The fruit guy
We don’t buy fruit from Gristede’s. We buy it from the fruit guy on 23rd and 9th. Sure, you could go to Gristede’s, but why would you, when what the Fruit Guy has on offer is cheaper and better and comes with the kind of sales pitch you can’t resist?
These last couple of weeks in New York I’ve kept to a regular breakfast. Fruit, yoghurt, and Ezekiel 4:9 cereal (yes, really) to add a little crunch. What fruit? Well, that depends on what the fruit guy is selling — and the other morning, when — post our morning promenade — Sylvia and I climbed down off the High Line in the kind of downpour that only NYC can muster, there were these figs:
Nice, no? Oh, tell me about it! Soaked to the skin at 8.30 am we plucked the figs from the fruit stand, expecting simply to hand over our money, but we weren’t going to get off without a warning. “Be careful with those figs!” admonished the Fruit Guy, going on to indicate that they might get us, well, pretty excited. “American men, they only work all day and read books — but Turkish guys, they eat a lot of figs,” said our Fruit Man, grinning; you may have guessed that he is a Turkish guy. “And also they eat women like spaghetti!”
The figs, I will tell you, were as beautiful to eat as they are to look at. But guess what? We didn’t have pasta for dinner…