Tag Archives: caputo’s

A Carbohydrate Fantasia in Three Movements

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bergen bagel

Bergen Bagel, mi amor...

My obsession with carbs is not a new development. In eighth grade health class* we had a homework assignment that involved reading an account of what a fictional someone had eaten in a day and identifying what was wrong with that person’s diet. The person who ate chocolate cake for breakfast or the person who ate fried food at every meal was a no-brainer, but I recall looking at the one who ate pancakes for breakfast, a potato for lunch and pasta for dinner and thinking, “What’s wrong with that?”

Nothing is more enabling for the carb-obsessed than marathon training. It is the perfect cover while snarfing down great quantities of noodles, which is exactly what I have been doing, probably more than is strictly necessary. What is necessary is a carb-heavy diet the day before the marathon (it helps you finish faster and in less pain—I swear I am not making this up), which has led to my elaborate fantasies of what exactly I am going to eat for each meal this Saturday before I run the New York marathon on Sunday. And as I was constructing this ideal New York carb triptych, I realized that I haven’t written much about two of the three places I had in mind, which seems utterly unjust, an oversight that I should rectify.

I. New Yorkers tend to be very opinionated about their bagels, but for me, there’s really not much of a contest when it comes to where I’ll be eating breakfast on Saturday. Bergen Bagels are everything bagels should be: dense, chewy, flavorful, slathered with cream cheese, and without a chip on their shoulders about being toasted. Not that long ago, Bergen Bagel opened a third location just a couple blocks from my house, and, no joke, I consider this one of the highlights of the past year.

II. For lunch, I think I’ll mosey over to Manhattan Continue reading →

The Secret to Fresh Pasta

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pasta

A recent haul from Caputo's

There are many reasons I like Roger. We often agree about books and movies and music. He was once the state Monopoly champion of Rhode Island. He knows all the best puppy videos on YouTube, and though he is my boss, often shows them to me while I’m on the clock. But I think that the reason I like him most of all is that he is the one who told me about Caputo’s.

The topic came up because we were talking about making pasta. Roger, a bit of a foodie, makes his own noodles from time to time, and though they are tasty, it’s a time-consuming enterprise. “Really,” he said, “for four bucks, why wouldn’t you just buy it at that little Italian place on Court Street?” He meant Caputo’s, and he sent me the address. Regular readers of this blog will already know that I believe there’s value in knowing the long way of doing something; making something from scratch is a pleasure in itself. But even I have my limits. The secret to fresh pasta is this: you buy it at Caputo’s.

Caputo's Fine FoodsCaputo’s has an unassuming storefront in Carroll Gardens. It is one of those places that looks old, in a good way, as though maybe it staked its claim when Brooklyn was still a forest and the neighborhood simply grew up around it. In addition to the refrigerator cases of fresh pasta and sauces and soups, there is an olive bar, a cheese case, bins of glistening homemade mozzarella, shelves of dry pasta and bread and tiny jarred wonders, and freezers of pizza dough and cannoli filling and always, always, more pasta. It is all heaven-help-me groan-worthy. My Caputo’s shopping trips end only because of the limits of my wallet and my refrigerator. I have always said that if I could choose only one cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, it would be Indian or Mexican, but now I need to add a caveat that I would choose Italian, provided that all of the ingredients came from Caputo’s.

But the food, glorious though it be, is not the only attraction. Continue reading →