Turkey Light

It’s the first gorgeous day of spring. The kind of day that makes you remember what it’s like to wear just a t-shirt outside, that makes you take an extra coffee break, or take the long way home from work. The kind of day that you have to be patient, and then ruthless, to find a spot to sit in Rittenhouse Square.

A 50-something woman bent over the paper bag on her lap had snagged a bench facing the fountain. She tells me it’s usually impossible to find a seat during lunchtime. She looks around the park with a tight smile, “Sometimes you get lucky.”

The woman, her name she’d “rather not say,” wears her gray hair tightly clipped around her pointed face. Her gray pants match the socks peeking out of her sensible black clogs. She peels back the foil on her Turkey Light from Cosi and takes a bite. Cut flatbread holds turkey, arugula, and a smear of mayo – ‘Light’ just means it’s lower in fat than the regular, she tells me (Less mayo? Fewer slices of turkey? No cheese? …these are just my speculations.). This isn’t the usual. “Too expensive,” the woman says, “A once in a while treat.” What’s the occasion? She shrugs, “It’s a nice day.”

She generally packs her lunch, likely a sandwich, and takes an hour off around noon. She likes to get out and take a walk. If she’s treating herself, she’ll go to Starbucks or Cosi, “Someplace quick, easy, and hopefully not too expensive.”

The woman is a paralegal, and has worked for the same firm for 20 years. She wasn’t at liberty to tell me about any of the cases she had looked into that morning. “We do research,” she says, “Glorified secretary work. It’s a boring job.” But it pays the rent, she says. I wonder if she ever imagines herself doing something completely different, if she has a dream-job. “I’d like to retire,” she says. She thinks she's got about eight years to go. “That’ll be my dream-job.”

Whipping Something Up

“I’ve just been to Mexico and I’ve still not had enough,” Laurentine said as she scooped avocado into her favorite blue ceramic bowl. She added diced tomato, onion, garlic, lemon, salt, and pepper and smashed it together with a fork for a batch of fresh guacamole. “We have flatbread from Trader Joe’s,” she said, pulling a package out of the freezer. “I’m going to put that in my very favorite toaster oven.” She leaned her hip into the kitchen counter, blond hair tied up in a messy ponytail, fur-lined slippers on her feet.

Laurentine and I have lived together for the past six months, and she’s soon returning to Holland. I wanted to capture a moment of her cooking - her skill, whimsy, and enthusiasm in the kitchen - that I’ve been inspired (and fed) by before she leaves.

Laurentine doesn’t typically have lunch at home, but she decided to avoid a rainy trip to the office and work at the desk in her room. “I work in a research clinic, Penn’s Women’s Health,” she said, “I’m finishing up a project I’ve been working on for six months.” It’s her first year of med school at University of Groningen in Holland and she came to U Penn to study for six months. She’s been researching fertility preservation and today she’s writing up her final analysis. It’s been a bit of a slow morning. “It feels like an obligation working at home because you kinda want to do fun stuff when you’re at home,” she said. Fun stuff like make lunch.

“Oooo! No avocado pit in there!” Laurentine said, as she reached her hand into the garbage disposal. She spun around, simultaneously tidying up the kitchen and assembling her lunch. She opened the fridge and leaned in. “Cream cheese, or no cream cheese?” She’d been debating about adding it to the guacamole for a “little variation.” Her bright eyes widened in excitement, “I know, we can put a layer on the flatbread and then put the guacamole on top!” Problem solved.

As enthusiastic as she is about the guacamole, lunch is not Laurentine’s favorite meal. Mostly because afternoon time in the kitchen is not a regular occurrence. “I never have time to make something for myself,” she said. She’ll bring leftovers to work or go to her favorite Chinese food truck for soup and vegetables, but that means likely spending more money and not eating as healthy. And she rarely gets to eat with friends, something she misses from lunchtime back home in Holland. “Here I just warm something up or grab something and hopefully there would be someone else in the office eating lunch at the same time,” she said, a tinge of frustration in her voice.

In Holland, her and a few roommates would take an hour and a half off studying to whip something up and eat together. Cream cheese, avocado and Parma ham (a region-specific prosciutto) on a whole-wheat grainy something was a standby lunch. It’s something she hasn’t made in the States because, “Parma ham is incredibly expensive here,” she laughed. “In Holland I would eat 100 grams of Parma Ham a couple times a week.” Generally, though, she doesn’t miss Dutch lunch food. “Dutch people are all about their sandwiches, and I’m not a big sandwich person,” she said.

A slight scent of char started to permeate the kitchen. “Holy Mother, Katherine, something’s burning in here!” Laurentine slid to the toaster oven, chef’s knife in hand, and fished out a little baguette end. From last night’s dinner, she suspected.

The grainy flatbread was unharmed and she flipped it onto two plates (yes, I did get to enjoy the meal I’m writing about). She cut hers in half, smeared a thin layer of cream cheese on one side, piled on a few spoonfuls of guacamole, and almost took a bite… just as remembered the salsa and fresh cilantro in the fridge. She plucked a few leaves to garnish the top and dug in.

“Mmm,” Laurentine’s fingers moved like a piano player over her plate in excitement. “This is actually a really good lunch!” She looked around at our sunny little kitchen, then at me. “We’re the best at just whipping something up!”

Whole Foods Transformed by Will

Chris sat at the window bar in jeans and a navy t-shirt eating baked chicken, meatloaf, and macaroni salad from a compostable container. He looked out at South Street through his faux-wood-framed glasses, taking a sip of OJ. Chris eats lunch at his neighborhood Whole Foods often on Mondays or Tuesdays, his days off.

“Hey Chris!” A jovial, graying man nodded as he pulled out a stool and set down his salad a few seats away. He and Chris are business neighbors; his 35-year-old clothing shop is down the street from the restaurant Chris opened four years ago, Will BYOB.

“I live upstairs,” Chris said, “I come down at 9:00 to check on everything, start cooking around 11:00.” He’ll work on prep through the afternoon, generally forgoing a sit-down lunch. “We don’t really have ‘breaks’ in the industry,” he said. He’ll taste, snack, maybe have a protein shake while he cooks, but he finds he often doesn’t eat enough – “About 1000 calories a day.” He keeps track using MyFitnessPal. “You can put your food in, or scan the barcode,” he said, holding his phone to his bottle of Uncle Matt’s orange juice to show me. To ensure he eats more full meals, he tries to cook for the whole week on Monday or Tuesday. “Chicken or fish, vegetables, quinoa, sweet potatoes,” he said, “Kind of boring, but it works.”

The food on the menu at his restaurant is anything but boring. ‘Chef,’ as he’s known at Will, plays with contrasting textures, colors, and flavors – no less than six components making up each dish. Sweet Potato and Apple Soup, for example, is garnished with pumpernickel granola (toasted breadcrumbs, puffed wild and pearled rice), verjus (sour grape juice) jelly, black pepper jam, apple cider foam, and chamomile micro-greens.

Chris invited me to spend a shift in the kitchen, so I saw the execution first hand. Around 7:45 on Friday night, the tickets line up on the board, covering quotes like, “There are no mistakes, only carelessness” and “Shitbag chefs breed more shitty chefs.” There are three chefs – Chris, Sydney, and Mike – in the kitchen smaller than an average hotel room.

“Two soups! One Monk! Two pastas! One chicken!” I hear it three times as each chef repeats the order. Then a flurry as Mike counts out his 26 noodles of fresh pasta, Sydney warms the napa cabbage-wrapped Monkfish, and Chris paints the plates with bright stripes of beet purée (and I fumble with the immersion blender to conjure up fresh apple cider foam for the soup). Each plate is assembled with stunningly seamless collaboration. The chefs anticipate each others’ next move – one pulling plates out of the oven just as another is poised with a dab of parsnip sauce; one plating the branzino as another plucks pumpkin rounds from pickling brine with kitchen tweezers. Six hands play a part in each dish that leaves the kitchen.

“Chef?” Jennifer, the hostess, appears in the doorway, “Can we send out a bouche to table 31?” Chef nods and pulls out the container of curry-seasoned, dehydrated beef tendon, which he will fry, creating a highly glorified pork rind. An amuse-bouche, Sydney tells me, is French for ‘mouth amuser,’ or ‘present for the mouth.’ It’s a treat sent out to family and friends of the chef or especially good patrons. Adorned with dabs of coconut purée and viola blossoms, the crispy beef tendon is whisked away.

If I would have had the enchanting experience of being in the Will kitchen before chatting with Chris at Whole Foods, I might have been less surprised about the menu items Chris highlighted: The Rohan duck (a cross between a Heritage Mallard and a Pekin) and the short rib they cook for two days. I also might have understood why he tastes constantly, but rarely pauses for a full meal, why he occasionally binges on something unhealthy at midnight; he’s in the kitchen most hours of the day, most days of the week.

If he does happen to make it out for lunch, he’ll go to Terakawa Ramen for miso ramen – “At 3:00 or 4:oo, not 12:00 because it’s too busy,” – or Circles on 2nd for Thai. Or he’ll stick with Whole Foods, the old standby, where he’ll pursue the hot bar for a simple meal cooked by someone else.

North American Security

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Kisha’s doing a double. She says it doesn’t bother her anymore, working on the holiday, though today she was jealous of her husband who got to stay home. “It’s like, let me stay in the warm bed,” she said. Lately, she’s been getting her lunch delivered, “Because it’s too cold to go outside.” She had an Italian sub from Primo's waiting on her desk and had just finished a bowl of chicken noodle soup made by her mother-in-law. Neither are her favorites. She likes JJ’s (Jimmy John's) better than Primo’s; “The rolls are way better, fresher.” And she’d prefer her mother-in-law’s pea soup to the chicken noodle.

A man with flushed cheeks and a briefcase strode to Kisha’s desk to sign in. “16^th floor, I already know,” Kisha said, waving him along. Kisha works security at the North American Building on Broad and Sansom. She sees everyone who walks in from 7am to 3pm, Monday-Friday. “I got nothin’ but time,” she said when I asked if she had a few minutes to chat. “Me sittin’ here? Last week I went through four books,” she said. She plays WDAS (105.3) R&B and Old School from her smartphone. “That’s on at all times,” Kisha laughed. If she works late, she’ll get out her DVD player and watch movies.

Every once in a while, she does have to deal with trouble. “Yeah, last Thursday I had an incident,” she said, nodding her head of tight, honey-colored curls. A woman frequents the building “wander the halls”; Kisha has had a hard time getting her to leave. “She came in with paint on her face to try to disguise herself, but I knew who she was.” It’s a tricky job – telling someone to leave the building without upsetting or provoking them. “Sometimes you gotta make something up quick,” Kisha said. “I told her the office was closed for the holidays – she bought it.”

Sometimes it’s more serious. She called the police on a man last month. “This guy,” she opened the cabinet under her desk, “I got a picture right here.” The man had snuck on the elevator after Kisha made it clear she wasn’t going to argue with him, and told him to leave. She warned the offices upstairs and called the police. He made a threat as he was escorted out. “He’s like ‘Imma come back and Imma shoot it up!’” Kisha rolled her eyes. “I’m like, ‘Have a good one.’”

I left Kisha to grab my camera and when I came back, the Primo sub had been replaced by a tuna sandwich from Wawa. Her friend, Daren (“aka Big Daddy”), stood at the side of her desk eating the other tuna sandwich he had brought. Kisha’s was plain – mayo-smothered chuncks of tuna and half-moon celery pieces on wheat bread. Daren’s was doctored up with jalapeño potato chips, cheese, and ranch dressing. “There’s a whole lotta party going on in your mouth right now,” Kisha said, making circles with her pointer finger, nose scrunched in disgust.

When I ask for lunch recommendations, I get heated banter. Daren likes Joey Joe’s Deli, Kisha says Gooey Looie’s is better. Daren is a fan of Primo’s, Kisha says, “Primo’s is horrible. Period.” Daren raves about a spot in West Philly, Kisha “Can’t eat outta dirty West.”

They agreed on one place: Famous Dave’s. Daren couldn’t contain an “Ooooo!” and a high five when Kisha mentioned she gets the Trash Lid. It’s a sampler of ribs, brisket, cornbread, coleslaw, chili, fries… “And it actually comes on a trash can lid.”

The two laugh hysterically, barely nodding as suits and heels rush past Kisha’s desk.

A Scorpio and His Seafood

Tony’s meal was vibrant against the gray table shoved in the way back of Reading Terminal’s Rick Nichols Room. Bright steamed broccoli complemented the fleshy salmon and butterflied shrimp. White rice swirled in sweet and sour sauce at the bottom of the bowl. He took a bite of the salmon, the chief reason he orders the dish. “It’s flavorful through the whole piece,” he said, “I would say it’s a day or two marinated.”

Little Thai Kitchen is Tony’s regular spot at Reading Terminal. “It’s a really long line but it’s worth it,” he said. When I walked by the neon sign, a string of people wound around the counter, stretching back to the neighboring Salumeria. It was by far the longest line in the Market, though I couldn’t see what was coming out of the kitchen. “Their giveaway’s these little white containers,” Tony said, tapping the side of his dish.

Tony’s been coming to Reading Terminal regularly for ten or twelve years. “It’s a get-away,” he said, “A quick ride, hop on the sub.” The Market is a place to enjoy time away from work, to have social time. “My homie and I normally come, but he had work.”

 

Tony had the day off from his job at a lighting warehouse in Northeast Philadelphia. They supply lamps, bulbs, and fixtures for big companies. “I’m a picker; I get different orders and send them to shipping,” he said. He likes it because it’s a “tell-yourself job.” He knows what he’s responsible for and he gets it done. “Routine. That’s all it is; routine everyday,” he said, shaking his head, “I like to work so it goes fast.”

Before working in the warehouse, Tony was a casual (a seasonal worker that might be put on full-time if needed) for the Postal Service. “That job,” he shook his head, letting out a high-pitched ‘Ooooo!’ “If you ain’t in shape you get torn.” He’d throw 70-80lb sacks around the sorting warehouse all night. Hard work, but he’s practiced at keeping his mind occupied. “I’m always thinking,” he said, pulling the tail off a piece of shrimp squeezed between his lips. “Seriously – I’m a Scorpio.”

“Straight Tony, no Anthony, no Antonio,” is confident and warm with a relaxed smile. He has the tendency to ask “Me?” pointing his middle finger toward his chest before answering a question. He wore a black Navy coat over a Nike sweatshirt, black watch cap pulled to his ears. I asked how long he’s lived in Philly. “Me? Born and raised.”

He lives on Erie Avenue where he’s spoiled; “You really don’t have to go anywhere for nothing.” He’ll go to Pete and Kim’s - right across from his barbershop - for Korean.  He likes Clock Bar and Black Pearl (on Erie near Broad) for seafood. “Me? I go in there and get three crab cakes, four crab sticks, six butterfly shrimp,” he said. In judging a crab cake, the breading is everything; it’s gotta be thick. And he likes tartar sauce.

At work, he avoids the vending machine and eats a packed lunch - usually soup, a chicken sandwich, or a salad with turkey bacon. The 45 minutes he’s allotted is more than enough. “I go light,” he said, “When I eat heavy and it’s time to go back to work I don’t feel like working!”

He packs his four-year-old’s lunch as well, sending her with veggie packs and apple juice in her Princess Anna lunchbox. “I try to make it my business to get her to eat healthy,” he said. He eats more veggies in hopes that she’ll learn to like them. Like father like daughter, she’s Toni. “Named after me,” he said, smiling, “Or mom… ‘cause, me? I’m named after mom.”