Topic: Artichoke Parm

[8ullfrog]

I'm not a big fan of the food blogs, I feel like they are an agent of gentrification, but with facebook, you can't really escape them all, and I really enjoyed one story about defying the future.

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/artichoke-parm-history-new-york

One of the main things I found interesting is that the area the shop was in was gentrified twice.

First, it was called Pig Town. Then Crown Heights, and now the weirdly anonymous and beige "Prospect Lefferts Gardens"

Whodafuck is Lefferts? Oh, oh no, oh sweet stupidity no. (Nimby's, neighborhood association, prolific slave owners.)

Honestly, I think calling your town Pig town has more class than gentrified gardens. There's an honesty in Pig Town, and if you're working meat, even better.

And it's a damn sight better than naming your town after a slaver. WOW.

(The meatball sub place in Encinitas my grandpa loved for its old-school style is now a gentrified "char pizza" place called "URBN" That old oven deserves better)

[6pairsofshoes]

I used to get the eggplant parm at the Kendall House of Pizza (a Greek pizzaria in East Cambridge, MA) sans sandwich and it was glorious.  They didn't feel the need to smother it in melted cheese or throw eggs into it.  I adore artichoke hearts but this looks like a good way to lose them in a vat of fat.  Kind of like losing the history of a prominent Dutch family 400 years before by calling it something aspirational like "Prospect (insert locality here) Gardens."  You wanna live somewhere nice like Prospect Park, Brooklyn, then move there.  And, surely, with the Dutch's propensity to work with Portuguese slave traders, yeah, I'm sure there's some nasty back story about the Lefferts family. 
https://www.cityneighborhoods.nyc/lefferts-boulevard#:~:text=Lefferts%20Boulevard%20in%20Queens%20derives,lasting%20mark%20on%20the%20community.

Like you, I prefer "Pig Town."  Presumably, that's because of the farms in the area.  There were slaughterhouses on the East River in Midtown Manhattan until 1947 when the district was closed down and became the UN HQ.  There were many working farms around NYC until after WWII when a potato blight made the residential developments on Long Island a reasonable alternative use.  At that time, the economy of NYC began its shift from shipping and manufacturing to a service oriented one.  But I digress.  I was disappointed by that sandwich, particularly because I have some jars of artichoke hearts in the pantry and I'm not sure what to do with them.  This ain't it.