In the current issue of Nextbook, Emily Barton's essay from the forthcoming anthology "Brooklyn Was Mine," takes us into a forgotten world of true Brooklyn seltzer-love, introducing us to Eli, the seltzer man. Finding this old-world, high-end delivery service that puts store-bought seltzer to shame, she writes:
Eli’s seltzer is more expensive than the kind we got in the store, so we don’t drink it with the same abandon, and the taste is different: saltier, more metallic, sharper. Learning to control the pressure was trickier than we’d expected; we had a few days of wet countertop before we mastered it. Even with soy milk, it makes phenomenal egg creams. But more important, we like having the crates and bottles in our kitchen, a tie to this city’s past. I like the connection to my father’s childhood, my aunts’ and uncle’s childhoods, and a world that was based around neighborhoods, where you knew the people who lived next door and ran the shop around the corner.
No beverage was more prominent in the home of my Sheepshead Bay grandparents than true, high-end seltzer (without the high-end price), and for the record, my Long Island born father still romances about properly carbonated egg creams. I used to even think as a little kid that seltzer was a specifically Jewish drink. But upon visiting my wife's Abruzzo-born Italian family in Bay Ridge last week, guess what I was served? One hint: It wasn't Pellegrino.
Why Glass Shallot?
Because we spit out "club soda" with verve!
