With a Scowl, Staring Straight

Poughkeepsie has had an upgrade.  I lived here last in 1984.  I don’t remember many fine eateries beyond Coppolas and the Milanese.  But this has changed.  All y’all that dis the ‘hut-by-the-river’, need to sample some of the fine cuisine that the city and the region have recently sprouted.  Tonight my mother and stepfather have opted to turn me on to another new one for me:  Essie’s Restaurant.

We drive over on a wet night for our 7:00PM reservation.  Poughkeepsie and the region seem to be benefiting from a Johnnie-apple-seed like profusion of inspired young chefs who graduate and decide to build out a restaurant not far from the Culinary Institute from which they spawned.  This neighborhood is the Old Italian section of town, not far from the railway station.  This setting is the immigrant neighborhood of my mind’s imagination actually.  It doesn’t look anything like what I have stored away, but this is the ward through which my maternal grandmother walked to school.  And she hated it.  It was an Italian neighborhood.  The Italians dried their tomatoes on the window.  They hung cloves of garlic.  I can see her face now as she conveyed to me these crimes.  Heading to school for this Irish Catholic girl, schooled in potatoes and pot roast, the Italian ward was an olfactory horror show.  Neither tomato sauce nor worse garlic cloves ever shadowed her kitchen when I lived with her, across town, far from the First Ward she lived beside growing up.

I always try to imagine her there, walking along with a scowl, staring straight, avoiding the site of over-ripe red tomatoes rotting on the windowsill. And what is strange shall change for every generation. I use tomatoes or garlic all the time.  What is here now in this neighborhood is the city’s most kick ass Italian pastry shop, where my mom got two pounds of cannolis one night over Christmas.  There is Ravena hair salon, a fire department station, and now there is Essie’s. 

The atmosphere is warm, especially after a particularly enthusiastic waitress helps to turn the space heater on near our window seat.  I’m savoring the walls (brick) and ceilings (tin) before I sample any food.  This is a group of what I presume to be “local” people who are benighted by this atmosphere, which suddenly casts them all as sophisticated strivers.  Were we to bump into one another at the Galleria Mall I’d probably feel sorry for them.  Likely a mutual consideration. 

I have some fried octopus for appetizer that is fresh and rewarding with every bite and makes me think of Tokyo and the Algarve.  The pasta is done with a Bolognese sauce sporting finely ground goat.  Me grandma would only have expect as much from an eatery on this street.  The cavatelli is tight, gritty, delicious, and stuffs me up quick.  I’ve no need to for desert though I’m sure whatever they spin up on the sweet side is similarly delicious.  As we’re finishing up the chef emerges and makes his rounds.  Short dreads beneath his chefs’ chapeau, he cuts a cool figure, genuinely interested in our opinions.  My mother and step dad both recognize him.  And, lo, we learn that he has lived for a time in China.  He seems to recall that it was Shenzhen.  “Well. Whatdaya think?” 

“Perhaps you should consider opening a joint over in Beijing . . . “