The Obsessions Issue: 2018
Obsessions come in varying degrees throughout our lives. I was once hung up on chicken tenders—for an entire childhood summer, I ordered nothing else on the menu. Then, my junior year of high school, the humble baked potato drew my idée fixe at the dinner table.
And for most of my adolescence, my struggle with disordered eating made me a highly neurotic and duplicitious calorie calculator—embarrassed by my self hatred, I brown-bagged my SlimFast shakes at school so no one would know, and at home I became so obsessed with sticking to my all-natural homemade smoothie diet that I piously told everyone I was on a long-term religious fast.
Obsessed chefs, artists, inventors? They monastically toil while we sleep, working at the bee in their bonnet, and in doing so they often improve the lives of others. It can also be debilitating, driving some to mania and distancing them from those in their lives who can’t understand their all-encompassing mindset.
In this issue, Giulia Pines explores the documentarian obsession of The German-Jewish Cookbook authors Gabrielle Rosmmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman, digging deep to honor their roots. Pines said, “To be part of the Jewish diaspora, we are told, is always to be longing for the Jewish homeland.” And of the Gropmans, “Yet here was one right in front of their eyes, hitting their taste buds, wafting into their noses as they sat down around the family table, alive, finally able to thrive, and finally home.”
In Dan Dao’s look at Long Island City’s ice gods, we see what beauty can come from giving yourself over fully to your craft. “I don’t really want to be involved in mediocrity,” as the proprietor-bartender behind Hundredweight Ice and Dutch Kills Bar, Richard “Richie” Boccato says. The big square cubes and perfectly formed highball spears made at the ice shop are painstakingly crafted, and cocktail drinkers across the city are all the happier for it.
When I first spoke to Pat Butera about his fishing charter business in Rockaway and he said, “I’m married to this boat,” I knew that his single-mindedness would translate perfectly to the theme of Obsessions.
The way our first-person Backburner section explores obsession is about finding the perfect tortilla—visiting tortilleria after tortilleria, and pressing masa ball after masa ball in her Victoria press in a calm, dogged journey to get it just as good as Elizabeth Sile knows it can be, like at her favorite, Tortilleria Nixtamal in Corona.
The new iteration of The Astor Room, George’s at Kaufman Studios in Astoria, is a detailed homage to Hollywood’s Marx Brothers–era heyday, featuring Prohibition-era cocktails and dishes inspired by glamorous stars of yesteryear (until recently, Groucho Marx’s favorite meal graced the menu: New England clam chowder with animal crackers). And in Flushing, Carson Yiu and Neal Syham are earnest in their fight to bring healthier cuisine to their community through fresh, Filipino-(and other Queens cuisines)-inspired lunch dishes at Ok Lah!
In a slightly different take on our usual In the Kitchen with stories, I profiled the unofficial King of Queens, Joe DiStefano, and his longtime collaborator Clay Williams photographed him in his favorite restaurant kitchens around the borough. It’s an attempt to look closer at the man who eats, sleeps and breathes seemingly nothing but balut, papadum and tlayudas.
And there is so much more herein!
Thank you, as always, for reading along with us.
Hundredweight Ice | @hundredweightice
Dutch Kills Bar | @dutchkillsbar
Tortilleria Nixtamal | @tortillerianixtamal
George’s at Kaufman Studios in Astoria | @georgesatkaufman
Ok Lah! | @oklahnyc
