The following is from Mark Kurlansky’s Cheesecake. Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of Milk!, Havana, Paper, The Big Oyster, 1968, Salt, The Basque History of the World, Cod, and Salmon, among other titles. He has received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bon Appétit’s Food Writer of the Year Award, the James Beard Award, and the Glenfiddich Award. He lives in New York City. www.markkurlansky.com.

Ahh, the eighties! The rich who had retreated to the suburbs were coming back to town and were willing to pay for it. Now that Art had bought his first building, he saw opportunities everywhere. The mayor, the banks, they were all on Art’s side. It had been a mistake that he was born on an island that had none. He belonged here, on this island, where the scent was one of money, not goats—at least to him.

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Greek diners would not fit in here for much longer. They belonged to a different age. Art, at least in his mind, had already moved on from the Katz Brothers—even if it was still Niki and Adara’s whole life. He was in the mood to buy. Acquisition. It was the American way. With the rents from his first building, he was soon able to open a small real estate office in midtown, which he kept furnished with a sumptuous leather coach and a blonde assistant—tall, of course.

Soon their Queens neighbor on the other side, Sam Golden, came to Art for advice. He was moving to Boca for the tax break and wanted to be out of his house well before April. Art was happy to buy it for less than a year’s worth of his midtown office cost.

Now he was building his own little neighborhood in Queens and had an office in midtown with a blonde. Wasn’t this perfect? Wasn’t this the ideal portrait of a Manhattan landlord?

It was balding Art and not curly-topped Niki who was continually involved with different women—his “blondes,” at least until their roots. What Art called blondes, though, Niki and Adara called Americans. All they meant was “not Greek.” For a time Art was dating a Polish woman who was taller than he, even in bare feet. She too they called an American. Those were the two kinds of people. He did not bring his blondes to Queens so they would not have to face Adara’s glare. Maybe someday if he dated a brunette he would bring her around. A brunette—why would he do such a thing?

Art would drive in every morning from Queens with his brother and sometimes his sister-in-law in his SUV. The smoked windows had been meant to give them the privacy of celebrities, and now Art felt like one. Everybody now knew who he was since no one else drove a car like this.

Parking was difficult but he did not want to “waste a fortune” on the Upper West Side parking garages. He was torn between disdaining them and entertaining the possibility of getting into that business, which was clearly going to grow with the transition. There was often an empty parking space across the street from the Katz Brothers. Horace, the doorman, occupied the spot next to it during his day shift. He held it until six p.m. when Felix, the night man, drove in from Astoria and took the spot. But the place in front of it, just across from the Katz Brothers, was empty. It was a moneymaker for the city: There was a No Parking sign, but it was hidden behind a leafy tree and so obscurely marked that no one saw it.

Rosita, who gave tickets, was always waiting. Everyone feared Rosita, though she was a pleasant-looking woman whose love of the mofongo served on Amsterdam was making her uniform so tight she no longer tried to fasten the upper two buttons (and even the third was a struggle). She said this gave men something to look at while she was ticketing their car. In some cases this was true.

Horace, a heavy set man with close-cropped hair that may have been gray, who filled out his doorman uniform with the look of a staff sergeant—a beefy look of authority beyond his position—would warn people that if they parked there, they would be towed. He warned Violette, who he had been told was a famous model. In fact, he found her parking spots. “See the blue one five cars down? She is leaving in twenty minutes.” He had every space on the block monitored. Everyone wanted to park on West Eighty-Sixth Street so the doormen would look after their car. On the smaller streets they would be broken into.

Horace perfectly perceived the image Art was projecting and, unfortunately, he didn’t like it. Anyway, the spaces weren’t for landlords—they were for building staff and sometimes good tenants who remembered him at Christmas. When this new SUV parked in the trick spot, Horace said nothing. He even watched with some satisfaction as the car was towed away. The tow charge plus the ticket cost Art more than a burglary, and he was soon becoming a regular at the police garage on the pier off the West Side Highway.

*

With the rent from his new properties, and the banks eager to help, he was able to buy out Gonzalez’s ever-scaffolded sixteen-story elevator building next to the Katz Brothers. Gonzalez still hadn’t finished the renovations—he obviously hadn’t had Art’s vision—and he was anxious to sell at a low price because the building’s apartments were mostly rent-stabilized and not profitable. Of course, what tenants called “affordable,” landlords called “unprofitable.” Often they really were profitable—they just made a small profit in a city where others were making large ones. In Manhattan it wasn’t any fun to make a small profit. Art liked to say, “If the orchard is ripe, pick a lot of apples.” West Eighty-Sixth Street was ripe.

Art could see that this new building was a waiting game. If a tenant’s income rose above a certain level, the landlord could raise their rent. Art could raise it so high that the tenant would have to move and make room for someone who could afford it. This was how to arrive at “a fair market rate.” Other tenants would probably just move away, and others would die. Dying was the more New York thing to do: No one willingly gave up a rent-stabilized apartment or a good parking spot. In fact, having them was a reason to stave off death.

Yes, by the late eighties the transition Art had envisioned was happening. To Art, the changes had begun when he started fixing up the old buildings. To Niki, it began when he saw that the raccoons were finally leaving. So both brothers were happy. But one night, sitting with Adara behind their house in Queens, Niki saw a raccoon and insisted that it had followed him from Manhattan.

Over the next few years, Art managed to strong-arm nearly all the old tenants out of the sixteen-story building. By 1990 his rents were so “fair” that he was making enough money to buy two more inexpensive buildings on the block. By then, everyone saw what was happening. West Eighty-Sixth Street was becoming one of the most expensive streets in Manhattan. To Art this was the fatalistic fulfillment of his destiny. He knew how much he was at cross-purposes: the people he was driving out of the Upper West Side were his regular customers. The diner was from the past and so were its patrons. The Katz Brothers, with its reddish fake-stone façade and cheap grilled cheeses, did not have a place in the neighborhood anymore.

*

Art could change tactics as easily as he could change nationalities. As gently as he could, he pointed out to Adara and Niki that if the restaurant was going to profit from the transition, they had to learn to “modernize.” He declared that the diner was now to be called Mykonos. Their new restaurant was to offer what Art called a “modern international cuisine.” Art hired a new chef, Mario di Capri—no more from Capri than the Milanos were from Milan—who was said to be a three-star Italian chef, though they did not know who had given him those three stars. Adara would still supply the goat cheese. Niki would still be the greeter, only now he would be called the maître d’.

Before even opening, the label “modern international cuisine” had been scrapped. Art was now calling it “modern classical cuisine.” To sell food, he reasoned, a new label had to be invented for it. A new century was coming, and a new Eighty-Sixth Street. Grossinger’s landlord quadrupled their rent and the bakery was no more. Most everyone thought this was a sad moment, but Art thought the closing showed him that he had been right in not getting involved with the bakery. He was impressed with the landlord. If a man owned a property and rented it with short-term leases, he had the right to quadruple the rent. If the original tenants left, he could find someone else. If he could find someone to pay the higher rent, he had been right to raise it.

Art had to offer new food for the new century—not the old New York cheesecake or grilled cheese sandwiches. Special ingredients would be the key. Nothing would be ordinary. The scallops, dayboat scallops, would be sprinkled with saffron from Spain. The braised veal would be served with trompette de la mort—wild black mushrooms—and truffle oil. The lamb was to be grilled with wild garlic ramps. Grilled tuna was to be served with a pungent “Roman garum,” a fermented fish sauce once popular in ancient Rome. The menu would explain the ancient history of garum. Art, expanding beyond rice pudding, delighted in making the garum from scratch, showing a flair for rotten fish.

Adara was enthusiastic about the change. Though it seemed a risk, running an evening restaurant would be much better than working the long hours of the diner. Art told Adara that in addition to cheesemaking, he had a special cooking task for her, one he said was for “the most important item on the menu.” Her assignment was to make something called “Cato’s cheesecake.” The menu was to explain that this Roman recipe was the oldest known written recipe. Art knew cheesecake was popular but he didn’t want a “loser cheesecake,” the kind made by people who couldn’t pay the rent. Adara resisted the idea of a Roman cheesecake. She argued that the first cheesecake had been Greek, but Art had done his homework. “Cato wrote his cheesecake recipe in 160 BCE,” he argued, feeling that he sounded very professional as he said “BCE.”

Adara was not to be intimidated. “Athenius wrote that there were cheesecakes a hundred years before that.”

“But where are the recipes?”

“He said there were recipes, even books, on cheesecake.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re lost.” She reflected for a furious moment and then announced, “My melopita is the recipe. It’s older than Cato’s.”

“Cato’s is the oldest cheesecake recipe. It is the oldest written recipe in existence. And for the first time since perhaps ancient Rome, we are going to make it—in our restaurant. Besides, who is Athenius?”

Adara snorted her disdain. “Ancient Rome. Ancient Rome.

Ancient times begin with Greece!”

“And,” Art said, pointing a finger in the air, “the cheesecake will be scented with truffle oil.”

“Truffle oil?” said Niki and Adara.

“Yes, so it will have the scent of truffles.” “Who can smell truffles?” asked Niki.

“Very few people,” conceded Art with great enthusiasm. “But the ones who can are the ones you want.”

Niki and Adara, who knew little about truffles, looked at each other with uncertainty, but Art had tested his theory. He told them he had bought a black truffle, held it to his nose, and got a musty smell that resembled the shed on their island where old farm equipment was kept. Truffles were only embraced by people who have never had such a shed, he concluded.

“And I can assure you,” Art boldly declared. “The people at the New York Times can smell truffles.”

Art was excited about this idea. He would try it out on Violette.

“We are going to make an ancient Roman cheesecake,” Art said to her one day as she sat at the counter alone. “What do you think of that?”

Sipping on her root beer, she said, “That sounds more like an idea for my husband.”

Art, who had been looking for what he called a “wedge issue,” said, “So you and your husband don’t see these things the same?”

“We’ve never discussed cheesecake.”

“Oh shit!” Art suddenly shouted, looking out the window, and he ran out of the restaurant, shouting, “Rosita! Wait. I’m moving it!”

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From Cheesecake. Used with permission of the publisher, Bloomsbury. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Kurlansky.