Pastries Save the Day

I haven't blogged here in over two months.  There are a few reasons I could give, but the primary reason is that I simply had nothing to say.  Brooklyn is not entirely what I expected.  And life-after-Paris is also not what I expected.

I did not want this blog to become a conduit for my negativity towards our new home, and most of the things I thought about writing were along the lines of "reasons I'm not impressed with Brooklyn."  Or, "reasons New York is annoying."  Or, "reasons I wish we still lived in Paris."  We have spent many nights contemplating whether we made the right decision to come here, always ultimately concluding that right or wrong, the decision was made.  Here we are.  Here we will be, for the foreseeable future. 

Throughout college and subsequent years living on the East Coast, I thought it was the height of snobbery that New Yorkers saw their city as a universe unto itself.  So wrapped in their New York-ness, some New Yorkers I met did not even know where my home state of Oregon is located.  Yes, seriously.  And at an Ivy League school.   But I better understand this reality now.  New York City is simply so huge, so colossal, teeming with every kind of race and religion, showcasing rich and poor within blocks of each other, and geographically so large that you could immerse yourself 24 hours a day in understanding the complexities of the New York life and never finish the task.

Brooklyn alone has a population the size of Chicago.  So that's a significantly-sized urban population with spitting distance of maybe the most densely populated island on Earth - Manhattan.  The heterogeneity of the people I pass every day is remarkable.  Do they fall into distinct groups?  Sure.  The hipsters, the yuppie moms, the nannies, the white kids, the black kids, the Orthodox Jews - just to name a few.  But I say this to try to explain why it is easy to feel so lost in one of the most populous corners of the planet.  As Michael says on a regular basis, there are just too many people in New York.

Paris felt, and truly was, much smaller.  We lived in a more rarefied neighborhood - more like the Upper East Side than Park Slope.  And we could take comfort in knowing that we would really never fit in.  Thus, when we felt alone, we knew it was just part of the expat experience.  In New York, though, these are our countrymen.  We should be able to be fully part of this world.  That is more daunting than having to speak French every day.

In our first months, we had only a few opportunities to explore the city, and I think we fell victim to the idea of experiencing what's "hot" (e.g., Williamsburg, the Highline, etc).  But we saw those places with little context, and never had a moment where we felt, "Ah, here is New York."   Having recently read a fascinating book called "Eat the City" about the history of food production within New York City, I better understand what the Highline used to be (this was how meat was transported into the City to be butchered).  I read "Unorthodox", a remarkable story of a young woman who grew up in the Satmar Hasidic sect in Williamsburg only to later leave the sect (a fairly rare occurrence).  That gave me more of a picture of how Williamsburg has been for the past few decades, rather than the trendy bakeries and bars of recent years.

But it took a drive deep into Brooklyn to finally achieve that a-ha moment.  About five miles from our apartment, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood, is Villabate Alba.  It's a family-run Italian bakery that has no pretense, no hip trends.  On one side is a line for bread; the other side is a line for cakes and pastries. Every possible inch of the store currently holds holiday panettone, or cookie assortments, or brightly colorful cakes.  The workers are brisk and friendly.  And the prices are - wait for it - completely reasonable.

Marzipan treats

Max & Nava debate which cookies look the best

Yes, that's a faux-hamburger cake.

This is what we had been waiting for.  Something that isn't geared for the tourists or the hipsters or the wealthy.   Something that just is, dare I say, authentic.

What we brought home - cheesecake and a cannoli-cream-chocolate-mousse slice

A friend who has lived in New York for many years told us this weekend that he has faith that we will come to not only like, but to truly love this city.  There are many things that make it challenging to embrace this intense place (have you read this?  - she lives about 20 minutes walking from us).  But Villabate Alba has renewed my faith in the possibility of making New York our own.