BOSTON. Summertime in Boston means lots of activity in the city’s public spaces, including an annual ethnic food festival at which tourists and natives can sample delicacies from around the world prepared in marginally sanitary conditions. “It’s really educational,” says Marcia Keezer-Winston, who makes the twenty-mile trip into town each year from her suburban home in Westland. “You learn the cuisines of different cultures, then you experience diarrhea as suffered around the world.”
“Yes I like dogs–why do you ask?”
But the popular shindig has, for many years, stuck like a fishbone in the throat of one excluded demographic: WASPs–white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the people who founded Boston as a “shining city on a hill,” the Biblical phrase invoked by Puritan John Winthrop in his lecture to the first group of Massachusetts Bay colonists as they prepared to sail for America.
“I honestly could never figure out why we were singled out,” says Asa Huntington IV as he stirs a pot of baked beans. “We’re an ethnic group too, just a disproportionately affluent one.”
And so, after a threat of pro bono litigation by one of the city’s “white shoe” law firms, this year marks the first time that WASP cuisine will be available alongside Brazilian feijoada, Ethiopian injera, and Freedonian glaxvkstik, despite protests from “foodies”–culinary aficionados–who claim the bland, starchy fare will drag Boston back to the bad old days when natives of the city were assumed to live on nothing but beans baked in molasses.
“I’m sorry, dear–Twinkies are for the lower classes.”
Curious passersby take in the aroma and the presentation of various offerings as they stroll through City Hall Plaza, winner of numerous architectural awards but voted “Most Depressing Public Space” by the American Society of Pedestrians for six years running.
“What is that stuff?” a young woman asks as Huntington takes a nondescript loaf out of a throw-back oven.
“It’s New England brown bread,” the descendant of Mayflower passengers says with as much of a smile as he can muster in response to someone with a nose ring and tattoos all over her bare arms.
“It doesn’t look very appetizing,” the woman says.
“It’s not supposed to be,” Huntington replies, warming to his didactic role. “The Puritans viewed food as punishment. In fact, they viewed everything as punishment, so they liked to suffer when they sat down at mealtime. Want to try some?”
New England brown bread: Yum, sort of.
“No thanks,” the woman says, as she wanders off to a tent bearing a banner that reads “A Taste of Canada!” for some poutine, a disgusting dish made of French fries and cheese curds topped with brown gravy.
Huntington seems miffed at first, but he needs to tend to a boiling pot on a butane-fueled outdoor stove. He stirs the thick mixture, keeping it from boiling over, and producing a sweet aroma that begins to attract some hungry visitors from out-of-town, most of whom are unimpressed with his other offerings; cold roast beef and a buffet of mashed vegetables including mashed turnips, mashed potatoes, mashed squash and more mashed turnips.
“That smells delicious,” says Cindy Cornell from Ashtabula, Ohio. “What is it?”
“Indian pudding,” Huntington says, offering the visitor a spoonful. “Made from real Indians!”