Grey Saturday

In the past few years I've been alerted by the steadfast diligence of our great national media to a growing national habit dating to the founding of Alaska or to 2005, I'm not sure. It is called Black Friday. It sounds like something fun- a seance, a take your favorite dress to work day, or a gathering storm, but it is also a day to shop at stores I never go to, apparently at four a.m. According to the fine reporting by the numerous competitors of The Boca Union Sentinel, it is not just a great day out with the family, but an accurate measure of the vitality of our great nation's economy. When seven thousand people wait on line to get into Macy's Herald Square two hours before sunrise, it is not a sign of the end of civilization, but a joy for corporate retailers.

I wonder what one hopes to find at an hour normally reserved for sleep or cow milking. I realize that a hundred dollars off a t.v. is an alluring prospect, but doesn't Macy's sell sweaters, wallets and gift certificates? All day, every day? Sweaters aren't that expensive.

In the name of research, this intrepid reporter braved the shopping crowds, about thirty-six hours after the dawn of- say it with a hoarse voice and an overenunciated "l"- BLACK FRIDAY. I had a few small goals for my excursion to Boca Town Center. Or is it Centre? The prize to be collected in exchange for a few hours among crowds of humans, rare and difficult to spot in the gated community which currently houses the (not very) intrepid reporter, is a bathing suit, perhaps a wallet.

The wallets did not meet the exacting standards of this reporter. The wallet was to be taupe or bone, as smooth as a calf's kissable forehead, and large enough to carry a canvas and hand pistol in addition to the usual change and half-torn dollars bills. The search is not over. However, I will at last be able to bathe in the sea or swimming pool attired in the manner of most women, wearing two tiny strings of cloth rather than one single kerchiefy type thing. For at last I have found a bikini, two matching pieces in my size, and sensibly priced.

I hadn't worn a bikini for years before trying it on in the dressing room at Macy's, and I was surprised by how horrible I looked. But I bought it, because it was Juicy Couture, marked down to twenty bucks from, like, a million or whatever, and if there's anything I was taught by my family, it was that you don't pass up a bargain. Or maybe I learned this on my own, the same way I learned how to cook, ride a bike, change the oil in my car and play guitar. The balmy shores of the Atlantic await!

Anthony's, Delray Beach

Since moving to Boynton Beach I’ve lost my cool about pizza. I’d been looking forward to pizza. Florida is not known for pizza, but after twenty years of living away from pizza, sometimes an ocean away, I am not very fussy about it. I just want a large, drippy slice with subtly fragrant marinara sauce, properly chewy cheese, a nice, solid crust which is neither crispy nor soggy but has that indefinably good feel every New Yorker knows from birth... um, yeah, sorry, you were saying?

In Florida, food is found in minimalls. In other words, you get into the car, drive to a minimall parking lot, park as close as possible to your destination, and enter. Any deviation from this routine will invite speculation, stalkers and worried questions. You may not be seen walking, or stopping on one of the few corners amenable to human habitation and contemplating where to go. Now, how is this relevant, apart from to recommend a few places (the mall, the park) where humans are allowed to gather and inspect one another for signs of life?

The minimall life is not conducive to grabbing a slice of pizza. The point of a slice is to balance it over a paper plate while walking down 6^th Avenue, or if more time is available the slice is covered in red pepper flakes and cheese and eaten on a stool at a shelf. If you're really lucky you're getting this sold by weight in Rome (or Tel Aviv- just try the amazing pizza slices on Dizengoff) but you aren't getting it from a young server named Scott who keeps asking you, again and again, if there's anything else you need before he brings you the bill.

I could go on and on about minimalls, the ache of loneliness I feel looking out at the parking lot through a glass window, the melancholy that sets upon me eating a slice of pizza without the traffic of the world stamping around me. I don't hear America singing! But I don't want to wind up the implication of pizza without pizza. I want pizza. Come back, crust with cheese.

So let us go then, you and I, to a corner restaurant a few blocks from the easy resort buzz of Delray Beach's Atlantic Avenue. Anthony's. It's a restaurant, and once you're there you will see other humans. Delray Beach, the town that is, gets its fill of humans who come, park their cars next to actual sidewalks, and stroll a good half-mile up and down, past shops and restaurants. It's like a city! You stop in from of a shop window, look inside, and then on to the next one! There are park benches, cafes! And if you know where to find it, a little north on the Federal Highway, Anthony's!

The full name of Anthony's is Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza. It's a local chain- big surprise. You may notice that the name contains nothing about dripping slices, Penn Station, eggplant or even a vague allusion to a borough. So I won't say anything about the pizza, which is that type served as a pie on a raised plate. It's okay. Maybe it's good. But it's thin crust, a little burnt on the bottom, and subtly not burstingly flavored.

However, there is one special dish-the Broccoli Rabe and Sausage. Sauteed in garlic and oil, of course, the texture is finely balanced between the juice of the oil and a delicate crunch in the texture. It actually tastes like food, and I could imagine someone in back, cooking it.

Come to think of it, this is the ongoing theme in my return to the U.S.A. (after many months of training my palate near the Elephant & Castle roundabout in London): does the food on my plate seem to have been conceived, cut and cooked by humans, or did it emerge full blown from a picture of food to be half-eaten and then languish in a styrofoam box in the fridge?

Anthony's: good for balmy Florida with its outdoor terrace and retiree-friendly prices. But I won't be walking down Atlantic Avenue with a slice.

Lunch with Father

My first restaurant post, one of many to follow, will appraise the $5.99 lunch at Sal's Pizzeria.

Sal's Pizzeria, or Restaurant, depending on who you ask (they do publish a menu), is a local chain in South Florida. Whether there is stiff competition for your pizza dollar is simple to determine: how many pizzerias are there in the shopping center near Publix? One? It is probably Sal's.

Sal's delights the wallet with its twopizzaandacoke lunch for a fiver, and for slightly more dosh one gets a lunch with some variety, even a little potential for greens: a salad or soup, slice of pizza and half a sandwich, which at Sal's means something warm and substantial. But how was the food?

Dad: "It's excellent! Whadda deal!"

Me: "It's fine, but why does my eggplant parmigiana taste like Chinese food? Was it cooked in peanut oil?"

I will continue to ponder this matter.

What is The Boca Union Sentinel?

The Boca Union Sentinel was founded in 1938 by Carl Klepper, a German emigre to Florida by way of Scranton, and is the oldest continuously published newspaper in South Florida. For sixty-two years Boca Ratonians have relied on the Boca Union Sentinel as their first source in local news- but if it's opinion you want, we've got that too!

As of November 2010 Melissa Bellovin has taken over the paper as editor-in-chief, managing editor, chief reporter, chief columnist, chief food critic and chief film critic. In fact, she is chief of everything. She is chief of all she sees, and would like it to stay that way, but there is the bad economy, which luckily does not inhibit her duties as chief food critic. Her parents, avid eaters of food themselves, are willing, in exchange for a bit of fine conversation, to foot the bill. This is no joke, and uniquely qualifies her for the position of chief food critic- I mean chief restaurant critic- of the Boca Union Sentinel. Not only is her palate fine, trained by many years of living in London, El Paso, Los Angeles and Long Island (along with the millions of other professional food critics living in those places), she is objective, because the restaurants she frequents simply have no idea what this brazen woman is up to with her eating and mental note-taking.

In all seriousness, non-existent readers, I will take a moment to point out a few things about the writer and eater Melissa Bellovin.

1. She has never met a soft-serve ice cream she doesn't like- unless its name starts with Vanilla. I'm talking to you, England.

2. She has an immodest pride in her ability to avoid spending money and still eating delicious food, which has served her well in her peripatetic, borderline bohemian existence in various cities whose neighborhoods became trendy once she left and started charging too much for their food.

3. Her favorite place in the world used to be the counter at the Original Pantry in downtown Los Angeles, where she would sit for hours writing nonsense about her love life in a little notebook while drinking bottomless cups of coffee and eating home fries, coleslaw and sourdough bread. This does not in the least qualify her to write about food, but she thought you should know this.

4. Melissa used to consider herself an authority on Mexican food, due to her living there, speaking the language and living in a rooming house with pink walls perched above a really, really good puesto- that's like a taco stand for all you non-Mexicans. She lived on fat sandwiches filled with marinated pork, tiny tacos filled with obscure animal brains, and tamales built in the center of the world, aka The Zocalo. Nowadays she considers Mexican food a corn tortilla with a slice of cheese melted into a bit of chipotle, but still looks forward to some far away day when she will eat nothing but chile relleno served by a friendly transexual in front of a post office in Sonora.

5. Melissa hails from Long Island, which taught her everything she knows about pizza and Jewish food, which is that she basically likes it and thinks she knows more than you do about it, at least if you don't share her rather common ethnic and geographic traits. At this point in her life, however, she has to concede the real pizza superiority to the fine nation of Italy. Oh well.