Persephone

Who is Persephone?  A goddess of nature and its rebirth.  Like her mother Ceres (think of grain, cereal) she is intimately associated with food  - the seeds of the pomegranate.  Forced by Hades for six months into his underworld,  Persephone  ate six pomegranate seeds and thus ensured that she would return to the world above for six months, – and that the world would return  to color and  vitality and life.

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Pomegranates equal food.  Food equals recreation of  community and life.

Persephone’s Table  will be celebrating food, community, the place of hospitality and fine dining, in our lives. We will be showcasing  local  restaurants.  . Which  may both define a neighborhood, and be defined by it. Or provide a home away from home .  We will be celebrating the gathering places that anchor the many villages that make up the city of New York.

Of course, food is life. It is primal.  A direct link to the memory. A single bite of a tiny White Castle slider burger- and you are 10 years old again, licking ketchup off fingers and  sneaking greasy French fries off your brother’s paper plate in a campground, while the mosquitoes whine and the bullfrogs croak.

And the idea of what is good food changes- thankfully. When I was a child my concept  of a good restaurant was HoJo- Howard Johnson’s, your host of the highways.  HoJo’s  garish turquoise and orange color scheme, spottable on the highways from miles away, was burned brightly into our skulls.  I loved the place. The food was always the same, always fried – fried clams, fried onion rings- and always satisfyingly greasy.  And the ice cream! The thrill of actually having 28 or 52 or 1,000 flavors to pick from was my idea of luxury.

Imagine how shocking to move to New York City and find real local and/or ethnic food. And food that had more than one pedigree!  .  The local Cuban Chinese places, for example, woke the mouth up with lime, or intense Cuban coffee, or adobo-heavy crisp chicken, and smoothed it all out with luscious plantains and pungent rice and beans.   And the rich flan—loved its silky sweet sensation. After one bite I was an addict.  Now this was cuisine.

~Persephone

Persephone invites you to her Table…