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keelywolfe · 5 years

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FIC: Separate Lives (spicyhoney)

Summary: Edge can't be anyone but himself, but he is nothing that Rus needs.

Notes: This story strikes me as almost an AU of 'By Any Other Name', what might've happened if Stretch and Edge didn't get together. Sadness ahead!

Tags: Underfell Papyrus, Underswap Papyrus, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, Angst, Self-Worth Issues, Post-Break Up, Yearning

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~~*~~

It was past dark by the time Edge returned home from work. The lights in the main room turned on automatically as he stepped inside, closing the door against the chilly evening air. He hung up his jacket in the closet, keys deposited in a decorative bowl on a small table by the front door, shoes lined up carefully on the mat.

Dinner was waiting for him, already prepared in the crock pot which in his opinion was one of the best inventions Humans ever developed. Perhaps some gourmands would be rolling in their graves if they were forced to taste his modified version of beef bourguignon, but if so, they could keep their complaints beneath the ground.

He changed before he ate, hanging up his suit carefully and dressing in a soft pullover and jeans. When the workday was done, it was best to get out of that mindset and a simple change of clothes helped to keep him from turning Embassy issues over in his head all night long.

He ate at the table in silence, washed his plate and set it in the drainer.

Mettaton was on and he watched the variety show. The detective movie. Even the Quiz show. If he were asked tomorrow what any of them were about, he wouldn’t have been able to think of a single word.

His sockets felt dry and grainy by then, exhaustion starting to pull him down; he was tired and tomorrow would be an early day, technically today, and--

But his cell phone ringing cut off anything else.

He waited for the second ring to answer, “Hello.”

“heya, bestie,” The voice on the other side of the line was low and amused. “didn’t wake you up, did i.”

Edge relaxed back into the sofa cushions and closed his sockets, allowing that husky, malted voice to roll over him. “Would you care if you had?”

“nah. we both know you were waiting by the phone.” Rus said it teasingly, unaware of the uncomfortable truth.

“With bated breath,” Edge said dryly.

“heh, well, you can cut your fishing trip short cause here i am. told you i’d call when i got home safe.” The blurred, liquid quality to his laughter implied several drinks over the course of the night. His eye lights would be bright from the alcohol, faint orange bleeding into the normal soft white. There was the sound of rustling, perhaps blankets, it could be that Rus was lying in the unmade mess of his own bed, looking up at the ceiling with Edge’s voice in his skull.

“At 2am?” Distantly said, the words weren’t ones he wanted to think too closely about. “Burning the late-night oil, were you.”

Rus made a rude, scoffing sound, punctuated by the creak of the bed frame and there was a soft thunk, quickly followed by a second; he must be kicking off his shoes. “it was a date, not a tinder hookup! gotta take a little time, you know, get to know them, takes a few hours. isn’t that what a date is for? getting to know someone, making a match, letting someone light my fire.”

“Knowing your jokes, he was probably ready for the burn unit by the end of the night.” Perhaps he took an Uber home, alone, perhaps he’d allowed his date to take him. A last few teasing jokes before he got out of the car or perhaps leaning in through the driver’s side window. Perhaps, perhaps—

“ouch, okay, i’m hanging up, i need to report a murder,” Rus laughed, then his voice dropped low, secretive. “speaking of fire, might not make it to the third date rule with this one, whoa, momma, he’s igniting something, all right.”

The low growl that escaped was not of his choosing and Edge stifled it immediately.

“didn’t catch that, what did you say?” More rustling sounds, Rus’s voice was muffled, likely pulling off his sweatshirt. There was a heavy flump of it hitting the floor and Edge could see it very clearly. The clutter of dirty clothing littered around with the occasional empty honey bottle sprouting through, a trash flower blooming through fabric. Rus lying back on the sheets, rib cage bare, the path of his spine leading to his pelvis where his pants interrupted the journey. Or perhaps not, perhaps he’d already kicked them off to join their brethren, another patch in his laundry garden. Perhaps he was dressed only in his own bare, lovely bones, perhaps--

"Oh, I was just thinking,” Edge said lightly, “that you might try playing a little hard to get. That is, if you’re hoping for something past date three.”

“we’ll see,” doubtfully, rich with amusement, “anyway, i’m home safe, worry wart, didn't end up in any stranger's dust pan. you can get some sleep now. night, edgelord, see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Rus.”

Edge disconnected the call and sat on his sofa with his phone in his hand for a long time.

~~*~~

Once, he’d been the one on the verge of date three, all of Rus’s teasing flirtations forging a direct path to it. Edge was the one who stopped things there, halted them at the crossroads to choose a different path.

He could still clearly remember Rus’s face when he’d told him; the bland acceptance complicit with the way he blinked a little too often, a fraction too hard. There would be no third date, but when Edge offered friendship, Rus took it eagerly, and now, months later, they were best of friends despite their differences.

It was for the best, Edge knew, necessary, the only choice Edge could make. He’d needed to break things off before he learned how Rus’s mouth tasted, before he ever felt him in his arms.

Dates were a chance to get to know someone, Rus said, a learning experience of sorts, and what Edge learned all too quickly was that Rus deserved better than he could offer.

Truth be told, he should have cut him off entirely, kept his distance rather than endure this slow, aching torture. It was a weakness, Edge supposed. Too weak to properly let Rus go, but at least like this the only person he was hurting was himself.

They were friends, the best of friends, and it was enough. It was.

~~*~~

The next morning Edge got up with his alarm. He went to work, did his job, came home. Left his shoes lined up by the door and listened when Rus called him to let him know he was home safe from his date.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

~~*~~

“unf, how do you always make the best stuff for lunch,” Rus said around his current mouthful. His chopsticks were delving back into his bowls, scooping up more noodles before he’d even swallowed the first round.

They were sitting together in the Embassy cafeteria as they always did on their once a week meeting. It was nothing unusual, hardly a second glance was sent their way. Everyone else was focused on their own lunches and conversations, a roomful of meandering chatter

“I like eating.” Edge took a bite from his own bowl with more care. The broth was rich and salty, the noodles cooked to satisfying perfection and generously flavored with plenty of scallions.

“please, everyone likes eating. most people, anyway. not everyone raises their game to an art form like you, damn.” Rus slurped up another mouthful of noodles and Edge reached over to slap him lightly on the back of the skull.

“Show some manners or you’re going to get banned from the museum,” Edge told him dryly. He looked down into his ramen bowl, swirling his chopstick through the broth. “Speaking of which, the Embassy is sponsoring an event this Friday at the Ebott Art Institute. Did you want to come?”

“can’t,” Rus said around a mouthful of soft-boiled egg. It should have been the furthest thing from charming. “got another date.”

“Date number three, isn’t it?” Edge said idly. As if he didn’t know very well. “I’m sure that will be far more entertaining than ‘Monster and Human Art Trends Through the Ages’.”

“might be, i’m a little more into current events. ‘specially when its currently in my bedroom. eh, don’t worry, edgelord, i bet you won’t have any trouble getting someone else as a go along.” Rus offered him a sharp grin and cast a glance over the room, his eye lights touching on various Monsters consideringly. Edge didn’t follow his gaze.

That would only be true if one considered his shadow a companion.

Edge didn’t answer him and asked instead, “You’ll call me when you get home?”

“wouldn’t dream of not, captain concern.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, banked heat hidden in his eye lights. “might just be a text, though. could be busy.”

“Of course,” Edge said crisply. He took another mouthful of noodles, too soft beneath the force of his teeth.

~~*~~

“you’re an idiot, you know.”

Edge stopped just inside the door of his office, sighing to see his brother sprawled out on the sofa. Instead of at one end, Red chose to lay on the middle cushion so he could prop his filthy boots up on the arm.

“Yes, please do instruct me on how I’ve failed you this time.” Edge took hold of the untied laces and yanked those boots roughly off the fine leather. Red only rolled with it, shifting to sit upright. His coat needed washing and Edge absently began making a plan on how to get him out of it long enough to do it.

“ain’t failing me,” Red scoffed. He pulled out a slender vial, tipping a toothpick into his hand, and the faint smell of cinnamon rose in the air. “too busy failing yourself.”

It would be better to ignore him. Eventually Red would get bored and either wander off or fall asleep, adding drool to the dirt he’d already gotten on the sofa. Either way, he’d be silent. That would be the intelligent thing to do. “How so?”

There was enough disgust in his expression to sting. “you think no one else can see it, don’t you? just cause rus can’t find his coccyx in broad daylight with both hands and a map don’t mean i’m blind.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” The noodles were long since incorporated into his magic, it wasn’t possible for them to churn within him nauseously. He went over to the coffee maker and poured out a cup.

“oh yeah?” Red’s eye lights glittered, the color of old blood, and his grin widening to border on vicious. “what about last movie night?”

Edge stilled, cup in hand.

He should have known that was what would give him away. His weaknesses would glare out for his brother, as easy to read as the daily newspaper.

Rus always sat next to him these days at the movie gatherings, the line of his body pressed lightly against Edge from their shoulders down to their knees. Sharing a large bowl of popcorn that Edge would eat too much of, glutting himself on greasy kernels until he felt nauseous for the simple reason that their hands would brush inside the bowl.

An utterly pathetic excuse for a too-brief touch and he was greedy for it, every time.

But last week, Rus fell asleep halfway through the movie. Sagging in increments, until he ended up in Edge’s lap, and Edge couldn’t remember a thing about the film. His only memory of that night was of warm weight against him, of soft, even breathing, the lingering drowsiness when Rus awoke, blinking up at him with languid temptation.

If the phone calls were slow torture, that evening was a white-hot spike through the soul, and all he’d done afterward was help Rus sit upright, let the others tease him for getting drool on Edge’s pantleg.

Red’s mouth twisted into a knowing sneer, “yeah, s’what i thought. you’re forgettin’ all your lessons, little brother.” He leaned forward and his expression was savage, gleaming teeth and blazing eye lights were of memory long past, of Underfell. “you want something that bad, you find a way to get it.” Then the fiery blaze eased, leaving nothing but soft crimson as Red sank back into the sofa cushions, his sharp-fingered hands clasped together over his middle. “unless you’re getting a little too used to the soft life on the surface, eh, boss?”

“Shut up,” Edge told him, the words felt brittle between his teeth.

Red’s laughter cut, the honest amusement at his expense. “truth hurts, yeah?”

He was gone in a shortcut, vanished before the hurled cup could hit him. It bounced uselessly off the empty cushion, hot coffee puddling on the leather.

Edge stood for too long, panting, staring at the ruined sofa, before he called down to housekeeping to send a cleaner to his office.

~~*~~

“home safe, edgelord, no one stayin’ over on either side.” Rus was a lot more drunk this time, all his words a soft slurry, blurred nearly to nonsense.

Edge closed his sockets, listening. It was well past three am, the Embassy event ended hours ago to muted applause and well-funded success. He’d been sitting here alone in his living room, tearing a magazine into little strips. The confetti of them flutter to the floor as he sat forward, “Are you all right?”

“jus’ fine, honey, i’m doing great. came home ‘lone, but he gave me a swell time first.”

The temptation was there to go to Rus’s home, to burst through the front door, ignore Blue’s surprised questions that demanded to know what he thought he was doing. To go up to Rus’s room, to pull him close, ignore the scent of someone else on him and— “You didn’t take my advice to play hard to get?”

“can’t play hard enough, never enough, is it. never. never ever ever,” Singsong sweet, tripping over his tongue, and it trailed into something like a muted sob, wretched and wet, “edge? why’m i so hard to love?”

He needed to say something to that, couldn’t let Rus think that, he couldn’t, he needed—

“nah, s’okay, don’ matter anyway, it don’, you listen to me, yeah? worry about me, you do, every time, all th’ time.” Rus drifted off between words, those weak sobs slowing, evening out to only the occasional hiccough.

Edge sat up for most of the night, listening to him breathe.

~~*~~

“fuck, it’s so early. how could you sign me up for this?” Rus groaned. The darkened hollows beneath his sockets were stark, but Rus was up and moving, helping Edge carry the tables to the outside storefront.

“Believe me, you weren’t my first choice for the early shift,” Edge told him.

The fundraiser was one for a local family who’d lost all their possessions in a fire, a bake sale held by the local chapter of Wilderness Scouts group that was made up of Monster and Human children. The goal was one of more than money, it was part of a continuing an effort to familiarize the Human community with Monsters showing them working beside Humans in harmonious unity. Or at least that was the goal and as children tended towards adorable regardless of species, it seemed an excellent opportunity.

Not that Edge was planning on staying for the actual event; he’d baked an assortment of treats, another calculated move, chocolate chip cookies and rice krispie treats, familiar snacks to Humans from an unfamiliar people.

His baking skills notwithstanding, Humans tended to find his appearance somewhat unnerving. He’d volunteered the two of them to set things up for the children and after they were done, the rest would be up to the chaperones.

That was the plan anyway and Edge was hopeful.

“If we work together, we should be able to get this done quickly enough,” Edge said. Although his doubts grew on that as he watched Rus struggle with the folding table

“uh huh,” Rus grunted, finally battling the capricious thing into submission. “sorry if i kept you up last night.”

“What?” The table Edge was setting up seemed to be of a kinder temperament. “You didn’t.”

“no?” Rus unfolded a plastic tablecloth, fussing to spread it over the table with uncommon precision. “that call lasted for four hours.”

They weren’t actually talking about this, they weren’t-- “I must have forgotten to hang up.”

A touch on his wrist stilled him, cool fingertips against the slim line of bone showing between his gloves and his sleeve. His head jerked up involuntarily and Rus was standing too close, too too close, the shadows beneath his sockets garish and obvious.

"how long are we going to do this?" Tiredly, so terribly soft, too low to be heard by any passersby going into the store. Rus seemed worn, the world almost blurring around him as if he were nearly about to step into a shortcut.

"It shouldn’t even be a couple of hours,” Edge said doggedly. “Once we get set up, I think--"

"edge."

Rus didn't say another word, only his name, once. Anything else stayed unspoken and he was so close, his eye lights soft, pale, searching Edge’s face and it would be so easy to lean in, to take his mouth, to see if the sweetness of his kiss matched the rest of him, this endearing fool.

But Rus deserved so much better, he deserved a pure soul that glowed a silver to match his own, not the stony, LV-scarred one that was all Edge had to offer, the memory of murders bound within it in blood-shaded crimson. Rus deserved someone who could offer him their world.

Edge couldn’t even offer a piece of his.

Don’t do this, don’t, don’t be kind, don’t know how I feel, don’t, please, please—

He reared back, turning away to smooth the last tablecloth into place. "Let's finish getting this set up."

Rus said nothing, stood unmoving and Edge tried not to look at him, unable to bear seeing the banked unhappiness within him. Then, abruptly, "yeah, okay. guess we're gonna do this for a little while, then." Rus gathered up one of the boxes, pulling out baggies of cookies and setting them up in fairly neat rows. “we can go out for lunch after if you want, but i need to get home in time for a nap, i got a date tonight."

“You’ll call me when you get home.” It should have been a question. When Rus didn’t answer, Edge glanced at him, involuntarily, searching his face, and the taste of his desperation was flavored with shame.

Rus smiled a little, a faint curve of his mouth. “yeah, sure. i’ll call, let you know i got home okay. this is date number one, maybe i can make a good first impression, for once.”

“I’m sure you will.” Edge stood next to him, both of them piling up cookies and treats, readying them for the children to sell. They’d finish soon enough, go out for lunch, and then Edge would go home, alone. He’d line up his shoes on the mat by the door, sit on his sofa, and wait for his phone to ring. It was enough, stealing brief, borrowed moments of Rus, more than he even deserved.

Despite everything, Edge was still himself. It was all he could ever be.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus

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laroque09 · 5 years

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Mrs J with one of her lambs.

There are sheep at the bottom of the garden. Jacob sheep, three of them. And not so long ago, they gave birth to lambs – five between them. We didn’t see this domestic drama. They visit a neighbouring farm for ante-natal and delivery services. But a fortnight ago, they all returned home, and relished the fresh grass, newly lush after the winter.

Last week, the large and spectacular copper beech at one end of their field virtually overnight burst into leaf. Naked twigs produced swelling leaf buds, and then…. almost instantly, delicate pinky-crimson leaves, practically translucent. The Jacob sheep eyed them with interest. Grass is all very well, but …. young beech leaves? Oh yes! Well worth craning your neck for!

Yesterday afternoon, one of the ewes and her two lambs popped over to inspect me as I walked down the drive. They thought I might be John with a bucket of food (I had neither a beard nor a bucket, and it wasn’t the right time of day, but well, it was still worth a try). I was, as ever, a big disappointment. But it did remind the ewe that the copper beech was there beside me, its lowest branches just about reachable. She reached up. She selected bunches of young leaves, chewed them, ate them. Moved on a few yards and repeated the process. Again and again.

In a few days, those leaves will toughen up. Got to take your pleasures while you can. I hope her gourmandising didn’t give her a tummy ache.

I wonder if the apple tree will be next?

This is my entry for today’s Ragtag Challenge: gourmand.

Click on any image to view it full size

The tale of the Jacob sheep and the copper beech There are sheep at the bottom of the garden. Jacob sheep, three of them. And not so long ago, they gave birth to lambs - five between them.

#Copper beech #gourmand #Jacob sheep #RDP challenge

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180abroad · 6 years

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Day 46: Rhone Valley Wineries

[Wine snob warning: This post includes a lot of long-winded talking about wine. If you just aren’t that interested, feel free to skim through it and move on to the next post. But you might like it.]

Today we had a private guided tour of top-class wineries in three of the Rhone Valley’s most famous “crus” (small, legally defined areas known for producing particularly distinctive wines).

Our guide was the fantastic Céline Viany of Le Vin a La Bouche. A professional sommelier who grew up and lives in the Rhone region, Celine has the knowledge and the local connections to provide the perfect wine tasting experience. She leads the tastings herself, so as the day went on she as able to identify our preferences and help us to express them in the jargon of the wine world--which means that from now on we can more easily identify and ask for wines that we will like.

She does a great job of balancing the teaching of wine facts with inviting tasters to draw their own conclusions. Before we left Avignon, she handed each of us an information packet discussing the essentials of wine tasting as well as specific details on each of the winemaking regions we would be visiting.

And of course, we got to peek into the cellars everywhere we went.

Our first stop was Domaine Les Goubert in the cru of Gigondas. (A cru is a small area--often a single vineyard--that has been officially recognized as producing especially distinctive wines.)

We tried two white wines and two red wines: a Sablet “village” white, a Viognier “Cote du Rhone” white, their standard Gigondas red, and their reserve “Cuvee Florence” Gigondas red.

A (rather extended) note on French wine region terminology: French wines are generally classified in terms of where they come from, not what grapes they are made with. This works because the French wine authorities strictly control which grapes and methods can be used in which areas. As a Californian, the French system seemed overly conservative and controlling to me at first. But it actually makes a lot of sense.

The more that I’ve tasted different wines over the last year and a half, the more I’ve realized that the exact variety of grape used to make the wine is only a small part of what makes the wine taste how it does.

A Rhone-style red wine will be made up largely of the same three grapes in the same proportions, but the subtle differences in soil, terrain, and climate (collectively referred to as “terroir” in French) can make a wine from one vineyard taste distinctly different from a vineyard just across the road.

In the French system, terroir is everything. It’s not about how bold or complex a wine you can make, but rather how transparently you can let the wine transmit a sense of the place it comes from. That’s why French wine bottles (generally) have place names, not grape names.

And the more specific a wine’s sense of place is, the more specific a place name it can have. A wine made with grapes from across the Cotes-du-Rhone region can only be called a Cotes-du-Rhone wine. But a wine made with grapes from a specific village or cru (and meeting certain quality requirements) can be called by the name of that village or cru.

The place name that you can give a wine is called its appelation. More specific appelations are generally more prestigious, but that doesn’t necessarily make them better. Not all producers of village and cru wines actually make good wine, and not all villages and crus make easily drinkable wines. Some are known for their “challenging” palates. And some top-notch winemakers choose to experiment and make very good wines that only qualify as a regional or--gasp--table wine (the least prestigious appelation for wine in France).

Because of these strict controls, you can buy a bottle of wine and know from the label exactly what kind of wine you will be getting. In California, a Sauvignon Blanc may be fruity, citrusy, grassy, or any combination of the three. Just knowing the variety of grape really isn’t enough to how the wine will taste.

Anyway, all of the wines were delicious. The Sablet (one of the Rhone “villages”) was crisp and minerally, while the Viognier was round and fruity. True to my nature, I preferred the Sablet, but I also enjoyed the Viognier much more than I expected to. The California Viogniers I’ve tried in the past had tasty exotic fruit flavors, but they had a strong aftertaste that stuck around long after I was ready for the taste to be over. The French Viognier had all those flavors, but they were subtler and better-balanced.

And that seems to be the recurring theme of the day, and our French wine-country tour in general. Whereas California wines tend to take their dominant characteristic and make it as bold as possible, French wines treat their dominant characteristic as simply the first chair in a well-balanced orchestra.

But as much as I enjoyed the whites, the reds were a revelation. I’ve tried a fair share of Rhone-style reds before, and I always liked them. They are fruity, easy to drink, and just spicy enough to be interesting without overpowering. But they were always simple and straightforward. These true Rhone reds had all the great qualities I expected, but they also had a level of complexity that I’m only used to experiencing with Cabernets and Pinot Noirs.

Suffice it to say that I left the winery with a bottle of Florence.

Before moving on to our next winery, we stopped for lunch at a traditional bistro in the Gigondas village. While Celine got our table ready, we wandered up to the top of the small hill town to see the church and a great vista of the southern Rhone Valley.

Lunch at the bistro was fantastic. Jessica and I had duck in a garlic cream sauce. It was the best duck I’ve ever had--savory and tender without the gummy aftertaste I usually associate with duck. The sauce was amazing too, and we made sure to mop up the leftovers with bread. While we ate, we also enjoyed a Gigondas rose wine. It was fruity and simple--perfect for lunch on a sunny spring day.

For dessert, we discovered “cafe gourmand”--a French specialty that consists of a small coffee and a selection of assorted miniature desserts. This cafe gourmand included strawberries with cream, a small scoop of ice cream, and a canelé (a sort of chewy rum cake).

Our next stop was Domaine la Fourmone in the cru of Vacqueyras. There, we tasted one Vacqueyras white and two Vacqueyras reds. The white was very similar to the Sablet from earlier--crisp and minerally with just a hint of round fruitiness. But it was also much more complex than the Sablet. If you like the more minerally white wines (Sauvignon Blancs over Chardonnays, for example), I’d recommend checking out a Vacqueyras white if you can find one.

The reds were similar to the Gigondas reds, but also different--mainly in that they had more black pepper notes. If you tend to prefer pinot noir and Burgundy wines, I’d recommend a Vacqueyras. If you tend to prefer cabernet and Bordeaux wines, I’d recommend trying a Gigondas--again, if you can find one. Sadly, many of the crus, villages, and vineyards that we discovered in France aren’t readily available back home as far as I could find.

Our last stop was Domaine de Beaurenard in the Rhone’s most famous cru--Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Their offerings were simple but sufficient: a standard red and white plus a reserve red and white. To be honest, my taste buds were a little tired at this point, but the wines were still spectacular. To put it simply, I couldn’t taste anything wrong with them.

By far, though, my favorite was the reserve red. It is made with all 13 varieties of grape that are grown in Chateauneuf-du-Pape--the whites as well as the reds--just like the popes used to drink it.

Back in Avignon, we capped off our day with a walk around the Palace of the Popes and the nearby public gardens overlooking the city.

See the castle in the distance on the right? That’s how far the Avignon bridge originally spanned.

Next Post: Beaune

Last Post: Provence (Wine, Hill Towns, and Roman Ruins)

#180abroad #avignon #cotes du rhone #wine #france #travel #drink like a pope

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theurbanologist · 8 years

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A Conversation about “Dining Out in Boston”

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that you can know a city through its food, eateries, and unique culinary ways. Boston is certainly a city known for its restaurants and foodways and I’ve always thought it deserved a scholarly look at these matters. My friend Jim O’Connell recently published “Dining Out in Boston” (University of New England Press), so I reached out to see if he could respond to a few questions.

He took his time and crafted these thoughtful replies.

What brought you to this particular project?

I have always been fascinated by restaurants and the experience of dining out. As an historian and urbanist, I have wanted to know about the history of restaurants. A few years back, I discovered a trove of historic menus from the 1820s through the 1970s in the library of The Bostonian Society. After poring through this menu collection, it struck me that I could put together a history of Boston’s restaurants by tracing the evolution of menus over time. It became apparent that different eras offered different types of dishes. Menus tended to offer a standard set of dishes, though they changed from era to era.

As I delved into Boston’s restaurant history, I realized that it has been completely misunderstood. It is not simply “the land of the bean and the cod.” Nor is it “cold roast Boston.” Boston has a lot of really good food and interesting restaurants. The conventional histories of American restaurants in general have focused on the restaurants of flashy New York, sybaritic San Francisco, or Creole New Orleans. Some writers have argued that New York is representative of the rest of the country because every conceivable type of food has been available in that city. Although Boston’s gastronomic reputation has not been as celebrated as these cities’, its long-standing and inventive restaurant culture provides singular insights into how have Americans dined out.

Boston has had a reputation for good dining dating back to 1793, when Julien’s Restorator (the original French name for restaurant) opened as America’s first true restaurant. Over the decades, the city pioneered many features of American restaurant life, opening some of the first hotel dining rooms, oyster houses, ice cream parlors, tearooms, ethnic restaurants, the twentieth-century revival of traditional New England dishes, student hangouts, and contemporary locavore and trendy foodie culture. With all this, Boston has had a rich culinary story well worth exploring.

During your research, were there any favorite restaurants that emerged? Were there dishes that struck you as particularly appetizing? Were there dishes that seemed particularly repugnant?

The first thing that struck me about Boston restaurants in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the encyclopedic range of the menus. The most astonishing everyday menu was served by Young’s Hotel (1860-1927). Its menu took up 15 pages and included 27 oyster dishes, 14 clam dishes, 24 soups, 38 salads, 27 preparations of sweetbreads, and 57 steak dishes. Spaghetti could be served Napolitaine, Pièmontaise, Parisienne, Sicilienne, or Italienne. Game dishes included English pheasant, English plover, Scotch grouse, and Philadelphia squab. You could even order marrow on toast, deviled roast beef bones, pig’s feet, and crackers and milk. Fine dining meant having the largest selection of dishes. Young’s would have been quite a place to dine.

Even before the Civil War, hotel dining rooms were offering a cornucopian selection. At the Adams House, head waiter Tunis G. Campbell recorded the recipes for the extensive bill of fare in Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide (1848). Campbell was a free black man, who was an ardent abolitionist and who later served as a state senator in Reconstruction-era Georgia, before being driven out by the Ku Klux Klan. Campbell’s Adams House guide listed dozens of preparations for roast, broiled, fried, and stewed meat dishes; meat pies, oyster patties, croquettes, fritters, stews, salmis, and hash; and soups and sauces. Desserts included tarts, dumplings, fritters, trifles, and puddings.

Probably the most extravagant dining ever to take place in Boston took place at the 19th-century banquets, which were usually held in leading hotels like the Parker House, Tremont House, Revere House, Hotel Brunswick, and Hotel Vendome. Prodigious feasts became a prime form of entertainment for the city’s clubs that met in hotels and restaurants. The Gilded Age was notable for its “conspicuous consumption,” and rotund bellies signaled that one had “made it.” Meals could consist of ten or more courses with matching wines, Madeiras, punches, and cordials.

The earliest printed menu in America that I have discovered was for an 1824 public dinner given for the Marquis de Lafayette at the Exchange Coffee House. The menu described a three-course meal. The first course comprised 25 dishes split between fish and boiled and roast meats and nine French-named dishes. The second course included 11 dishes, which featured such game birds as woodcock, pigeon, and snipe, as well as lobster fricassee and calves feet. The sweet course included orange cream, puddings, pastries, custards, and ice cream. Diners could sample any of these dishes. This menu set the banquet standard for the rest of the century.

The climactic course was usually an array of game birds. For example, the Annual Target Excursion of the Charlestown City Guard, held at the National House in Charlestown in 1854, provided a vivid example of such a game dinner. After taking its annual ceremonial target practice, the Charlestown City Guard dined on roast turkey, chickens, capon, mongrel goose, mongrel ducks, tame ducks, black ducks, red head ducks, brant, widgeon, and teel. Also on offer were prepared fowl dishes that included turkey in oyster sauce, duck and olive sauce, potted pigeons, and bird pies. Lubricated with various wines, beers, and cordials, such a repast was a form of high entertainment, which gourmands of today can only dream about. Those meals will never be experienced again.

We hear a great deal about where the well-to-do ate in your book. Was it much harder to find information about the everyday eateries?

By the mid-19th century, working people ate in inexpensive oyster houses, lunchrooms, and saloons. They basically wanted to grab a bite when at work or away from home (they might also pack a lunch). No matter what their class, unless they were poverty-stricken, everyone would eat out sometimes. Oyster bars, like the Union Oyster House (called Atwood & Bacon in the 19th century) were fast-food eateries, serving plates of oysters and clams and bowls of oyster stew. Cheap eating houses served plain meat and-potato dishes, various pies, and the old standby crackers and milk. “Beaneries” specialized in baked beans and brown bread. Around 1900, cafeterias, such at the Waldorf and Hayes-Bickford, sprang up to serve cheap, quick meals. Cafeterias and lunch counters met their demise in the 1970s with the rise of McDonald’s and similar fast food chains.

It should be noted that the proto-type for the affordable family restaurant was invented in Quincy—Howard Johnson’s. Howard Johnson opened his first ice cream stand in the Wollaston section of Quincy in 1925 and served “28 Famous Flavors,” pioneering the concept of multiple flavors of high-butterfat premium ice cream. When he opened his first full-service restaurant, in Quincy, in 1929, he featured such New England staples as “tendersweet fried clams,” Boston baked beans, Welsh rarebit with bacon, and frankforts grilled in butter. Mr. Johnson exported these concepts and dishes across the country.

Was there anything particularly surprising about the emergence of ethnic restaurants and foodways throughout the Hub?

By the 1890s, ethnic restaurants were becoming established in Boston. With the influx of immigrants, American restaurant cooking began adopting ethnic dishes. French cuisine was long the gold standard, which was adopted by fashionable hotels and restaurants across the country. During these years, German restaurants, led by Jacob Wirth, made their way into the mainstream. Other ethnic groups and their foodways were less readily assimilated. Their restaurants, at first, tended to cater to immigrant communities, but some soon became popular with the broader public. Restaurant offerings evolved dramatically at the turn of the century, with ethnic foods becoming part of the dining experience.

In 1916, the Boston Globe reported that foreign restaurants had expanded significantly, reflecting the impact of immigration in the intervening years. Of the city’s 1,816 eateries, 1,006 had foreign-born owners. The Globe commented: “No one can complain that Boston is not a city of cosmopolitan food, for about the only varieties of victualer not doing business here are a native Hottentot and an Eskimo.” There were 218 Russian-owned restaurants, lunchrooms, and delicatessens, most of them serving kosher cooking; next came Greek (211), Italian (108), Armenian (49), German (43), Syrian (24), French (23), Chinese (21), and Austrian (14). There were even Albanian, Cuban, and Japanese restaurants. Most of these restaurants served a mix of ethnic dishes and American food to attract non-ethnic business and achieve some form of assimilation. Ethnic restaurants did not set out to provide food that authentically replicated that of the old world.

A large mainstream audience for ethnic restaurants developed in the 1970s, when American dining tastes expanded way beyond meat-and-potatoes in search of novelty and foreign authenticity.

Today we see the emergence of food on or near the sidewalk with food trucks and carts. Did you see much evidence of food wagons in your work? As a follow up: Do you have a favorite food truck?

I don’t think that food carts were a big part of Boston’s eating experience Maybe it was because of the bad weather, but most inexpensive eating was done inside—at lunch counters, cafeterias, etc. I think that the recent wave of food trucks is a good development, and I seek them out around the downtown. Roxy’s Grilled Cheese is one of my favorites.

In your time in the Hub, have you developed a nostalgia for a restaurant that is no more? What made it unique in terms of experience, dishes, and the like?

Bailey’s Ice Cream Shop provides my Proustian recollection. My mother introduced me to Bailey’s on Temple Place when I was a kid. It was magical, better than Howard Johnson’s or Friendly’s. Bailey’s, which opened as a candy shop, in 1873, was famous for sundaes with fudge sauce overflowing onto a silver-plated saucer. A soda jerk would place a six-ounce scoop of ice cream in a five-ounce dish and poured 1 ½ ounces of hot fudge or hot butterscotch over the top. Then a customer might request a dollop of whipped cream or marshmallow with a sprinkling of nuts. Bailey’s thrived at Temple Place, Harvard Square, Wellesley, and Chestnut Hill right up until 1989. Nothing replaced Bailey’s lavish nineteenth-century ice cream parlor style, but it has had many successors in creative ice cream-making, ranging from Steve Herrell’s and Toscanini’s to Emack & Bolio’s and J.P. Licks.

For the visitor who might be looking for segments of Boston’s restaurant-going past, can you recommend a few spots to experience these historical moments and culinary experiences?

About the only places to get a whiff of the 19th-century style of dining are Durgin-Park, Union Oyster House, and Jacob Wirth. To experience a somewhat different take on historical culinary trends, I would check out Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, which was one of dozens of neo-traditional New England inns that flourished between the 1920s and 1960s. They were special occasion, white tablecloth restaurants, where diners dressed up. Along with the Wayside Inn, the Colonial Inn (Concord), Wellesely Inn, Hartwell Farm (Lincoln), and Toll House Inn (Whitman) were leading restaurants of their day.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn is one of the few survivors of this type of dining spot. The Wayside Inn claims to be the oldest operating inn in America, having been founded as Howe’s Tavern in 1716. In 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave Howe’s Tavern a new prominence when he set his poetry collection “Tales of a Wayside Inn” there. One of the book’s poems was “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Auto magnate Henry Ford purchased the inn in 1923, playing up the inn’s historical connections. The Wayside Inn still serves such dishes as “traditional” Yankee pot roast, roast turkey with cornbread and sausage stuffing and giblet gravy, deep dish apple pie, and “homemade” Indian pudding.

Such dishes do not just carry on 18th and 19th-century cooking, they also reflect early 20th-century efforts to preserve the rapidly fading past in a movement referred to as the Colonial Revival. Until then, restaurant menus did not explicitly feature traditional New England dishes. Menus simply read “clam chowder,” “boiled dinner,” and “baked beans.” Only by the 1920s did restaurants start serving “New England clam chowder,” “Boston baked beans,” “Yankee pot roast,” and “Boston cream pie.” Such dishes may sound like clichés, but they’re harder to get these days than fish tacos or kale salad.

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