6th Ave.
I had errands to do in the city on Monday. It was really a great day for late November. The sun was shining and the air was warm enough to walk around happily. I made it to midtown without too much trouble and parked my car. Often, it takes me as long to navigate to midtown or uptown as it does to get from my house into the city. Oh well, it’s always worth it.
Over the past several years, I’ve become fascinated with the impulse of creativity. I don’t have any background in neuroscience at all and so I don’t know how the brain works in this regard. I’m actually not that interested in the mechanics of it in the brain. Rather, I’m interested in the inception of ideas and the wandering of thought into the creative process. I guess I have to do a little study of the brain function part in order to “get” this.
I bring this up because I am often in the mode of making things up – like recipes. Yesterday morning I was thinking about my little recipe project for the 25 days of December and I got to thinking about making a cloud-like cookie permeated and covered with crunchy peppermint pieces. What I have in mind is an Amaretti-type cookie permeated with pieces of peppermint – red and white, of course. If this sounds good to you, stay tuned.
This was before 6 am and I have to say, it does make me wonder how and why one begins thinking about cloud-like peppermint cookies before the coffee kicks in, say before the 6 o’clock hour.
I have several hobbies I’m actively engaging in. I am bound and determined to close the book on as many mundane activities that I’ve been “crowded out” by over the past many years as possible. I now want to have fun every day, doing new and exciting things and allowing myself to wonder and explore all the nooks and crannies and wide open spaces that my feet, eyes and ears can take me to. I’m listening to new classical music every day, walking around the city and visiting places I’ve never seen before, looking closely at the plant life around me each day when I walk the dog – to see what’s blooming out of season (Sunday I saw an Iris blooming on Shunpike Road in Chatham) and how the earth’s changing from yesterday. In short, I’m feeding my brain and psyche and purposely re-directing myself from boring tasks. Alright, I do clean up my kitchen every morning. Working in the garden, even if I’m cleaning up doesn’t qualify as mundane.
Yesterday, I happened to be in Whole Foods in Madison. The funniest thing happened. I spotted a man walking around the store spying on people and food. He was literally lurking, standing at the end of an aisle and peering through a slit of light and watching someone or something. Then, I saw him closely observing the flowers. At first I thought he was someone who had wandered in and just had some odd proclivities. Later in the day, around dinner time, I returned as I’d discovered I’d asked for cash back and they’d neglected to give it to me. I saw this same man again and I decided he must be a QC employee. Hmmmm, I said to myself. How many businesses could use more of these – I’ll tell you my #1 pick is for United Airlines – like forcing the CEO to take a coach flight once a month, but I digress. Starbucks, at least in the food department, could definitely use one, too. I know everyone thinks Howard Schultz is a genius, but I have yet to get the Starbucks phenomenon to compute in my own little brain. I guess he’s riding the wave of all the millions of auto-pilot devotees and concentrating on his roll-out in China. Somehow, I think the quality world will catch up with him at some point, but, oh well…….. And, for all the independent coffee shops and small-scale bakeries he’s put out of business, I shed a tear.
On Monday afternoon, I trundled on down 5th Avenue to the West Village after I was done in midtown. I had a goal in mind. I wanted to visit the new location of Maz he dar Bakery on Greenwich Ave. I’ve heard a lot about this place in the past couple of months and, perhaps nothing is more fun for me than visiting bakeries. (The name, Mah ze dar comes from Mazedar, which means “the essence” in Urdu – the Hindustani language)
Here are two reviews on Maz he dar Bakery. I give everyone who steps into this undertaking great amounts of credit for their vision and execution. It doesn’t hurt to have someone like Tom Colicchio working with you either.
www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/dining/mah-ze-dahr-bakery.html
http://ny.eater.com/2016/8/9/12416288/mah-ze-dahr-bakery-inside
I’m always curious about the design and implementation of someone’s vision of a pleasing bakery space. Many if not most of my favorites are in Paris and I spend a lot of time yearning over that. But, since I don’t live in Paris, well, I have to occupy myself otherwise.
I was lucky enough to score a parking spot right across the street.
Here are my photos of my visit:
I’m not one to generally critique bakery spaces. This is because I find this business among the most difficult to operate at a high level under any circumstances. I have tried over the years to figure out how one can do this and break even, let alone make any money. If your standard is to put out freshly-baked pastries every day – many by the hour, and really good ones at that, and charge about $3.00 for each item, well, I can’t make the math work unless obviously, you’re selling hundreds of them. This, of course, is magnified times a zillion when you’re paying New York City rents.
Every time I step inside a chain bakery like Maison Kayser, my mind starts reeling. I start envisioning factory-baking. I’m sorry to say it’s a huge turn off. I’m not criticizing them, a lot of their product looks pretty good.
And, don’t get me started on Starbucks. Of course, they’re not a bakery but I do have to tell you I was in the one in Chatham recently getting a cup of tea and their bakery case caused me to have an extreme negative reaction – I dubbed it the “petrified-pastry” case. Ugh. I didn’t have my camera with me or else I’d have gone off on that.
Anyway, back to Maz he dar. This retail bakery space opened in mid-September with quite a bit of fanfare. They have been an online bakery for awhile. I thought this space was very nicely done. It’s new, clean and fresh looking. I quickly surveyed the offerings and honestly had a bit of trouble trying to pick out what to sample. Not a piece of fresh-faced fruit to be seen, which is always my first inclination. No tarts except hand pies. I wound up selecting their Mazhedar bar and the Vanilla Brioche. The pastry cream was to die for and while, I’m not one generally given to a huge blob of anything creamy, I give this an A. The choux itself was cold (temperature) and slightly damp on the bottom. This was a small turn off but I blew right through that when I tasted the pastry cream. First class. The bar was very good as well but my mouth watered for something fruity. I know that this time of year is especially tough with fresh fruit – and it was the Monday after Thanksgiving so, I will go again and have another try.
I think it would be a good idea to have a conversation with a few Pastry chefs who run successful larger scale bakeries. I am still flummoxed by this how to succeed in this operation. The key here has to be quality and volume and without a great reserve of cash and top flight pastry chefs, this is very difficult.
In any event, I hope Mahzedar does well. I am always for independent bakeries being successful. How do you say Ciao in Hindustani?