Health & Underground History

A few things you might not know about Essene Market & Cafe in Queen Village:

It’s old --  macrobiotic teacher Denny Waxman and his brother co-founded the store in the 70s; a section of hard-to-find Japanese products includes koji cultures, agar flakes, and umeboshi plums; the hot bar in the back is a primo spot for a lunch loaded with vegetables and Korean dishes like japchae (stir fried glass noodles) and ajitsuke inari (seasoned fried tofu skins stuffed with rice).

On a recent afternoon, Sonia filled her plate of garlicky white beans and kale, brown rice, sautéed broccoli and kimbap, Korean Sushi. “I like the way they cook vegetables here,” she told me, stabbing a broccoli stem. “They still have a nice crunch to them.”

Sonia was raised vegetarian in West Philly; her mom is a nutritionist and acupuncturist. “A lot of my understanding of health comes from her,” Sonia says. She cooks for herself, often with the help of Budget Bytes, a website that calculates cost per recipe. “I want to eat healthy, but I don’t want to go broke.” 

For breakfast, she makes oatmeal with toppings like blueberries, coconut milk and chia seeds. She usually packs a lunch. “My staple is some kind of vegetable with brown rice and chickpea or lentil soup,” she said. 

But when she doesn't have time to pack, she heads to Essene for a healthy lunch – it’s just a couple blocks from her office. Sonia is a reference assistant at the Presbyterian Historical Society. The stately brick building houses the national archives for the Presbyterian Church. They’re kept in a two-floor underground vault, “like what you’d imagine in a bank,” Sonia said. The historical records span a full city block, under Lombard Street between 4th and 5th Streets. 

Occasionally, Sonia gives public tours of the vault, but she spends most days helping visitors track down family records. “Mostly people are looking for baptism, marriage, and death certificates,” she says, “We have records dating back to 1774.”

That morning she had been in a Skype meeting with leaders of the church, "to talk about a unifying vision," Sonia said. The conversation was led by Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, the first African American Stated Clerk of the denomination. "We move away from dying talk, we move away from 'can't do' talk, we move away from not being enough," Nelson said to the 2020 vision team recently. "Let's see what the Lord can do."

Sonia isn’t Presbyterian – she’s Buddhist, a tradition she started studying in her 20s. “When I was growing up, my parents believed you shouldn’t be in a church just because your parents are in a certain church,” she told me. “Your faith develops as you develop.”

Buddhist beliefs and spiritual practices made sense to Sonia. “I like what it says about our journey here,” she said. “There’s never a point at which you’re cast out -- you’re always evolving and always getting better.”