Caroline Fidanza Anna Dunn Rebecca Collerton Elizabeth - Saltie: A Cookbook

The Peak of a Wave
by Anna Dunn

Amplitude. Its not hard to feel full in Brooklyn. Here, where a community of shimmering characters has seemingly sprung from cracks in the sidewalk, there is rarely a dull or colorless moment. The ground seems always to be gently roiling with the endless tides of creativity. This energy flows on the crescendo of a piano being keyed, the notes drifting from an open tenement window, wafting down onto the truck-packed streets. From the hum of sewing machines, the timbre of computer keys gently clacking, the soft scratch of ink on paper. This aliveness crests in one tiny blue-and-white kitchen down on Metropolitan Avenue.

I first met Caroline, Elizabeth, and Rebecca working the coffee counter on weekend mornings at Marlow & Sons, the now acclaimed restaurant tucked just under the Williamsburg Bridge and a stones throw from the East River. At the time, I was employed weekdays at an independent bookstore in the city, running coat check at a salsa night on the Lower East Side, and trying to start my own small publishing company. I took the job making cappuccinos on weekends to make sure I could cover rent. It wasnt pretty. But I was youngand when youre twenty-five it is the very untenable and untamable nature of New York City herself that you desire. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I am not a morning person, so sprinting the eight blocks to Marlow at 6:00 a.m. was always a heart-pounding blur: across the park, over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, under the bridge, around the corner, and down the hatch into the warm, white-and-silver, sweetly pungent bakery. Finish buttoning shirt; make sure belt is looped; straighten hair; run past baker; do not look up at clock; get up back staircase; start to set up shop For the rest of the ten-hour day, at least in the beginning, I watched people come and go. I began to get a feel for the circadian rhythms of a day in the life of a restaurant and to glimpse for the first time what it is that makes a restaurant a kind of perfect vortex in the great cosmos of life. The rituals, the characters, the kaleidoscope of colors and aromas, the grace of spring, the ease of summer, the emptying of fall. Desire and fulfillment. I knew nothing of food.

My initial encounters with the Saltie trio were unique in that they were private. That is, these moments were truly my own, not shared even with the ladies themselves. I admit: I was terrified of them, perhaps as all youths are when they can sense they are in the company of greatness.

They called her Cheffie. When Caroline Fidanza entered the building, around one or two in the afternoon, rosy cheeked and feeling perhaps momentarily Zen, there was a palpable electrical shift in the air. Everyone wanted her ear, her adoration, her respect. It didnt take long for me to gather that she was the spiritual and intellectual Yoda, the den mother and the Demeter of this swath of handsome, hardworking, burgeoning food professionals. Not that Cheffie would ever let on. The nickname was almost more than she could allow. She would linger at the pastry counter in those early days, maybe to listen to Tom Mylan yammer on about whatever obscure Japanese knife or food curio had caught his ever-enthusiastic eye that week, or to quietly consider a cup of coffee, usually deciding against it but never denying its appeal. Then, down to the basement: chefs whites, clogs, a Sharpie and some torn butcher paper for notes, a trip through the walk-in, and the day began.

That considering she lent so graciously to the cup of coffee seems to me, in fact, to be the genesis and catalyst of Carolines genius. The synapse-like attention to understanding a thing, any thing, for what it is in all of its varieties and innate and natural glory, informs her specific and brilliant kind of creativity. Whether we are at Guy Joness farm, standing among the Brussels sprout stalks, ankle deep in loamy Hudson Valley black soil; at the dinner table of a crowded, clattering Manhattan restaurant; or huddled in the warm glow of Salties prep station, Ive seen it time and time again. Caroline will pause, some-times just for a split second, sometimes prolonged, to discover the nature of whatever it is she is faced with and decide how best to honor it. A spiny artichoke, the ubiquitous egg, a piece of bread.

Later in the afternoon, Rebecca would grace us with her presence. She lived in the apartment above Marlow, and around two oclock, shed come straight from tumbling out of bed, her hair somehow perfectly pompadoured, the first cigarette of the day waiting only on that first sip of coffee. I was completely enamored of her English accent, her tattoos, and her cool. I was nervous. I blushed. Never have I ever enjoyed an insult as much as the one served to me on a slow weekday afternoon when Rebecca finally leaned over the counter and asked me to answer a crossword puzzle question. Im pretty sure the clue had something to do with poetry, but I went blank. I must have mustered something utterly wrong; she was almost speechless with her disappointment in me. Rebecca straightened up, placed a Camel Light between her lips, smiled, and said, I thought you were meant to be clever. This genuine nonchalance is at the very core of the wild integrity of Rebecca.

Determined, methodical, inspired, Rebecca slices scallions perfectly, painstakingly juliennes radishes and carrots only to garnish a striking bowl of soup. Rebecca, it seems, has a deep understanding that beauty is in the details. The architectural loft of lettuce towering on a plate. Pickles, yogurt sauce, our fresh herb mix, aioli these are all her domain. She has within her the (page 92).

Elizabeth has a true bakers temperament: one of attention to detail, focus, and an acute understanding of whatever medium she is working in. She has the mind and patience to repeat a task in exactly the same way every day, to make meaning out of method. When Elizabeth burst up out of the Marlow kitchen one afternoon, her kind blue eyes piercing through a white billow of sugar and flour, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm and immediate camaraderie. Here was a true sage. Her roles at Marlow & Sons and at Diner were nebulous, forever changing and vital. Line cook, baker, illustrator. It wasnt until we worked together on