The Queen of Tarts, She Made Some Hearts
I’d decided to put my apartment up for sale, and head to Key West. I have friends there, I was long growing tired of New York City – the climate, the “rat race”, and, with only a few exceptions, all of my closest friends from over the years had moved away to various other parts of the globe. I was negotiating on a small building, a former bakery, to build out a small restaurant, it had a second floor apartment where I could live. The amount I was selling my NYC studio for plus some savings would pretty much cover the cost of the building and the renovations. I’d decided I deserved a break, and a longer stretch exploring Argentina, and maybe even see if there was more to the spark between Henry and I. What would it take, if so, to convince him to leave South American and come to that States, and how would we get all the logistics worked out?
Little did I know that my six week vacation plan would become an ostensibly permanent move. The deal in Key West fell through while I was in Buenos Aires, Henry and I fanned the spark into a flame, I was already there. Everything I owned was in storage, ready to ship to anywhere… why not? But, at the beginning of April, that had not come to pass. I knew some of it was coming – the offer on my apartment had been agreed upon, the paperwork in process, I was doing all the stuff I needed to do to move on to the next step in life. But, a last goodbye dinner had to be had, with a few of those folk who’d been the mainstays of friendship and my time (23 years!) in the city. I don’t think I even remembered that I’d already done a “hearts” dinner at the time – it had been five years earlier.
presents
“The Queen of Tarts, She Made Some Hearts”
Dinner
1983 Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Milenaires
1989 Marcel Deiss Riesling Grand Cru Schoenenbourg
1976 Mommessin Clos de Tart
1985 Mommessin Clos de Tart
1990 Mommessin Clos de Tart
magnum of
1969 Mommessin Clos de Tart
in my library, and it’s probably something I picked up at random on a sale table at somewhere like The Strand, and so for three of the presidents was the inspiration behind the choices of dishes (when the book was published, Reagan hadn’t yet been president).
, where one of his characters is describing it as a far better match than caviar and champagne. The timing fits, the book was published in mid to late 2003, so I’d likely just read it, but I’ve just done a word search through my ebook version of the tome and not found it. There is a caviar eating scene in his book 
, but no Maraschino mentioned. So I’m at a loss now to recall where I read the scene. Nonetheless, at the time, I decided to give it a try, and it’s actually quite true – it’s an amazing combination. Where whomever wrote it got the idea from, I have no idea, it’s not something that I’ve encountered anywhere else in gastronomic literature (or any other literature for that matter).
