A couple of weeks ago, Chris Crawford, a former restaurant chef who prefers to be called a cook, gave me a tour of the place that she refers to as her "factory."The description is technically true, but it's also funny, considering that it's a single room in which Crawford usually works alone. The eleven-hundred-square-foot space, situated on a high floor of a building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is equipped with an induction burner, a microscope, and a big sink, plus bouquets of lemon verbena and whole persimmons hanging from the ceiling to dry.
About half the room is occupied by tall shelving units, lined with hundreds of large plastic pails. Crawford, a petite forty-one-year-old with elfin features, is the founder and the sole full-time employee of a company called Tart Vinegar. She has made a name for herself selling vinegar fermented from a surprising array of ingredients: celery, lavender, rose with sour cherry and Concord grape (a variety she markets as True Romance). Prying off the lid of one bucket, and then another, she dipped in a ladle, bringing the vinegar to her lips as if it were soup, and encouraged me to do the same.
This story is from the February 12 -19, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the February 12 -19, 2024 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"
