say no. I like the way the “and” works in the magazine version to enact the magic of the process; it’s like “you crush each segment on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb, and voilà, like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape.” I prefer the use of “segment” rather than “one,” even though it’s a repetition; “segment” sounds more precise than the generic “one.” I prefer the second person “you” to the third person “it”; it seems to me “you” more directly engages the reader. Finally, I think clammy hands are more consistent with anxiety than with excitement, and that the whole passage is funnier when you think of someone suffering anxiety as a result of “finally making pasta.” The Heat version of "The Pasta Station" (included in the chapter called “Line Cook”) differs from the magazine piece in numerous other respects. And in every instance, I find the magazine version preferable. The only way to account for the superiority of The New Yorker piece is, in my opinion, to credit the work of the magazine's editorial staff in helping Buford fine-tune what's turned out to be a Food Issue classic.