Friday in Uptown Kingston

KIngston is, in many ways, and in many parts a beautiful old city; a city that has seen many much better days.  We would go to the historic Rondout district on the South East side of town.  I would take G to synagogue once a year in a neighborhood filled with lovely old houses, we would reluctantly drive down Broadway, which is a less than savory neighborhood to attend chamber concerts at one of the churches.  I would also do much of my shopping in Kingston in the last few years, but the shopping was done on the northern end of town and most of the shopping districts are new, fueled by growth in Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Saugerties and surrounding areas of retirees, weekend, and vacation homes looking for a bit of country to call their home away from the Big City.  

A couple of years ago I started doing more of my grocery shopping in Kingston.  There is another outpost of my favorite produce/gourmet market, and several grocery stores, all within a close circle of about half an hour.  Other little shops had cropped up in Rhinebeck, the town between me and Kingston, so getting everything I wanted was easy, easier in fact, that driving back and forth around Poughkeepsie where the stores were widely scattered and nothing was close to anything else.   This would have been fine were I the kind of shopper who was happy to get everything at one place, but I am not.  I am one of the more fanatical grocery-shoppers, willingly  going to multiple stores, and if necessary, miles out of my way to get exactly what I want.  

Kingston made all that easier.  But I still avoided Uptown Kingston.  That is, I avoided it until this winter when my favorite butcher shop, Fleishers, closed their Rhinebeck store and moved to larger quarters in Uptown Kingston. I never knew what I was missing.

Now I look forward to Friday all week because I get to go walk down the covered sidewalk, or park in front of an old stone building or a small plaza.  Of course my mission is to go to the butcher shop, but I just love walking down the street, looking in the windows, making up stories about the buildings and their histories and the residents.  I love just being there,  and it always makes me smile.  Sometimes we stop at a coffee shop for a bit, sometimes we just walk by, and sometimes we arrange our day so that we can stop for lunch at Le Canard Enchaine.

I love going to Le Canard Enchaine because while I am there, for a brief time I can imagine that I am in France, and it makes me smile.  The inside is warm and charming, the staff is all French or is fluent in French.  I love listening to the French-accented English of the staff as they greet and speak to the patrons.  I love the old tin ceiling, and the dark bar, and the cozy bright dining room.  I love looking out the window and watching people walk by on the street.  If we sit in my favorite window, it is warm, very warm even in the depths of winter, and I can look out at the firehouse across the street, and people coming and going from the law firm next door.

When we went last week, I had a fabulous roasted tomato and garlic soup which was rich and warm, sweet with roasted garlic and also just a little spicy, perfect for a cold winter's day.  I followed this with the coq au vin, which was perfection, the ideal meal for sitting and whiling away an afternoon dreaming that I had perhaps been carried off to foreign climes. Sometimes I imagine I live here and can for coffee daily and walk to do my shopping.  But then that is my fantasy Kingston, and the reality is not quite as nice, and the nearby neighborhoods not nearly as safe. 

G had the onion soup followed by a plate of calves liver which was so beautifully presented that he didn't want to destroy it by eating it.  I 
promised him a photo and here it is.

But then, of course, we had to leave and resume our mundane tasks of filling the larder.  We had to go back to the produce market because there were no eggs at the butcher shop.  It seems there had been a plague at the farm that provided the free-range eggs, and they had to hold up production for a while until the pestilence was gone.  There will probably be something of a free-range egg shortage as half the chickens lost their lives to the rampages of disease.  It will either be back to mass-market eggs or accept paying nearly three times as much for free-range eggs at the Health Food store ($8 a dozen versus $3)or driving 30 miles in the opposite direction to get eggs at the other free range poultry farm.

Such a bother.

We were rewarded in the end.  I found Haagen Dazs Fleur de Sel Caramel ice-cream at the fancy supermarket in upscale Rhinebeck.  It is not sold in my little town, or the next town south.  I had been hankering for a taste since Belette Rouge mentioned that it was her favorite, and the idea just made my mouth water.  It was all I hoped for, and I am usually rather particular about ice cream, rarely tempted.  Most of the other Haagen Dazs flavors, especially the specialty ones, are too sweet and leave me cold.  This one brings out the instinct to hide and hoard; perhaps it is a blessing that it is not available just down the road.