I’ve just started The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir by Amy Trubek which is full of interesting stuff, but I was a little shocked to see Trubek cite another author I’m reading at the moment, French scholar Michel de Certeau.  I’ve just started de Certeau’s  The Practice of Everyday Life and while a lot of it is, well, really really hard, I feel like at points I’m getting the gist of it through some of it.

Bear with me for a bit but de Certeau makes it a point to focus on our everyday actions as acts of consumption rather than just static notions of obtaining or buying or using things.  In other words, you can count, on one end, how many TV were sold in a month, or how many hours of TV were watch in a month on the other end, but it may be a lot more interesting to figure out exactly how that TV watching is being consumed.  In the author’s words, we need to ask “what the consumer makes of these of these [televised] images and during these hours.”

So, how fun is that for a nerd like me when it comes to food?  For many of us (probably not for you personally if you’re reading this blog) food is often served a role greater than something for mere sustanence.  It’s something of pleasure, but it’s also something to think about, something to ponder, something to explore, something to revel in.  I am not suggesting we should, you know, take notes with a pen and paper every time we have a double cheeseburger from McDonalds, but it is sometimes good to know that, quoting de Certeau from the Trubek, “the food that is reserved, authorized, and preferred is the place of a silent piling up of an entire satisfaction of orders and counterorders that stem at the same time from an ethnohistory, a biology, a climatology, and a regional economy, from a cultural invention and a personal experience.”

In other words, food is kind of complicated, and most of what we eat has a pretty long history to tell.  To quote Thomas Keller quoting his mentor Roland Henin in The French Laundry Cookbook, “If you’re a really good cook, you can go back in time.”  I am not a really good cook, but I am a pretty good eater, and I think the effect can be the same if you pay enough attention.

So after our long walk up the hill of Broad Street in New Britain, CT, we tucked into Staropolska and got that oh-so-humanistic of beverages, beer.  Talk about loaded with history, but I’m not really the one to write about the cultural implications of beer through the centuries.  I just know it’s ancient, and nearly universal as a drink across the globe, and in the case of my first EB, pretty tasty.

First on the table was the Viener Schnitzel, ordered mainly because fried animals chunks tend to be really tasty.  I’ve been to Europe once (I was in 8th grade) and I had schnitzel twice, mainly because back then I was a pleb and I recognized it on menus and I was fairly sure I wasn’t getting myself into anything scary.

The potatoes were just ok, sprinkled with dill, and there were also some sad looking diced veggies on the plate I ignored, but the main event was pretty good - tender, crispy, hot, and the runny egg added a nice, thick sauciness to the whole thing.  It was a bit thicker and less delicate than what I had in Europe but I’m not sure if I should attribute that to being in Staropolska in New Britain, CT, or this just being the way it is in Poland.

The Polish Platter was all around spectacular.  Starting from the bottom and going clockwise is stuffed cabbage, Bigos - a stew made with kraut and meat, 3 pierogis of varying fillings, kielbasa, and of course more mashed potatoes in the middle.  Standouts were the cabbage which had a very light, flavorful filling and a tangy/sweet tomato sauce, and the Bigos, which tasted like it had cook a long time which mellowed out the cabbage and gave it a rich, dark, meaty taste.  Of the three pierogies, the best was probably the cheese and potato, which was thick, creamy, and wonderfully chewy on the outside.

When in New Britain, CT Staropolska is a pretty good place to eat.  We were there in the middle of the afternoon on a rainy Saturday and still had to wait for a table, many of which were filled with large parties that seemed to be celebrating birthdays or special events.  The menu is quite extensive, and the next time I go I’d love to try out their Kielbasa grinder with sauerkraut which would make a nice lunch.  It will be food to think about.