My father, a butcher by trade, used to have a saying that would have us kids rolling our eyes every time it came out of his mouth, which was often: “I may not be rich, but I’ll never starve!”
It was, in a way, like a little prayer. But for a Depression-era kid from immigrant parents, those words had deep meaning. He was proud of his work and his shop, first opened in East Rockaway with my Calabrian grandfather, when he took money he’d saved to go to college and instead opened a business with his dad. And later, on Shelter Island, when he moved our family here full-time and struck out on his own when I was just a toddler (I worked alongside him there and, no slight on Times Review, but it was one of the best jobs I ever had).
Food — good food — represented different, important things to him. First and foremost, that he could feed and provide for his family. That he knew good quality from bad. That he could, say, barter a pound of ground chuck for some really great fish from one of his buddies, creating in his life both deep friendships and variety at the table.
When I look at the stories in this Food Issue of Northforker, I think about my dad. In the great story by Charity Robey about Maria Schultheis (p. 78), who worked so hard to raise her family and build her eponymous business, which Islanders not only rely upon year-round, but crave, too. In the way Michael Affatato followed his instinct and love of artisanal, hand-made, gorgeous cheese 10 years ago (p. 62) when he took over the can’t-live-without-it Village Cheese Shop on Love Lane. In the gumption and sheer will of the folks Brian Halweil writes about in our food start-up story (p. 92) — people who had a dream they just couldn’t shake — be it making the best biscotti this side of Italy or creating the world’s first compact mac ‘n cheese cupcake. Or in the insatiable creativity of our very own Taylor Knapp (sorry Indiana, we’re claiming him now!), whose bi-monthly PawPaw suppers at Lin Beach House are in their 10th year — when I interviewed him for this story (p. 44), we kinda laughed at the notion that he may well be the world’s longest-standing pop-up.
There’s a lot of passion involved in each of these stories. And while, like my dad, they may never be rich, they certainly have rich stories that I think you’re really going to feast on when you read them. No starving here.
Buon appetito.
Amy Zavatto,
Editor-in-chief, Northforker
