Escape From Nowheresville

There is a cliché of the sour-smelling apartment hallway, reeking of over boiled cabbage and over fried fish.  That is not my hallway.  My neighbors are a culinary polyglot, and the scent of our hallway reinforces it.  We are Haitian, Persian, West Indian, Filipino.  We are of Roman, Tuscan and Alsatian descent.  We come from the American South.  And we have the cuisines to prove it.

More than once I have come home ready to cook dinner but wishing I could ring my neighbor’s doorbell and sample whatever is simmering on their stove.  I have greeted my dinner guests who step off the elevator  complimenting the delicious smell with a “sorry, not us but we’re making something pretty good, too.”   The high point of it all is Thanksgiving which everyone interprets in their own way.  We compare notes when we meet in the hall.

Cooking unites us; aromas of allspice, coriander, cinnamon, rosemary, pomegranate, rose-water.  Fish sauce, pungent and off-putting for that split second before it mellows and brings everything together.

SPM