Yossi Gutmann demonstrates the elegance of frugality in a concise, almost sparse essay for Gastronomica, “My Father’s Kitchen, Tel Aviv” (pdf). Gutmann’s crisp writing shrewdly captures the timelessness of a long-occupied apartment and its tenant:
My father does nothing fancy in his kitchen. He prepares the same thing every day: for breakfast, one small cucumber a hard-boiled egg, five tablespoons of low-fat yogurt mixed with cottage cheese (each time he eats it, he tells me how much he likes that particular combination).
Photographs rich in color accompany the brief essay, which–in all its elegance–calls to mind another lucidly written glimpse of family gathering around a table: Toni Mirosevich’s “The Prize Inside,” which we reprinted out of Gastronomica in 2007. For readers interested in more background on Gutmann’s father and his Tel Aviv apartment, Gastronomica offers an online exclusive interview with the writer.