A visit to the acclaimed Talula's Table in Kennett Square left him impatient with the small portions. The rolls at DiNic's Roast Pork in the Reading Terminal Market, where he grabbed a sandwich with pal Nick Malgieri, the celebrated pastry chef, weren't up to what Blank remembered.
Then again, one's memory is a slippery thing. Which is why we have libraries, after all. And why this week it was a small comfort to see Fritz Blank's un-Googleable archives still intact, if unsprung from sturdy Hollinger file boxes, reminders of our time at the table, not simply in Deux Cheminees' twilight, but at fire department muskrat feeds, and staff meals - bowls of German potato salad warm and glistening, grainy hot-dog mustard runny and sweet - that shall not soon, to my deep regret, pass this way again.