Avocado

I was on a trip to Vancouver and had stopped at a little local restaurant for lunch, where my eye was caught by the avocado salad on the menu.

(Photo by John Vid)

I don’t often eat avocados when I’m so far north of Southern California: living where I do, I’ve become somewhat spoiled where they are concerned. The sun-loving avocado does well in the Los Angeles area, and in the neighborhood where I live we are lucky enough to have access to some particularly good ones. Our local supermarket does a delightful variety; our local organic produce store does a delicious one; Christina from Ace Ranch at Mar Vista Farmers’ Market on Sundays offers one that would make you curl your toes and pity the poor angels in heaven above who were missing it.

But that’s in Los Angeles; and the downside of having such delectable bounty so easily to local hand, is that it does tend to spoil you for the less spectacular fruit to be found elsewhere. I have an LA friend who refuses even to look at an avocado when he is anywhere north of the frozen tundra of Paso Robles; and here I was now in Vancouver, a beautiful and vibrant metropolis known by the locals – mostly, I tell myself, affectionately – as Rain City. But I could live foolishly, I reflected on that only mildly drizzling lunchtime: when the avocado jones is upon you and you’re up in the rainy north, you cannot afford to be picky, and if the Canadian avocado were to prove truly execrable, then no one in Los Angeles need ever even know of my moment of lunacy. So, somewhat in the spirit of the buttoned-up New England spinster who embarks on a wild spree of licentiousness the instant her toe touches European soil, I flung caution to the winds and ordered it.

The avocado arrived, and it was delicious. Nutty and creamy, rich and firm, it was a fruit that could hold up its head with pride in the most rarefied of avocado company. I was in luck, I exulted, downing one vinaigrette-smeared piece after another. I was in better than luck: I was in the presence of a truly fine avocado.

But where, I then wondered, my initial hunger satiated and my mind slowing down to wander, could the restaurant owners have procured so excellent a fruit? It was a modest establishment, and I doubted whether the family who owned it would have had the means to transport produce all the way from Santa Barbara. On the other hand, the quality was far superior to that of the standard restaurant avocado anywhere, never mind British Columbia. Could some enterprising soul have found a way to grow such richness all the way up here in the rain? It would be difficult, but Vancouverites are famously green-fingered after all, and amazing things can be done these days …

“Excuse me,” I said to the waitress the next time she came by. “I have a question about my avocado.”

The waitress, a dewy young thing who, it became immediately plain, was longer on sweetness of nature than on razor sharpness of professional expertise, looked alarmed.

“Do you have a problem with it?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s delicious. I just want to know where you guys found it.”

The waitress’ eyes widened in confusion.

“It’s wonderful,” I said. “Where did it come from? Do you guys have a farm or something?”

The waitress’ eyes now widened further in fright. I am not a small person and it has been commented at times that my bearing, even at my most benign, is not necessarily that of the mild-mannered.

“Don’t you like it?” she said.

I began to feel sorry for her.

“I love it,” I said, and smiled reassuringly. “I just wondered where it came from.”

The waitress was now on the verge of tears.

“If you don’t like it,” she said. “I can take it away.”

This was heartbreaking.

“I do like it!” I cried. I nodded vigorously, and patted my stomach in appreciation: English did appear to be the waitress’s native language, but I figured that a little visual aid might not go amiss either. “I really like it very much indeed. In fact, I like it so much I want to know where you found it.”

Then pointed again to the greenly creamy deliciousness in my salad. “Where?” I asked, speaking very slowly and clearly so that she could understand me. “Does. This. Come. From?”

The waitress furrowed her brow in concentration.

“You want to know,” she ventured at last, “where it comes from?”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Yes!” I said, and beamed at her in congratulation.

The waitress’ brow unfurrowed as she beamed back.

“I’ll talk to the manager,” she announced delightedly, and disappeared into the back of the restaurant, leaving me to savor both the remains of my salad and the afterglow of my communicational victory. Now, I thought, exchanging a commendatory nod with myself in the mirror, I knew how Socrates felt, and Anne Sullivan, and Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love.

The waitress was gone a long time. Eventually, she reappeared, carefully bearing with her a whole avocado, which she flourished in front of me.

“You,” she informed me, “are from England.”

I’d forgotten about my accent, but, feeling that any effort of observation on her part should be met with positive reinforcement, I nodded in agreement.

“I am indeed,” I affirmed.

She nodded back in triumph.

“I thought so,” she said.

She placed the fruit on the table in front of me, and raised a slender but imposing finger, which she then lowered to point at it.

“This,” she said, speaking slowly now for my own benefit, “is called … an avocado.”

She nodded again, and scanned my face for a sign of comprehension.

The least I could be was gracious.

“Avocado,” I repeated carefully. “Thank you.”

The waitress smiled, proudly.

“They’re pretty common here in Canada,” she explained. “They don’t look much from the outside, but when you cut into them you get what you have on your plate.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“OK,” I said. “Good to know.”

The waitress was on a roll.

“You can find them,” she noted, “in the produce section of the supermarket.”

I raised my eyebrows in acknowledgment.

“Very useful information,” I said. “Thank you very much indeed.”

The waitress was now wreathed in smiles.

“You’re very welcome,” she said.

She took the avocado and went her way, softly humming the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song.