the great baguette and cheese day
an ode to melty brie, welcome to Bite into this
You can blame Drew B. (a friend of the newsletter) for this missive you are about to receive, and any that follow. I feel a bit ridiculous writing about food to you all, but we’re going for it because at some point I must actually bite into this thing I’ve been saying I want to try for years (food pun not intended, but now I’m keeping it), and also because today, I’m battling an overpowering food memory that also constitutes a very short letter of recommendation.
The day after the Pride Parade in 2019, I wandered around Capitol Hill with a friend equally new to D.C. and ended up at Eastern Market in the height of summer glory. We were both in one of those moods where an unexpected outdoor flea will prompt you to spend lots of money. Memorable purchases from that day include: a pair of silver earrings my mother still wears ($10) and an old map of Athens that said-friend just framed for her wall (also about $10), three years later.
She sent me a picture of the newly-framed map yesterday. We were trying to recall buying that map, and we both immediately remembered the “great baguette and cheese day.” That day was hot, and the shopping spree was so unexpected, that by the time we made it inside the actual market, we were a bit hallucinatory.
These days at Eastern Market, I stare longingly at the cheese counter and then walk past, intimidated by the idea of having to pick a cheese I don’t recognize and turned off by paying at least $30/pound. (Recently I took a man on a date there and was so overwhelmed and nervous that we lasted about five minutes and left with hoagies.)
But on this gleeful day in 2019, we found ourselves best friends with the man behind the counter, sampling brie after goat after blue with total abandon. I think that man might have been in love with the way we were eating his cheese. I think I was in love with him. I have no memory of why we decided to buy a particularly massive chunk of totally luscious, melts-upon-contact-with-air Brie (imo, the sign of a really good Brie is that it starts to liquidate the second it’s loosed from the plastic), but we wandered out of there with the cheese and a baguette in a bit of a daze.
For anyone who’s been to Eastern Market, you’ll remember that there are steps that lead into the doorways of little shops and townhouses on several sides. You’re definitely not supposed to sit on people’s doorsteps and rip chunks of bread and dripping cheese and stuff it in your faces, but I would recommend trying it.
l also don’t think there’s a better way to eat really good cheese. You don’t need a schmancy wooden board, or other cheeses to compare it to, or meat or crackers or honey. Really good cheese is made better only by a loaf of crusty bread, ideally torn by your hands. Utensils or napkins should not play a role in this experience. Wine is unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong — this particular friend and I have also been known to eat entire meals off of charcuterie boards intended for eight-ten people and washed down with a bottle of red each. But there’s something different about allowing yourself to eat a comically large amount of expensive cheese in the middle of the street.
So I’ve written about this day in 2019 as the first (and quite possibly the last) food newsletter thing I’m trying because it’s a memory that has come back to me so many times over the last few years that it needed to be put down. Future iterations of this newsletter might include just a paragraph. I might write about the delicious but also objectively gross meals I cook when I’m alone (sardines, baby!!), or maybe I’ll share the lists of bars and restaurants I religiously update and dole out whenever someone needs a place for their parents, a place for a date, or a place for an underage brother to get drunk. I’ll definitely be writing a review of the $3.50 cheesecake slices at Safeway. Another friend of this newsletter Maggie tells me that my mother’s pancake recipe would be doing the world a service. Who knows.
Thanks for being my first readers ever :) And please share if you like this!
Restaurant notes this week
(playing with the idea of making this a recurring feature, lmk if it’s useful!)
Classy bar: The Cellar. Admo. Bartenders who know. Worth the many $$$. Under the Imperial, dark and moody
Neighborhood restaurant with impeccable vibes: Capa Tosta, Italian, Columbia Heights. Cute! Handmade pasta. $$
