I was watching a great cooking contest on Netflix as I love to do. The new Iron Chef is a rigid, glossy reboot of a classic concept. The Kitchen Stadium is a dream factory that I wish I had to host my barbecues and game nights. The challengers stand their work against gourmands with French training and plenty stripes. We’re talking franchise-builders and household names versus soon-to-be millionaire chefs. The whole exercise can degrade an average home cook like me but I know it’s meant to inspire.
Then, because social media has a grip on me, I scrolled videos. There was a widespread one of a white guy, new to New York, insulting bodegas. After searching for “supermarkets” on Google, he’d toured several of the pinned locations. They were corner stores, bodegas, and other “shops.” They’re the lifeblood of our city. The writer John DeVore has a great piece about them on his blog. No-frills coffee that tastes like Tuesday. Bacon-egg-and-cheese fried any way you want it (including with a honey bun). But the video guy felt betrayed by a store with diapers, tampons, paper towels, foil, chips, Ramens, eggs, and deli meats. He felt entitled to more which says a lot about what he’s used to having more of.
I started to think of my first romances with bodegas. I was in junior high at Hudde, a school south enough of my neighborhood to serve a pocket of Russian descendants. There was a better education beyond our avenue so I walked the 20 blocks there with my friends daily. We each had a couple bucks to go to the corner store after school. More like a buck for me. But wow, what that dollar could do in a mid-90s store run was a coup for a hungry, lip-smacking 11-year-old. I wore a pullover hoodie in the fall with a front pocket that doubled as a napkin. My chip-greased hands snatched out onion rings, a “quarter water,” some Lay’s or Doritos, and a five-cent mint for palate and breath-cleansing. That gave me 20 cents to spare. Or sometimes, I’d get two bags of chips, at 25 cents apiece, and a 50-cent soda. The myriad options among primally bright plastics assaulted the unformed taste buds. They instilled saline and saccharine addictions before I tasted my first tongue kiss. On the walk home, a black plastic bag toted snacks while we crunched through conversations about girls or the white stuff in Mr. DeGange’s beard…
