in line at Sahadi's

Now why would a guy who’s so notoriously averse to waiting in line that, even when he has the money to pay for them, he eschews and pooh-poohs Brooklyn’s It restaurants in favor or places where he can get seated quickly? For one thing, because the line moves quickly, past signs reading “No Smile, No Service,” and, “Of course, I’m in shape. Round is a shape.” For another, because this swift queue belongs to Brooklyn’s own Sahadi’s.

Unless your idea of a good time is blaring horns, auto exhaust, and permanent aggressive traffic congestion, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. I’ll ride my bike just about anywhere it’s legal to do so in NYC, but will go out of my way to avoid Atlantic. For Sahadi’s, I’ll make an exception. Fortunately, from where I live, I need to stay on Atlantic for all of a block to get there. For those who might not have experienced this polyglot monument to what makes NYC the pastured lamb chop of American food cities, and Brooklyn the meaty bit on that chop that’s worth every gnaw to attain, here’s a brief rundown. The Lebanese-owned shop has occupied its location since 1948. That’s not to say that this is a mono-ethnic grocer; the guy who portioned out my bulk items, and flung them expertly into my basket from over barrels of nuts and sweets, displayed a buzzcut and shrug that were incontrovertibly Sabra, and the checkout girls were from the patchwork of Brooklyn backgrounds that make the BK not just what it is, but What It Is.

I went there for the almonds. The more I ride my bike, the more almonds I eat (a topic I’ll get into in a later post), so it’s important to me to have an affordable, high-quality supply handy at all times. At $3.95/lb., Sahadi’s roasted salted almonds are a full $0.74/lb less than their cellophane-prebagged counterparts across the avenue at Trader Joe’s.

I want you to let this sink in for a moment. I know everyone of a certain age and weight in NYC is hung up on shopping at Trader Joe’s, the way at a certain point we all started dressing out of Banana Republic. Unless you’re the prepared meal kind of eater, if you have a choice between a national chain owned by a foreign billionaire’s family trust, and a local store that’s been a pillar of the NYC food scene for half a century, and where the prices also happen to be lower, which one are you going to choose? We have few enough opportunities to vote both with our consciences and our wallets. I’ll take this one. I’ll take Sahadi’s.

But back to the nuts. Sahadi’s almond prices are a near match for my previous nut bargain champ, Carmel, the little Israeli grocery on 108th St. in Queens. Fairway’s almond prices? Let’s not even discuss them. More amazing still: good-quality shelled walnuts were not ten bucks a bound, not six-fifty, no, but $3.50/lb. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I bought a pound and a quarter.

And this is the danger of Sahadi’s. There’s so much for so little and it all looks so good, that it’s perversely easier to go overbudget than in a pricer vending establishment. A pound of dried mint, for mint iced tea, $0.81. A pound of Spanish peanuts (the little salted shelled ones, with their skins still on), $2.41. Half a pound of chocolate-covered crystallized ginger (a sweet before which I am helpless; the chocolate is there only to keep me from munching through the whole bag at a sitting): $2.95. And those were just the bulk items. Momentarily taken with the idea of a PR-style roast chicken, I scored a tub of cumin for $2.28. A prepack of dried Peruvian fava beans, with which I haven’t a clue what I’ll do, cost me $3.64. I danced a kazatske at the broad selection of harissa, and came away with $2.00 in a squeeze tube, plus a modestly-sized jar of house-brand tahini, for $4.35, that’ll be the support hose of my salad dressings for the rest of the summer. And, a tube of Hit cookies for a buck, because where else are you going to find Hits for $1? (Never mind that, two hours later, I’d eaten them all.) Total, including $0.25 candy tax on the chocolate-covered ginger: $30 even.

There was also the small matter of a $6 tub of excellent hummus (nothing but chickpeas, tahini and salt) and a sack of peerless fresh pita from Damascus Bakery, a couple of doors down. Pricey, sure, but my food processor, a casualty of the move back east, is now a interned in Cari’s kitchen; that hummus fed me for a day and a half; the sack of pita, even after acting as hummus conveyance, snack bread, and being fried in olive oil and combined into a salad, still marches on. Money well spent, right?

Now let’s factor in the $26.00 I spent at Fairway on July 9th, after returning from North Carolina. (Actually, it was $27.58, but I somehow left the store without my sale 2-liter bottle of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, and, dammit, I’m not counting any cream soda that I don’t get to drink.) Two bucks and change for a loaf of light rye. $3.89 for another dozen eggs, $5.39 for a lump of house-made mozzarella (the price of which went up over a dollar a pound since the last time, but which I bought anyway), $1 worth of fuzzy yellow peaches, from someplace local enough that they retained their leaves and both smelled and tasted peachy, at a buck a pound; $1.22 for black plums, same minus the fuzz and tasting rather plummier than peachy; another dollar for bunch of crisp, sweet and spicy NJ radishes, with salad-worthy greens intact; six bucks to get a little roast turkey into my breakfasts; two bucks for blueberries, cause my baby likes to much on them, and I prefer to encourage her in her healthier eating habits; and $3 for two avocados, now at the apogee of ripeness. Don’t forget to tack on the $7 I spent at my last visit to Waffle House for a long while, on the drive back from North Carolina. Add in the small matter of $8 spent on some thoroughly mediocre but no less welcome nachos at Viva, and that, friends, puts me up to $72.58 for the week, which means that I overspent my budget by nearly half. State government, here I come.

All right, Adam, start justifying. Well, it’s like this: those almonds, walnuts, favas, tahini, etc., from Sahadi’s are investments in my future. I won’t see the end of that bag of almonds for weeks, unless I start putting in the hundred miles a week of saddle time that I ought to. The favas alone are enough for several meals; I’ve been sprinkling Spanish peanuts over everything I can think of that can stand them (hummus with Spanish peanuts? A+); and the walnuts will bedeck salads, beet- and otherwise, for months. I bought well. I bought staples. Nowhere in my spending will you find an item more egregious than the fresh mozzarella, which wasn’t even that expensive for fresh mozzarella.

dinner from sahadi's, fairway, and damascus bakery

(I mean, check out that spread. That’s worth it, right? See, even the dog approves. A note on the wine, incidentally: small production, Southern French, low alcohol content, minimal manipulation, by a woman winemaker, about $10 at Heights Chateau: a quality quaff at an affordable price.)

Let’s put it this way: I indulged in my present, and planned for my future. You, over there, with the Verizon DSL IP address: you think you can do better? Yeah? You did? Ok, you did. Fine. But I wouldn’t trade away a single meal I ate.

And now, there are new challenges in store. The Red Hook Farmer’s Market opened this weekend, and I’m looking down the barrel of a $10/week half-share from the neighborhood’s own Added Value Farm. (CSA shares are still available; inquire at their storefront at 370 Van Brunt St., or call 718-855-5531). Yes, that’s a Wendell Berry quote on their hand-painted sign. How will the culinary mores of the self-indulgent gastro-yuppie of reduced means jibe with the principles of Mr. Virtuous Eating his-own-self? Stay tuned and find out, as I drop off my sign-up form and get buried under a pile of Brooklyn turnips.

Added Value Farm <3s Wendell Berry. Red Hook <3s Added Value Farm.