Marche Atwater

One of the defining characteristics of America is that there’s so much of it. You can drive hours in any direction and still be in it, and here in the early 21st century there’s a numbing sameness to just about every place outside of the oldest parts of the oldest cities. If you live in New York City you can leave town in any direction on an Interstate and drive for hours on a treadmill of strip malled suburbia

Any direction but North that is.

Strike out from the city about 9am and fight your way through New Jersey traffic up to the New York State thruway northbound and by noon you can be in the stunning Adirondacks traveling one of the most scenic roads on the planet. Keep going and by 3pm you can find yourself in a place totally alien to your fellow Americans. A place that is always my first or last stop when I visit the city that for me is home but not home, the city I can always visit but never live. The city is Montreal, and the place is Marche Atwater.

It’s a smell that gets you first. Fantastically enticing food smells bearing no resemblance to what you experience in a 21st century American supermarket. Whether you walk into the bakery or into one of the cheese shops or up the stairs to the rows of butchers or into the fish shop there are smells to awake your hunger, to make you smile, to make you happy to be a living, breathing omnivorous creature alive at that moment.

After the smell there’s the sound of commerce conducted in French, strange to the ear of an American. Even in New York we’re used to hearing Spanish or Russian or Chinese or Japanese spoken depending on the shop and the surroundings but rarely do we hear French.

And then someone offers you a sample. Not some godawful reconstituted freeze dried crap out of a microwave in some Costco nightmare. A simple hunk of crisp baguette with melted Gruyere cheese and a couple of crisp cornichons that follow the creamy sweet nuttiness of the melted cheese with a tart bee sting to the tongue, awaking it for the next nibble.

As you chew you begin to examine the signs near the food designed to entice you. Nowhere, it seems are there any health guarantees, or mention of nutritionism. No low-carb, low-fat, omega 3 whatever. Just signs guaranteeing freshness or organic, or a bargain price. The way I’m told food used to be marketed before America lost its collective mind about 60 years ago.

Eventually you work up the courage to start buying. You speak sheepish English to the counterpeople and cashiers feeling like the new kid in class from out of town every time no matter how many times you've been there. That's the downside of going somewhere else, I mean really somewhere else as opposed to the Wal Mart in Toledo instead of the Wal Mart in Topeka. You are an alien in these surroundings reliant on the understanding of others to extract what you want from the experience. It's a scary feeling sometimes, and one that most Americans never have to experience even if they travel thousands of miles. Fortunately commerce trumps all so if you have the money to pay for that wine, that cheese, that beer, that saucisson sec all is well.

Finally you depart with a mixture of sadness (leaving the joyous sensory experience behind) and anticipation (of the meals to come out of what you bought here). If you do happen to bring some of that cheese or that meat or that beer back over the border every bite or sip in the days following your trip serves as a reminder that it's not all gone to generica yet. There are places close by that are different and special.

It's not all McStarbuckee's yet.

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