Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

I again had the duck in sauce gastrique. My wife had pigeon accompanied by the best vegetable I’ve ever tasted: brunoise of vegetables braised with a whole black truffle, mixed with bacon and served with foie gras on top. Now that’s what I call vegetarian food.

I was feeling wonderful. And then the cheese tray screeched to a halt in front of us. I frantically waved it away, but my wife insisted. She made her selections, which squandered fourteen minutes. I got my cheese quickly because I remembered what the captain had said to her and didn’t ask him to repeat everything. I don’t like to brag, but I appear to be the only American who can do that.

The cheeses were magnificent, especially the Fourme d’Ambert, a sweet-tart blue cheese I’d not tasted before; a beautifully balanced Epoisses still a few days away from insanity; and an impeccable Explo-rateur. Afterward, I was suitably ungrateful. I told the captain that if this had been a dinner for ten and everybody had required fourteen minutes to select cheese, we would not have begun eating them until two hours and twenty minutes had passed.

He thought that sounded wonderful.

“That way they would be very hungry,” he said. “Imagine how much they would have enjoyed the cheese.”

GQ, june 1997

D A I R Y Q U E E N S

When New Yorkers walk into Leo’s Latticini, a tiny, provolone-scented food shop in the Corona section of Queens, they no longer act like New Yorkers.

Cops stand patiently in line, caps tipped back on their heads, gobbling samples of mozzarella. The moment they taste the freshly made cheese handed over the counter by Carmela Lamorgese, Irene DeBenedittis, or Marie DeBenedittis, the three women my wife nicknamed the Mozzarella Sisters back when we lived in nearby Forest Hills, they smile and cease looking at civilians suspiciously. The Miranda warning, their favorite poetry, stops echoing in their heads.

Firemen double-park hook-and-ladders out front on 104th Street and walk in wearing their funny rubber suits. They’ve come straight from a Queens emergency run, having saved a family of twelve immigrants trapped in a one-bedroom apartment that burned because of faulty wiring installed by a landlord who had illegally converted a one-family home into a miniature apartment building. Their harrowing rescue behind them, they grab a Mama’s Special—an Italian sub made with fresh mozzarella—and begin eating even before they’re out the door.

I’m not sure I understand what happens to customers who enter Leo’s—or Mama’s, as it’s often called. Perhaps it’s the cheese, softer and sweeter than mozzarella made anywhere else, but I believe an undeniable cause of the transformation is the exceptional kindness of the sisters and their mother. Leo’s Latticini (latticini are dairy products) is a 2 7 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

showcase of Old World virtues and familial affection. It is magical, the kind of shop travelers hope to stumble upon in some remote Italian village, yet it’s only a half-hour from Manhattan on the number 7 subway line.

Whenever I’m under the influence of the Mozzarella Sisters, I possess no free will. I always drive there clearheaded and purposeful, my mission to purchase a few supplemental groceries for the household—a pound or so of mozzarella, a jar of meaty olives from Cerig-nola, a liter of olive oil from Puglia, a bit of scamorza (a mozzarella-like cheese perfect for melting), a tub of roasted peppers marinated in garlic and olive oil, maybe a container of ravioli in Marie’s fragrant tomato sauce. (It’s the only pasta dish I know that’s sublime when reheated the next day.)

What actually occurs on these visits is that Irene takes over and demands that I eat a complete lunch. I do so in about two minutes, while I am waiting for my purchases to be bagged. She thrusts a fistful of mozzarella at me, followed by a small plate of Marie’s extra-creamy chicken salad, and finally an ingot-size hunk of provolone cut from one of the 75-to-100-pound dirigibles from Calabria that hang from the ceiling.

Sometimes Irene forces me to stuff the provolone in my mouth before I’ve finished the chicken salad, but I’m comforted by the presence of so many police cars and fire engines encircling the premises.

They’re manned by public servants trained to provide emergency resus-citation to citizens who eat too fast. I find that requesting permission to chew my food properly is counterproductive, because then Irene gets angry and accuses me of not liking the food. “When we yell at the customers, it’s because we treat them like family,” she explains.

I always try to make it to Leo’s on Thursday, the only day Marie makes her roast pork, and thus the only time all week that her sub stuffed with pork and fresh mozzarella, then lavished with gravy, is available. I am unable to look at a calendar and see Thursday approaching without trying to find a way to take the day off so I can drive to Queens. The outrageously savory pork seems to have hints of rosemary, F O R K I T O V E R

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but Marie refuses to divulge the recipe, and the gravy is of a sort that no longer exists, dark and salty and tasting of pork drippings, gravy from a long-ago time when gravies did not come from cans.

Although I occasionally become giddy with anticipation, awaiting the arrival of Thursdays, the other days of the week have their virtues (except for Sunday and Monday, when the shop is closed). Roast beef and Vir-ginia ham are both once-a-week items. Mama’s Special, the best sub in the city, is available daily. The roast turkey with gravy is on the menu every day as well, and I have to admit it is almost as profound as the roast pork. Wednesday isn’t too bad, either, since that is meatball day.

Marie’s have the weight of puffs