Who would have thought when a pandemic hit the United States that instead of stocking up on guns, Americans went grocery shopping? Well, actually, firearms sales are up, but around here it seems that all anyone can think about is food.
I was complaining about this to my friend Jameson Ellis about a month into the lockdown and he recommended I watch “La Grande Bouffe,” a 1970s French film about four late-career-aged men who hole up in a rambling house with a plan to eat and drink themselves to death. And so they do, ordering deliveries of meat and game and making dishes worthy of a Michelin star.
The climax, if you would call it that perhaps, comes when Ugo (played by Ugo Tognazzi) prepares a monstrous pâté in the shape of what appears to be the Florentine Grand Duomo, consisting of three concentric layers — goose, chicken, and duck, eats it by himself, and expires with a helping hand from the men’s sole remaining female guest. The way that Jameson sees it, this is exactly what we are all doing now.
Watching the Peapod and Baldor trucks rattling past the office windows, it is difficult to find much of a reason to disagree. Whether for relieving panic or just something to do, the developed world in lockdown has turned on the stove and preheated the oven. The New York Times reported on a small English flour mill now operating 24 hours a day to meet the needs of British home bread bakers. One of the mill’s owners told The Times, “Demand remains consistently obscene,” in what is close but not quite the sentiment of “La Grande Bouffe.” And an ancient, water-powered grain mill, in Dorset, which operated through the plague in the 17th century and during the 1918 flu pandemic but ceased production in 1970, was returned to service. Less dramatically, the flour shelves at Stop and Shop in East Hampton are consistently bare, and yeast is almost nowhere to be found.
From The East Hampton Star’s own reporting, we learned that beer, wine, and hard alcohol sales, if not consumption, has soared locally. Cases are rolling out the door at Race Lane Liquors. Rodney Roncaglio, the owner of Wines by Morrell in East Hampton, had his biggest-ever single sale in 26 years in the business. The Wolffer wine drive-through on Montauk Highway in Wainscott is almost never without a line of drivers waiting their turns.
You know it’s big when purveyors from elsewhere are pouring in. Eataly, the Manhattan Italian mega-market, has $500 box pickups in East Hampton, and Blue Hill Farm, the famed Westchester institution, has begun its own select service with options including flowers, vegetables, and pastries. This will probably be wildly successful. Several people I know see supermarkets as risky last resorts and are happily shifting their dining out budgets to delivery, pickup, and takeout.
No fan of shopping, I, too, could get used to this. I far prefer relaxing in my truck and having a runner walk my stuff out to me than standing on a tense and fidgeting line at La Fondita, for example. And it’s not just food; the other day an employee at Revco carried a $7 replacement plug to my passenger-side window.
People talk a lot about Covid-19, as in 19 pounds put on as the crisis continues. As long as we don’t go all the way down the “La Grande Bouffe” garden path, that seems a small price to pay.