When I was growing up, my family would make trips into the City and the Russian bakeries there. That's bakeries — plural. There were several at that time. I don't remember their names, or even the names of the streets they were on, but to this day I can see their storefronts and remember the way they smelled. They were utterly unlike the American bakeshops. The smells were different, the pastries and cakes looked different. The sweets tasted different. All the sweets, the chocolates, hard candies, the buns, cookies, cakes — everything. The fruit tastes were more concentrated, the chocolate more intense and just different from American chocolate.

At the shop on the flat street with the narrow, dark storefront, we got hard candies filled with tart, pungent fruit centers, firm milk candies that melted in the mouth, and shiny foil wrapped chocolates in the shapes of bottles and filled with liqueur. The shop with the wide, bright storefront on the hill had pale white meringues, so light and crisp, with barely sweetened vanilla cream and a bright red cherry, pyramid slices of sponge cake and chocolate icing, Black Forest cake with kirsch and cherries and more real cream and dark chocolate shaved so thin that it melted on your lips, and jars of raspberry jellies that smelled and tasted like nothing else.

Those Russian bakeries are gone. Sometimes I can still find a box of Swiss marzipan or European chocolates that have the quintessential fragrance I remember from those days, but even now, with such an increased interest in imported foods, it is rare.

What happened? Did our tastes really change so much? Mine haven't. Well, maybe they've broadened, but they certainly haven't cheapened. I still want cakes made with real whipped cream, buttercreams made with — Yes! — butter, and bittersweet chocolate that has character, not just color.

Ginger cake should be spicy, not merely suggestive, cookies buttery, puddings creamy and milky. I want fruit jams that shout fruit not pectin, and booze, booze, booze! Not because I want to make anyone tipsy, but because I want cakes and creams that are as fragrant as they are flavorful, and dark rums, eau de vies and brandies give us these things in abundance.

And more than anything, I want you to want these things too. I want you to expect every pumpkin pie to be spicy and creamy, every flaky pastry to be made with sweet butter instead of vegetable shortening. I want you to think of the smallest pastry as the greatest extravagance not because of how many calories it has, but because of the satisfaction it gives you, the way it makes you feel special, worthy, imminently alive and connected not only to the world around you but to the history and traditions of the people who came before us and left us this legacy of splendor that should not be forgotten.

Food should sustain the body, but good food also elevates the soul. At Crixa, I hope to always offer you the very best in quality and aesthetic that will nurture both.

Elizabeth Kloian