The Art of Purveying, Part I

To purvey: To furnish or supply (esp. food or provisions) ---pur-vey-or n. (New World Dictionary of the American Language)

I first encountered the word “purveyor” in reading about the Crimean War, specifically about Florence Nightingale’s heroic battle to improve the hospital care for the wounded at Scutari. In the tangled bureaucracy of the British military, the Commissariat comprised the cooks, carters, and shop keepers who were responsible for filling the stomachs of the troops—whether they were in the field or in the hospital. However, once men were too ill to eat regular food (and if they ended up at the hospital in Scutari, they were likely to become too ill to eat regular food, even if they were only slightly damaged when they entered its portals), the job of supplying the “invalid food” became the purview of the Purveyor. However, the Purveyor only cooked and disseminated the beef broth, puddings, port wine, and other Victorian comfort foods. It was still the Commissariat who made the budget for the food, picked the merchants who supplied it, and decided if the quality was suitable. And it was the doctor who chose which patients should receive the special diet.

Do not think the Purveyor powerless, for, although the doctor could order specific foods for the patient, his order could easily be countermanded by the whim of the Purveyor. If you think this set up sounds confusing, you’re right. The administrators of this institution were also confused. But what kind of order do you expect in a hospital that had a city of whores living in the basement?

But I digress. . .

Ever since then, I have been a fan of the word Purveyor. I like it capitalized like that, like the Terminator, or The Grand Inquisitor. I like the fact that Mark and I can spend his days off purveying, going from one shop to another to pick up our provisions for the week, and that the merchants we patronize are also purveying when they supply us with said delicacies.

So, without further ado, here are some of our favorites.

East Village Cheese, 40 3^rd Avenue, New York, NY. Okay, some Yelpers may complain that East Village’s supplies are not always the freshest. Yes, it’s true, I have bought the odd pound of port salut there that was almost too pungent to eat by the time we got it home, and no amount of telling ourselves that it was supposed to taste like that and that we would grow to love it, could make it palatable. Yes, sadly, sometimes East Village Cheese’s specials are past their prime. But to my mind if you can pay 2.99 a pound for port salut, St. Andre’s, and other cheeses that normally retail for 14 bucks a pound, it is worth the occasional dud. A pound of port salut in the garbage is a small price to pay for the entire kilo of Castello we got for two bucks that was so delicious we ate it in a week! Actually, our arteries are probably thankful.

East Village Cheese is really big on atmosphere, too. The specials are hand-printed on butcher’s paper, and taped the windows. The long, narrow store is nearly impossible to navigate any time a holiday is approaching. When they say that they’re closing at 6:30, they mean they’re locking the doors at 6:30, so you’d better be finished. And they have this old European way of charging you for items, which I have not encountered anywhere else in the United States. You get on one, long serpentine line, and when you finally get to the counter, you tell the guy what you want and he gathers it, cuts it, weighs it, and wraps it. He then uses an old fashioned adding machine to assess the damages. He hands you the tape, and you walk across the store (about three feet away), hand your slip to the cashier, and pay. After that, the cheese counter guy will hand over your groceries. Not sure why they keep this system in place, but it does add to the experience.