Saturday, March 21, 2015

THE SANDWICHES OF YESTERYEAR



N.Y. / REGION

Pastrami Piled as High as New York, With Prices to Match


Photo

A slab of pastrami at Yankee Tavern in the Bronx. The tavern has started charging $12.95 for a pastrami sandwich, an increase of $3. CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Short on dismal news? Have a look at this notice, taped to the counter at the Yankee Tavern on 161st Street in the Bronx.
“Due to the increased price of pastrami,” it began, unpromisingly, “we at the Yankee Tavern apologize for the increase in prices for the pastrami items.”
Pastrami is in crisis.
“I contemplated taking it off the menus,” Joe Bastone, owner of the tavern, said. “I came very close to doing it. I decided to try passing it on.”
Last year, the average price of brisket — an embryonic form of pastrami — increased 47 percent over 2013. This year it is up 14 percent, according to Gary Morrison, who follows beef prices for Urner Barry, a food trade publisher.
In the Bronx, where a pastrami sandwich could have been the coat of arms in its days as a duchy of Jewish gastronomy, the hardy survivors say the centerpiece of their menus is being battered.


“Our suppliers are killing us, so we raised prices about eight months ago,” said Art Rabin, manager of Liebman’s Kosher Delicatessen on West 235th Street. “Every few months, we get a letter that the price is going up.
“We’re not in Manhattan — there’s a ceiling to what people will pay. In Manhattan, people expect to get whacked for a sandwich.”
What is behind this? “Drought has put cattle inventory at its lowest level in 60 years,” Mr. Morrison said.
Meanwhile, brisket is not just for Passover anymore. Arby’s created a 13-hour video commercial last year that showed, in real time, the smoking of its brisket. Brisket is a basis for barbecue. Buying cooked brisket or ribs by the pound, and eating them off butcher paper, has become a staple at some celebrated restaurants in renaissance Brooklyn: dive chic.
Not that being cool confers protection against higher costs.
“Brisket prices have gone up almost 40 percent or more since I opened in 2013,” Billy Durney, the owner of Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, said. “I think we increased prices a dollar a pound. We put some other products on the menu that are not loss leaders. For us, brisket and beef are what people come to Hometown for. We can’t take it off the menu.”
But back to the beleaguered pastrami.
It began as the food of poor people in a new land. The German and Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century made a delightful discovery.
“Beef was more available in America than in any place Jews had ever lived,” Harry Levine, a sociologist at Queens College, wrote in a 2007 article, “Pastrami Land, the Jewish Deli in New York City,” for the quarterly journal Contexts. “In America, the Jews became the people of the brisket.”
A long, tough cut from the breast, marbled with fat, brisket requires slow cooking. Corned beef, which is brisket that has been pickled, was already widely available in the United States. The new immigrants elaborated on it, smoking and spicing the corned beef with techniques used in southeastern Europe to preserve mutton and pork, according to Professor Levine.
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Ballade des dames du temps jadis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" ("Ballade of the Ladies of Times Past") is a poem by François Villon that celebrates famous women in history and mythology, and a prominent example of the ubi sunt? genre. It is written in the fixed-form ballade format, and forms part of his collection Le Testament.
The section is simply labelled Ballade by Villon; the title des dames du temps jadis was added by Clément Marot in his 1533 edition of Villon's poems.

Translations and adaptations[edit]

Particularly famous is its interrogative refrain, Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? This was translated into English by Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?",[1] for which he coined the new word yester-year to translate Villon's antan. The French word was used in its original sense of "last year", although both antan and the English yesteryearhave now taken on a wider meaning of "years gone by".
The refrain is taken up in the bitter and ironic "Lied de Nana" ("Nana's Song") by Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, from Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe (Round Heads and Pointed Heads),[2] expressing the short-term memory without regrets of a hard-bitten prostitute, in the refrain
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern abend?Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
Where are the tears of yesterday evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?
The ballade has been made into a song (using the original Middle French text) by French songwriter Georges Brassens, and by the Czech composer Petr Eben, in the cycleSestero piesní milostnych (1951).

Text of the ballade[edit]

The text is from Clement Marot's Œuvres complètes de François Villon of 1533, in the Le Grand Testament pages 34 and 35.
Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays,Tell me where, in which country
Est Flora, la belle Romaine ;Is Flora, the beautiful Roman;
Archipiada, né Thaïs,Archipiada (Alcibiades?), born Thaïs
Qui fut sa cousine germaine;Who was her first cousin;
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maineEcho, speaking when one makes noise
Dessus rivière ou sus estan,Over river or on pond,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine?Who had a beauty too much more than human?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

Où est la très sage Heloïs,Where is the very wise Heloise,
Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyneFor whom was castrated, and then (made) a monk,
Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys?Pierre Esbaillart (Abelard) in Saint-Denis ?
Pour son amour eut cest essoyne.For his love he suffered this sentence.
Semblablement, où est la royneSimilarly, where is the Queen (Marguerite de Bourgogne)
Qui commanda que BuridanWho ordered that Buridan
Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine?Be thrown in a sack into the Seine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

La royne Blanche comme ung lys,The queen Blanche (white) as a lily (Blanche de Castille)
Qui chantoit à voix de sereine;Who sang with a Siren's voice;
Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys;Bertha of the Big Foot, Beatrix, Aelis;
Harembourges qui tint le Mayne,Erembourge who ruled over the Maine,
Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,And Joan (Joan of Arc), the good (woman from) Lorraine
Qu'Anglois bruslerent à Rouen;Whom the English burned in Rouen ;
Où sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine ?Where are they, oh sovereign Virgin?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

Prince, n'enquerez de sepmainePrince, do not ask me in the whole week
Où elles sont, ne de cest an,Where they are - neither in this whole year,
Qu'à ce refrain ne vous remaine:Lest I bring you back to this refrain:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

In popular culture[edit]

  • The poem was alluded to in Joseph Heller's novel, Catch-22, when Yossarian asks "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" in both French and English, Snowden being the name of a character who dies despite the efforts of Yossarian to save him.
  • The text "Ou sont les neiges" is used as a screen projection in the first scene of Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie.
  • "And like the snows of yesteryear, gone from this earth" is used by Lt. Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds to describe the intended effects of a plot to assassinate the Nazi leadership.
  • The poem appears in season two, episode three of Mad Men - the character Don sits in an almost empty cinema, watching a French film (identity unknown) in which a female narrator reads the poem over a series of stills.
  • In chapter five of D.H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover, Clifford Chatterley asks, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?...It's what endures through one's life that matters." Here he is referring to the short-lived sexual affairs that his wife, Lady Chatterley, has had with other men. He is suggesting that these affairs, like the snows of yesteryear, are ephemeral and once gone leave nothing tangible behind.
  • In Act Two, scene II of the play Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Madame Arcati quotes the line, Où sont les neiges d'antan? as she waxes nostalgic about the good old days of "genuine religious belief" when "a drop of holy water could send even a poltergeist scampering for cover."
  • In the graphical novel The Crow by James O'Barr the quote "ou' sont les neiges d'antan" appears in the second chapter.
  • The phrase "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" is included in Act II of the Broadway musical, I Do! I Do!, in a song entitled "Where Are the Snows?" It is a duet sung by the leading characters, Michael and Agnes. The musical has book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt.
  • In chapter 13 of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, the quote "où sont les neiges d'antan?" is referenced by Alvah.
  • During the season 2 Christmas special of Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) quotes, "Où sont les neiges d'antan" while reminiscing with her son about old acquaintances.
  • In HBO's Boardwalk Empire (episode 6 of season 3) prosecuting attorney Esther Randolph quotes, "Where are the snows of yesteryear" in response to Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson's assertion that his days as County Treasurer of Atlantic City are past.
  • In a late-career ballade entitled "Snow Jobs", poet James Merrill took up the refrain "Where is the slush of yesteryear?" explicitly mentioning Teapot Dome, Watergate, theIran-Contra affair and the Whitewater scandal. The poem appeared in the posthumous collection A Scattering of Salts (1995).
  • "Vanished Like the Snow," a track off Irish band Solas's 1997 album Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers, follows the poem thematically, with three stanzas about Helen, Heloise and Abelard, and Joan of Arc.
  • In BBC´s Downton Abbey the Dowager Countess Grantham played by Maggie Smith utters the sentence "Mais ou sont les neiges d´antan" when speaking about a person from her past. This is in episode 9 " Christmas special" of season 2.
  • Umberto Eco quotes the line "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" in the final chapter "Last Page" of "The Name Of The Rose".

See also[edit]

Portal iconpoetry portal

References[edit]

Notes
  1. Jump up^ Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1872) [original French poem Ballade des dames du temps jadis 1461 by François Villon], "Three Translations From François Villon, 1450. I. The Ballad of Dead Ladies", Poems (1870): Sixth Edition (1), French poems translated 1869 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (6 ed.), London: F. S. Ellis, p. 177, retrieved 2013-07-23
  2. Jump up^ Nanna's Lied, sung by Tiziana Sojat
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