Memory Palace
in which I reboot and begin again
WELL HI HELLO THERE! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Thanks for sticking with me— I started this newsletter at the very beginning of the pandemic, when I was bored and homesick and longing for the restaurant community that I love so much. Things have changed! I’m very proud to say that while I’m still cooking at a restaurant, I have also developed a series of freelance recipe writing/development/testing gigs, truly a dream come true. Freelance work is scary and exhilarating and frustrating and empowering and I think I love it. I always love hard things. So that’s a bit of an explanation why you haven’t seen so much from me on this space lately, but I’ll add that this year has been a particular motherfucker and just now do I feel like I have the mental energy to pick my head up and breathe a little.
Because I’m doing so much recipe development for like, actual money these days, I’d like to shift the format of this newsletter a little. I’ll still be talking about food and I’ll still be bitching about restaurants, but I’m going to use this space as a place for some more exploratory food writing. I’m not finding much of a market for the type of lyrical, loopy stuff coming out of my brain at the moment, so this will become a practice space, a sounding board. Not a fan? Not a problem. Go ahead and smash that unsubscribe button, I won’t be offended. Huge fan? Also an editor at a publication? HIRE ME. As always, I appreciate you reading this, and I love to hear your feedback. Hit me up in the comments!
I went back to Philadelphia this month for my friend Lori’s memorial. I’ve been back to Philly a lot this summer, dealing with a devastating family tragedy, but this is the first time I went by myself with the freedom and flexibility to actually enjoy the city that I love so very deeply. Coming back because a friend died can’t exactly be described as a fun trip, and after the events of this summer… and the two years before that… I needed something from Philly. I needed to reconnect. I feel completely lost lately, the identity that I’d worked so hard to create for myself now merely a nebulous swirl. I don’t feel like the person I was two years ago, I don't even look like her anymore.
The food from the hipster dim sum joint I helped to open eight years ago was a time capsule that grounded me almost instantly. The sharp spicy sweetness of the cucumber salad, the meaty burst of the soup dumplings. The caterpillar bread still delighted and revolted me in equal measure, just as it had when we first put it on the menu. The soft buns, sticky with honey and stuffed with pork, had a gamey familiarity on my tongue. The texture was repulsively soft to me, the flavors jangling against each other in slight discord. Other people, including people who worked next to me on the line all those years ago, loved the caterpillar bread. But I remembered the congealed pork fat when the buns were refrigerated, and how it softened as we left it out at room temperature. There was nothing bad or wrong or unhealthy about this dish, it just didn’t click in my brain like it did for everyone else. Maybe it was my antagonistic streak, determined to dislike the most popular item on the menu. Or maybe I just got tired of seeing and smelling the wobbly, damp rolls come out of the steamer. My reaction to the caterpillar bread was the same then as it is now. I derived a perverse sense of comfort in that.
Although I’ve been working professionally in food for almost thirteen years now, the threads of this obsession stretch much further back. Lori’s memorial service reminded me of how food-focused we were in the theater, always filling the green room table with snacks, always having something to munch on as the rehearsal hours dragged on. Lori was famous for taking home and repurposing the sad trays of cubed cheese that lingered after opening night parties. She would eat them for weeks afterwards. I didn’t get it at the time, but now I do– throwing away all of that food was a terrible affront to everyone working in theater who had subsisted on nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for months before they worked for a big theater and made an actual paycheck and had a real opening night party with catered food. At Lori’s memorial the folding tables (were they old rehearsal tables, I wonder now?) groaned under the weight of food that people brought– salads and pulled pork and home-baked sweets for those of us in attendance, but also boxes of soft pretzels and jars of Bubbie’s bread-n-butter pickles and peanut chews as an offering, a tribute, a testament to the foods that Lori loved. In the theater, we told ourselves loftily, our minds were nourished by Creating Art. In reality we were stressed and drastically underpaid and struggling to uphold our ideals against dour, petty management practices. So while Art did get created, it was more hard work than flights of divine inspiration, and we needed fuel to support this emotional and physical labor. Lori understood the power of food better than any of us, and was a master at using food to cement and celebrate cultural identity. It was from Lori that I learned about the Armenian tradition of dying Easter eggs red using onion skins, it was Lori who taught me that the painstaking process of layering phyllo dough with nuts and honey was worth the trouble because baklava makes everyone happy.
The day of Lori’s memorial was also the day that the Phillies won the National League Championship Series and got themselves into the World Series, and I happened to be at a bar in South Philadelphia when it happened. If you’re not from Philly, perhaps you don’t understand how magical this was. The streets that I had lived, laughed and loved in (as well as cried, puked and gotten my heart broken in) erupted in a way that only a tight-knit neighborhood lousy with history can. An old friend and I went into a corner bar for a beer after Lori’s memorial that I hadn’t been in for at least a decade (only because my very favorite bar in the world is only a few blocks away) and I immediately saw a familiar face behind the bar, because that’s how South Philly is. We carve well-worn paths to our chosen haunts. The bartender was known to me only as a person my ex used to sleep with, something they told me about when we were first dating. That was 17 years ago, but I remembered his face. A chosen haunt.
The joyful eruption of noise in the street when the Phillies won brought me back to 2008, the last time the Phils won the World Series. (Fingers crossed they’ll do it again!) That was also the year Barack Obama was elected, just a few days after our baseball victory. The city was drunk with celebration. Both times we joined the street party, lighting sparklers and shouting our joy into the night. On the night of Obama’s election, a sour-faced woman popped her head out of her front door to interrupt our revelry with a seething “Not all of us are happy about this, you know”. We didn’t know then, but we sure learned it later.
I ate dinner by myself the night of Lori’s memorial, sort of. I’d only been able to get a reservation for one at a chef friend’s new restaurant, one of the hottest places in town. But perched at the bar on top of South Philly, my seat facing even more south, I could see the stadium where the Phils had just won their pivotal game. My chef friend gave me a big hug and sent me a pasta dish that I hadn’t ordered. My bartender friend chatted with me, introduced me to the fellow industry folks sitting to my left, and poured me an amaro I’d never heard of. I wasn’t alone, I was surrounded by all of South Philly, my old friends. My new friends. I’m never alone in South Philly and that’s maybe why I miss it so much.
READING LIST:
On Tipping by Alicia Kennedy for From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith And Fractured A Nation, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
How Not To Be Humiliated In Snob Restaurants, (the late, great!) Gael Greene for Grubstreet
Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir, by Lisa Crystal Carver
PLAYLIST*:
MOVE (featuring Grace Jones and Tems), Beyonce
Live In The Dream, St. Vincent
Ima Read, Zebra Katz & Njena Reddd Foxxx
Blue Water, Sally Oldfield
*all music mentioned in the newsletter collected in this handy Splatternalia with Sara May playlist
I would be remiss in my spousal duties if I didn’t mention my bonkers-talented husband Brian John McBrearty released an album this summer— it’s called Beginning Again and I think it’s one of the most lush, gorgeous things I’ve ever listened to. I hope you’ll give it a spin!
I’M COOKING/EATING/DRINKING/WRITING:
A lot of published work to catch you up on! I’ve been a busy gal this summer.
For Finger Lakes Wine Country:
I’ve had SO MUCH fun doing a bunch of vegetable-focused recipes for the Full Plate Farm Collective summer CSA newsletter— a sampling of them can be found here.
In addition to recipe writing, I’ve also been developing and testing recipes for Giant, Hannaford and Stop&Shop supermarkets. I love this gig, so if you’re in the market for a recipe tester, hit your girl up!
I made a series of desserts for the summer concert series at Big Sky Music Studio, which was a real blast. Serving up slabs of cake, listening to music under the stars, going for a skinny dip in the farm pond after the show… what a welcome balm in the middle of a very fraught summer. Huge thanks to Siedra, Paul and Rosie for making this magic happen!
As for cooking, I’ve been juggling testing recipes for mass market shoppers with using up our CSA veggies, so it’s been… interesting to say the least. One night we’ll have a tater tot casserole made with frozen peas and carrots for dinner, the next we’ll have coffee-roasted carrots with dry-rubbed pork steaks. Or it’ll be taco pasta (yes, I said TACO PASTA) one night followed by a cauliflower & green olive pizza the next. Or Cheeze-It encrusted chicken tenders on Tuesday and roasted squash with sautéed kale on Wednesday. Always an adventure around here, and I couldn’t be more grateful to have a partner who’s game to eat just about anything I put in front of him.
Splatternalia original artwork by the indomitable Hannah Taylor. Check out her stuff here and support her by commissioning work, buying prints and/or attending her gigs!
Sara! So happy to have your writing in my life again. Super regretful that we couldn't connect this summer. Looking forward to more newsletters.
Always a good read! Love your writing!