Two or three years ago now, my family and I went on a haunted tour of the Boston Common. On it, we were allowed to peer into times gone by: we marveled at the former site of the hanging tree, we were awed by the burial grounds nearby the Boylston T-stop, and we shuddered in fear in front of the Omni Parker House's haunted mirror.
And then we hit the bar.
No offense to the ghost tour - which was fun and very well-done - but the most terror-stricken event of the evening was, actually, something that did not happen.
Nobody was interested in dessert. We had just discovered - amongst the corpses, phantasms, and hauntings that lingered like a miasma over our evening - that the birthplace of the Boston cream pie was the Omni Parker House, whose bar we were currently sitting in!
And no one was interested in dessert?! As if some hackneyed doughnut version of the dessert - the only version of it any of us had ever known - had satisfied a lifetime of itches for a pudding-filled cake topped in chocolate? If you had just discovered that Spaghetti-Os were inspired by a real pasta dish and a traditional sauce that can date back centuries, wouldn't you want to try that dish? Wouldn't you want to know what the recipe, free from the mass-manufacturing mechanisms of modern food, would be like?
For some ridiculous reason, I felt compelled not to order desert.
Now, finally, I have returned to the Omni Parker House, I have ordered my dessert, and I loved it. A Boston cream pie will cost $9, but it would make for an excellent dessert-date, if that kind of thing appeals to your and/or your loved one. Or, think of it this way: Boston's current gourmet dessert scene is heavily restricted to cupcakes and frozen yogurt, both of which tally in anywhere from $3 to $7 per, particularly when forced to pay by weight and topping count, At that rate, a one-of-a-kind original desert with deep ties to local history, served in a place that exudes local history, is a downright bargain at $9.
So, please, enjoy it now; just because something is worth the wait, doesn't mean you have to.
Til next time!
