BIG CITY. LITTLE SURPRISES.
by leah
When I was little I used to walk around the yard collecting rocks and pine cones, wrap them up in colored paper tied with ribbon and leave them on my neighbors doorstep as “pretty little surprises”. At one point, I thought I had the power to convince my neighbor, Mr. Matthieus to quit smoking with one of these “surprise deliveries” in which I painted one stick to look like a cigarette and another to look like red licorice with a note that read Licorice tastes better than cigarettes. You might ask why I didn’t just leave licorice for him. Or how I knew, at the age of six, what a cigarette should really look like. Or why I’m even sharing this silly anecdote with you.
The SFMOMA Blue Bottle pastry trio is in New York right now, where the most out-there surprises abound daily, along with the most ideal doorsteps. Everytime I pass one, I want to leave a present, or sit myself down with a picnic of Red Vines and watch people pass by. This city can swallow you up, but it’s endlessly inspiring. As if there is not enough to see and do in NYC around this time of year, the city is crawling with art fairs. Which is one of the reasons we are here. Blue Bottle had a booth at the Frieze Art Fair and we made a selection of art-inspired treats to serve to accompany the coffee drinks and art-viewing.
Frieze face and art-inspired treats at Blue Bottle Coffee Booth at Frieze New York
We weren’t really sure what to expect, but we wanted to be prepared for the crowds, the exhibitors, the art enthusiasts and delight them with what we hoped would our own rendition of “pretty little (art-inspired) surprises”. In preparation, we made a lot of cake, covered bunches of bananas in chocolate, boxed many cookies, trekked our treats over bridges and floated on boats, were faced with some tough questions, made some good decisions, shared memorable meals and ingested a lot of art.
tom friedman’s food-inspired sculptures made of styrofoam and paint shown in the luhring augustine booth. untitled (pea) could have been easily been missed if it were not for the $35,000 price tag!
Perhaps it was a stretch bringing up that childhood story of my grand aspirations of a home-made gift having the ability to convince someone to break a habit, or to see something differently. But I couldn’t help but think that it’s not far from what we aspire to do now with art and desserts. I was making my way back to the kitchen from Frieze, considering what we could do in reference to a single green pea on a wall, when I stumbled upon this little surprise, and thought to myself how good it is to be somewhere else seeing new things in fresh ways and the circularity of it all. And that perhaps I have come to a place in my life when cigarettes and licorice might actually make for an outstanding flavor combination for a sweet treat.
a moment in new york from one place to another
