A mere tour around the store can cause spontaneous gasps of incredulity and amazement, usually caused by the store’s admirable attempt to aid inflation (they want $77 for a knife?) while simultaneously drawing the wistful sighs of, “Oh, I wish I could afford that $80 mortar and pestle. I’d use it every day.”
The nature of the chain store is that, no matter where you go in the country, the stores not only look exactly the same, but also feature the same clientele. For Williams-Sonoma, these are elderly grandmothers in Lord & Taylor suits, domestic matrons sporting the cleanest two-year-olds in town, brides-to-be registering everything in sight.
But I enjoy the occasional perusal. The place reminds me of my mother’s dream kitchen. She could spend hours looking at all the different varieties of olive oil alone. When she got a gift certificate to the store this year, she announced it to my dad with her how-great-is-that! smile, complete with perfect-teeth grin and sparkling eyes. I went on her “scoping out” visit where she looked around but didn’t buy anything. She said she needed to deliberate before committing to a purchase. My mother’s worked in courthouses for the last 30 years. Everything requires deliberation.
Personally, I go for the food. Samples are the best part, and in the week before the Super Bowl, the Williams-Sonoma store in the Carousel Center in Syracuse, NY is all about different sauces to go with your party food, all advertised as “just in time for the big game.” A man named Owen talks to some middle-aged wives, a silver-haired woman and her daughter, both toting shopping bags from Lord & Taylor, and me about making the chicken wing sauce that he’s just pulled out of the oven and is serving to us with Tostitos chips.
Owen is clean-cut with bright eyes at what my grandmother would call “a young forty,” which means that he’s about 35, smiles a lot, and doesn’t have a beer belly. He’s friendly, approachable, eager to help. He’s also very surprised to have a young college student with them. In a city as saturated with students as Syracuse, where the university commands all the resources (and parking spaces), I don’t blame him.
The air fills with the scent of chicken wing dip and reminds me of some of the East coast Mexican restaurants; heavy on the cheese, light on the spices. When I share this, Owen tells me the names and locations of the best Mexican restaurants in the area, including one to the north that’s owned by a Mexican woman and her husband. The silver-haired woman chimes in and tells us she hates spicy foods even as she picks up a copy of the wing dip recipe. The spiciness, she says, overpower the other flavors; Owen finishes the sentence with her in evident agreement. They diverge, talking about some of the other recipes in the store (mostly desserts) and their favorite local restaurants – predominately French and Italian ones. She doesn’t invite me to join in, though Owen shoots me a sweet smile as she talks. She leaves out my most common dinner destinations; Coleman’s, Dinosaur, any sushi restaurant in the city. When she collects her purchases (which include the $77 knife) and leaves with her daughter, the disdain with which she passes the guacamole display makes me shudder.
I mention the Super Bowl to Owen; he shrugs and tells me that the class that morning is all about chocolate. My eyes wander to the cake on display in the shape of a Giants helmet only a few feet from where we stand talking.
Apparently the “big game” weekend ends on Saturday at Williams-Sonoma. After all, with this crowd, football just can’t compete with chocolate.
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