The Matchbox Tells The Tale

Back in the days when I traveled (i.e. pre-COVID), I often picked up a matchbox at a restaurant as a small souvenir. Like the majority of people in the U.S., I’m not a smoker, and so matches are for more prosaic uses — candles, fireplaces, and a few fireworks at home on Independence Day. But I do love picking up a box and being reminded of the places I’ve visited all over the world.

Once my collection was vast — talismans from amazing experiences like Bibendum in London, Les Papilles in Paris, Zuni Café in San Francisco, the late (much-missed) Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, and Light & Salt on the Bund in Shanghai. I never guarded or hoarded the matchboxes, though, assuming in most cases that I would be back for return trips. In some cases, I was, but in other instances now the restaurants and the matches are in the past. Several relocations, new houses, and things we shed along the way contributed to the loss of those little boxes. And in the early, and middle, and now later days of COVID, we grabbed a box here and there to light a few candles or the firepit — anything to literally and figuratively light the darkness.

Now, most of the matches I’ve scavenged around the house are prosaic ones, like the ones that you buy, twenty boxes to a package, at the hardware store. The few others I’ve found recently embody the lockdown world we are living in, one where eating is mostly local although very good — matches from Blue Ridge Grill (just down the street from us), King & Duke (from that last pre-COVID foray into dining out), and Le Colonial (alas, not the Chicago one but the local outpost).

But hang on, there is one forlorn outlier from somewhere outside our hometown of Atlanta: a box from Gramercy Tavern in New York. That must have been from our last trip to NYC in early March 2020, when we celebrated my husband’s birthday at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis, succumbed to a late night of great music at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and hit not one but two Danny Meyer restaurants — the tried and true Gramercy Tavern, and the new star on the block, Manhattan. At both of those places, the staff were gracious and the food was amazing. We remembered those evenings fondly when a few weeks later both, and many more, were closed due to coronavirus. They briefly reopened this year, but as of this writing are now closed again because of the rising number of COVID cases in the New York City area and beyond.

At least for now, I’ve got my matchboxes, and my memories — and here’s hoping that great food and great travel return soon.

-Laura Flippin | Wheels Up