The Grocery List: An Upper West Side Mystery

By Yvonne Vávra

One of our neighbors had a trying week. His issues involved frozen peas, cream cheese, and possibly jalapeños. There was some uncertainty about that last one. Tired of losing sleep over a grocery list he found in a shopping cart at the Target on 97th Street and Columbus Avenue, Andreas, 29, of West 100th Street, reached out to the Rag. “I don’t know why I’m so intrigued by this list,” he wrote. “I even brought it home. I have so many questions!”

It’s a fascinating list indeed. Neat, long, drafted with great care. You can call it a grocery list; I call it art. The handwriting is impeccable, and there’s a system of stars I’d love to understand. So would Andreas. “The variety of ingredients, the unused check boxes, and what do the stars represent?” he asked. “The saddest part is I might never know.”

Hold your salt, Andreas, and believe in the power of the Rag. We might be able to find the creator, get to the bottom of it all, and maybe even return the list so that the full feast plotted here can finally see the light of day. But what, in fact, could that feast be? Andreas, who is passionate about cooking for friends and family and dreams of opening a farm-to-table restaurant one day, suspects there are a couple of different meals in the works. “Maybe an Asian dish with the top of the list and a Mexican one with the bottom?”

It’s one of life’s great joys to stumble upon a private glimpse into someone else’s life and wonder about it. I once found a note that said, “Must not talk to him,” and I’m still thinking about it. We’re often so trapped inside our own heads that we start to mistake our version of life for life itself. These moments pull you out of yourself, reminding you there are entirely different ways to live, entirely different things to worry about.

Your life could look like carefully crafting a beautiful shopping list, considering lettuce and lunch meat but then putting them in brackets. Maybe tuna would be better… or perhaps not. Best to put it all in brackets, because the perfect idea might strike at the store.

The shopping list mystery made me wonder what everyone is up to in the kitchen. Do you all have a signature dish? A specialty the people in your lives can’t get enough of? Something so good it will be passed down for generations? Or do you come up with dishes that puzzle your family, like my mom? She used to make something we called “yellow rice,” which consisted of a thin slice of pork topped with an abundance of cooked onions and—take a deep breath—mayonnaise. A thick layer of it. A little thicker than you imagine. It came with a side of saffron rice and curry sauce with even more onions. What in the food world was that even? Only the tastiest thing ever, courtesy of nostalgia.

I wish we were the East Village—though only because they have a wildly popular community cookbook full of recipes from local residents, chefs, and artists. Alan Cumming contributed the Scottish dish “stovies,” made of potatoes, onions, and, um, fat. There are also family recipes like “Nana’s Apple Cake,” which made its way to the East Village from Belarus when Nana came to New York as a teenager.

I want our Upper West Side apple cakes that have been in our families for generations, and I want them now! I’d even try your potatoes and fat in honor of our culinary heritage.

I personally wouldn’t have much to contribute to the collection. If I cared less about a balanced diet, I’d eat my signature dish at all hours of the day. It’s oats with 10 pounds of cocoa powder and applesauce on top. I don’t assume anyone would want the details.

Andreas, however, just recently made pasta with asparagus, peas, leeks, and ricotta for his girlfriend and his cat. One look at the magic Lexey and Marley—the girlfriend and the cat—get to enjoy, and we definitely want him in the cookbook. That’s a double-page spread right there.

I wanted to know what he’d make with the groceries on the list. “Since it’s summer, I’d probably grill the chicken breast and zucchini. I’d boil the potatoes first, then smash them and throw them on the grill to get them a little crispy.”

OK, don’t stop talking, say more.

“Another light summer meal idea from the list could be lettuce-wrap tacos: ground beef, bell peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, and a shredded cheese mix.”

Now, for dessert: if you’re the Upper West Sider missing a fabulous shopping list, please reveal yourself. We’d love to know what was for dinner.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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